Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / 6 Quick Questions with MakeLoveNotPorn founder Cindy Gallop (Part 2)
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome back. Here are the six quick questions. Question number one, what's your why? Why do you wake up every day and build this business? Because I'm going to fucking well show you. Love that. That's going to be my other mantra. I'm putting that on another post-it as well.
- 0:28Question number two, in your career, what's been your favorite marketing moment so far? Can be for the business, can be in your advertising career. What's been the fave? Gosh, honestly, when I look back at my marketing career, you know, I've worked on so many great brands and so many terrific campaigns. But I will say that this is more of an emotional moment than anything else. But way back in the day,
- 0:55I led the pitch at BBH for the Polaroid Europe business, back when Polaroid was a thing, by the way. Love Polaroid, still. We won the pitch. And to this day, my Polaroid clients are, you know, I think the best clients I've ever worked with. And the reason I say that is because we presented a campaign that was completely not what they were expecting. The strategy was,
- 1:24Polaroid is not a camera, it's a social lubricant. Because again, back in the day, when you got the Polaroid camera out, everyone gathered around, this is before digital photography, you took the photos, oh my God, you can see them developing. And literally, we said, you are like alcohol or party games. You're something that gets the party going, you know, bronze people. And we created a brilliant campaign. And
- 1:46It was a Poland Europe business. So this was, you know, across Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, I mean, the whole of Europe. And every country had a different opinion. And it was only sometime later that my key day-to-day contact, the chief mafia officer, told me that the head of Europe was a gentleman called Lee, and I've forgotten his surname and his existence, but he had basically sent out a countrywide, Europe-wide memo
- 2:16You know, we appointed BBH because they gave us the best thinking and the best creativity. And we trust them to deliver, and I want you to as well, so give them six months. Give them a time, you know, and then we'll talk. And honestly, to have a client do that is so rare. It was just a very unique relationship with the team there. And so I've always remembered that as a team, very, you know,
- 2:44emotional moment in my marketing and advertising career but also a great demonstration of you know never buy a dog and bark yourself there's nothing better than being trusted you know by someone to do something wow that is so I love that I would love to like I don't know one day I want to do a session with you where I'm like cool how do I like think like Cindy that's what I need to operate under I do personal coaching darling so you know
- 3:12Oh, well, new client coming your way. Question number three, where are you learning? What's a resource that you're going to learn from at the moment? It can be podcast, book, newsletter, something random. Do you know, so first of all, here's something that really aids me in my answer to this because I was a voracious reader when I was young and I unconsciously taught myself to speed read. Yeah.
- 3:39I read at the speed of light. And in fact, so quickly that my father didn't trust me. So he would test me when I was a kid. He would basically give me a long newspaper article to read, take it away, and then grill me on the article. And I always absorb all the content, no matter how fast. So I am able to... Wow, cool. It's very useful talent, especially because what that means is that I absorb a ton of information every day from the internet.
- 4:05And so I'm learning all the time, but I'm not focused in on one particular source. And because I do operate this quickly in terms of speed reading, I'm able to absorb a huge amount of it. And so I'm learning from the stimulus all around me every day. Oh, yeah, I love that. You consume at scale.
- 4:27Love. Question number four, we've already kind of covered this one, but how do you win the day? What does a day one look like to you? What are your rituals or moments of small moments of joy? So this comes out of the fact that, you know, I've been asked in interviews over the years, what are the most important qualities of an entrepreneur? And my answer is always the same, persistence, resilience, and the ability to manage your own mind.
- 4:58And I've gotten very good at managing my own mind. And I'll give you an example of what I mean by that. As we know, it's incredibly stressful being a startup founder and building your business. And so what I say to myself each day is, okay, Sydney, you know, there are all these things you could be stressing about. Today, you are only allowed to stress about one thing. At the very most, two. And so today, we are going to stress about and solve this one thing or these two things.
- 5:29And a day one is when I've done that and I've homed in, I've gone right. And I've sorted that. And then tomorrow we'll move on to the next thing that stresses me. But I literally break it up into bite-sized chunks, you know, and I go, if I can just stress about and solve this one thing today, it's going to be a good day.
- 5:48oh, I mean, you've just given me so many things that I'm like, I am going to adopt that thinking. I need to manage my mind. I can definitely stress in a million different locations and a different million directions. And I'm absolutely going to do that. I'm going to focus on the one thing I can solve today. Great. Thank you. That was great. Question number five, what has been the worst money mistake you've ever made in the business and how much did it cost you?
- 6:19You know, with MakeLoveNotPorn, I have a primary investor who's been amazingly supportive over the years. I mean, I pitched the idea of MakeLoveNotPorn for two years from 2009 to 2011, which is how long it took me to find one angel who got it and put up seed funding. And he's been really supportive. Over the years, he's put in $4 million, which is fantastic. I have put in all my savings.
- 6:46I've liquidated my retirement fund. I've destroyed myself financially for this business, which is why, by the way, I need to make a return on it. And, you know, I'm sharing that with you and our listeners because I should not have done that, okay?
- 7:01But on the other hand, if I had not done that, we would not still be here. So I don't regret that. But, you know, you could say that was my biggest money mistake, jeopardizing my own personal financial security for my startup. Yeah, and that, I guess it's like, for you, it's a tough lesson to learn. And I feel like...
- 7:27It's one that it's almost like, of course you want to go into that direction, but then, yeah, it's, it's one that is tricky, is a very tricky one. I feel like I have a lot of similarities in things that you're saying. Last question, question number six. What is just a crazy story, good or bad from your journey with make love, not porn? You've shared so many already, but another one. Yeah, honestly.
- 7:56well, again, it's been such a crazy journey. You know, I guess what I would just say is, so I and my team have a front row seat to how the world has real world sex. And, you know, I've been saying for years that real world sex is more innovative, more creative, more surprising, more hot and arousing than porn will ever be. And what I can tell you is that, so every week we have a,
- 8:26Make Love Not Porn team meeting where everyone reports back on their particular sphere of responsibility. And during those meetings, our curation team report on how many videos we published this week, how many new Make Love Not Porn stars, things of note in the videos that have been submitted. And to this day, there'll be moments when we will all go, wow, I did not know that was a thing.
- 8:51So, okay, so tell me one. Real of old sex continues to surprise us, you know, all the time, all the time. Oh, give me one of a, give me a good one. What's one that surprised you recently? Well, there are a wonderful couple on Make Love Not Porn, that they're an older couple. And they have a sexual hair fetish and that the wife has wonderful flowing gray locks
- 9:21And there are all sorts of things they do with her hair that we had never encountered. Oh, my God. How fascinating. It is. That is so cool. Yeah. And we'll be on there having a look. Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. And again, you know, this is a great thing. You know, we have a saying in the UK in Northern dialect, there's not so queer as folk. There's nothing as odd as people. And there really isn't. You know, any kind of performative produced entertainment.
- 9:50You know, honestly, with the real world, you can't make this shit up. I love that. Oh, my gosh, Cindy, this was such a delight. I have loved chatting with you. I'm such a hype girl for what you're doing and what you're doing in the world. And I can't wait to be one of your coaching clients. Fantastic. Excellent. It's been an absolute joy. Thanks so much for having me on.
- 10:20Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
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