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Women Of The C-Suite: Rachel Francine of Musical Health Technologies On The Five Things You Need To Succeed As A Senior Executive

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Being a bit of a word nerd, I looked up the exact definition of “executive” to answer this question and it’s “having the power to put plans, actions, or laws into effect.” When it comes to being a CEO in a startup, I would add that it also entails, coming up with exact plans, after taking into account, the ideas and options of your team, advisors and customers (current and/or future)…I have a bit of a maxim, which is that an idea is only as good as your ability to execute it well. If one aspires to be a CEO of a startup and is not comfortable starting with a blank page, then the gig is likely not for you. If someone is thinking about being an executive in a more traditional company and is not excited about the idea of having to marshal troops to bring that plan into action, then another role might be a better choice.

As a part of our interview series called “Women Of The C-Suite”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Rachel Francine.

Rachel Francine began her career in technology when the platform debate was VHS vs. Beta. Then, in 1996 Rachel kicked her career in tech into high gear as a member of the CitySearch.com New Markets team and spent the next decade leading teams that transformed brick & mortar businesses into digital, scalable solutions. In the 2000s, Rachel earned a master’s degree in Futures Studies from the University of Houston with a focus on transformative economics and then went on to found and become the CEO of Musical Health Technologies, whose award-winning SingFit digital health platform is successfully scaling music as medicine.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! 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 dad was a serial entrepreneur back when that was called being a crazy inventor, so I grew up working at his businesses and going to the Consumer Electronics Show for vacation. When the internet came to be in 1996, I was able to get in early and thrive, because for me a blank page is more comfortable than following someone else’s path. As it happens the original core technology for our SingFit platform was first thought of by my dad in the 1960s who wanted a way to rehearse on his way to his opera lessons. You could say, I was socially and genetically engineered to do what I do.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

The most interesting? Wow, so many possible answers…I got to speak at the United Nations on International Older Persons Day to talk about the statistic that in spite of the fact that the image of the ideal startup founder is someone in their 20s, founders who launch their companies in their 40s or after are statistically more successful.

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. 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?

Well, there was that time I tried to invent a time machine to rectify a mistake. When I was about 26 I got a promotion to the New Markets Rollout Team of CitySearch, which was the Yelp of its time. I’d been promoted about three months before and I was asked to attend a meeting with an important new client. Long story short, I overslept and missed the meeting. When I woke up and realized that my General Manager had to take the meeting on his own, I was devastated and convinced my career was over. For what seemed like five minutes, I sat there and seriously thought about how I could invent time travel. Somehow it seemed easier to figure out how to navigate space, time, and get to the meeting, than it would be to repair this horrendous mistake of oversleeping once. The GM took the meeting, all went well, and said that my work up until then had been exemplary so he wouldn’t judge me on one mistake. From that I learned that one mistake will only in the rarest circumstances define you, and also not to define someone else by one mistake.

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?

Hazel Henderson, who just passed in mid-2022 at the age of 89. Hazel was a futurist, economist, and the godmother of modern social conscious capitalism. After a 15-year career on the internet, I’d become very disappointed with the trajectory of the sector. What began as a way to democratize media and bring people together had evolved into platforms to sell sugar water, so I went back to school and got a master’s in Futures Studies to figure out how to create businesses that could do well and do good at the same time. Every time I said something I thought was smart or innovative, my professor would say, “Hazel Henderson.” After reading her work, I got to interview her for a project. I asked her if she ever had a conflict between her morals and what a client asked her to do, she said “No.” She was in her late 70s at this point and Hazel explained to me she created an “electronic bird call” that told everyone who she was and what she believed in, and the people that she worked with “were either onboard with that or wanted to get on board.” Like everything, the reality wasn’t quite as simple as that, but Hazel became a true mentor for 15 years, right up until her passing. Her support has helped me navigate how to build a for profit business that is additive rather than destructive to society at large.

Leadership often entails making difficult decisions or hard choices between two apparently good paths. Can you share a story with us about a hard decision or choice you had to make as a leader?

When we started Musical Health Technologies, we were not sure what condition and demographic we would point our SingFit digital health platform to, in order to increase health outcomes. Singing as a therapeutic tool can be used to help a variety of conditions including dementia and autism, which is where many of the 10,000 music therapists focus. Ten years ago, the idea of the Silver Economy wasn’t really spoken about, whereas a lot of attention was focused on autism. There were many factors that went into choosing to focus on dementia and cognitive health. Part of it was simply because very few companies in digital health and healthcare overall were focused on dementia, and we thought there was a real need in that market even if it wasn’t the “hot” thing at the time. Now the older adult market is getting much more attention, because people now realize it’s an $800 trillion dollar industry worldwide.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Most of our readers — in fact, most people — think they have a pretty good idea of what a CEO or executive does. But in just a few words can you explain what an executive does that is different from the responsibilities of the other leaders?

Being a bit of a word nerd, I looked up the exact definition of “executive” to answer this question and it’s “having the power to put plans, actions, or laws into effect.” When it comes to being a CEO in a startup, I would add that it also entails, coming up with exact plans, after taking into account, the ideas and options of your team, advisors and customers (current and/or future)…I have a bit of a maxim, which is that an idea is only as good as your ability to execute it well. If one aspires to be a CEO of a startup and is not comfortable starting with a blank page, then the gig is likely not for you. If someone is thinking about being an executive in a more traditional company and is not excited about the idea of having to marshal troops to bring that plan into action, then another role might be a better choice.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a CEO or executive? Can you explain what you mean?

There is a general perception that you need to have a big personality and be traditionally charismatic to be a CEO so people will “follow you”. The book “Good to Great” dispels this perfectly by delving into the data around the characteristics of great leaders as defined by those who took a good company and made it great, both in terms of revenue and worker satisfaction. The book defines a great leader as a Level Five or Servant Leader, meaning (paraphrasing greatly) it’s your job as leader to help everyone else do their job well and not vice versa. By studying hundreds of businesses, the author and his research team found that CEO’s who might not be the center of attention at a party, but the person spending their time listening to everyone else, are statistically more likely to build a truly great company.

In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by women executives that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?

The potential answers here are almost too abundant and range from the fact that only 2% of venture funding goes to female founders, to the expectations of looking “put together” are so much higher than for men. For example, we put an average $8 worth of product on our faces a day. The time and expense of this cannot be underestimated. The list can go on and it can get disheartening. What I like to focus on in the 21st century, what advantages do women have over men in the workplace? The World Economic forum did a study on what traits are needed to be a successful leader as this century moves forward and found that emotional intelligence including empathy, listening skills, coaching, mentoring, and innovation/creativity are key. The ability to multi-task also often gets added to this list in studies. The research also shows that women tend to be better at these types of things than men. We all saw how much better countries with female leaders did at navigating the early days of COVID-19 epidemic than those with male leaders. In the past, women were encouraged to behave more like men in the workplace. I believe as time moves on, men will need to be taking on more female traits in order to compete.

What is the most striking difference between your actual job and how you thought the job would be?

I’ve worked in enough startups of various sizes that there really wasn’t much that surprised me. That said, I forget at times that there may be members of the staff that may be intimidated by me by virtue of my title/position, even though I don’t consider myself to have a particularly intimidating personality. Similarly, it’s hard to have the same kind of workplace friendships you had before because essentially, you’re viewed as “the boss.”

Is everyone cut out to be an executive? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful executive and what type of person should avoid aspiring to be an executive? Can you explain what you mean?

I think that the most essential characteristic of being a CEO/executive, especially in a startup, is grit, the ability not to give up no matter what is in your way. My dad used to say, “nothing’s ever easy” and believe me, behind every business success story, there are more obstacles and challenges than one can imagine. Certainly, not everyone has “grit” but I also believe most things can be learned if you really want to, though, of course, this takes a bit of grit. A good book to read on how to learn to do things that don’t come naturally is Playing Ball on Running Water.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

  1. When you start a business, if you aren’t in it for at least eight years, don’t start it.
  2. Enterprise sales cycles are slow.
  3. Not having competition can be a bad thing because it means you are growing the space on your own.
  4. Hiring will usually take longer than you want if you are looking for quality people.
  5. And, just for emphasis, when you start a business, if you aren’t in it for at least eight years, don’t start it.

In spite of years at startups, I don’t think I really got just how long it takes to build a business that is really running under its own steam. In our original projections, I’d had us conquering the healthcare space with our tech and moving on to the education sector in 3 years. Thankfully our investor was savvier in terms of enterprise sales cycles (I’d previously worked in direct-to-consumer) and was prepared for a longer haul.

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.

Anything involving the circular economy, which is essentially the opposite of planned obsolescence. The circular economy answers the question, how can we build things that don’t harm the environment in their manufacture and/or also stay in use longer. For example, I would love for there to be local one-stop repair shops/marketplace out there where I could bring my bags with broken zippers for someone to fix while dropping off the drawer full of cords and connectors for old electronics that I don’t need anymore. Someone else might need those cords, or they could be safely recycled, or I could get credit for them.

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.

If we are shooting for the stars here, I’d say it’s a toss-up between Dolly Parton, Selena Gomez, and Lady Gaga or her mom Cynthia Germanotta, who started the Born This Way Foundation. All of these women obviously understand the power of music and are advocates for mental and cognitive health which we focus on at Musical Health Technologies.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.


Women Of The C-Suite: Rachel Francine of Musical Health Technologies On The Five Things You Need To… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.