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Give It To A Working Mom And Watch · Divas That Care Network

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's Divas that Care Radio.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Stories, strategies, and ideas to inspire positive change.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Divas That Care, a network of women committed to making our world a better place for everyone.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is a global movement for women, by women engaged in a collaborative effort to create a better world for future generations.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: To find out more about the movement, visit divasletcare.com after the show.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, though, stay tuned for another jolt of inspiration.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_03: Well, hello everyone, and welcome back to the Divas That Care.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: My name is Candice Gish.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: If this is your very first time tuning in to us, a huge welcome.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: We are now in our 16th year.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: We are listening to over 35 countries around the world.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_03: And honestly, it is because of all of our amazing guests, our tribe, the people that have really promoted us and encouraged us to keep going.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: We're just so blessed to be able to chat with amazing individuals around the globe.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_03: Because when women support women, celebrate each other's achievements, and share their knowledge and resources, everyone has the opportunity to grow.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: Through honest conversations, inspiring stories, and practical insights, we'll discover how collaboration creates stronger relationships, opens doors to meet opportunities, and multiplies the impact we can make in our communities and beyond.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_03: From celebrating another woman's success to building meaningful partnerships, we'll explore how a spirit of generosity and teamwork can transform the way we approach life, business, and leadership.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: Whether you're an entrepreneur, a community leader, a creative, or a woman working toward your next big goal, this series will remind you that you don't have to do it all alone.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: Your success doesn't diminish someone else's.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: And another woman's achievements don't take away from your own attention.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_03: Today I'm going to be introducing a brand new diva to our family.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just getting to know her, also too.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: Her name is Nicole Penn.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the Divas I Cared, Nicole.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for having me.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so excited.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know what?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: I am beyond excited to actually get to know you, and we're gonna have so much fun today.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: Nicole, would you introduce yourself to our listeners today?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I am Nicole Penn, CEO of EGC Group.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: We're a digital marketing company here in New York, and also co-founder of a company named Suede, which is a performance PR platform that um I founded last year.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um I am also a mom.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um I've got my littlest is a seven-year-old, and then I've got uh two big guys, two stepsons, uh, one in London, one in Sydney, 24 and 26, and a 13-year-old daughter.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I am busy.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: But never too busy for this.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_03: Ah, Nicole, that's awesome.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we started our show on family.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I'm a mother of four daughters, and this is why I had started Diva's I care, and I'm really family-oriented, and I love hearing stories about like that.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have lots to say about, you know, like uh women supporting women, especially working women and working moms supporting working moms.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_03: Can I ask you, Nicole, how you got into starting your own business?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_03: Because I think that's really important for our listeners to kind of see, hear a little bit about the background and what drove you to that.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: So um I, you know, was kind of a creative or an artist, aspiring artist, like my whole life.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when I was eight years old, I uh walked into my local deli and told them that their logo needed improvement and and that I would be happy to like design a new logo for them.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um they said sure.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: They actually paid me$500, which at the time, not to date myself, but this was like, you know, uh 90s, 80s, and like that felt like when you're eight, that's a lot of money.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I really got the the the buzz of like, okay, I can be paid for my brain and my creativity.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, went on to a fine arts career, uh, thought I was gonna be a painter, but realized that I um missed the energy of commerce and like I missed the opportunity to be in the boardroom making decisions.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I wanted to be and kind of found my way into the agency world.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I also grew up watching like Melrose Place and and Who's the Boss and all the cool like agency uh women and kind of aspired to be them and um worked at a big agency in the city, uh, didn't love like the bureaucracy of big companies and stumbled upon, uh, met the founder of the agency that I now co-own, um, and at an ad club event and just walked up to him and said, I really want to work for you.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was an agency that had um, you know, uh Haganda's lottery, really cool accounts, loved just the concept of being at a boutique place where I can make my mark.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that was like 20 years ago or more.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna date myself further, but um, and then, you know, over time um worked my way through the agency.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: About four and a half years ago, um negotiated a um, you know, the opportunity to buy half of the company and learned a lot in that process.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh, you know, we collectively with my team grew the agency, worked with some great brands like Canon and KISC Cosmetics, and then uh launched, found a found a need in the market for uh a PR group that worked the way that my media team worked and uh founded this new co called um Suede, uh, which is largely largely based out of our office in Dumbo, Brooklyn.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, the rest is history, and I I get to learn about new industries every day.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: I love what I do.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's definitely intense, and uh AI has disrupted and enhanced what we do, and so every day is a learning.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh, that is absolutely incredible.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: I actually love your story.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, with being that we are talking about collaboration over competition and you just just listening to you and understanding what you have gone through.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: You've probably seen a lot of things, and like you're just mentioning right now, AI and how it's changing things.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: But I think what you've learned over the years is really um figuring out the dynamics of how an industry works and really going with the flow of things and making your mark on it, really.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I um it was a threat, it felt like a threat, you know, a few years ago.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, speaking of collaboration, you know, I early on learned that, you know, I can only know so much, and I am a lifelong learner, and I we really pushed the agency to join global agency networks and peer groups and learn from each other.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is a cutthroat business, so um agencies can all view each other as competitors, but um, you know, there's we all have so much to learn from each other, so that's been a big part of our company's progression is we we belong to a worldwide group called Amen, where it's like agencies from all over the world getting together, learning, and and and the topic of conversation always is AI, and it starts and ends there at the moment.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I was just at a uh a meeting with my peers like a month ago in Charlotte, uh, and each of us had different ways we were using AI.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was so fascinating, you know.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and yeah, so I'm uh I'm a huge, huge believer of like, you know, you you don't know what you don't know, especially in our business, especially with AI, because everyone's using it differently.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: And um having peer groups and um and and a platform like yours is is so beneficial.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: I just want to ask you with Suede, you I had the opportunity to kind of breeze through your website here.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_03: Is the individuals in your organization mostly women?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, actually in both organizations, um in EGC, the agency where um I want to say 65% women uh suede at the moment is uh all women.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, some of that, but yes, like our industry tends to attract women, but I I do have the uh saying that, you know, if you want to get something done, give it to a working mom.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because like we know, yes, um, we we you know, like I have a checklist to start my week with, you know, all things my business, my kids' lives, my my husband's life, my my extended family's lives, and like all the things that I need to do and all the check-ins I need to do.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And there's no time to play.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like you have to like we have limited windows, and we have to, it's up to us to make it happen.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I had a mentor years ago tell me that to split my day into like 15-minute increments.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_03: And when I started doing that, I accomplished so many things because, like you, I had checklists and I was able to get things done so much better.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: And totally.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that that 15-minute, it's funny.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or so my my business partner, Ernie Canadeo, who's great, and he was uh my mentor early on, uh, he used to have timers in meeting rooms.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: So so nothing ever went on too long.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think 15 minutes for us, unless you're really brainstorming and riffing on like creative, like nothing should take more than 15 minutes.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I like I like yeah, I like the 15-minute increment.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, I love that.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I'm just so fascinated exactly what you're doing.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: So I want to ask you, how has it all changed over the years with where it is today?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think first, and this is a big one, you know, I used to be the person responsible for like making PowerPoint presentations and decks, and I would start with that blank slide and like you just struggle.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: And now no one really has to start with a blank slate.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's that's great and an opportunity.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, AI, in my view, is great for collecting information so you're not starting from scratch, right?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's great.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: The the watch out there is that, you know, I'm I'm seeing a lot of like clotted decks come my way and I could spot them miles away.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm telling my team, like, slow down and it should be used as like an information gatherer, not put it your your ideas should be your ideas and your thoughts, your thoughts.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um second, just you know, we're in a data business.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day, I'm beholden to my clients and their budgets and their their goals and the the old ways of um how data was collected and analyzed and you know, creating like pivot tables and Excel, like, you know, yes, you're still doing that, but the way you can get to an insight and an answer is so great.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: And especially if, you know, if you you're not mathematical, and like so maybe you're a creative thinker, but you're not mathematical, it's such a great assist.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I've seen such a change just in even the last couple of years, and it's it's almost overwhelming.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I think a lot of our listeners, you know, they feel like this is taking away from everything that they're trying to accomplish.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yes and no.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was also at another agency peer group, and I was with an owner.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: His agency writes product listing copy for car parts, right?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and gets paid, you know, tens of millions of dollars, or or used to get paid tens of millions of dollars to do that, right?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's very straightforward, very um repetitive.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: That work is going to get replaced.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and it has been already, right?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: So he's he was in a bit of trouble.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the true like creative thinking, humor, like a motive, that's I mean, yeah, you can get some of that with AI, but it's never as good as what I see coming out of like my creative team.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: So um that balance is going to be interesting to see how it goes in the future.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: But the best part is like, if I have an idea, I could use runway AI or um grok or like and concept my thoughts in like minutes.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just so cool, right?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like, so the old days, like old, old days of madmen and you know, acetate like projections and those sorts of things are gone.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: Well, can you give some advice to maybe some of the younger listeners checking in on us um for advice going into this?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: Because if this is the field that they're wanting to get into, is it something that they you think they still would be able to?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_03: And how can you encourage them to keep maybe that humor and the realistic of their own voice instead of using all of it through AI?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, my advice would be AI is like your your agents or your assistants.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they're never 100% accurate.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, like anything, like a human assistant, you have to triple check it.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, second point, never like present or share anything.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care if it's like with a peer or a client or a stakeholder that that you haven't written with your own thoughts.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can use it, you can use gamma to like help design your thoughts into a slide, but I've seen people in a meeting with a with a DAC on screen and not be able to answer a question because it wasn't their their their answer.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't what they wrote.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: So um that's that's like no matter how good AI gets, you're still gonna be in in a room having to answer your, you know, your hypothesis, or you're still gonna have to sell in your work.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And all of that has to come from you and your brain or your heart.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: And um, that would be like my biggest piece of advice.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's great to be AI native, like we look for AI native creatives and analysts, but ultimately you need to be able to form thoughts and sentences and concepts on your own individually.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things we love to know about partners is individuals out there to work with.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: Is it small companies or do you look for large companies?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: We do a bit of both.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've worked with startups, um, we've worked with large enterprise global organizations.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm, you know, always looking for new partners, but I'm also looking for people to join our team too.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we're growing.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I imagine, you know, you have a fabulous listener base.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: So uh anyone that's listening uh probably shares my values.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, you know, always looking for and and just also looking to network with like-minded people, women or men.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I've joined, I'm a member of a group called uh YPO, which is Young Professionals Organization.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's been a game changer to my life, to be honest, my whole life, uh, in terms of personal development, expanding my perspectives on the world.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: And um I I am the truest believer of like connecting people.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: If your listener needs something and I can connect them to a client that might help, or um, you know, or if someone has a different perspective, or if they want to sell me something, I'm always happy to hear.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: I am um I am a true believer in in the power of connections.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: And you know what?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's exactly why I've done the Beams that care for all these years, is that I love to be able to connect people with the right person.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll say just one anecdote, you know.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: I um also I'll share, uh, joined uh a year ago uh a women's health board for Northwell Health.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: And part of that was like informed by my own, I was uh, you know, I had cancer going on like 12 years ago, and didn't know where to go.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was super rare, no one else had what I had, and I had nowhere to go.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And like I just wish that I could like speak to someone that at least had gone through this very specific thing that I went through.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what also kind of reinforced um my belief in connection is that had I have had like a little bit of resource or or someone who knew someone who knew someone that had what I had, it would have just been such a benefit to my life.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: So that is why one, I I believe in I'm a big advocate for women's health and connecting connectors and women's health.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of my side passion.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: But also just across the board, if I can help you, you know, I um it it brings me joy.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my god, Nicole, this is wonderful.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for sharing that with us.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: I I love that.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_03: You were very inspirational and we appreciate you at Diva's at Fair.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um I appreciate you.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_03: And it's so much fun, and I honestly hope that you can come back on the Divas and we can share some more things because there's a lot that I think you and I can really dive into, you know, in the marketing, but just on you know, a personal level too, and inspire our listeners.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would love that.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm always happy to share.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like I have a whole suite of my own personal AI tips and hacks, tools I use either personally for productivity or professionally.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm always happy to share those with anyone who needs it.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: That's wonderful.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: Is there any last-minute things you'd love to share with our listeners?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um, some tips, tools, or anything that's going to be happening for you.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, actually, I just discovered, so you know, I'll I'll stay on the AI track because that just seems to be like, you know, the fastest moving discussion.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I like most people probably started from a place of ChatGPT and it was using it for kind of QA, fact-finding, information gathering.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then I moved to Claude, who became kind of like my coworker and developed agents in in Claude to do a lot of like repetitive, like gave me dossiers on people I'm meeting with today, or um, you know, just that sort of work.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then I just recently started uh dabbling with GrockBot, which was new, and it's doing some incredible things, including like it it has a great uh calling feature that it could help make your dinner reservations or set up meetings.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's unbelievable.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I just started playing with that last week.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I encourage everyone to just like give it a give it a shot.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to connect it to like, you know, I'm pretty I deal with a lot of clients in the uh financial healthcare spaces.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: So privacy is a big thing.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't connect it to like my systems, but it's always worth testing these things and giving it little projects that you know are safe.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I I I would say uh go check it out.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's worth a test.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, thank you so much, Nicole.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Pleasure.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I could probably speak to you for another three hours.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know what?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: I was just thinking that too.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, oh my goodness, there is just so many questions that I do have for you, but I'm gonna definitely wait till our next show so that we can chat deeper into those.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Great, excellent.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we'll definitely have you back on again.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I think this was a great conversation, and we'll definitely do that in the future.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I do want to do just even a big shout out to all of our listeners today and let you know, like, thank you so much for tuning in today and listening to Nicole.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I'm gonna be posting actually her websites on our social media, just so that you can check her out.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, there's some pretty neat things in here, and it talks a little bit about her.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that for a lot of our listeners, you actually might get some amazing ideas from her.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, we are talking about collaboration over competition in this podcast series, but we want to build, we want to work together, and honestly, through honest conversations and inspiring stories like Nicole's, you know, I truly believe that you know we can we can celebrate each other's successes in so many ways.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: And there's so many tools out there that, as Nicole was saying, that we can utilize and not be so scared of for the future.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: So again, thank you to Nicole Penn and thank you to all of our listeners.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: And please remember to do something fine today.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: Until next time, everyone.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: This show was brought to you by Divas That Care.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Connect with us on Facebook, on Instagram, and of course on divas that care.com, where you can subscribe to our newsletter so you don't miss a thing.