Women In Wellness: Dina Lobo on the Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Separate yourself from your thoughts. You can detach yourself from your ideas once you become aware of them. Your thoughts are temporary. Either through journaling, visualization, or positive self-talk we can escape from that black or white thinking, which often leads to either a reaction of panic to a situation, or irrational choices.
Dina Lobo is a love and authenticity practitioner and mindset coach, certified trauma support expert, financial services manager, mother, and travel enthusiast, who assists clients in overcoming mental and emotional barriers that hinder them from living the life they truly desire.
She is the creator of Transformational Spark coaching, a company that assists clients in deciphering and resolving the core source of their ailments at the subconscious level, as well as creating breakthrough experiences that raise conscious awareness. This enables her customers to discover inner peace and freely follow their life’s ambitions.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the story about how you first got involved in fitness and wellness?
My expertise is mental wellness. Last year when I became a mom it was challenging due to the pandemic. I had scary emergency situations and had to undergo a diagnosis as well, prior to becoming pregnant. All of this caused tremendous trauma and as a result, my stress levels were through the roof.
I began to learn about the connection, or integration, between my mind and body. As a financial manager, I was helping people with financial breakthroughs, but I knew deep within I was meant to help people on a much deeper level.
I started Transformational Spark Coaching, and the world turned upside down for me. I began to attract beautiful things because I became the embodiment of change.
I told myself “I am in the process of having a transformation. I can be a mom and a successful entrepreneur.” This is when everything changed for me.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
Before, I would put everything else before myself. My self-care routine was not that great and as a result, I saw that there were these strong needs that were starving within me. The most interesting thing that happened was the timing and how starting on this journey worked perfectly for me.
I was able to be on parental leave and have this ‘transformation,’ while spending time with my baby, being there for my family, and learning to slow down.
Can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority in the fitness and wellness field? In your opinion, what is your unique contribution to the world of wellness?
My teachings are about mental wellness and integrating mind and body. We use an approach where we’re not defying the spiritual, emotional, and mental relational aspect from the physical body. Everything is connected.
So, I teach the physiology and psychology signs that help understand the body such as the threat response system, the tolerance system, and how to tune into your body’s messages.
I teach students to become the embodiment of love and vibrate at the love frequency. When you learn to do this and encompass that positive self-talk, everything changes.
None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
My biggest backbone is my husband, he is such a very caring, loving person. He’s always been incredibly supportive, even while I was having my breakthrough and transformation and becoming connected with my purpose work.
I’m thankful to have him as a partner; he’s someone I’ll be grateful for the rest of my life.
Ok thank you for that. Now let’s move to the focus of our interview. We all know it’s important to eat more vegetables, eat less sugar, exercise more, and get better sleep etc. But while we know it intellectually, it’s often difficult to put it into practice and make it a part of our daily habits. In your opinion, what are the 3 main blockages that prevent us from taking the information that we all know, and integrating it into our lives?
The three main blockages are 1.) We self-sabotage, 2.) We don’t keep our goals in our subconscious mind, and 3.) We don’t set ourselves up for success.
Your goals need to be in your subconscious mind — that is where you act, that is where you see the results. So, for that to happen your goals need to be attached to an emotion, and that becomes your desired goal. We need to know our big ‘why.’ What is important to you, what are the health goals that you have?
We must figure out our big why and focus on it every day being deliberate and intentional.
Preparing yourself for success means changing at your core identity level, continuing to inform your subconscious mind of those goals, attaching emotion, and feeling and visualizing that goal.
Can you please share your “5 Non-Intuitive Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Dramatically Improve One’s Wellbeing”?
The first step is especially important is recognizing your negative talking. Ask yourself, “What am I telling myself today?” It’s important to recognize this early on so we can stop and recognize those fears and anxiety and face them head on.
Secondly is to separate yourself from your thoughts. You can detach yourself from your ideas once you become aware of them. Your thoughts are temporary. Either through journaling, visualization, or positive self-talk we can escape from that black or white thinking, which often leads to either a reaction of panic to a situation, or irrational choices.
The third thing that will really help you with your success is practicing gratitude, I cannot focus on this enough. For every dip you have, every challenge, and every negative thing, you must focus on two positives. This is how you will train your mind and your inner critic to set new neural pathways to success.
The fourth point is to disconnect from technology. We all need to disconnect and make a commitment to ourselves to do so. A suitable time to do this is setting 30 minutes to an hour before bed and turning off our cellphones and devices. During this time, we can do something that honors ourselves, like expressing gratitude for the day, listing a few of the day’s accomplishments (even if they’re minor), and thinking of some goals for the following day. Write these things down or express them aloud. Also commit yourself during the first hour of the day to not check social media or browse on your phone and instead, do something you love. This has helped me immensely to take time for myself and connect with who I am. For me, it is dancing with my baby, listening to a meditation, or doing breathing exercises.
The fifth step is journaling, and this is also a huge part. When we record what happens to us and it goes from us, to pen and paper, it helps release emotion and trapped energy. It is a healthy alternative to bottling up your emotions and not dealing with it, which only causes trauma for your body.
As an expert this might be obvious to you, but it would be instructive to articulate this for the public. Aside from weight loss, what are 3 benefits of daily exercise? Can you explain?
When I became a mom, I easily gained 40 pounds. In the beginning I was hard on myself. As I began to start loving my body and love myself for who I am, it helped me take that first step to becoming healthier.
It is important to act and have movement in your body. Do what you liked to do as a child. Did you like dancing? How about painting or reading a novel? And then do that.
Other aspects that will help motivate you to incorporate daily exercise is to be sure to have positive self-talk with yourself and keep it simple and focus. Whether it’s going out in nature for a walk it doesn’t have to be complex.
Movement in body, self-regulation and positive self-talk. These are the things on which I would focus.
Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story?
The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, by Joseph Murphy.
To achieve our goals, we need to get to our subconscious mind. Create a goal, attach an emotion and make it a desired goal. There is a lot of mindset work that needs to be done, in order to succeed.
The subconscious mind is susceptible to suggestion, which you can use to your benefit. Do you recall the first time you learned to ride a bike? It most certainly demanded your conscious mind’s undivided attention and focus. However, after a period, your subconscious is likely to have gotten the hang of things, and riding a bike became a natural, instinctive job.
This is an excellent example of conscious to unconscious learning, which is a fantastic tool to have at your disposal. It is simply a matter of harnessing the power of your subconscious mind via the repetition of positive ideas to use it.
Your subconscious mind is continuously working, and you may use its power to your advantage. This latent energy may assist you in dealing with any difficulty in your life, enhancing your mental and physical well-being.
Finally, the entire process is dependent on envisioning success and removing negative ideas.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?
“If you want to change the fruits, you will first have to change the roots. If you want to change the visible, you must first change the invisible.” — T. Harv Eker
We hold on to certain beliefs, it could be from childhood, or it could be from past painful experiences where we incurred some sort of trauma. If we can tweak our beliefs, we can rewire ourselves and create the life we want.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why?
I would love to meet up with Tony Robbins someday and just chatter about life. Maybe collaborate with him on a session, I would absolutely love that.
What is the best way our readers can follow you online?
Build a team with talented people who truly believe in your idea and put their whole heart and perseverance to make it a success.
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Duygu Sefa.
Duygu Sefa, Founder and CEO of Babonbo, graduated from Bogazici University in Turkey and moved to Italy in 2007 to attend a master’s degree at Politecnico di Milano. Duygu continued to work for 10+ years in the multinational automotive sector as a Product Marketing Manager, Business Development Manager, and eventually Countrywide Manager. In 2017, upon returning from her first daughter’s maternity leave, she felt disconnected from work and wanting to start her own business. After traveling with her daughter, Duygu created the idea of a baby gear rental marketplace to ease the traveling experience for families and give an opportunity for moms to grow a business.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
Parents spend too much on baby gear, especially when it’s their first time.
Between the influence of our friends & family and social media to have everything you (don’t) need, there is way too much pressure around them, an added stressor already worried new parents don’t need.
According to a study made by a baby gear brand in the UK, 90% of parents admitted they’d overspent on baby goods, with more than half of the total value of the goods wasted on items that were either not used at all, or not enough to warrant the amount spent! This has a negative impact, both economical and environmental.
By creating a platform where we have both increased the lifespan of baby equipment by sharing, and created a circular economy, Babonbo has fully disrupted the way we see the traditional child care equipment market. We’ve increased the utility of the equipment while decreasing consumption — it’s a revolutionary win-win.
Our Babonbo providers — those who rent out baby gear they no longer use — help start this circular movement. They earn money by helping other families access baby gear anytime, anywhere and help them save money by avoiding unnecessary purchases while saving the environment by decreasing consumption. Our growing community is rapidly expanding, now beyond Italy, which is where we first took root.
After each rental, Babonbo providers take care of their baby gear, check, clean and sanitize it. We ensure excellent service through our terms with providers and customer rating after each rental.
And wherever our local providers cannot reach, we, as Babonbo, deliver high quality baby equipment to the doorstep of our trusting customers. And because we are strongly based on trust and quality, most of our customers are recommended by other parents, who themselves trusted us. Word of mouth is a strong tool and we pride ourselves in noting that our customer retention and recommendation is higher than most companies. We see this as a sign of success.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Babonbo was born as an idea in April 2018, and I had already incorporated the company in the UK by July 2018 — way too quickly. I should have taken more time to validate the idea before moving forward with the incorporation.
After incorporation it took more than 1 year to implement a product solution because I wanted everything “almost” perfect before launching it. And I spent an important part of my personal savings on creating the first product.
Now that I am more experienced, I know that it was a funny mistake! There were many other ways for me to build a Minimum Viable product by spending less money and time just to demonstrate the problem exists and people pay for the solution quickly. After that, I could have searched for an initial capital to build a more sophisticated tech solution without spending too much from my own pocket.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
When I decided to work effectively on my idea while I was still a full-time employer at a corporate company, I knew almost nothing about startups and the ecosystem around it. This led me to apply for the Founder Institute, an idea-stage accelerator and global launch network that helps entrepreneurs create meaningful and enduring technology companies.
I can’t begin to express how much this helped me. From learning how to launch a winning company, to creating a local and global network in the startup ecosystem quickly from 0 to 100, this has tremendously benefited my growth and success.
The Founder Institute’s Milan chapter directors, Peter Lazou and Maria Matloub, were always there when I needed during, but also after the program, and their local and global network of mentors has always been extremely supportive.
After that, my startup was incubated virtually by Polihub, the Innovation Park & Startup Accelerator of Politecnico di Milano. During and after, Polihub mentors were also very supportive in helping me reposition my business model with the unexpected turn of events the pandemic brought to our lives. Once again, a strong support system that helped me solidify strong foundations.
Having an experienced mentor or an advisor is so important in the journey of an entrepreneur. Without a doubt, the most impactful mentor and advisor that I had, and still have today, is Volkan Bicer. He always believed in my commitment and hard work, which led him to believe in me and Babonbo, as he became one of the first seed-stage investors.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
I believe disruption is positive if it brings benefits to society, planet, and improves the life of people, health and education, while decreasing our impact on the environment, the gap of inequalities we are all faced with.
I think we, entrepreneurs, have a very good guideline provided by the United Nations, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which state that we cannot only rely on our country’s policies and regulations to do good. We are all responsible for disrupting the existing non-sustainable markets and economies to create our own sustainable ones.
There is a long road ahead of us, but if we all create something meaningful from the start, we will all contribute to impact our world.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
Build a business which gives you passion every day. I heard this advice for the first time from my FI Milan Director, Peter Lazou. During a session in which we were practicing pitching our ideas, he said: “When you pitch your idea, you should be able to make your audience get goose bumps (excite them). And this can happen only if you are passionate about your idea” This is so true. The only way to excite people when you talk about your idea, this is also true when you present your idea to investors, is by being passionate about it and transmitting your excitement to them. Entrepreneurship is about finding solutions to problems arising almost everyday, or trying to overcome many obstacles coming your way to success. And dealing with all these is not easy, it is so tiring and frustrating. If I was not passionate about what I am doing everyday, I would have given up already.
Don’t cut corners and spend the necessary time networking and creating meaningful relationships, it’s important. One of my female mentors in the Polihub Mommyprenuers program that I participated in while I was on maternity leave, told me and other moms in the classroom : “Networking is one of the most effective tools to overcome many challenges that women entrepreneurs face such as accessing to financial, human and social capital . And women should dedicate more time and energy than men in building networks to overcome these challenges easier. On my entrepreneurial journey, I see and meet more and more women, not only, who work to empower women to close this gender gap. And this is so encouraging.
Build a team with talented people who truly believe in your idea and put their whole heart and perseverance to make it a success. My first attempt to build a team when I had only an idea was a failure. I think the main reason was that the focus of the other 2 people with whom I was trying to be a team was more financial gain than being part of a journey of creating something new and meaningful which touches the lives of people. It took a very long time for me to build the right team with people putting their heart everyday to make Babonbo a success, because they believe in the vision of Babonbo.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
We have officially launched the Babonbo app, now available worldwide, including the US! The process is simple: you sign up and complete your profile, for free with the help of one of Babonbo’s consultants. Once your items are uploaded, you choose when and how parents can book. Monitor and plan the logistics surrounding the rental, and reap all the benefits of your labor. Connecting families from different countries and states, the platform creates an incredible way to earn passive income, and gratification from helping other families travel with ease and comfort.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
Women have to juggle everything and it becomes really difficult finding the perfect balance between raising children, nurturing our family, yet being able to disrupt the world and change the status quo.
The responsibilities at home are truly a very demanding full time job as it is, so adding to that the responsibility to shake an entire industry up, it’s like moving mountains. Most of us are expected to be able to handle it all — but do you want to know the crazy part of it all? We actually do.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
It is when I decided to change my career path from being a corporate worker to an entrepreneur.
When I finally got back to work from maternity leave from my first daughter, I found out that my role and responsibilities were changed from being globally responsible for the most important product line of the company to a less strategic operative role. I was so worried about this change and decided to talk about my HR manager at that time. She basically told me that I had new priorities in my life by that time and I could not handle a global positioning which requires a lot of traveling etc. It took me a lot of time to digest it and at the end I realized that it was not the right place for me anymore and I took the decision to dedicate my energy in creating my own venture instead of trying to advance in my corporate career.
This had a deep impact on my thinking: Don’t allow anyone else to set my limits and define priorities in my own life. And I took that anger and turned into energy and motivation to try for the first time to realize my ideas.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Well, Babonbo IS a movement. We are changing the way we consume for our kids, which is completely wrong and not good for their future. By perpetuating this consumerism and detrimental environmental cycle, we are actually affecting the future of the very own beings we are trying to cherish. By starting from day 1, and changing our core beliefs, we are reprogramming an entire mentally that has been outdated for decades.
We are also creating a loving and supporting community of parents, especially mothers who usually can feel so isolated. They are inspiring each other, supporting each other in their quest to a more responsible and sustainable future for our children. By doing so, we created a support system that empowers parents to become more conscious and responsible consumers everyday. I believe as moms, we should be the first ones to change and be the change we want to see in the world. We have a responsibility to show the example to our children, and lead the way.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“If You Are Working On Something That You Really Care About, You Don’t Have To Be Pushed. The Vision Pulls You.” — Steve Jobs
This quote is very close to my heart, especially right now as this perfectly relates to the moment of life I currently am in. I quit all the benefits and the safety of a full time
job, fully aware of all the economical risks, and high probability of failure.
It’s a lot of work, and I have to sacrifice a lot of my free time in order to manage both my house, my children and family, and the obligations I have to my other baby, Babonbo. Sometimes, this requires me to do so day and night, weekends and sometimes, even in my sleep! But all in all, I know this is not only an investment in my future, but in the future of my children, and the world’s children. Which itself is an investment in everyone’s future.
How do I manage to resist the urge of slowing down and taking a minute to breathe? I don’t. People around me often wonder too, but the truth is that I am so passionate, that nothing could stop me from succeeding and accomplishing what I care most about, improving lives by providing a solution which is good for the Earth and the future of our kids.
Female Disruptors: Joan Breibart of PhysicalMind Institute On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
I’m an inventor. Joe Pilates was an inventor. People don’t like change so they don’t want innovation. Inventors have to invent. They don’t fix something because it’s broken. They just change it. Maybe this is not always good. In exercise, someone takes sitting on a stationary bike and adds weights and a new color and suddenly it is all the rage. Real inventors laugh at this “disruption.” I re-invented and patented Joe’s Wunda Chair. It is called the Mve. Most Pilates teachers are afraid to use it because it is really changed.
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Joan Breibart, founder of PhysicalMind Institute and 80Bites.Breibart is a Pilates professional, inventor with nine patents and nine trademarks, a published author of fiction and nonfiction and an editor of 50 plus books. Breibart began her career at Scholastic Magazines and Books in 1963, upon graduation from college with a major in Art History. She remained in publishing for 10 years, then was recruited for the HQ staff at ITT and has spent the past 46 years in the beauty and body businesses.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I can’t say my career had a pre-planned path; it just happened along the way while I was trying to earn a living, I found myself in various companies big and small and in line and staff positions. Although Pilates is a household name now, it was unknown in 1991 when I started the Institute for the Pilates Method in Santa Fe NM.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
I am trying to break through the collective wellness protection racket to the truth about weight loss. I did it in the 90s with Pilates, which was ridiculed — even hated — until it birthed a new category –BodyMind fitness. I did it in 1968 when I started Creative Book Service — a company employed by major educational publishers like McGraw Hill and Prentice Hall to outsource production on subsidiary texts. Today this is an accepted book production solution.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
In 1992, I decided to get a New Mexico State vanity license plate with the name “PILATES.” It was yellow with the Pilates name –then trademarked — in red letters. Obviously, a trademark held by someone else shouldn’t have been on a license plate, but New Mexico is kind of backward and didn’t know trademarks. I had a little sports car and in 1992 someone came up to me when it was parked and asked me why I had the name of that horrible person and I realized they were thinking Pontius Pilate and Jesus. I knew then and the years that followed confirmed that I had used a name that no one knew. I suffered ten years of legal assaults and lost practically everything — including a lucrative contract with Nordic Track — then the Peloton of exercise — because I over-estimated the public. Plus, it’s a terrible name!! I still have this license plate. I don’t have a car, but I have it on my wagon at my house on Fire Island. Now everyone recognizes my wagon by its name.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
We’re talking about this journey, and I don’t know whether that’s referring to the past 30 years when I’ve been in what I call the diet and exercise business (now euphemized to be wellness). I wouldn’t call this a journey. That’s not a word my generation — I am 80 years old — would use. It was a battle. And I think being an entrepreneur is a battle. A friend who started a skincare business which became very successful described it as being at the bottom of a pit. And as you get to the top and slide your fingertips over the edge someone steps on your fingers and you fall back. So “journey” again may be just a nice term for what is normally a very difficult way to earn a living. As for mentors, my two sons who are very successful have helped. The older is a music big shot and the younger is a real estate developer. My husband, when he was alive, helped me too. He was on the board of the American Institute of Graphic Arts and an owner of Graphis.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
I’m an inventor. Joe Pilates was an inventor. People don’t like change so they don’t want innovation. Inventors have to invent. They don’t fix something because it’s broken. They just change it. Maybe this is not always good. In exercise, someone takes sitting on a stationary bike and adds weights and a new color and suddenly it is all the rage. Real inventors laugh at this “disruption.” I re-invented and patented Joe’s Wunda Chair. It is called the Mve. Most Pilates teachers are afraid to use it because it is really changed.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
I was told to remember P.T. Barnum line that a sucker is born every minute. Almost a decade into the BodyMind revolution, a new gym called CRUNCH was launched. Pilates and Yoga people laughed, but the public embraced it when crunching contradicted all the new body truth. In 1991 after two decades of collective dieting, the public having gained an average of 20 pounds per person, quit nutrient manipulations. I cheered until a very smart former Weight Watchers executive told me that they would all be back. Again, I overestimated the public. Winston Churchill said, “Americans always do the right thing after they have tried everything else!” If so, I am waiting for them to recognize the new science: forget calories, hormones rule.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
There won’t be a next unless my current shake up is accepted. Dead people have very little purchasing power. Sixty percent of the U.S. population is obese. Fifty percent have diabetes or are pre-diabetic. Dr. Fauci knows the real numbers, but he is unable to fess up since the CDC manipulated the Body Mass Index.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
It’s a male world. When I worked at ITT and was for a time the only female executive, I saw how the men protected each other. They still do. They don’t compete in the way one expects. Anthropologist Ashley Montague in his book, “The Natural Superiority of the Female Sex” explains what men know so they band together to keep it secret.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
I have several:
Up the Organization by Robert Townsend
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber
FactFulness by Hans Rosling
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
They didn’t teach me anything. They confirmed by instincts. That is very comforting for an iconoclast in a country of followers, phonies and PC people.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Well, most of the world has already figured it out. America is the exception. Ninety percent of China’s 1.3 billion have no faith. Most of Europe has walked on religion. It is estimated that by the end of the 21stCentury, religion will be over. Free at last. But I am afraid the USA will be the last holdout.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Rich or poor — it’s good to have money.” — Lawrence Breibart (my father)
Female Founders: Andrea Heuston of Artitudes Design On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
A Kickass Outfit — You need an outfit that makes you feel like you can own the world when you wear it. It adds to your confidence level. It’s the outfit that makes you feel like a superhero; this is your uniform, this is your costume, and you are who you need to be to rule the world in that outfit. I have a pair of pants that I call my Super Woman pants. If I really need some good mojo, if I’m going to be speaking in front of a crowd or giving a big presentation, it’s what I wear. I also have a floral pantsuit that is one of my superhero costumes. It’s hard to have a bad day when I’m wearing it.
Andrea is the founder and CEO of Artitudes Design, an experiential design firm that works with Fortune 500 companies (Microsoft, Starbucks and Expedia to name a few) as well as startups and non-profits. She is also is the creator and host of the podcast, Lead Like a Woman, where she interviews female leaders and entrepreneurs who share their tips on life, leadership and entrepreneurship. She is passionate about empowering women and helping to close the gender gap for women in business.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
At 24 I was putting myself through college and running the creative services department at an energy systems engineering firm in Seattle when the company was purchased by a French firm. They had me lay off the entire team of seven designers and then laid me off. However, two days later they called me back and said we made a mistake — we need to do some rebranding and we need you to come back. I decided I didn’t want to put my fate in somebody else’s hands anymore, so I jumped in my car, drove 60 minutes to Olympia, the state capitol, got a business license, and the energy systems firm became my first client.
I also grew up with a father who had traditional values around gender roles, favoring female domesticity over entrepreneurship and leadership. He didn’t believe that women should be in business. The realization that I could run a company and I could do it well was also the attraction, motivation, and inspiration for founding Artitudes Design.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
In 2008, I started the year off in the emergency room. In March I had surgery. In April I had more surgery. On May 30th, I became very ill. Three days, one misdiagnosis, three emergency rooms, two ambulance rides, and one very concerned husband later, I was in surgery yet again. I didn’t wake up from that surgery for nearly 3 weeks. I had aspirated on the operating table, contracted pneumonia, which then turned into Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome or ARDS. ARDS is similar to SARS. It turns the lungs to stone. The doctors put me into a medically induced coma until my lungs could recover. At the time, ARDS had an over 70% fatality rate.
I don’t remember anything from that time. Except for some very vivid, medication-induced dreams! My husband and family remember it all. I woke up and met Dr. Stuart — the head of the hospital. (You know you’re really sick when the head of the hospital takes you on personally!) Dr. Stuart said to me, “I’m so happy to meet you because I didn’t really think I’d ever get a chance to.” I had no idea how ill I’d been until that moment. It was a long road back to health, and I missed over 8 months of work in 2008.
During that time, something amazing happened. The enthusiasm and passion I had breathed into Artitudes Design kept the company alive — without me! My incredible team of talented, creative and yes, enthusiastic heroes pulled together and saved the day.
Prior to this experience I was a micromanager, a control freak. I used to touch at least 80% of all projects that came through our doors, but because of my illness, I was forced to step back and see where I could truly add the most value to the company, and where I could let others shine with their skills and enthusiasm. It’s changed the way I lead, and I believe that both Artitudes and I are better for that decision.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
That’s a hard one. My mistakes are always huge, but not amusing! For example, my first employee and my best friend embezzled money from me. Another employee interviewed so well that I didn’t check her references before hiring her and she ended up throwing a chair at a contractor working for us at the time and I almost got sued. They’re funny in hindsight but were no laughing matter at the time. However, I learn so much from my mistakes. They’ve taught me resilience and made me a better person and leader.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
My Grandma Gerry was a powerful woman for her time in the 40s and 50s. She raised two boys on her own after her husband left her. She needed to work so marched down to Boeing and got a job operating a huge computer back in the day when computers were the size of a room and few women worked, let alone at a male-dominated company like Boeing.
When I spoke to my grandmother about starting my own business, she was incredibly supportive. She loaned me 5,000 dollars to start the business which was a huge amount of money to her. I paid her back, with interest. She insisted on interest. Smart lady.
She was a major influence in my life. She was never a victim. I really respect that about her. A lot of people are victims in this world, and they look at life as being bad to them. That wasn’t my grandmother. She would pick herself up and deal with whatever life threw at her. And throughout my many tough life lessons I’ve kept that in mind. That power to choose our reaction to anything the world hands us forms the basis of my book, Stronger on the Other Side: A Guide to Getting from Victim to Champion.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
I think there are a lot of things that are holding back women from founding companies. First, we don’t have a lot of role models. Founders of businesses are almost always white men. Because it’s not what we have in our purview, we don’t think it’s possible. It’s not that it’s not possible, it’s that we just don’t see it often enough to believe it ourselves.
Secondly, the societal norms are still that women are expected to be the house, the hearth, the home, and still expected to run the family. It is changing and the new generation that’s coming into the workforce believes that anything is possible which I absolutely love. But overall, that expectation that women will run the home is still there and that can get in the way of their ability to have the time and energy to found a company.
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
We need government subsidized childcare for families so women who want to can get back to work or found companies. Incubating a baby and incubating a business are both incredibly hard things and we need to provide resources and support that make it easier to do both. The cost of childcare is prohibitive, and families often decide that one parent should stay home. Almost exclusively the man makes more money. So, when as a couple you have to make the decision of who’s going to stay home, you go for the lower wage earner.
Secondly, we need better access to capital for women and more education about it, so women know what’s out there and how to get it. Women almost exclusively bootstrap their companies. When men have an idea and want start something they’ll ask their friends and their family for money or they’ll go out and seek Angel or VC funding, but women historically bootstrap because a) they don’t think they’ll get it, and b) they’re afraid to ask and afraid to incur debt.
Access to capital is one of the biggest things that works against women — they either don’t see the access, or they can’t find it. There are a ton of grants for women who are in business or starting businesses, but they’re really hard to find. I’ve spent hours and hours on the Washington State grants page looking for a grant that’s specifically for women owned entities that other women founders told me about, but it’s buried so deep I can’t find it.
There need to be more programs like the Office of Women’s Business Ownership (OWBO) which helps women entrepreneurs through programs coordinated by SBA district offices. The more things like that that are available and visible and publicized, the more likely we are to be to go for them.
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
Women bring so much to the table — as founders and as executives. Women are both empowering and inclusive. They are generally more inclusive of ideas, of people, and of different thought processes, and more likely to challenge the status quo, so you get a stronger company with that.Also,companies that have women at the helm or women on their board make more money than companies that don’t. Other benefits according to The Harvard Business Review are that companies with more women in senior positions are also more socially responsible, and provide safer, higher-quality customer experiences.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
One of the myths is that you must be focused on your business 100% of the time for it to be successful, but that’s absolutely not true. Being able to focus on yourself and your family and your mental and physical health will make you a stronger leader and make your business stronger. A lot of people say, ‘it’s going take all your time, you’re going to take away from your family, you’re not going to have time for anybody anymore’. That is utterly untrue, that is a decision you make on your own — there are super successful female founders who work 20 hours a week.
The other myth is that you have to know everything about everything. You categorically don’t. The best thing you can do as a founder is surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. Don’t ever be the smartest person in the room, because if you don’t believe there’s room to grow, you never will. I think that it’s vitally important because a lot of people, especially men, want to be the smartest person in the room. But if you’re not open to somebody else’s ideas or looking at something a different way that could make your company bigger, faster, stronger, better, you’ll at best limit your growth and at worst, fail all together.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
Oh, it’s definitely not for everyone! To be a successful founder you need to get over the fear of failure. You must believe that if you fall down six times, you get up seven. That’s such a trite quote, but it’s really true. If you look at something and you say, ‘What if I fail… What if I lose this?’ you’ll be paralyzed. You have to go through that exercise in your head that says, ‘What’s the worst thing that can happen?’ and the worst thing that can happen is you lose the business. You need to be ok with that and say, “hey, I’ll just do something else, or I’ll start a new one.” Setbacks fuel growth and future success and you need to believe in that with every fiber of your being.
There are some people who like clear parameters and direction — they like to color inside the lines. When you tell them what needs to be done, they can execute brilliantly, but they need that roadmap.
That is the opposite of what a founder does — a founder is always looking to color outside the lines, to push into uncharted territory. I’m not saying there’s not an element of entrepreneurship in a lot of jobs these days and people asking how they can do things better in order to succeed, but it’s different when you’re a founder. You have to be comfortable with the unknown and be able to jump off the building and trust that you’re going to make it, that you’re going to fly.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your opinion and experience, what are the “Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder?” (Please share a story or example for each.)
Confidence
As Sheryl Sandberg once famously said, “no one gets to the corner office by sitting on the side, not at the table.” As girls and women, historically we have been taught to defer to men. Forget that notion! The “nice girl” attitude you may have learned growing up doesn’t work in business, and customers, leaders and clients may tend doubt your abilities or, worse yet, try to take advantage of you. You need to own the table. Learn to walk into any room or situation with your head held high confident that you are an equal, an expert in your field, that you deserve a place at the table.
A Tribe
We all need support, but female leaders especially need their tribe! Your tribe is as unique as you are, but I suggest surrounding yourself with people who support but also question you. You should have a banker, a lawyer, a CPA, a bookkeeper and a coach. And you absolutely need a girlfriend you can cry with and drink with. In my role as CEO and founder, it’s taken me a long time to understand that I need female peers, business partners, friends, a female community. From a book club to an all-woman business group to nurturing friendships in my life, actively seeking out a supportive female community is one of the best things I’ve ever done to contribute to my own success and well-being.
You also need to hear the hard truth sometimes. Your friends/tribe can see your crap and call you on it when you can’t see it yourself. When you have trusted people around you, they’ll be the first ones to see your patterns, good or bad. Your best source of an objective opinion is your trusted group of supportive women that don’t have any other objective but your well-being.
Thick Skin
You have to have thick skin, because every person in your life is going to question you, they’re going to say: ‘Why are you doing this? Why don’t you just get a job? Why don’t you leave that to somebody else? What makes you think you can do that? Who’s raising your children right now? Shouldn’t you be making dinner?’ And when you’re assertive you’ll be called a bitch or bossy. It’s an endless litany of barbs. There’s always judgement about women. You need that thick skin, and you need to be able to laugh at yourself and let it roll off.
Creativity
It doesn’t matter if you’re a scientist or if you run a design firm, you have to be creative in your conversations, you have to be creative in how you present issues and solutions, you have to be creative in the way that you look for funding, and you have to be creative in how you juggle the demands of home and work. Creativity fuels big ideas and opens the door to new business opportunities.
A Kickass Outfit
You need an outfit that makes you feel like you can own the world when you wear it. It adds to your confidence level. It’s the outfit that makes you feel like a superhero; this is your uniform, this is your costume, and you are who you need to be to rule the world in that outfit. I have a pair of pants that I call my Super Woman pants. If I really need some good mojo, if I’m going to be speaking in front of a crowd or giving a big presentation, it’s what I wear. I also have a floral pantsuit that is one of my superhero costumes. It’s hard to have a bad day when I’m wearing it.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I’m passionate about empowering women to empower others and that’s really what I’m trying to do with my podcast, Lead Like a Woman. My goal is to help women recognize and realize their own power. I believe wholeheartedly that when we listen to women, we get a fuller story than when we listen to men. And that’s not to say that men’s ideas and voices are wrong or bad. That’s not at all what I’m trying to say. Rather, women have a different insight and different approach to things, and if we can inspire women to empower other people, the world will be a better place. Mainly because they will be listened to on a different level. Women see things that men don’t see because they’re deeper into the trenches generally of their lives, their families’ lives, of anywhere where the fringes are in society. Women when they get together can do incredible things. Men can, but there’s a little more jockeying.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
If I could inspire a movement, it would be around the idea that feminism is stronger when all people support it — all genders, all colors, all political parties. When women rise, society benefit. Closing the gender gap in pay and societal roles can raise the GDP by 35%, according to the World Economic Forum. There is a rising tide for equality, and even equity in gender roles. I believe that it needs to be bigger, louder, and bolder in order to see some sort of parity within the next 100 years.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Melinda Gates. I’m so impressed with what she’s doing to elevate women in this world. Everyone can learn from her. She continuously steps out of her comfort zone and listens and learns from the people she’s helping. She’s very humble and open to feedback and I don’t know many people in a position like hers that are so open to critical feedback. I’d LOVE to have her as a guest on my podcast.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Female Disruptors: Meredith Noble of The Grant Writing Unicorn Collective On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Focus. Focus, and then focus some more. Especially if you are a Visionary! Oh, it is hard. Even when you think you are focused, it’s so easy to sway here and there.
As a part of our series about women entrepreneurs who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Meredith Noble.
Meredith is an entrepreneur, author, community leader, and outdoor adventurer. She is the co-founder of the Grant Writing Unicorn Collective, an online professional development program for aspiring grant writers. She is part of a new wave of pioneers building technology companies from remote, yet connected Valdez, Alaska.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
When I quit my corporate job in 2017, I had a sexy business idea in mind. I was going to learn to code and build an app! I cringe sharing that — today, it seems so cliché!
Before pursuing life as an entrepreneur, I built a grant writing team at a large global architecture and engineering firm where I won $42 million in grants for infrastructure projects throughout the United States and Canada. It was a great career, but I had burned out and wanted to be more than a one trick pony. When I left, I pledged to never touch another grant.
Never say never. Fast forward and I’m teaching grant writing to thousands of incredible community leaders throughout the world. That experience, and the experiences of other entrepreneurs, showed me that your first business idea is rarely the one you eventually scale.
Within months I was teaching live workshops. During one, I said I was interested in making my course an online training business. An hour later I had Facebook ads for an online course platform. (Creepy how that works!) I signed up for a 30-day trial on the spot and was off to the races learning how to build an online course-based business.
If you were to list the top 100 mistakes a course creator can make, I made 99 of them. The business model of an online course is so obvious that I thought success should be easy — let me tell you — it is not.
In August of 2020, I brought on Alex Lustig as a cofounder. Despite taking a 35% pay cut, Alex chose to come work with me, and it felt like one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. Her willingness to risk the security of making her mortgage payment to join me was validation that we must be onto something.
With the horsepower of two, we got to work scaling the online course. We took action on every idea we had to achieve scale and nothing was working. We got to the point where we had only six weeks of runway left (an entrepreneur term for money left in the bank.)
We knew something had to change or we would be out of business. This sense of failure was disorienting and overwhelming. I had already published a #1 bestselling book on Amazon for nonprofit fundraising and grant writing and launched a $100k course.
I learned that businesses grow in phases. Often what works for one phase of growth, will not continue to work in the future. Growth is certainly not linear!
We reassessed and thought about who we really enjoyed serving. We realized we far preferred teaching how to build a freelance grant writing business over general grant writing knowledge to anyone. We were inspired and motivated to serve those that are burnt out in their 9–5 work and looking for something else that is meaningful and flexible.
In a three week sprint during the darkest month of the year in Alaska, we dug in deep and completely overhauled our business. We relaunched on January 1 this year and nine months later, we hit $42,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Not a bad turnaround considering we almost gave up.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
Absolutely. We are playing a role in disrupting the higher-education industry, work-from-home industry, and online course creator industry. Here’s how:
First, let’s talk about higher ed. I love the beauty of a college campus and all that it symbolizes for a prosperous and educated nation. That said, I’m afraid our higher education has fallen woefully behind in providing an employable, actionable and relevant education for a large percentage of our populace.
Frankly, programs like ours are a real threat to traditional college offerings. We had a young woman sign up for the Grant Writing Unicorn Collective who had done one year of college before dropping out, and she was undecided about returning or not. She had expected vibrant conversation in the classroom and inspiring educators. Instead the experience was stale, and it felt like no one wanted to be there. She didn’t feel like it was the rich learning environment that she was paying the hefty price tag to have. So, at 19, she decided to join our program instead of pursuing a traditional degree. More commonly, we are the choice between going back to graduate school or not.
We are also taking on the titans of grant writing education as a scrappy startup from Alaska. Our largest competitors have held the market for years despite having clunky, 1990’s looking websites. We are showing that getting an education can be fun and professional. One of our main competitors used to get 6,000 unique website visitors per month. One year later, they get 2,000 viewers and our viewership has grown to 6,000 unique visitors. We are proud and excited to be taking up Google search real-estate with our website.
Speaking of which, our website brings us hundreds of “free” leads per month, which is the number one struggle for course creators. We went from having 140 organic keywords last year to over 3,700 today. We are ranked #1 on Google now for nearly all the keywords we wanted. We have the Startup Kit for SaaS in Golang to thank for our powerhouse website. Plus, I fulfilled my goal to learn how to code. I love the empowering feeling I get when I write and push code changes.
Lastly, we know we are doing things differently in the online course world when it comes to branding. Most online courses use the founder’s name as their domain and throughout their branding. I knew early on that I didn’t want to do that. It seemed ironic to me that most people seek freedom when starting a business, but tethering their identity to the brand means they can never venture too far. Instead, and by accident, we developed a persona that has taken on a life of its own. It’s the Grant Writing Unicorn, a character that is aspirational, fun, and energized. Frankly, it has now become a movement of people that identify as grant writing unicorns!
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I am not sure if this is really a mistake or if it was the biggest blessing of my life, but when I quit my corporate job to launch a startup, I made the mistake of letting healthcare paperwork nearly stop me in my tracks. I live an active lifestyle, so I needed health insurance. Like five surgeries in the last five years from breaking things while biking or rollerblading! 🤦♀️
After submitting my application, Healthcare.gov wanted better documentation for my income projection. As the numbers started to take shape on my spreadsheet, I panicked. My runway budget was just enough to cover a few months. I had no idea how I would support myself beyond that. I felt like I had failed before I even started.
The next day, I was backcountry skiing in Alaska. I was on top of a scary couloir, which is a narrow stretch of skiable snow between two mountains.
As I looked into the couloir, the earliest stages of panic started to creep in. My heartbeat was increasing. I wondered if I had finally met the limits of my capabilities.
Panic is bad news. It can lead to a paralysis of sorts, which is an especially big problem when you are miles from help. I knew I couldn’t let this happen, so I engaged in my favorite bad habit when stressed: eating bacon and chocolate.
As the bacon fat dissolved in my mouth, I warmed up and regained my composure. I asked for the radio and announced I was going first.
I needed to start skiing so the fear and anxiety taking hold of my psyche would not have a chance to fully control me. I ratcheted down my ski boots and gingerly made my first few turns through the chattery snowpack. As I dropped out of sight from the boys, the snow became a soft, buttery delight to ski. I was emotionally transported. I remembered why I love to ski!
That night I was journaling about the day when I realized the scary couloir was a metaphor for my life. Only a month into my new life as an entrepreneur, I was at the top of the run. Everything said, “turn around and go back to safety, you fool!” I learned that day that I just needed to make a few turns. A little further in, I had better information and confidence in my ability to deal with it all.
From my journal I wrote:
The key takeaway from the day is how proud I am for overcoming my fears in the couloir and tapping into my mental strength… I feel a renewed sense that I can do this. At no point was I thinking about anything but the act of skiing. Whether I was pep-talking myself to keep up with the boys, admiring the rugged views, or enjoying every turn, it was amazing how rewarding and effective I felt with a singular focus.
Since that memorable day skiing, I have been relying on positive self-talk and action to get me through trying moments.
While you might not be skiing tricky terrain, you and anyone reading this, is pushing themselves in some way. Whether you are in the parking lot deciding to climb the mountain, or you are already on top ready to pee your pants, you will get to the other side. We only need to make a few turns.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
I cannot believe I’m quoting Tim Ferris because he is a bit too “bro” for my taste, but my dear mentor, Dave Bennett, shared this with me when I was deciding to quit my job:
“For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. “Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it “eventually,” just do it and correct course along the way.” — Tim Ferris, 4-Hour Work Week.
I wasn’t “ready” to quit my corporate job when I did. I felt like I still needed more experience, more savings, more everything. That said, I also realized I was 27 with no kids or debt. If not now, when?
I now teach aspiring grant writers how to start building a new career as a side-hustle. Our flywheel takes energy and time to build momentum. It is helpful to experiment on the side to gain business acumen that you can only gain from real-world experience. Once you have traction (ideally tangible product market fit), then you can leap into the abyss feeling more prepared.
That segues into another favorite one-liner that I got from my dad, Carroll David Noble. I grew up 5th generation on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. Imagine me at 14 years old (really I don’t look any different at 31!) out in the hay fields during harvest. I was running an old 1956 tractor to put hay into windrows. My job required staying ahead of the stacking crew (the team that put the hay into the haystacks). But the crew kept catching me, and I was growing frustrated. You can only bounce around so fast in a hayfield!
My father flags me down and explains that there is a pattern in the hay if I look for it. His advice was to “make each move count.” Once I started looking for the patterns, I could see them. I became more efficient and the gap grew between me and the stacking crew.
You can do the same thing.
Our life is a series of patterns if we look for them. Patterns to healthy living. Patterns to showing up in our businesses. Patterns in our relationships. If we are intentional about making each move count, we can get quite a lot done in a day, week, year, or decade!
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
Taking it back to the cattle ranch, I think we were in the last 1% of ranchers to make the technology switch from loose stack hay to round bales. Loose hay meant our hay was put up “loosely” in a cabin-like structure, piled high until it looked like a thatch roof. Every winter, we would pitch the hay off a wagon for the cattle with a pitchfork.
Sounds idyllic, right? In many ways, it was. Big work horses pulling a sleigh through sparkling snow is one of the most beautiful sights you can imagine.
You might also think, “That sounds like a lot of work!” You would be right about that, but you should have seen my six-pack abs! The physical labor was wearing my family down, so we eventually moved to storing hay in 2,000 pound round bales.
By being a late adopter (practically the last, I swear!), most kinks in baling technology had worked themselves out. We learned from other ranchers that made the switch earlier on, and we bought the best technology and equipment available.
My family’s ranching operation is an example of a business that has not changed much in over 100 years. There is something beautiful about how the routines of the seasons are on repeat from generation to generation. We care for the land deeply and will do pretty much anything to keep it from becoming a subdivision.
That said, every industry has a timeline before you change, or die. Beyond how my family gets their fabulous beef product to market, there are larger system changes happening, or needing to happen, in food production that feel imminent.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
#1 Focus. Focus, and then focus some more. Especially if you are a Visionary! Oh, it is hard. Even when you think you are focused, it’s so easy to sway here and there.
That means, you must focus on one ideal customer, with one product (in our case an online membership), through one main distribution channel (SEO), and one conversion tool (a webinar), for one year, or until hitting 1,000 customers.
Trust me, I know the struggle. I like to try new things as well, but often we quit an idea before it has time to get perfected. This also applies to who you serve and what you do. You should have one product for one customer. You can build a $1 million dollar business by keeping things simple and focused.
Focus. Focus with laser intensity. Doing so will be your competitive advantage.
#2 Solve for Your Customer’s Deep Desire. Our original product taught our customers the technical skills behind grant writing, but that was only a fraction of what they needed and wanted. They wanted to know how to actually pull off a career transition. After 25+ deep dive interviews and dissecting the exact words used by our ideal customer, we discovered what they really wanted: a flexible and fulfilling life.
Here is the tangible tip for you to run with: schedule 20 interviews with your ideal customer. Record the call. Use a service like Temi to transcribe the call. Aggregate all interviews into a single Google Doc and study it! Highlight the deep pains and aspirations. Then put the entire interview document into a unique word counter (lots of these are free online), and figure out which words are used most often. Build your single “what you do” sentence and who you do it for, with those words/phrases.
A template we learned from Haley Burkhead of Recurring Profit is: We help [unique identity] achieve [tangible transformation] so they can [avoid #1 pain or achieve #1 desire]. Use those words and phrases in your email copy, website, and talking points!
As I mentioned earlier, we went from a failing business model with six weeks of runway left to $42k in MRR in nine months. I attribute our turnaround to the previous two tips, plus getting our pricing right.
#3 Find the Integrator to your Visionary. Thanks to the book, Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman, I saw why my strong visionary tendencies made it hard for me to stick with anything long enough to see if it would work or not. Around the same time as I was listening to that book while hiking a mountainous trail in Alaska, a local project manager extraordinaire was helping me part-time run the business. It became exceedingly clear that she was (is) an Integrator. A power-house with skills in operations, execution, culture-building, and beyond.
Fast forward and that special project manager has become an indispensable soul-sister in life and rock in what is now our business. When she asked me “to talk” I thought what every woman thinks, “this can’t be good.” Instead, she asked to come work with me full-time, willing to take a huge pay cut to participate in the risk of startup life.
If it were not for the influence and hard work of my cofounder, Alex, we would not have a business today that is a fraction as successful. We are thankful for the book Rocket Fuel for giving us the guideposts to structure our approach to work and divvy responsibilities.
We also have the book, Slicing Pie by Mike Moyier to thank for providing guidance on how to split up equity in an early stage company. In my opinion, if you are interested in starting or growing a startup, Slicing Pie is the only truly fair way to approach it.
Here is a quick video on the top 5 pitfalls I see fellow Visionaries make and what to do about it.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
I consider myself an entrepreneur-in-training. I often think about the Grant Writing Unicorn Collective as my business on training wheels. I feel like I am almost ready to take those training wheels off and take a stab at a second business.
My co-founder Alex and I have a few ideas. First, my business did not truly take off until I found Alex, the Integrator to my Visionary. We have observed that there are an infinite number of visionary online course creators, and they struggle to scale their business. They hire virtual assistants or temporary contractors, but quickly grow frustrated, feeling like they are doing more work managing a team than doing the work themselves.
We have a hypothesis that there is an opportunity to train Integrators (who have strikingly similar characteristics to grant writers!) for Visionaries that want a complimentary business partner.
More broadly, we know there are a number of career paths beyond grant writing that fit the unicorn lifestyle we represent. The unicorn lifestyle is having flexibility and freedom over your time, traveling, having hobbies, better health, and time with family — while also having meaningful work. It might seem like a lot to ask for, but now more than ever, it is possible. As such, we are curious what other businesses we could be partnering with to help make that way of living possible for more women.
Lastly, my personal dream is to become a housing developer that provides attainable housing intentionally designed for young professionals and seniors. Most housing in communities, other than large cities, are single residential family houses. This is far too much house for a young professional so you end up finding strangers to live with for years. Young people don’t need much space, but they want something that is relaxing, modern, and connected. Seniors that don’t want a big house to maintain anymore and don’t want to live in senior housing, also have limited options. We see a number of ways these two seemingly disparate generations are complimentary in addressing loneliness, depression, housing attainability, and lack of connectivity in their lives.
I can’t wait to tackle future ventures, but for now, 100% of my attention is on the Grant Writing Unicorn Collective. I practice what I preach when it comes to focusing!
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
My partner, Lucas Brown, started and grew a startup with his twin brother from their college dorm room to 360 employees in 10 different countries. I asked him if he had ever felt imposter syndrome as a young CEO and founder in his twenties. He said he didn’t recall feeling that way. Sure, there were moments, but on the whole, he did not.
I thought, if he didn’t feel imposter syndrome, (when it seems like he should have) then why is it that every single woman I speak with feels burdened by it? Why is she constrained and holding herself back by fears of not being good enough to create or seize the opportunities before her? I still do not have an answer for this, but if I could eradicate that feeling, I know more women would achieve higher and higher levels of fulfillment and success.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
Yes! You are lucky that I am only on Chapter 3 of Breath — The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor or else this entire conversation could become a book report. Did you know that mouth breathing is the number one cause of cavities? To think all these years, I thought it was my chocolate addiction!
How about this one: nasal breathing allows you to absorb 18 percent more oxygen than breathing through the mouth. I have never exercised intensely while breathing through my nose, so on today’s bike ride to the grocery store up and down a few hills, I tried to not breath through my mouth. I felt like I was suffocating and would have to get a big gasp of air every few breaths. Within 20 minutes, however, I was able to breathe in and out of my nose continuously and feel less exhausted.
If you haven’t caught the punch line yet, it’s this: nasal breathing is unequivocally better for you than mouth breathing. Get a copy of the book and plan on reading it with a pen. I bet you have as many scribbles, underlines, and “wow’s!” in the margins as I do.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Ha! Thanks for the generous accolades. Building off my comment earlier about the difference between female disruptors and male disruptors, I would inspire a movement that wholeheartedly rejects the effects of imposter syndrome. It is holding back too many people from reaching their potential.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
This may come as a shock, but I was a royal trouble making, under-age drinking bandit in High School. I lied. I snuck out. I poured vodka into my pink lemonade at lunch.
I didn’t always outsmart my exhausted parents. My father would sit me down at the dinner table and ask me to think about why I was behaving the way I was. He would push me to think critically through reflection, and most importantly to take responsibility for my actions.
Taking responsibility has since become a core value, one that lives within my company and personal ethos. What I absolutely adore about the life lesson is how liberating it is. If something doesn’t go as planned, I reflect on the situation and look for ways I can improve.
Life is so much better when not weighed down with the energy required to blame others for anything we don’t like about ourselves or our lives. The trick with taking responsibility is that it requires active mindfulness to bring that perspective to a challenging situation — especially when you really feel wronged by someone else.
Plus, it doesn’t get much simpler than this for a life lesson: Take Responsibility!
How can our readers follow you online?
You can find me on Instagram @meredith.noble where I periodically show up to share life’s adventures in Alaska and beyond. Better yet, follow us @learngrantwriting where Alex and I more consistently show up. Rather not support Zuck’s platforms? Let’s connect on LinkedIn or through our website.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
…They will commit to being, and doing, better: The Tribe is growing more concerned with the impact their travels are having on local communities and the environment. As they return to travel post-pandemic, they’re taking a more considered approach, wanting to leave people, places, and things better than they found them. They feel that their ability to make an impact is limited as individuals, so they’re looking for brands to step up and facilitate positive change.
As part of my series about “developments in the travel industry over the next five years”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Nicole Cestaro, a Strategy Director at Team One, Publicis Groupe’s fully integrated media, digital and communications agency for premium brands. In her nearly six years with the agency, she has overseen brand positioning and global advertising campaigns for The Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, and W Hotels, among others.
A native east coaster, her career has spanned two coasts, serving in senior strategy roles at Arnold Worldwide and Publicis Sapient, both in Boston, before moving to Los Angeles to join Team One. Her resume includes brands in the automotive, consumer packaged goods, beverage/alcohol, financial services, and technology categories. She’s also known around Team One for being a diehard Tar Heel basketball fan, proud corgi mom, and wannabe chef.
Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I come from a family of teachers. Most everyone in my life — both parents, my sister, two grandparents, four aunts — have spent their careers in education. I knew pretty early on that teaching wouldn’t be my path, but besides knowing what I didn’t want to do, I wasn’t exactly sure what I did want to do.
For the longest time, I thought I was going to pursue medicine. I was very good at math and science, so my parents and teachers were encouraging me to be a doctor. However, after taking the prerequisite courses, I realized that although I may have been good at those subjects, I didn’t enjoy them. What I did enjoy was being creative. I did a lot of creative writing and loved a good school project where I got to break out the poster board and markers, so I decided to pursue journalism. The University of North Carolina, where I attended college, offered an advertising track within the journalism major, so that’s when my career started to take shape.
I might not have gone into the “family business,” but I found just what I was looking for: the perfect combination of left brain and right brain.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
I design and conduct a lot of research as part of my job — everything from focus groups to surveys to ethnographic studies. In 2013, I was working with a financial brand to better understand how financial professionals make investment decisions for their high-net-worth clients, so I went to New York City for one-on-one interviews with financial advisors. We hired a third-party moderator to lead the interviews, and my boss and I sat in the “back room” of the research facility (a slightly musky dark room behind one-way glass) to observe. We must’ve been on our ninth or tenth interview of the day and the moderator was going through his standard spiel about how there are a few people listening behind the glass when the participant abruptly stopped him. “There are people back there?” he said as he unknowingly pointed directly at us. “Well, yes,” the moderator said. “Bring them in here,” the participant said. “I won’t do this interview unless I can see them.” That was the first (and hopefully last) time that I ever sat silently in a room with a research participant while they tore apart my client and my work. A very awkward and humbling experience.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
How much time do you have? I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I chose to learn from them instead of dwelling on them.
I was a very proud twenty-something who thought that asking questions meant that I was incompetent, so I was afraid to inquire about things I didn’t know for fear of revealing myself as a fraud. But let me tell you: it’s hard to navigate a new career when you refuse to ask for help!
One of the first brands I worked on in my career was a car brand, and the automotive industry is full of acronyms: MPG, AWD, OEM, HEV, ABS, and so on. I was too scared to ask what any of those things meant, so when I had to brief a creative team on a new vehicle launch, I spent the entire meeting mispronouncing them, using them incorrectly, and just generally embarrassing myself. My best advice: ask questions, folks!
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”? Can you share a story about that?
I’m a very type-A, perfectionistic person, so I logged a lot of hours as a junior strategist trying to ensure that my work was “up to snuff.” Now, a decade plus into my career, I give myself more grace.
It took me a long time to learn this lesson, but I think I’ve avoided burnout by knowing when good enough is good enough. Expediency is more important than perfection on some projects, but on others, rigor outweighs speed. If you approach every project like it has to be your best, like you have to work harder than you ever have before, you’re bound to overwork yourself. I’ve gotten very good at sussing out what success looks like for each project, determining what is required to achieve it, and allowing myself to stop when I get there. It’s all about knowing when to put pencils down.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
I am incredibly grateful for my first boss in advertising, Ezra Englebardt. After undergrad, I went to Miami Ad School to pursue a certificate in Account Planning, and when I completed the program, I was shopping around my portfolio trying to secure a junior strategist position. Ezra was the first person to give me a shot. In fact, he hired me after one Skype meeting.
A professor once gave me the most incredible advice: pick your first boss, not your first job. What he meant was that it was far more important to go to an agency where I would have a strong mentor than it was to join one with fancy perks and lots of trophies. He told me to find a boss that would care for me as a human, not just as an employee, and who was willing to invest their time in my development. That’s what I found in Ezra.
Because of him, I moved to Boston sight-unseen. I had never been there and didn’t know one soul in the city, but I took a risk and made the move because he made me feel cared for, worthy, and capable. I owe a lot of my success to him.
Let’s jump to the core of our discussion. Can you share with our readers about the innovations that you are bringing to the travel and hospitality industries?
There are so many hot takes on the future of travel right now in light of COVID-19. I’m not one to speculate, so in times of uncertainty and massive change, I like to dig into the data. At Team One, we’re able to study the attitudes, behaviors, and aspirations of the world’s wealthy through a proprietary research initiative that we call The Global Affluent Tribe™. We founded this study more than 10 years ago, so we’ve been able to observe the Tribe, as we call them, throughout other times of revolution, such as the financial crisis, globalization, and global elections. Having this longitudinal study at our disposal is critical as it allows us to see how the Tribe’s values have changed over the past decade.
A big chunk of the study focuses on the travel industry, so we’ve been using our unique insights to expertly guide our travel clients, such as The Ritz-Carlton, Expedia, and Cathay Pacific, during this unprecedented time. Unsurprisingly, we’re seeing some big shifts in the data during this most recent wave, yet we’ve been encouraging our clients to avoid being reactionary and to make decisions that will help their brands thrive in the long-term.
Which “pain point” are you trying to address by introducing this innovation?
The Global Affluent Tribe™ study has helped us dispel inaccuracies about the world’s wealthy. For too long, marketers have assumed that because the global affluent are separated by distance, culture, and creed, their values must be vastly different too. How they live, move through the world, and forge bonds with others must be unique. But in fact, what we found is that they are united by their shared beliefs about the world they share.
They’re uncommon people with a lot in common, connected more by what they love than where they live. The Tribe has coalesced around five core values — mobility, success, status, consumption, and belonging — which we have been able to track over time.
The other pain point that the Global Affluent Tribe™ alleviates is access to people of means. Affluents are historically hard to reach from a research perspective, yet we have an engaged group that we are able to readily access through our proprietary platform.
How do you envision that this might disrupt the status quo?
We’re turning conventional thinking about wealth, prestige, and luxury on its head. Our work has not only enlightened us to the intricacies of the Tribe but also changed the narrative we tell around affluence.
This is especially true when it comes to travel. Travel continues to top the list of the Tribe’s aspirations and spending priorities; however, our latest wave of research revealed that the Tribe values traveling well rather than being well traveled. After not traveling for more than a year, they don’t want to simply check destinations off their bucket lists anymore. They’ve reassessed what’s important to them and are being more purposeful with their choices. We’ve had to change the way we speak to them to reflect these changing attitudes.
As you know, COVID19 changed the world as we know it. Can you share 5 examples of how travel and hospitality companies will be adjusting over the next five years to the new ways that consumers will prefer to travel?
They will commit to being, and doing, better: The Tribe is growing more concerned with the impact their travels are having on local communities and the environment. As they return to travel post-pandemic, they’re taking a more considered approach, wanting to leave people, places, and things better than they found them. They feel that their ability to make an impact is limited as individuals, so they’re looking for brands to step up and facilitate positive change.
They will create rootedness in a rootless world: The pandemic stole our sense of shared humanity, but the toll was even higher for the Tribe, who consider themselves citizens of the world. Inherently multicultural, their notion of home means finding deep connections wherever they go. As they look to strengthen their bonds post-pandemic, brands will have a role to play in helping the Tribe find belonging with others as they travel the world.
They will be inviting and intimate: The pandemic reset the Tribe’s values and altered their view of luxury. Namely, they have become more selective, choosing luxury travel experiences that feel understated and less formal. To cater to the intimacy that the Tribe is craving, brands need to deliver experiences of warmth and openness, not just personalized but personal.
They will help signal idealistic values: The Tribe doesn’t seek to achieve traditional status markers. Especially post-pandemic, they want to be recognized for contributions they are making towards a better society, at home and around the world. They are proud to be attached to brands that deliver on their idealistic virtues, so the onus is on brands to help them to signal that they are living well and responsible lives.
They will support local: The Tribe has developed a locavore taste for luxury. The pandemic enhanced their sense of community and increased both their interest in and willingness to pay more for local. Brands are now expected to support the Tribe’s desire to support local communities by celebrating and championing the people, culture, and environment that surround the destination.
You are a “travel insider”. How would you describe your “perfect vacation experience”?
I’m very active on vacations. I can’t just lay on a beach for a week, so I seek out trips with a lot of things to do and see. I’m a big fan of an itinerary, so I obviously do a lot of research before I go anywhere, but I love getting the local perspective once I arrive. My favorite is when you stay at an Airbnb or a hotel and they let you in on well-kept secrets of where to go and eat. I will of course go to some of the classic, can’t-miss destinations, but I lean on the “experts” to help me find the niche, insider spots. I’ll take a recommendation over a google search any day.
I think that’s something that the hospitality industry isn’t totally capitalizing on. They focus so much on selling the amenities of their properties that they forget that what most travelers are seeking isn’t designer sheets or infinity pools but access — to information, to exclusive places, to secret spots.
Can you share with our readers how have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
It’s funny because I told you earlier that I didn’t want to be a teacher, but my favorite part of my job today is actually mentoring. My alma mater has an incredible network of alumni, and many of them have offered me their time and connections over the years. Now that I have some years under my belt, I try to use my success to help others who may want to follow in my footsteps.
I get a lot of “Can I pick your brain?” emails, and no matter how busy I am, I try to always say “yes.” If I can encourage someone, share the mistakes I’ve made, or help them gain clarity on their goals, that 30 minutes is worth it to me. It’s how I give back.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Oh, this is a fun question! I may be biased as someone who works in the category, but I truly believe in the regenerative power of travel. Travel is so important not only in terms of opening your mind to new places, people, and cultures, but also from a mental health perspective. The pandemic exasperated our burnout culture, and despite desperately needing mental breaks, Americans took fewer vacation days in 2020 than the years prior. That’s all to say that I love the idea of government- or employer-sponsored sabbaticals. Sabbaticals have been trendy amongst the Tribe for a while now, but I would love to start a movement where they were democratized — made available to all and not only to the fortunate few — and also normalized. I want everyone to have the opportunity to take the appropriate time off and to see the world through a fresh set of eyes.
Team One actually has something called the Slash Award, our version of an employee of the year award, and the winners receive paid time off and money towards a trip. I haven’t won one yet, but I dream about it!
How can our readers follow you on social media?
I have a LinkedIn and an Instagram. My Instagram is just pictures of my adorable corgi Willow, so I suggest that if you want to connect that you add me on LinkedIn! https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolecestaro/
Female Founders: Jane Mosbacher Morris of TO THE MARKET On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Getting Comfortable with “Failing Forward” — Failure is inevitable — it’s how you handle it that makes all the difference. Take shame or regret out of the equation, and instead focus on what you can learn from your stumbles. What can you do better next time? What did this failure teach you about yourself or your company’s capabilities? I share this with my team as well. When mistakes happen, we focus on learning together what lessons we can take from the experience.
Jane Mosbacher Morris is the founder and CEO of TO THE MARKET, a company powering the ethical supply chain. Jane previously worked in the US Department of State and as the Director of Humanitarian Action at the McCain Institute for International Leadership. She is a member of VF Corporation’s Advisory Council on Responsible Sourcing, a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of Buy the Change You Want to See: Use Your Purchasing Power to Make the World a Better Place.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I started my career at the US Department of State, where I worked in the Bureau of Counterterrorism and the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues. Then, I became Director of Humanitarian Action at the McCain Institute for International Leadership before going on to launch TO THE MARKET. I grew up in a household where kindness and service were majorly emphasized, and I always knew I wanted to use my skill set to improve the world around me. When I honed in on the idea for TTM, all the pieces just fit together and built on what I’d learned in my previous roles. I love that the work we do helps change lives around the world.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
Every day brings a new adventure, so it’s hard to choose just one experience, but something that sticks out in my mind is TTM’s shift to producing PPE at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. When the virus hit, we shifted from our usual focus on retail and home goods to begin supplying PPE (personal protective equipment) for frontline workers.
Because TTM has a syndicated supply chain, we were in a unique position to help. We had the ideal production expertise for this situation, but had never worked with healthcare before, so we learned as we went. Our amazing suppliers hit the ground running, transforming their factories around the world into PPE production facilities to create masks, gowns, and other vital equipment. Over the course of 2020, we delivered over 11 million units of PPE in the US alone.
What’s so interesting to me about that experience is that we’d spent TO THE MARKET’s entire lifespan sharpening our skills and building our supply chain into a position where we could be helpful in just such a crisis — but we didn’t realize it until the moment arrived. You never know when unexpected opportunities to make a difference will cross your path.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When I first launched the company, I had no idea how to price products! Normally, you’d want to make sure you multiply the cost of a product’s goods by 2.7, but at first, I just added $1 per product. People would ask me what the MSRP was for a product — a super basic question in the world of retail — and I didn’t know what they were talking about! Obviously, things got clearer over time as I gained experience and learned more tools of the trade. The lesson I took from this is that it’s okay to not know everything! This is especially true in the beginning of a new endeavor — don’t let fear of what you don’t know hold you back from pursuing a dream project. You’ll figure things out as you go, and that’s perfectly okay.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
My husband is also an entrepreneur. He founded his own company, Rubicon, so he’s given me lots of insight on running a startup. He’s my biggest cheerleader when I’m discouraged, and my go-to sounding board. He offers a great perspective on how to grow a company sustainably.
I’m also incredibly grateful for the work ethic my parents instilled in my siblings and I while I was growing up. Their rule when it came to school was that no matter what the end result was, we had to give our fullest effort. Getting a perfect grade wasn’t as important as the idea that we did the best we could do. In school and in life, it’s all about showing up for the task and giving it your all. That lesson has served me so much in entrepreneurship.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
When I started TO THE MARKET, it became clear pretty quickly that in the garment industry, most of the people in charge of the industry — the ones who stand to profit the most and the ones who have the power to make decisions that could change lives — are men. Meanwhile, a large percentage of the makers and factory workers actually putting those garments together are women. And that stat you just shared is just one more reminder of how widespread gender imbalances are across industries.
There are many systemic barriers for women in business. In 2018, American women on average earned 82% of what men earned, and the gap was especially wide for women of color, with Black women earning just 62% of what men took home. The same types of systemic issues that might prevent women from building personal wealth or gaining financial independence can carry over into entrepreneurship. For example, in many parts of the world, women do not have the right to inherit their family’s or spouse’s capital if they pass away, or in some cases to even open a bank account. Creating societal structures where women are treated as financial equals can pave the way for more women to build businesses — and gain independence along the way.
Another factor is that, quite simply, there isn’t a lot of representation. “You can’t be what you can’t see” holds a lot of truth. Many female entrepreneurs feel they need to work harder than men to establish credibility and may worry that they won’t be welcome in fields that are typically male dominated. The more women in business we all have to look up to, the less intimidating it will seem.
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
On a personal level, share other women’s voices and experiences. Give platforms to your fellow female entrepreneurs. Share the stage with women from marginalized communities who deserve to be heard in their own words. Swap resources and join forces with women in your industry to work on projects together. The more we look out for one another, the faster and higher we all rise.
When it comes to making a difference in industry at large, I always suggest that people vote with their dollar. (And of course, when elections roll around, vote with your ballot too!) Show the world your values by opting to purchase products from women-owned companies and from brands that operate safe, fairly paid factories. As everyday consumers, we all have more power than we think.
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
The phrase “be the change you want to see in the world” is used so often for a reason: if we want a world with more female founders, we can create that world by becoming those founders ourselves. This fuels a ripple effect for future generations of young women who then see themselves represented in industry and realize those dreams can come true for them too.
Research has shown that companies with more female leadership perform better. When as many walks of life as possible are represented in leadership positions, industries get closer to reflecting the wider range of needs, ideas, and insights in our greater world. And that makes life better for everyone.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
A huge myth is the notion that people always should know what they’re doing right away when they launch a business. You can learn as you go! No matter what your imposter syndrome may try to tell you, nobody steps into a new role with one hundred percent expert knowledge and confidence. Don’t rob yourself of your dreams by spending years convincing yourself that you’re not qualified. You know more than you think, and in a career like this, you never stop learning, so there’s no better time to just start.
Another myth I often see is the idea of overnight success. Ninety-nine percent of the time, that superstar entrepreneur who seemingly appeared out of nowhere has been working behind the scenes for years. Even the most successful companies and leaders have moments of failure, doubt, and hurdles. That part of the process is totally normal. All your hard work is getting you closer to your goals, even in moments when it doesn’t feel that way.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
Life as a founder means you’ll experience a lot of roller coaster moments. One of the biggest factors is being comfortable with failure and knowing how to learn and improve from your mistakes. You will fail along the way, and that’s okay. But you need to be able to channel that failure into something bigger and better that doesn’t involve quitting or beating yourself up over it.
Another key is unwavering belief in your vision. At first, you’ll probably be the only person who believes in your idea. You need to be comfortable telling others why your idea is great and why it will make the world a better place. Lots of women are hesitant to feel openly proud of their work because they worry they’ll seem like they’re bragging. I’m here to tell you: it’s okay to brag! You are your company’s biggest cheerleader. Let the world know about it!
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your opinion and experience, what are the “Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder?” (Please share a story or example for each.)
Emotional Resilience
Entrepreneurship doesn’t just come with logistical challenges. It can also be a very emotionally tough experience. You can feel like you’re on top of the world and like you’re in front of an epic hurdle within the same day. It’s important to build emotional resilience, both for your own wellbeing and because when you’re brainstorming from a positive place, you come up with solutions you wouldn’t have thought up otherwise. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit and lockdowns rolled out around the world, many of our operations were put on hold overnight. But because the team and I had learned from experience not to panic in hard times, we were able to think on our feet and quickly pivot to sourcing PPE.
Time Management in a World of 24/7 Demands
As a CEO, there are a lot of demands for your time. Your team understandably has questions in the day to day, and as the face of the company, there are also time demands from outside forces. So, figuring out a version of time management that works for you makes a world of difference. For me, that means carving out uninterrupted time for deep focused work, grouping meetings into batches whenever possible, entrusting my amazing assistant to take the reins on lots of scheduling decisions. This also means trusting my team to thrive at the things they do best while I focus on my tasks, providing them guidance and feedback but knowing they’re able to shine on their own.
Laser Focus on the Tasks That Mean the Most
On any given day in a start-up, the to-do list is never ending. This can make it tempting to chip away at a less important task that feels productive but doesn’t actually move the company forward, while game-changing tasks linger at the bottom of the list. To help avoid this, I try to start my day thinking about what I’d like to have accomplished by the evening, or how I’d like the company to move forward by the end of the week. This helps me work backwards to decide which tasks are actually worth focusing on. I try to think about the ROI of the time, money, and energy that goes into each task. As a team, we practice this together by sharing our weekly priorities each Monday. This helps us focus more sharply on what really matters.
Asking for Help
Spend your career (especially your early career) building strong relationships and growing your network. And down the line, if things get tough or you need help, don’t be afraid to reach out to that network for what you need. In the early days of TO THE MARKET, so many of our first breaks came from reaching out far and wide within my network, seeking out anyone I could who might be able to benefit from TTM’s expertise. Years later, when we pivoted from apparel to PPE in 2020, TTM’s network stepped up in a whole new way, providing funding that enabled us to get new orders for healthcare workers underway as quickly as possible.
Getting Comfortable with “Failing Forward”
Failure is inevitable — it’s how you handle it that makes all the difference. Take shame or regret out of the equation, and instead focus on what you can learn from your stumbles. What can you do better next time? What did this failure teach you about yourself or your company’s capabilities? I share this with my team as well. When mistakes happen, we focus on learning together what lessons we can take from the experience.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
One of the most tangible ways TO THE MARKET has been able to make a difference is through our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, when we switched from supplying apparel, accessories, and home goods to supplying PPE to frontline healthcare workers, nuns, farmers, and other essential workers. We supplied millions of units of PPE in the United States, and we were also able to commission some of our makers to supply and distribute masks within their local communities in Kenya and Ghana.
In a larger sense, my hope for TO THE MARKET is that everything we do makes the world a better place. I founded the company with the goal of creating a world with more safe, sustainable, fairly paid jobs, and we’ve been fortunate to work with makers all over the world doing exactly that. Along the way, I hope to continue showing consumers just how simple it is to make a difference with our everyday purchases. Each one of us has more power than we think — it’s all about where we direct our dollars!
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Helping people, especially women in marginalized communities, find meaningful employment. Everyone, no matter their walk of life, deserves safe, fairly paid work that enables them to make decisions about the direction of their lives. I’m passionate about enabling the dignity of work.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
There have been so many people that have influenced my life and my career in different ways, it’s hard to choose any one person! Family immediately comes to mind because they’re so important to keep close. I’d love to share a meal with my mother and grandmother, as they’ve been the most influential women in my life.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Female Founders: Leslie Goldman of The Artemis Fund On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
By putting my money, time and energy where my mouth is. By giving up a steady paycheck and using my savings to invest in purpose-driven female founders. These founders are building companies that democratize access to wealth, encourage sustainability, and reduce friction in the care economy. What could be better?
Leslie Goldman is a General Partner and Co-Founder of The Artemis Fund, a seed stage VC fund that invests in mission-driven female founders across the US. After more than 25 years as a corporate attorney, Leslie turned to angel investing in companies (60+) and funds (11) and reacted to the alarming funding disparity for women by launching a fund with partners Diana Murakhovskaya and Stephanie Campbell to tackle the disparity. The team is launching The Artemis Fund II in Q4 of 2021 to invest in another 20 exceptional female founders.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
My passions for gender equity, amplifying female voices, continuous learning, and investing led me to this career path.
Prior to co-founding The Artemis Fund with my partners, Diana Murakhovskaya and Stephanie Campbell, I was an opera singer in training, turned corporate attorney for 25 years, turned executive recruiter for three years. I believe the winding path has given me an enriched and unique perspective as an investor. Along the way, I invested in 60 companies and 11 funds before my “aha” moment after one-too-many experiences as the only woman in a room full of male investors; watching pitch after pitch from all white male teams with advisors and board members who mirrored them. When I met Stephanie and Diana, they were reeling from the same “aha” moment.
The three of us had been researching the paltry amount of funding women founders receive (only 2–3% over the past 10 years of the trillions invested) and reviewing the evidence that shows female founders outperform their males counterparts when they do get funded. We all wanted to create a path to getting larger dollars to these overlooked founders to further prove out this data. I view it as low hanging fruit — money left on the table and innovation missed. How are we leaving out 50% of the population? To boot, women-led companies are solving problems that are completely undetected, or even obscured, by men. Thus begat The Artemis Fund.
The mandate of The Artemis Fund is to invest in female-founded, female-led companies that democratize access to wealth (e.g. CNote, Goodfynd, UNest, Upgrade), encourage sustainability (e.g. DressX and Goodmylk), and reduce friction in the care economy (e.g. HopSkipDrive, Naborforce and Work & Mother). With that mandate, The Artemis Fund has invested in 11 companies, and we are on the way to a 15-company portfolio. We are embarking on The Artemis Fund II to find and fund many more. But, we need billions to close the gender funding gap as a $50M fund can’t move the needle. We simply need more funders, more limited partners (LPs), to demand more from their fund managers.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
While I can’t share the details of specific companies, founders and investors, I can say that The Artemis Fund’s record will prove that pregnancy makes a determined female founder even more determined.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I made many mistakes as an angel investor before starting The Artemis Fund. I am not sure they are “haha” funny, but I have certainly learned from them. My personal experience involves investing early in two different, but equally amazing storytellers. Both of these gents raised millions of dollars for their companies and then disappeared. One of them resurfaced in Southern California with no remorse and is surfing and living in a beautiful estate. The other may be behind bars, but I’m not sure.
Our fund’s extensive diligence on our portfolio companies would have uncovered the red flags. As an angel with a small check, my ability to conduct due diligence was limited. I learned the importance not only of extensive background and reference checks but also the need to build a rapport with founders. Developing a relationship with founders allows me to explore their true motivation, authenticity, passion, drive, and grit. Sometimes there is no “there there.” Sigh.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Yes! My fiance and sons (yes, all boys) have been vocal about their support for the work I am doing. Their encouragement and overt show of respect fuels my confidence, especially since my time and energy is often diverted from them.
I am also grateful for discovering the book Angel by Jason Calacanis. It led me to realize that anyone can learn to invest in startups, at any time and any gender, and even with small amounts of money. Jason has educated thousands of people. Granted, most of them are men, because women have not yet discovered (en masse) that they can have a seat at the investor table. So — I (and my partners) in turn, make it my (our) business to educate women.
Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
That 20% includes co-ed teams. Of those co-ed teams, less than half have female CEOs or women who are equal owners of the company. The real “telling” statistic is, according to Harvard Business Review and Crunchbase, only 2.3% of funding in 2020 went to female founded companies.
The second question is a false construct. I do not believe there is anything holding women back from founding companies. In fact, statistics show that more women than men start their own businesses. The real question is: why are traditional venture capitalists (VCs) unable to find the female founders? The Artemis Fund has upwards of 3,000 seed stage female-founded companies seeking funding each year. Where are the traditional VCs looking? It is clear that (a) they are looking within their networks for deal flow, or from traditional sources, and (b) they are looking for a certain type of pedigree. In fact, research shows that female founders who went on to secure more than $1 million in funding for their startups attended the same 10 universities and colleges.
To break that cycle, VCs have to be intentional and must source differently. They must make a move from their comfort zone, both geographically and demographically. That move requires looking outside their networks and considering a different type of founder, one who may not be a white male from Stanford or Harvard, a former Google exec, a serial entrepreneur, or a startup accelerator alumnus, such as YCombinator, or another name brand program.
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
Yes.
Institutional investors could require that fund managers allocate more deliberately to female-led, female-founded companies.
Male and female thought leaders and investors (angel, venture capital and private equity) could intentionally seek out and educate more women about this asset class and provide them the opportunity to invest.
Fund managers could diversify their investment decision makers, since women are three times more likely to invest in female founders.
And traditional VCs should ask themselves:
How much do we plan to allocate to female founded companies?
How do we screen companies? Can we somehow make the pitch gender blind?
Where do we look for companies? Do we invest in founders in cities throughout the US? Do we look outside the cities with the greatest number of startups? Do we ask for deal flow from VCs that exclusively invest in female founders? Are we broadening our network to non-traditional VCs?
How many female-founded/female-led companies do we see per year? And what percentage of deals do we screen?
Are we training our team on unconscious bias and are we aware of current statistics?
Realistically, however, only the larger institutional investors — the limited partners (LPs) — can sway their General Partners to actively and intentionally act on the questions above. There seems to be a lot of lip service calling for investment in women and minority fund managers. The rub is that most female fund managers are “emerging managers” — i.e., with small funds and no track record. Established LPs — the foundations, pension funds, endowments, government-run agencies, universities — are unable to invest in amounts small enough to allow them to participate in a small Fund (<$100M). They also want to see a track record which, by definition, an emerging manager cannot produce. Since this creates a catch-22, fund of funds — like Sapphire Ventures and Ahoy Capital — as well as family offices and even banks are trying to fill in the gaps for small funds.
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
Since we know that female founders receive approximately 2% of the overall venture capital funding dollars, we are losing out on an estimated $2.5T to $5T in GDP and immeasurable innovation. Entrepreneurship is considered a central path to job creation, economic growth and prosperity; small businesses contribute 64% of new job creation annually in the United States. So imagine what we are leaving on the table by not allocating even 5%, 10%, or 20% to the other half of the population?
Research also shows that women are better at high-growth entrepreneurship than men. In fact, companies with a female founder deliver a higher rate of return (112% vs 48%) than all-male founded teams and a lower risk of failure. I attribute this to (a) doing more with less money and (b) having (almost universally) a gender diverse management team and advisory board. Also, by the time a female founder is ready for institutional funding, she will have gone through many tests of her grit and determination, and have achieved product market fit and revenue. She cannot expect funding on an idea, or due to pedigree, or from a funding mafia.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
I think one myth to dispel is that you need to raise VC money. If you can avoid it, you should. If you can bootstrap, raise money from angels, grants, or otherwise, do that first. Once you raise from VCs, you are wedded and accountable to that VC, who in turn is accountable to a whole slew of investors. Putting a VC on the cap table changes the dynamic around the decision making table.
Another myth may be in thinking you can control your own destiny. As a founder and CEO, you will work harder than ever and time will not be yours. To be a successful founder, you have to be truly passionate, incredibly gritty, and determined. Which means you are probably ‘Type A’ and easily addicted to work. The hours in the day and night run together, especially if you don’t have someone who forces you to break away.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
No way. You must be comfortable taking risks. When your company gets to a certain point, you must be comfortable taking money from others. And then be prepared to roll up your sleeves, receive their input, and communicate with them.
As for traits, the most successful founders are passionate, gritty, and determined, and gifted at communicating and developing relationships with all stakeholders. Plus, they deeply understand their market, their customers, and how to serve them. They must focus on the customer experience and closely monitor the changes in behavior and needs of the customer over time.
Without these traits, you are better off collecting a paycheck and enjoying the family.
Based on your opinion and experience, what are the “Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder?” (Please share a story or example for each.)
I want to premise my comments by saying that these traits apply to both male and female founders. Being female just adds an additional layer of challenges and scrutiny.
A thick skin. Most founders (both male and female) will hear “no” more often than “yes.” Out of 100 pitch meetings, you’ll be lucky to get one “yes” from a potential investor. And if you are a woman, you may have to double or triple that number, as research shows unconscious bias. Power through and know your value.
Passion. Passion for your product will drive your persistence, a necessary ingredient in overcoming the naysayers, the difficult times, and of course, the grind of fundraising. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a true test of persistence and passion. We saw it test the founders in our Artemis portfolio. They passed. Passionate about their product and service, they came out stronger. The founder/CEO must motivate, steer, collaborate, and communicate her vision to the entire (at first small) team. The CEO must fuel the team and create the culture. A great leader can authentically convey optimism at the most challenging times.
Female leaders are under greater scrutiny since there are fewer. Every female founder and CEO knows she is a role model. Given her visibility, the pressure to lead and give voice to the vision of the company while demonstrating resilience, creates a greater responsibility.
Ability to attract and retain talent (employees, advisors, board members). Surrounding yourself with talented people will enhance your ability to raise. The blunt reality is that the pedigree of your team — track record as founders and operators, where they worked, went to school, their connections — unfortunately, make a difference to some investors.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
By putting my money, time and energy where my mouth is. By giving up a steady paycheck and using my savings to invest in purpose-driven female founders. These founders are building companies that democratize access to wealth, encourage sustainability, and reduce friction in the care economy. What could be better?
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Limited partners (LPs) need to step in and require their general partners (GPs) to invest in women. They need to mandate that a certain percentage of their investments be directed into women-led companies. We have managed to get legislation passed requiring female representation on boards, yet we can’t seem to fix the gender disparity at the very beginning of the funnel — having women in the C-suite from the very nascent stage of a company.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
There are so many amazing people that are making a difference and doing amazing things for gender equity. Here are just a few of the people I would love to meet:
Melinda Gates. She is doing all she can for gender equity.
Serena Williams. She is investing in female founders and using her purse as well as her brand to help female founders.
Arc Equity’s Cathy Wood, who is using her financial strength and celebrity to put a focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG). She’s an incredibly successful female investor.
Marla Blow, who is one of the few black female founders in fintech. She led ESG efforts at Mastercard and is now the CEO of the Skoll Foundation, working on some incredibly important initiatives around financial inclusion and climate change.
Jeff Skoll is a philanthropist with a focus on social impact and driving positive change by focusing on things that matter.
Betsy Cohen, a female pioneer in fintech,
Jacki Zehner is giving a voice to women, calling on them to invest and move millions to women’s causes.
All the incredible gender-lens investors, promoters and thought leaders. And of course, the bold and determined female founders who are working to create the change we need to see.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Thanks to the rising popularity of smart working, travellers are looking for greater flexibility in their villa bookings and with cancellation policies. With flexible work becoming the new norm for so many, people are now turning an airport lounge or villa dining room into their office. We anticipate the rise of “workcations” will likely lead to increased off-season travel, as clients seek to avoid crowds of tourists.
As part of my series about “developments in the travel industry over the next five years”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Roberto Sortino.
Roberto Sortino, Managing Director & Founder of Villatravellers, founded the Sicilian villa company over 15 years ago. Villatravellers provides exclusive, personalised holidays all across Sicily and includes over 70 meticulously selected properties that span every part of the island. At the start of this year, and during the height of Covid-19, Sortino led a company rebrand to reflect the brand’s optimistic view on tourism on the island.
Sortino was brought up during the digital age, which led him to pursue a degree in computer science and languages and he studied at home in Sicily throughout university. This was when the idea behind soloSicily (now Villatravellers) was born — Roberto was looking to bring together his love of Sicily with his passion for the internet, giving life to one of the top villa rental companies.
Villatravellers offers a high-end concierge service and offers unique experiences for every area that showcase the island’s culture, natural beauty, and gourmet scene. Guests can enjoy sandy beaches along the south coast, rocky shores on the east, immerse themselves in the Arab-Norman culture of the north region or explore the Baroque towns of the south.
Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
From an early age my father shared his passion for computers with me, in turn growing my own. So when it came time to pick a degree at university I naturally chose computer science. After graduation many of my friends were keen to move away from Sicily, but not me. I loved the area, and wanted to live and work in it. Though online travel companies were rare at the time, I saw an opportunity to combine my love for technology with my love for Sicily to create soloSicily. Since then my business has evolved and become Villatravellers, with a mission to share Sicily’s beauty and culture with the modern world.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
At the start of my career, when I didn’t have much money or resources, I had to use my parents’ house as an office. When clients would used to have meetings with me, I’d have to run around, turning the house upside down until it looked like an office. My mother wasn’t pleased about it at the time, but we laugh about it now!
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When I started out, I was responsible for most aspects of the business, including setting up the website. As is often the case with new projects, I began by taking inspiration from other websites. With so much on my plate, I was a little overworked. One time, when looking at another company’s website I mistakenly copied their phone number and added it to ours.
After weeks of not receiving any phone calls I started feeling really disappointed, and wondered what I was doing wrong. Finally the phone rang, only for the owner of the other company to inform me that all my clients were calling them. At the time it was an absolutely humiliating moment, but reminiscing about it now it’s a funny story to look back on.
To this day I still think it’s vital to be aware of your market and familiar with competitors’ websites, so that you can see improve on what is already available. That being said, be careful to make sure the contact details on your website are really yours!
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”? Can you share a story about that?
Some of the managers and business owners I know often criticise their employees, saying they are not up to the job and telling me they prefer to do it themselves to “save time.” I’ve found this mindset is what most often leads to serious burn out. I was a bit like this starting out as well, but I have since then learned that trusting my team is much better that being an individualist.
The best tip I could offer would be to learn to delegate and to trust your co-workers and employees by listening to and supporting them. Since you are all working towards the same goal, incentivising them to provide feedback on how to improve the company is also necessary. It’s impossible to do everything yourself, however talented and keen you might be. By delegating what you can, you’ll be able to devote more energy to the tasks that really require your focus.
Ask yourself whether you are a boss or a leader of your team. As Russell H. Ewing once said, “A boss creates fear, a leader confidence.” Being a leader in your business means sharing your vision, bringing the team together, and not being afraid to ask for help.
It is always better to ask for help reaching your goal than to fail by being arrogant. Whether you’re too proud, afraid people will doubt your intelligence, or haven’t been brought up that way, if you don’t ask for help you won’t receive it. Even working for yourself, you need a team you can rely on — success stories about those who “did it by themselves” aren’t true. Today, Villatravellers is the product of many people’s hard work, including our team today, and all those who have worked alongside us over the years.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
There are actually two: the women in my life.
At the beginning, my mother was the only person who believed in my business. She trusted my vision and helped me financially. Part of living well is loving your work, and I’ll never stop being thankful to my mother for giving me the chance to do what I love.
The second person is Valentina, Villatravellers’ Administrative Manager, and also my wife. While some might think this is the classic cliché of a boss falling for his colleague, but we actually met and fell in love outside of work. In the first few years of my career, there was a time when I needed help but I couldn’t afford to hire employees. Valentina so kindly offered to help out. We’d spend evenings in the office, during many of which we’d eat pizza. Our favourite was a margherita with buffalo mozzarella and prosciutto.
For those first two years she worked selflessly without pay, helping grow the business into what it has become. Today she is not just one of the most important members of the Villatravellers team, but also my partner in life and a wonderful mother to our son.
Thank you for that. Let’s jump to the core of our discussion. Can you share with our readers about the innovations that you are bringing to the travel and hospitality industries?
Today, tourism has become an incredibly competitive industry. While we are always trying to improve and innovate, it can sometimes be difficult to keep up.
Right now our goal at Villatravellers is to give our guests more than just a holiday at a beautiful villa. Our clients all have different approaches when it comes to how they like to travel, but we believe everyone should be able to enjoy an authentic experience. Our wish is that anyone who books a holiday with Villatravellers leaves with a suitcase full of unique memories.
Currently, we’re working on improving the experiences we offer, as well as adding greater personalisation to our clients trips. Additionally, we are currently developing an app, so that guests can manage their holidays with a sense of autonomy. The app will include updated information about both their villa and experience bookings, as well as a complete guide to the region and an interactive map. There’s lots more to explore, but we want to keep some surprises for the launch!
As you know, COVID19 changed the world as we know it. Can you share 5 examples of how travel and hospitality companies will be adjusting over the next five years to the new ways that consumers will prefer to travel?
There is no doubt about the impact that the pandemic has had on tourism, especially in the way that people travel. In 2021 these changes are already being seen.
1. FLEXIBILITY
Thanks to the rising popularity of smart working, travellers are looking for greater flexibility in their villa bookings and with cancellation policies. With flexible work becoming the new norm for so many, people are now turning an airport lounge or villa dining room into their office. We anticipate the rise of “workcations” will likely lead to increased off-season travel, as clients seek to avoid crowds of tourists.
2. LONGER HOLIDAYS
Another emerging trend is longer holidays.
Usually our clients go on holiday for one or two weeks, but thanks to smart working many guests are now booking longer trips. To make the most of this trend, we have decided to offer discounts to guests who want to stay for longer than one week.
3. PRIVACY AND SECURITY
Thankfully the vaccination programmes around the world are slowly bringing about a return to normality. However, already this year we are seeing more guests seeking a guarantee of privacy in their accommodation. Without a doubt, villas are a great choice for this. Guests can enjoy an incredible holiday with their family or friends without having to worry about the risk of infection present in more public places.
Another important concern for guests is hygiene and sanctification. Whilst this has always been important to us, COVID-19 has made this an absolute priority for guests and staff. For this reason we have drawn up a list of steps for our hosts to respect. We also regularly inspect our villas to make sure that these standards are being upheld.
4. AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCES
Today’s travellers are no longer content just to stay in a place and observe its beauty, be it natural or man-made, as an outsider. The modern traveller is searching for authenticity and wants to connect to the place that they are visiting, to truly feel like a local. Because of this, there is a growing desire for authentic and unique experiences that can bring about these sensations during a holiday.
5. SUSTAINABILITY
The European parliament has stated that the pandemic has changed consumers’ priorities towards greener options. Because of this, a roadmap will be created to develop more sustainable forms of tourism which will reduce the environmental impact that comes from this sector. Sustainable tourism is the present and the future of travel, with an aim to promote understanding and appreciation of local cultures and traditions, to preserve the environment, and to respect the ways of life of the land and its people. By applying the principals of sustainable tourism, it is possible to keep the balance between the beauty of sharing “local treasures” with the world, and the necessity to preserve them for the next generation. There are solutions which will improve the local quality of life while creating unforgettable experiences and memories for tourists.
Tourism doesn’t and shouldn’t mean pollution, increasing cost of living, environmental damage, nightlife, or searching for luxury at the cost of traditional identities. On the contrary, real tourism contributes to, preserves, and sustains the local culture and natural beauty of the places tourists choose to visit, allowing them to enjoy the area with care and respect.
You are a “travel insider”. How would you describe your “perfect vacation experience”?
I’m not sure that a perfect holiday exists. When I travel — and this is the piece of advice I give to everyone — I try to remember that I am a guest. The rhythms, routines, languages and traditions are often different to those we know at home, and a tourist has to understand and accept that they can’t always expect it to be like home.
Let yourself go, don’t judge, live, and take part. A traveller loves, but does not judge. That’s the best experience.
Can you share with our readers how have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
We want to make our hosts and our guests aware of the importance of sustainability. We want our actions to contribute towards making the world a better place, part of a better culture.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I’d like to bring about a sustainable movement that the whole industry can follow. We have a great responsibility bringing together so many people for such an important cause.
The tourism industry has a great impact on the environment and it is our responsibility to take action to ensure change. The world is sadly suffering, but travel is a way to discover the beauty in the world. We have a duty to look after it, for ourselves and future generations.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
Facebook — Instagram — Twitter — LinkedIn
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
I have always believed that we need to practice what we preach. If you are committed to your own well being, you will bring that commitment forward in the work environment and others will be inspired to follow suit.
As a part of my series about the “5 Things Anyone Can Do To Optimize Their Mental Wellness”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Nora Plesent, founder of Be Still and Soar.
Nora Plesent has been supporting women personally and professionally for over 40 years. She is a lawyer, entrepreneur, mom, writer and advocate for women’s wellness. After practicing law for 20 years and being a founder of a multi-million dollar legal staffing company for another 20 years, Nora is now a Stress Management Consultant and Wellness Coach helping women who live in a state of overwhelm and exhaustion become calmer, clearer and more connected so that they can experience more joy, comfort, peace and presence in their lives.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
Yes! I practiced law for 20 years in NYC and then founded a legal staffing company which I ran for the next 20 years. During that time I was overwhelmed and exhausted on a regular basis. I was working full time, raising four kids on my own and never felt like I was particularly successful at either. Around 2007 I hit a wall; while I was in China adopting my youngest daughter my brother died at 39. I knew I needed to make some changes in my life. I went through a difficult divorce and moved across the country to LA to start life anew. The move was hard on my children and it was a struggle for all of us to make friends and create a sense of belonging. I felt like I was on empty. I came across a meditation studio and began learning how to meditate. I read everything I could on the mind-body connection, the nervous system and the power of slowing down. All these concepts were new to me and I was blown away by how much they helped me through my own crisis. I then decided to become certified as a meditation coach and help women learn how to do the same for themselves.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
I think one of the most surprising and interesting things that happened to me these last five years was when I had to go to the DMV to renew my license and walked in to the madness and chaos and seemingly unending lines and was able to sit for hours without the massive amount of angst, annoyance and frustration that had always overwhelmed me in moments such as these.
Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?
When I started out I was still under the impression that to “meditate” properly you needed a meditation cushion, incense and beads! I was initially so impressed with myself that I had the “right” paraphernalia to meditate but soon thereafter when I was sitting on the cushion, cross legged with the incense wafting and beads in my hands I burst out laughing realizing that the inner work I was committed to doing and bringing to others had nothing to do with these of any props. It was going inside, wherever you are and getting quiet and listening to your own still small voice.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
My meditation coach, Heather Hayward! The first day I walked into one of her classes and she was playing Stevie Wonder I knew I had found someone I could work with, relate to and learn from.
What advice would you suggest to your colleagues in your industry to thrive and avoid burnout?
For anyone stepping into a career in wellness, make sure to stay connected to your own reason for being in the industry and stay true to your own practices of meditation or breath work, healthy eating, sleep routines and whatever you do to personally stay “well”. When you do, you will naturally avoid burnout!
What advice would you give to other leaders about how to create a fantastic work culture?
I have always believed that we need to practice what we preach. If you are committed to your own well being, you will bring that commitment forward in the work environment and others will be inspired to follow suit.
Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s move to the main focus of our interview. Mental health is often looked at in binary terms; those who are healthy and those who have mental illness. The truth, however, is that mental wellness is a huge spectrum. Even those who are “mentally healthy” can still improve their mental wellness. From your experience or research, what are five steps that each of us can take to improve or optimize our mental wellness. Can you please share a story or example for each.
I am a strong believer that in order to stay healthy, we need to live as balanced a life as we can, and not become obsessive about any one arena of our life/personality. I advise clients to take a good look at all parts of themselves and to spend some time every day devoted to nurturing all their different parts!
The Five Steps I suggest for optimizing mental wellness can be found in the neumonic SPICE!
I work with my clients to bring a little SPICE to their lives but each and every day, doing something
Much of my expertise focuses on helping people to plan for after retirement. Retirement is a dramatic ‘life course transition’ that can impact one’s health. In addition to the ideas you mentioned earlier, are there things that one should do to optimize mental wellness after retirement? Please share a story or an example for each.
Even more important in retirement to make sure you are nurturing all the various sides of yourself!
How about teens and pre teens. Are there any specific new ideas you would suggest for teens and pre teens to optimize their mental wellness?
Teens also are advised to explore the various areas of themselves and break out of their habitual routines on the phone and take a walk or bike ride, read something not online, write a note the old fashioned way and even have a talk on the phone rather than on chat!
Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story?
I read constantly and have many many books that have impacted me but one of the ones I come back to regularly is Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart. Real, Relatable, Meaningful.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I would like to start a movement to get people to meditate en masse together, write in journals, share and then walk around hugging one another!
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?
I love this one- It’s not what you get in life, it’s what you do with it!
To me that sums it all up- whatever happens to us, we can always espond how we want to!
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