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Kristen Carbone: The Art of Finding Your Bold · The Bold Lounge

0:09
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Bold Lounge Podcast.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: My name is Lee Burgess and I will be your host.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: Every week we'll hear from someone who has taken the lead and worked on an extraordinary journey.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: In addition to hearing their stories, about their bold growth mindset that they used to make things.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: Whether they faced challenges or doubt along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: These impactful stories will leave you so motivated and inspired to pursue your own culture.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be folded.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Tune in, get ready to be inspired.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Bold Lounge Podcast.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: This morning we have Kristen Carbone, who is the founder of Brilliantly, and I'm very excited to talk to her about her journey and her boldness that she's experienced throughout really her entire life.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: So, Kristen, thank you for being on the podcast.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: I'd love just to start off with introduction if you want to tell everyone about yourself and your journey to being a founder, and then we'll jump into being bold.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: So I'm Kristen.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: And after a career in the arts, I am a trained art historian, worked in museums and curatorial departments, did some arts-based leadership training, public art, creative problem-solving work, pivoted to being a founder in tech.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: And that was really based on my own health experience.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: I had a preventative mastectomy about 10 years ago.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: And one of the unexpected outcomes was that I feel cold all the time.
1:49
SPEAKER_01: And in an effort to try to make a product that I could wear every day to make me feel comfortable so I could focus on what's important.
1:56
SPEAKER_01: I sort of just kept stumbling forward until this moment where I tried to make a tech product, an actual wearable tech product, and realized I needed help, started talking to other people.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: And it kind of organically grew into this business.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: And so here I am four or four and a half years later, not working in the arts, working in as a female founder in tech and women's health.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: And it's been a pretty exciting journey to get here.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of bold points along there.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: When you think about your definition of bold, what does that look like?
2:28
SPEAKER_01: And I've been thinking about this since we met and you first told me about your podcast, because I think there's so many different ways to think about what bold means.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: And for me, what I came up with was that I I always feel afraid and I do something anyway.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: So I think it's that idea that you don't have to be totally comfortable.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to know everything, you don't have to be ready, but that you kind of are willing to try anyway.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: That's how I've been thinking about bold.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you you lean in, right?
2:56
SPEAKER_00: And you move forward and you you might have a couple butterflies.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: I always feel like if I have butterflies, like it's the right moment most of the time.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: I don't do roller coasters or anything like that, so I don't have those type of butterflies.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: But I think, you know, I'll feel like, oh, a little uneasy.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, I think this is where I should be.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: And you hear that a lot.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: If you're not ready, then you're ready, it's the time to do it because you're never ready, right?
3:18
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a great definition.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: So if you think about where you on your bold journey, where you first started, like, what's the first moment of bold?
3:26
SPEAKER_00: And you can go back as far as you'd like.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: Where does your continuum start when you're like, wow, that was a bold move?
3:32
SPEAKER_01: I think I took a lot of really safe moves for a long time.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: I was not a major risk taker for most of my life.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: And I think the benefit of that was that I felt really stable and secure.
3:45
SPEAKER_01: Things had been kind of smooth, and I understood who I was, and I felt like I knew my place in the world.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: I honestly think some of my first bold moves were recent, and I just turned 40.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know what that says about.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm new to being bold.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: You think that, but you know, I think there's some things that happened in your life where you've overcome and there's things that you've done that no matter what are going to be bold to anyone else.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: So I bet you've been bold a lot longer than this, the last four years.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, you know, the the first thing I did that felt a little bit out of the box was that I graduated college a year early.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: When I graduated, I feel like the timing of my early 20s was like someone was fitting puzzle pieces in or something.
4:25
SPEAKER_01: I graduated early, and that was the year one that I got offered a job at a museum where I had done an internship.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: And it was because a position opened up because there was a new director.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: Like the timing of when I graduated worked out to a point where I got a job where I had major curatorial projects as a 21-year-old.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: Like no one gets that.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: I had such a, it was so so much serendipity.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: And that isn't to belittle the amount of work I did to like prove to them as an intern that I wanted it and I was hungry for it and that I could do the work.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: But the first exhibition that I worked on was this massive regional biennial in Western New York.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: It involved 11 art organizations, 14 curators, and it was a submission process with artists.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: And this was pre-digital.
5:08
SPEAKER_01: So this, you know, like 700 and something artists sent in 20 something slides.
5:12
SPEAKER_01: I had a whole second.
5:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, everything gets mailed in.
5:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was crazy.
5:16
SPEAKER_01: And it and there was a publication and there were events, and there was a it was a huge undertaking.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: And I was project manager for that.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: And I think that having that be my first professional experience that was so collaborative that involved living artists and curators and multiple organizations helped me to understand how to sort of hover above a huge project and see how it could work and say, okay, I have these resources, which sometimes are money and sometimes are people and sometimes are artworks of art.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: And how do we make how do we make something magic with what we have, whether that's resources or constraints?
5:51
SPEAKER_01: And I learned so much from working on that project and was able to leverage the experience there into the next thing, into the next thing, into the next thing.
5:59
SPEAKER_01: I love art.
5:59
SPEAKER_01: I have like a really deep love of art and creativity and creative problem solving and the way that artists look at the world.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: But I think people have an idea about working in a museum or curatorial work that's sort of like mysterious or sexy or something like really cool.
6:15
SPEAKER_01: But you just sit in a cold office in a building and it's really academic.
6:19
SPEAKER_01: And I was so hungry to engage with the public.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: You know, you work for two years on an exhibition and it goes up.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: And then, unless you're giving a tour, you're not in the gallery.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: You don't hear people stand in front of a work of art and say that they've been moved.
6:34
SPEAKER_01: You don't get that engagement.
6:35
SPEAKER_01: And I think the early days of my career, I felt like, how am I doing this thing that I love so much and I don't feel fulfilled?
6:43
SPEAKER_01: Like it made me sort of question my identity and what I wanted my role to be in the world.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I touched on it that my mom died from metastatic breast cancer in her 40s.
6:52
SPEAKER_01: And when she died, I thought, what am I doing?
6:55
SPEAKER_01: And I and I believe art can heal people, but I believe it changes the world and that it has since the beginning of time.
7:01
SPEAKER_01: But I didn't feel like I had the agency within the art world to make the kind of impact that I felt like compelled to make, but I didn't have a calling to be a doctor or a nurse.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: So it took me a really long time to figure out what would make me feel like I was doing something real.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: So from the perspective of all that, so the experience of doing something you love and having some great responsibility and obviously some key learnings, right?
7:24
SPEAKER_00: You talked about being able to hover above and be able to see all the puzzle pieces to something massive, especially in your 20s when let's let maybe a 30, you know, I'll say a 30-year-old project, like once you have a couple of years under your belt, because that's it sounds like an undertaking, and I I don't know that world very well, but I can just imagine.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: You know, like we've lived the life of national treasure and I at the museum, so that's probably what we think about.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: Right, which it sounds like it's totally fun.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: I love the idea as also of being a docent.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: I've used that analogy a lot, just even my in my own work of kind of showing people around and being able to like this is this is from this time period and being able to engage.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: So I can see the the need for the interaction, right?
8:03
SPEAKER_00: Because you're curating and and doing the history and notating and all the other things that go into that, and there's probably numerous things I don't know, but you wanted more.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: And so you knew you wanted more.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: And I think the key thing here that I think is really important, and you probably know this as well, is like you don't have to have it all figured out in your 20s, and 40 is super young.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: So where you are now is exactly where you're supposed to be, you know, and like without those things, and if you think of from 20 until now, I think of my experience, like if I didn't have some of those experiences in my 30s and 40s, like I wouldn't be able to even think or know or understand some of the things that I can do now.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: So I feel like you've really done a few things in between those years of obviously banking key skills and meeting people and getting to this point.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: So when you think about the transition from the art world, the museum world, and the engagement, that does change lives.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: I think my house is like an art museum.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: I've I'm like I've gone against every interior design rule, and I don't have like consistent art or the same artist, and I probably have different things in different rooms, but it is such an enjoyable thing, and I'm always in the awe of it.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: I think the hardest thing when I go to a museum is not to touch anything.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, totally.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: Me too.
9:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think the transition for me was super organic.
9:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm coming to you from Providence, Rhode Island, tiniest little state that I love so much.
9:21
SPEAKER_01: I've been here a little over 10 years.
9:23
SPEAKER_01: My last museum job was at the museum at the Rhode Island School of Design.
9:28
SPEAKER_01: And I got that job because of the first job that I had out of college at the Albright Knox.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: I met the contemporary art curator here at RISD.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: She has since retired, but we had coffee, and I was telling her about my very first curatorial endeavor.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: And she called me a month later and said, We have a local donor who's given money for us to curate an exhibition of local artists who are in the collection.
9:50
SPEAKER_01: And I know you understand the politics of doing a show of living artists who are local, and we need someone to curate that show.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: Would you be willing to come and work on a contract?
9:59
SPEAKER_01: And it was an awesome experience.
10:01
SPEAKER_01: It helped me dive into being new to Rhode Island and meet people.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: I think I did like 45 studio visits, which are super fun.
10:08
SPEAKER_01: Probably the most part of being a curator is like going into someone's space and hearing about their practice and seeing their work, and sometimes they let you touch it.
10:15
SPEAKER_01: Can't do that once the museum owns it.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: And I met a group of artists when I worked at RISD, and their practice was making these large-scale public murals out of tape.
10:26
SPEAKER_01: So they were temporary.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: And the entire process for them was that they would maybe a museum would commission them.
10:33
SPEAKER_01: It could be on the side of someone's house, it could be on a building, downtown, anything.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: They just needed a wall.
10:38
SPEAKER_01: And they would decide on a composition or theme and they would work until they finished.
10:43
SPEAKER_01: So sometimes that was like overnight, days straight, like just this really rigorous, no-break process.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: And part of that was engaging with the public.
10:53
SPEAKER_01: So if you can imagine that you're working on the side of a museum for 24 hours straight, that people are going to come up and talk to you.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: Like, what are you doing?
11:00
SPEAKER_01: Why are you still here?
11:01
SPEAKER_01: How come you don't, you know, and you have this conversation about making, about creating something as a collective.
11:07
SPEAKER_01: And that practice was really amazing in and of itself, but they also volunteered in the children's hospital.
11:14
SPEAKER_01: They did work at a children's psychiatric facility.
11:17
SPEAKER_01: They went into community centers and worked with elderly people.
11:21
SPEAKER_01: They had this like really full practice that included art, but also included social impact.
11:26
SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that was new, and this was like 2012, 2013 when they started doing it, was that arts-based leadership training was the thing.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: So GE, since the 50s, has sort of decided on the trends in corporate education.
11:40
SPEAKER_01: And they decided that arts-based leadership training was the thing.
11:43
SPEAKER_01: And they were hiring all different kinds of artists to come in and meet with their executives or their brand new hires who showed a lot of promise and teach them about all kinds of things within their company culture and growing and simulating different scenarios.
11:57
SPEAKER_01: But part of their curriculum was bringing in artists and teaching their employees how to think about problems from a more creative perspective.
12:07
SPEAKER_01: And so we were going to GE's Crotonville a few times a month and standing in front of auditoriums full of these like amazing executives who do all kinds of like things that are actually unfathomable to me, like the kinds of medical imaging technology and windmill technology that these brilliant people have created.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: And we would be like, you're gonna draw together.
12:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, it was this crazy interaction.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: But that was sort of my first step out of the museum and into the world where I was engaging with children and elderly people and sick people and other artists and figuring out what part of that felt good and important to me.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: And so I ended up working for a few small businesses after that that did some kind of either state of mind, creative problem solving, design thinking approach to business.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: And so that really helped me lay the foundation from going from the museum to starting my own business.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's just so many things that get extrapolated out of your base passion.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: That's what I think about.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: Like your base camp is art and everything out of that, like you return to it and come back to it.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: But in my mind, that's the analogy I'm I'm going through as you're talking because it connects in with what you're doing now for sure, which we're going to talk about.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: It connects with your experiences to date.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm assuming it brings you joy to be around it, to interact with it, to still, you know, talk to artists and do those types of things, and you're interactive, probably still in it.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: You know, we talked about project management seeing the big problem, like having the ability to solve a problem creatively, which I think we just don't value enough in business, honestly.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the things that I do differently with my engagements, is I do something called strategic sprints.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: Like I think change or improvement or evolution takes too long.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm just very impatient.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: Part of that's just because of the losses I've experienced.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: So I was like, life's too short, we got to fix this, you know?
13:53
SPEAKER_00: So from your experiences, like you're exactly where you are.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: So how did you start or where did you start with regard to the products that you're creating?
14:01
SPEAKER_00: Because you're still creating.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: And you know, creative problem solving doesn't mean that I like sit in a silo by myself and and come up with really amazing ways to pivot around all the obstacles.
14:12
SPEAKER_01: I think what it really means to me is that it's a willingness to hear someone's critique and to collaborate.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: Because from what I've found, the value of being brought up through the arts is that part of the artistic process is critique, that you might say to me, hey, I love that lamp.
14:29
SPEAKER_01: And I'm for people who can't see, I'm pointing to this like orange lamp behind me.
14:32
SPEAKER_01: But Lee might also say, but it shouldn't be there.
14:35
SPEAKER_01: I really think that it would make more of an impact in your space if you moved it over there.
14:39
SPEAKER_01: And that is how we approach composition.
14:42
SPEAKER_01: Like all of the things that go into creating a piece of art, especially as a student and a young person, involve other people's inputs and thoughts.
14:50
SPEAKER_01: And it has allowed me to surround myself actually with advisors and experts and thought leaders who are constantly critiquing my process.
15:00
SPEAKER_01: And whether that's the product development process or the business growth process or the hiring process, like any part of it, I'm open and willing and egoless in my pursuit to make this business a success.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: And I think that that is the part that relates the most to the arts because there are a lot of things that feel like a huge departure.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: But I do think that you're right that there's some, what did you call it?
15:22
SPEAKER_00: The the base camp.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like your base camp.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: If you're like someone who's hiking, to me, your base camp of your mountain is art.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: And so, like you're really trekking around all around it, but you can return to it, you know.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: So I just think that's kind of your safe space.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: It's also your happy space, and it's a place where you can kind of just be 100% you in a way.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: Again, you you just added another thing.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: You talked about critique and feedback.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: Those are things that not everyone's good at one giving and some receiving.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: And you really have to have a little bit of a thick skin, I'm assuming, when someone's critiquing your art or you're critiquing someone's art, you have to know the way to do it, the skill to do it.
15:59
SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, we've seen in the movies where someone can be really harsh, but I'm sure that's not everyone.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: But when you're hearing something that you created and worked on, or maybe spent hours on, or really you think it's the greatest thing, you can think that as a founder too.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: Like, I think of things I think are so fabulous.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: So my team will be like, How is that different than this?
16:16
SPEAKER_00: Or how is that, you know, what's the value in that?
16:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't know, is this a really cool idea?
16:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it can hurt, right?
16:22
SPEAKER_01: It feels really personal.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: Whether it's a piece of art or a business, when someone starts to poke holes in it, it feels like they're poking holes in you.
16:31
SPEAKER_01: And I think knowing that most people, especially the people that like you and I are inviting to hear our most important ideas, they care about us, right?
16:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're not like getting up on the world stage and here and having people like internet trolls pick upon our idea.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: It's like our friends and our family who are saying, Well, wait a minute, is that different than this other thing?
16:52
SPEAKER_01: And they're asking because they care.
16:55
SPEAKER_01: They're asking because they want to help you make it better.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: And this is such a silly example, but my daughter got an ice cream maker and she's been making all of these different like sorbets and ice creams, and she made one that had ground-up chocolate chips in it.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: And one of our friends was eating it with us, and he said, Chocolate chips when they're frozen are just like wax.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: Like it doesn't, you can't taste it.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: The texture is funny, and her feelings were so hurt.
17:18
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Sylvia, everyone else has given you, you know, there's a room full of people who are giving you positive feedback.
17:25
SPEAKER_01: And also, Sam said he liked it, other than this one thing.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: And then we talked about different chocolates you could try that would maybe taste better cold.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: This was not a personal attack, but it's it's so human to be like, oh, that hurt.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: I just think like maybe I should have just advised everyone to go into the your route because I do think that a lot of things that you learn, working together, figuring things out, being creative, managing complexity of projects across things.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: The other thing you mentioned was politics.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: That's in every one of our lives.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: I used to think that, oh, education doesn't have politics, healthcare doesn't have politics, and like everything does politics and history.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: That's what I would always say existed in every organization I worked in.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: And being able to understand the political, like you said, having a you know local artists come together, like there's the politics of that, that you have to understand who's who and how they like things and how things get set up.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: I really think there's a lot of pieces and parts that have really built a lot of the areas that you need to be a founder, you need to be a leader in business.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: And it's really exciting to talk about some of those.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: When you think about what you've created and where you are today, what has been the biggest learning from the time that you started to now?
18:37
SPEAKER_00: And you're about, you said four and a half years into your product.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: And do you want to talk about your product a little bit as well?
18:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the product that I ended up actually launching last year is called Brilliantly Warm.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: It's an app controlled wearable that slips into a bra and it's a warmer.
18:53
SPEAKER_01: So it's a warming wearable technology.
18:55
SPEAKER_01: I designed it specifically for women in the breast cancer community who had implant reconstruction and were bothered by this constant feeling of cold because when you have implants without breast tissue insulating them and keeping them at body temperature, they act like a heatsink and pull heat from your core.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: So I spent years engaging with that community of women and designing and iterating and talking to them and trying to make a thing that worked the best for them.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: And then when we launched the product, all of these other women used it and have since learned that women's metabolisms are 30% slower.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: So we're often colder in situations where men or, and of course, there's women who run hot too.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: Some of it is about BMI, some of it's just your biology.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: It can be geography, where like where you spend your time, people who work in freezing cold offices, people who go skiing.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: There was this whole group of women who started using it.
19:43
SPEAKER_01: If I had to say from a high-level perspective about what was the most, the most important thing I learned from this business, it's certainly about the product and that I was so laser focused on meeting the needs of this community of women who I like genuinely love and care about that I didn't see that there was this huge opportunity.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: The amount of learning that happened in creating the business, which is brilliantly, and the product, which is brilliantly warm.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: There have been so many learnings along the way from like, I mean, I literally had to make myself flashcards to learn about the financials because as I started pitching investors, it's a whole separate language.
20:18
SPEAKER_01: And the language around money in nonprofits and museums is really different than the language around money and growth in a in a startup and in the business world.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: And the same thing with marketing.
20:27
SPEAKER_01: Marketing is a whole other language.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: Trying to learn all of those different things has been an enormous effort.
20:33
SPEAKER_01: Like I've read books, I've taken classes, I listened to podcasts.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: There's all of that learning that's not, I think you asked what was like surprising.
20:40
SPEAKER_01: And none of that is surprising.
20:41
SPEAKER_01: Like I knew I had to learn those if I wanted to start a business.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: But what was surprising was that, like, one, if you build it, they will come as a myth.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: It's really, there's there's so much that goes into finding your audience and cultivating a community, but that other people will find you too.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: You're make if you make a thing, whether it's a product or a service or a podcast, whatever you're making, it's like you're creating something that is a solution to a problem.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: So a problem someone might be like interested in learning and they're listening to these kinds of podcasts.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: But for me, understanding the job that my product was doing outside of what I designed it to do was so surprising.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: And it's opened up this entire new opportunity where we're talking to nursing moms.
21:23
SPEAKER_01: We'll probably make a product that helps women with menstrual pain that actually goes on an abdomen instead of on your chest.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: And how much I've learned in the last year about growth and about expansion has certainly been more interesting and high level than like learning the vocabulary around fundraising.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: I think as an entrepreneur, and I'm newer to the space.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: And I think I was just thinking about the education, the degrees that we get, and things, you know, there should be some letter or something that you get, you know, for being an entrepreneur, but you don't.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: But it is a dig in, learn it fast.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Type of moment, and it's across admin, operations, creative, marketing, finance, and and you have pieces and parts of those already in you, like from your experiences of what you've done possibly, but not to the degree that you do them as an entrepreneur.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's something for folks to know.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: And you said something in there I think that was really important is the language between the world that you may have been in to the new world that you're going to or where you're you're stepping into, though there's a learning curve, right?
22:26
SPEAKER_00: And you have, oh, this means that, you know, as I work across different businesses, like primarily I've worked in healthcare, but when I'm working in different spaces, I'm like, oh, you don't do it that way, or you don't call it this, but this is really the same thing.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's some of it as well.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: You created the product specifically for women who had nasectomies and had breast cancer.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: But now what you're seeing is like kind of your where you had your bullseye is that there's a bunch of rings, uh, so to speak, of how the product could be used.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: And so evolution of the product has occurred, or even maybe changes in it to meet a different need.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: As you're going through that process of really taking something that you've created for one purpose to another, is there anything that people should understand?
23:05
SPEAKER_00: Because I think of things I've created or products that I have, like, oh, maybe I'm too pinpointing it too much and I haven't looked back at the big picture.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: Any advice for us creators out here who think it's for something, but it could be for something broader?
23:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would say don't get mad about it.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: You know, like I think sometimes we're like, wait, but I didn't, that's not what I meant.
23:23
SPEAKER_01: But if you think about like that company Oxo O X O that makes all those kitchen things, they originally started making those products for people who have arthritis.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: And everybody was like, oh, this vegetable peeler is just way nicer to hold.
23:36
SPEAKER_01: It's bigger, it's whatever.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: And if you think about that, like probably every kitchen in America has some of their products, and that they were originally like, oh, we're doing this for people who have arthritis, or curb cuts were, you know, when you're at the corner, that those were for a specific purpose.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: It has helped every mom with a stroller, every person with a walker.
23:55
SPEAKER_01: You know, like there's all of these things that get developed from like things that are mundane, like sidewalks and vegetable peelers, to huge technologies that people, once they have access to it, figure out how they're going to make it work and use it in the way that they want.
24:10
SPEAKER_01: And I would say the most important part is talk to the people who listen to your podcast, talk to the people who use your product, talk to the people who participate or who show up if you have a brick and mortar shop, like understand who they are and why are they there.
24:22
SPEAKER_01: Because it might be like a subtle tweak in how you talk about what you do, that you get a whole new influx of people.
24:27
SPEAKER_01: It might be that you just have to change the color of something and a whole new audience wants it because then it's high visibility and people can use it for something else.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: You know, you're not gonna know if you don't ever talk to people and the in the constant engagement with your community, with your audience, with your users, with your customers, whatever you call the cohort of people who bolster your business, talk to them all the time.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: And then you'll know what are those things that are different and how did it happen and how can you capitalize on it?
24:55
SPEAKER_01: I hate the word capitalize, but I don't mean it necessarily in like a financial capitalized, but how do you make it better so more people can use it?
25:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're learning it's creative like expansion and creative adaptation.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: That's what comes to mind as you're talking about.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I created it for this, but it actually works for that and this and that.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: And then that's not a bad thing.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm very more go-with the flow with oh, it could be used for that.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: But I think sometimes, you know, especially I I haven't created something that took years to create or to get the product done or to, you know, to do something from a technical perspective, which takes a lot of time and effort and investment.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: And then it's like, oh, it's gonna get used for that.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: Like, wait a minute.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: This is you know, so I can see like from a technology perspective, how that that's even a little bit harder to like flex.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: But when you flex, then there's more opportunity.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: And that's another thing I think a learning, you know, is is this flexing.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: And you could take this out to different scenarios in your life.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: It's like it didn't go the way you wanted it, and now you just need to kind of flex.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that's harder and easier said than done, of course, at times.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: But I think one of the things that I've, you know, in our conversations, you're open to that, and you're open to the pivot, and you're open to learning more, and you're open to the critique, which I think that only you get to capitalize on that learning.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: That's what you're really capitalizing, is the information and then being able to make something that helps people.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what you're doing.
26:14
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't mean it's easy.
26:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, you said something about having thick skin.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: And I think that I make this constant joke, especially before I'm pitching investors, that I spray on my Teflon coating because it's not easy.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: You know, we're having a conversation about something that is like a life's practice, and the way that anything that's hard that you work at is a practice and it gets maybe easier.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: But when you're talking to someone who you thought was going to love your product, that you thought you designed it for, who's like, hey, guess what?
26:41
SPEAKER_01: I actually hate this or it doesn't work for me, or even if you've talked, and this goes back to my point about my daughter, even if you talk to a hundred people who love it for a different reason, hearing why someone doesn't like it is just as important as hearing about who does.
26:54
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't mean it's easy to hear, and it doesn't mean it's going to give you a direct and clear path to making a change, but it gives you information that might be actionable and will add up to some kind of important learning.
27:06
SPEAKER_01: So I just wanted to say that I know that it's hard and that we're talking about it really casually, but it is something that is difficult.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think about like when I write something and I send it to someone and say, can you give me feedback?
27:16
SPEAKER_00: And I get it back.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: It was like no edits.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, really?
27:19
SPEAKER_00: Come on now.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: Like, I need you to really read it and like give me some red on there, like pick it up, you know.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: Like, and so for me, I now like actually seek that.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: If you send me back something that's like, oh, it's all good, I'm like, no, it's not, you know, it could be better.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: So I think it's not easy, but you get better at it, I guess.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: And depending on what it is, it can it can sting a little bit more.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: But the thing is that you know, whatever it is, you have the ability to take that feedback or to ignore the feedback.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the other key when you're in this, any really in any business, but I think especially as an entrepreneur, you get to decide what you'll take in, what you'll value, and what you don't value, right?
27:59
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that's also the nice choice that we get uh in this position.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, to that point, you might talk to someone who tells you something and you're gonna immediately know, oh, that's just this one person who has this one very specific issue, and that could be positive or negative.
28:16
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't mean you should pivot your whole business to accommodate that.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: Right.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: There might be an outlier or it might be the best thing that you've heard because you're like, oh, no one really looked at it from that angle.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: That's really valuable.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: So again, making sure that you have that empowerment to not take everything in as, oh, I've got to do something.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: That's really important, I think, for folks to hear, especially when you're starting out.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: And I think you talked earlier around like when you're sharing your ideas and when you're getting your creative out there and when you're doing things, making sure that your inner circle for that is your tight group because I think there will be people that don't understand what you're doing.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: And actually, that probably hurt me the most when I first started was people just doubting what I was doing and kind of calling me crazy for not being in the corporate world and not being a C-suite healthcare executive.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing wrong with that, it just wasn't where I was finding joy all the time.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: And so I really like what I do, but it's not in that space.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: So I think it's also important like who gives you the feedback, and you get to select that too most of the time.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: Most of the time.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: So, one question I have is when you're talking to investors, and there's a lot of people out here who are doing that and and working towards that or thinking that they may need to, what's your biggest learning or piece of advice for those that are in that space right now?
29:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if you're someone who has a company that requires capital to launch, I would say before you immediately decide you're going to start pitching angel groups or VCs, understand the full landscape of how you could possibly be capitalized because there's a lot of different ways of getting funding and we don't hear about them a lot.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: And it's not just bank loans and VCs.
29:52
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a lot of creative ways to do it.
29:54
SPEAKER_01: And I think because of the media and our culture, we sensationalize these people who have a tech startup and get immediately get venture funding and then grow the company to this huge valuation and sell it.
30:08
SPEAKER_01: Like we hear that story.
30:10
SPEAKER_01: We don't hear the story about somebody who's like, oh, I have a business that maybe is only ever going to be valued at$25 million, which means no VC is going to touch you anyway, but it's going to be a healthy, great business.
30:22
SPEAKER_01: There's ways to fund that business and you don't have to waste your time talking to the wrong investor.
30:27
SPEAKER_01: So I think really understanding why you need money, when you need money, and what kind of money you want, because if you're fundraising, you're choosing your boss.
30:36
SPEAKER_01: You are beholden to those people.
30:38
SPEAKER_01: You are responsible for their money and you're working to try to make them more of it.
30:43
SPEAKER_01: And if that's not what you want to do, then don't pitch VCs.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: And I have gone back and forth on that.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: Like, do I want to do it?
30:50
SPEAKER_01: Do I not want to do it?
30:52
SPEAKER_01: Because it's a lifestyle choice.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: And to your point about wanting to like what you do, if you go into building a business because it's something that like really is fulfilling and makes you feel good and it brings you joy and all the things that we, of course, want for everyone.
31:07
SPEAKER_01: If you pick a specific kind of way to be capitalized, it could change the entire process of what the business looks like and of how you spend your time every single day.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: And that might change how you feel about the business.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: That's one of the most important things to be really thoughtful about.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: Like I would say slow down before you speed up.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: That's great advice because I think one of the things you have to realize, and you made a point I just want to reiterate, is it it changes potentially how your business flows, who your boss is.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: If you don't want a boss, then you definitely don't want to go into the VC land because that becomes really the people who you're beholden to or responsible to.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: So there are ways to grow faster or slower, but they have their pros and cons, right?
31:53
SPEAKER_00: So I think thinking about that too.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: Again, I always like to extrapolate out to other situations that people have.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: Like when you're thinking about how you want to grow your career, how you want to maybe follow your path.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: There are ways to do it faster or slower.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: They each have a trade-off, right?
32:10
SPEAKER_00: And so I think really importantly, you know, you have to be ready to do some of those things too.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: I haven't chosen that route.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: One, I totally really don't understand it for the business that I have.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm not creating a product and things like that.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: And not saying that I won't ever do it, but for me, I need I would need to spend some time educating myself, which is your advice of like understanding it and what happens in the timeline for that, when you need it, how you need it, and how you need to receive the funding for your product to move?
32:37
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's really, really good advice.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: One last question.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: So being a woman in technology, because women tech really would be kind of how I would, your product it really fits rightly in that space.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: What have you noticed in this space when you are in, whether you're in conversations or presentations or conferences, is there anything you've noticed specifically about women in tech over the last four years that's notable, either good or or maybe not so good?
33:01
SPEAKER_01: It is my desire almost always when I get into a room where I'm like, oh, this isn't what I thought it was going to be, which happens all the time, is to want to subvert it and change it.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: And one of my advisors was like, Kristen, you can't subvert a system that you're trying to work within.
33:17
SPEAKER_01: We're in a moment where there is a lot of rhetoric being developed around women supporting women and funds that are for women and women, women, women, and women's health and femtech.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it's just the words.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: I would say in the past four years of me doing this business that it has certainly gotten better to be being a woman in tech.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: There are more female founders, there are more funds that are for women and by women, there are more funds run by men who are like, oh, wait, women's health is a thing.
33:44
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we should invest in it.
33:46
SPEAKER_01: But it's not good by any stretch.
33:48
SPEAKER_01: There's a massive amount of work that needs to be done.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: But I feel really good about being part of that tide change.
33:54
SPEAKER_01: I would say men ask really frustrating questions.
33:57
SPEAKER_01: I've been asked things like, well, what happens?
34:00
SPEAKER_01: What's my priority if my children get sick, my children or the business?
34:04
SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know that a male founder has ever been asked that question.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: Pretty sure no, that would be 100% on that, I think.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: I'll put myself out there.
34:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've had an investor say right to my face that he would rather pay for a vacation together than invest in my company.
34:19
SPEAKER_01: I've had another investor say he would absolutely never invest in a woman or let any of his friends because we're too emotional.
34:26
SPEAKER_01: And the joke for me is always like, well, there's no HR department in fundraising.
34:30
SPEAKER_01: And I've, I mean, the sexual harassment stories I've heard from other founders run the gamut of like, oh, laugh it off because you've got your Teflon coating on, to like, you should have called the cops.
34:42
SPEAKER_01: And in the you should have called the cops scenario, the male investor literally said to my female founder friend, remember, you wanted to be here.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: You asked for this meeting.
34:52
SPEAKER_01: And it's really hard.
34:53
SPEAKER_01: And you have to get up every day and be like, I know.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: And women, you know, women investors have it hard too.
35:00
SPEAKER_01: They typically have a more difficult time raising the capital to start the fund because they're women.
35:05
SPEAKER_01: They end up writing smaller checks.
35:07
SPEAKER_01: They have to do more rigorous diligence because they have to prove they have to in men, the investment world, let's say they make 10 investments, one is typically successful.
35:16
SPEAKER_01: The funds that I've talked to that are run by women, they're like, we have to do better than that so we can raise our next fund.
35:22
SPEAKER_01: So they're having to be more careful and more rigorous and more thoughtful and less risky than they want to be, because they're trying to prove that they're going to be just as good, if not better.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: So like a male investor would get a one in 10 chance and still be considered positive, you know, in the sense of what they do and good at what they do.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: A woman needs to be one in five.
35:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and whatever that number is, it's definitely a different metric.
35:45
SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's true about being a woman in tech.
35:48
SPEAKER_01: I've seen wearables that do cool stuff.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: Like there's a lot of wearable technology.
35:53
SPEAKER_01: Now, I've seen those companies started by male founders just skyrocket in the time that I've started, raise money in less than a month.
36:01
SPEAKER_01: You know, like all of these things, there are inherent biases that women are coming up against all the time.
36:07
SPEAKER_01: And I know as a woman who is not technical, who is making a tech product, who is an art historian and a mom and 40, and I don't live in San Francisco, and I'm working in women's health where there's missing data, like I have all of these things stacked against me already.
36:23
SPEAKER_01: And I just know in my heart that this product is right.
36:26
SPEAKER_01: I know that women who use it love it.
36:28
SPEAKER_01: I know that we have the opportunity to like meet little girls when they get their first period and use a heat therapy that is just as effective as Ibuprofen and all the way through when you're done with perimetopause and your estrogen flat lines and you're cold all the time.
36:43
SPEAKER_01: Like I genuinely believe that our technology can help a woman from when she's 12 to when she's 90.
36:51
SPEAKER_01: And because I know that, I can put myself in those rooms and be like, this feels shitty, and it's another 30 minutes, and I'm gonna answer these questions and I'm gonna learn something because maybe they ask me a question I haven't been asked before.
37:02
SPEAKER_01: And even if it's a bad question and feels bad, I'll be more prepared for it when I get it the next time.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: So another skill set, obviously, of being able to be in a difficult situation.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it sounds like toxic and hostile, and not tell someone off and walk out of the room, which I'm still not very good at that.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: So that's probably why I'm not dealing with VCs.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: But I think what you said was like, I'm gonna hang in here because I might hear a question I haven't been asked before.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: And then that question being able to answer it, it's gonna help me in the next one.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: And you have the option too of say no.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: Like, I would love like the opportunity to like have someone say yes, we want to invest in and you say, I don't think so.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: And then then walk away.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: That would be like a really fun moment.
37:41
SPEAKER_00: Like, if you would be able to do that.
37:43
SPEAKER_01: I have turned down money and it is really important.
37:46
SPEAKER_01: I guess that's the other thing.
37:47
SPEAKER_01: If we want to talk back for two seconds to the fundraising thing, if somebody says yes, they're gonna invest in you and you have a bad feeling about them, there is no such thing as cheap money.
37:56
SPEAKER_01: Say no.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you get to choose.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: I think that's another thing.
38:00
SPEAKER_00: I think being an entrepreneur and working with different people, whether it be raising money or different engagement, you get to select, you know, when I first started out, I was like, I just need to find quote unquote my people, like who gets what I'm saying and wants to move the speed and use the techniques and think about things creatively and innovatively and just open to a little bit of risk to, you know, for the reward.
38:20
SPEAKER_00: And you you'll find people that aren't there, but they'd like you to come in and be different.
38:24
SPEAKER_00: And you're like, I don't think I'm going to do that, you know.
38:27
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's an empowered piece.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: That I love to end on that, that you're really empowered to make that decision.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, I've enjoyed speaking with you.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: I want to make sure people know that down in the podcast information is all the information about your company and learning more about you and what you do and the impact that you're making.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: And I really appreciate having you on the podcast.
38:45
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
38:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks so much for the time today.
38:48
SPEAKER_01: It was great to chat, Lee.
38:49
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge Podcast.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: Through the continuum of bold stories, vulnerability to taking the leap.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: You will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact from others.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: Through there to make an important story.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others to share the journey of the next people.
39:11
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