Latest / #WisdomOfWomen Show / Heather Kernahan: What If You Bought the Business Instead?

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Heather Kernahan: What If You Bought the Business Instead? · #WisdomOfWomen Show

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Wisdom of Women Show.
• 0:02
  We are dedicated to amplifying the voice of women in business.
• 0:07
  A new model of leadership is emerging and we are here to amplify the voices of women leading the way.
• 0:14
  I am your host, Coco Selman, five time founder, impact investor and creator of the Force for Good system.
• 0:20
  Thank you for joining us today as we illuminate the path to unlocking opportunities and prosperity for women led enterprises by amplifying the voice and wisdom of women.
• 0:32
  Today, we have an unstuckable momentum maker in our midst.
• 0:39
  Heather Kernahan is a global business leader, investor and author with more than 25 years in the tech industry, including nine years at Hotwire where she rose to global CEO, led four acquisitions and served brands such as Meta, Adobe
• 0:58
  and LinkedIn.
• 1:00
  She has chaired the board of the PR Council and was named one of the San Francisco Business Times 100 Most Influential Women.
• 1:11
  In 2025, she stepped into ownership acquiring the B2B marketing and PR firm, the Content Bureau, and founding Novella Ventures to put capital, equity and real exits into the hands of women who are building marketing and communications firms.
• 1:32
  So her book Unstuckable shares the unstuck model, a practical path for any founder who has hit a wall and keep moving forward towards her biggest vision.
• 1:44
  Welcome Heather.
• 1:46
  Oh my gosh, Coco.
• 1:47
  Thank you.
• 1:47
  Wow.
• 1:48
  I'm so proud to be here today on your show.
• 1:50
  Oh, I'm so excited to be here with you.
• 1:53
  Tell us, what is a book written by a woman that has significantly influenced your life?
• 1:58
  Oh, I love this question.
• 1:59
  Cause I'm a voracious reader.
• 2:00
  I went back to a book I read in 2006 when I was a pretty new mom.
• 2:05
  I had a two year old and I was trying to figure out could I have a big career and a family.
• 2:11
  And the book is called Am Bitches Ambitious by Deborah Condren.
• 2:16
  And she put the words to what I was feeling, feeling about how I could be ambitious and not be apologetic about it.
• 2:24
  Amazing.
• 2:25
  Ambitious, ambitious.
• 2:27
  Did it help you find your way going forward?
• 2:30
  Yes.
• 2:30
  It let me feel less apologetic about how ambitious I wanted to be.
• 2:36
  I felt it inside.
• 2:37
  My ambition was there.
• 2:39
  I was figuring out how I was gonna bring it to life and I was wondering if it was okay, if it was okay that I had that ambition.
• 2:46
  Her book made me feel it was okay and I owed it to myself to go as big as I could dream.
• 2:53
  Awesome.
• 2:53
  I love that.
• 2:55
  So Heather, tell us about you and your life.
• 2:59
  Give us three moments that have shaped the person you have become.
• 3:04
  The first moment is when I was really little.
• 3:07
  I grew up in a single mom household.
• 3:09
  My parents divorced when I was quite young and my mom was on her own for a long time.
• 3:14
  I remember her holding down two and three jobs, trying to put together our lives.
• 3:19
  And I have a clear memory of going with her in evenings and weekends to clean offices.
• 3:24
  That was one of the part time jobs she had.
• 3:26
  After she worked a full time day, she went and did that at night.
• 3:29
  So when I look back at what shaped me, seeing her work so incredibly hard, do what it takes, being there, taking me along with her, and her instilling in me that if you work really hard, you can make
• 3:41
  things happen.
• 3:41
  So that's a definitive moment that shaped me that whole period of time.
• 3:46
  And second moment is when I was working in my second corporate technology job.
• 3:51
  I was in my early 30s and we were going through an acquisition.
• 3:56
  I was in Canada at the time.
• 3:57
  I grew up in Canada and I was in Toronto with my husband.
• 4:01
  Somebody on the team that was acquiring us was talking about whether there were roles for people in the company I was with and I blurted out, I'd go to San Francisco, I would move.
• 4:13
  And that's where the company was headquartered.
• 4:14
  And from that blurt, I changed the whole trajectory of our lives.
• 4:18
  We ended up being offered a role in San Francisco.
• 4:21
  We moved to San Francisco and started the next whole leg of our life here.
• 4:25
  We still live in the area today.
• 4:27
  And then the third one is when I had decided I wanted to be a chief marketing officer.
• 4:31
  So when we moved to San Francisco, I went back to school to do my mba.
• 4:35
  And I had a professor say to me, you know, Heather, when you're the CEO of a company, here's some things you should think about in terms of finance.
• 4:42
  I said, oh, I want to be a cmo.
• 4:44
  And he said, you are not thinking big.
• 4:46
  And I was like, just blew me away.
• 4:49
  And he said, you, you're being trained to be a CEO.
• 4:52
  And I left that room and I said, I'm gonna be a CEO.
• 4:56
  I'm gonna do that.
• 4:58
  I had a single mom too, so I know it really impressions upon you that you can't do anything.
• 5:03
  And boy, did they do a lot for us.
• 5:06
  And boy was it hard.
• 5:08
  I love that you just felt that urge to say, I'm in, I'll go, I'll move, I'll do whatever.
• 5:14
  They've had those moments where you just blurt something out and it's not intentional and.
• 5:19
  You're like, I wonder what my husband's gonna think, right?
• 5:21
  Is this okay?
• 5:22
  He loves living in Canada.
• 5:24
  We had never thought about moving to the us.
• 5:26
  It wasn't on the life path and yet there it was.
• 5:28
  And that really taught me, say the things that you want out loud and give it energy and it will move the universe along with you.
• 5:37
  Yeah.
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  And what a wonderful mentor.
• 5:41
  Somebody who really saw you and was able to say, okay, CMO is nice, but actually.
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  You're being trained,.
• 5:50
  Right?
• 5:50
  You're being trained for something else and you have the DNA for it.
• 5:55
  Wow.
• 5:55
  So I thank you for sharing those moments.
• 5:57
  As we get into the next part here where I have so many questions for you, I really want everybody listening to know about the specific businesses you have.
• 6:06
  Tell us about Content Bureau and Novella Ventures for each of them, tell us who does the company serve?
• 6:14
  What does it do to help them?
• 6:16
  Yes.
• 6:16
  Okay, well, Novella Ventures is where I'll start because that company was formed first.
• 6:21
  So Novel Ventures is a private investment company and we focus on investing in acquiring and launching marketing, public relations, reputation and thought leadership businesses both in the technology and the services space.
• 6:35
  Our first full acquisition was Content Bureau and that was last July.
• 6:39
  And Content Bureau is a B2B Communications and Content agency.
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  We work with lots of folks in the big enterprise space.
• 6:48
  Companies like PayPal and Wolters, Kluwer and Autodesk, big enterprise companies.
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  But we also work with fast growth companies, people in the B2B space that are trying to build big businesses and we help them with anything related to content and communications.
• 7:02
  Cool.
• 7:03
  And so what is your big picture strategy here?
• 7:07
  Yeah, I really want to spend more of my time on Novella Ventures over the coming years.
• 7:11
  Right now I'm the operating CEO of Content Bureau, so after we acquired the business, felt like I wanted to be deeply involved in it, lead the team, lead the business, and grow the company.
• 7:21
  Novella Ventures is where my heart lives.
• 7:24
  It's where we spend a lot of time talking to women in particular who have an idea for a business that they would like to start but feel like something's holding them back or they don't have the operational experience
• 7:35
  to be able to launch, helping them make that leap into ownership or joint venture or some other form of business formation for them to get going.
• 7:44
  Over time.
• 7:45
  I hope to build a significant portfolio of businesses under Novella Ventures that we're invested in, sometimes fully owned and other times just have some investment in the portfolio and help all of those businesses raise their value together.
• 7:59
  So it's good for us all to know that today, point who you are, what you're working on now, but talk to US a little bit about the journey from running acquisitions to owning businesses.
• 8:09
  So for years you led acquisitions as a global CEO with finance teams, lawyers and bankers at your side.
• 8:16
  And over time, you realized you were building wealth for somebody else.
• 8:21
  And then a woman you had known for 25 years told you she was thinking about selling her firm and you bought it.
• 8:28
  Yeah, I was part of a business that sold and I got the experience of working with the owner to see what was it like to build and then sell a business.
• 8:35
  And the owner of that business was fantastic in letting me sit in the rooms where those conversations were happening about selling the business.
• 8:42
  So that was my first entry point into understanding that you can build something of value and then you can have an exit.
• 8:49
  And to see the change of trajectory of someone's life when that happens, it was a big aha to me.
• 8:55
  And then when I was CEO of Hotwire, we were doing acquisitions and I was meeting lots of different companies to acquire.
• 9:01
  I was often wondering, where are the women owned businesses and why aren't I seeing more businesses owned by women who want to exit?
• 9:09
  So I went out, I talked to tons of women over years who were building businesses and what their exit plans were while I was in my company doing these acquisitions.
• 9:18
  And I realized at some point, like, I could, I can do that.
• 9:21
  I run this big company now.
• 9:23
  I want to build a different kind of wealth profile for my family, but I also now have the skills to help other women build businesses of value and find an exit for themselves, which can change their lives significantly.
• 9:37
  I had to get a lot of courage, plot out that transition from corporate CEO.
• 9:42
  Quite a safe space for me, a predictable paycheck.
• 9:44
  There's pressure, of course, but taking the leap to entrepreneurship was something I had wanted to do and didn't quite know how.
• 9:51
  But then over time built my confidence about my ability to do it.
• 9:55
  And at one point got really tired of listening to myself think about it and not take action.
• 10:00
  And so decided, okay, now is the time.
• 10:02
  Here's what we're doing.
• 10:04
  That's when I decided, okay, Novella Ventures will be formed.
• 10:06
  I'm not quite sure what we'll invest in or acquire yet, but let's do that formation.
• 10:12
  And then this woman I'd known for 25 years when I was inside technology companies, she called and said, I'm going to sell the company.
• 10:20
  I am ready to move on to my next thing.
• 10:22
  I think you should buy it.
• 10:23
  And I said, of course I'm going to buy it.
• 10:25
  I'm going to buy it.
• 10:26
  And then I Sat back and thought, how do I do this as an individual?
• 10:29
  I don't have all the bankers around me anymore and the finance people all around me.
• 10:33
  I got to figure this out now.
• 10:35
  Yeah.
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  It's not Hotwire's balance sheet,.
• 10:38
  It's.
• 10:38
  Your balance sheet.
• 10:39
  Balance sheet.
• 10:40
  And that's different.
• 10:40
  Those are different decisions to make.
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  Talk to us about that.
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  How did you get comfortable with that and what did you do to be able to make it workable to you?
• 10:49
  This is the part that I think is the gap.
• 10:53
  Right.
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  Where we don't let ourselves imagine the possibilities.
• 10:59
  And it's because we haven't been in rooms like this one where somebody is telling us the truth of how we did it, even though we didn't have millions and millions of dollars in the bank.
• 11:09
  Maybe you did.
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  I don't know.
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  Maybe you had millions of dollars in the bank.
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  But people pull this off without millions and millions of dollars in the bank.
• 11:16
  Yeah, they do.
• 11:17
  And it was only when I began exploring the possibilities that I discovered all of these different options and routes to ownership that I didn't know anything about.
• 11:27
  I would just think people just opened their bank accounts and they were just buying and selling things out of their own money.
• 11:32
  No one's using their own money.
• 11:34
  No one infusing their own money.
• 11:35
  Yes.
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  But I felt like even when they had, that was such a secret people kept from me for years and talked to a couple mentors who said, yeah, you could have it in the bank, but don't use your own
• 11:45
  cash.
• 11:45
  You want to use other people's cash.
• 11:47
  Because I grew up quite conservatively, I didn't grow up with a lot of money.
• 11:50
  I was like, whoa.
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  But you pay an interest rate.
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  And they're like, yeah, but it's deductible on your taxes.
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  Paying.
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  Your business is going to pay it back, right?
• 11:58
  Yes.
• 11:58
  What?
• 11:59
  Yes.
• 11:59
  Right?
• 12:00
  Yeah.
• 12:00
  So as soon as I had made that decision, okay, we're going to go ahead with this acquisition, I did talk to people in my network.
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  I called everybody I knew.
• 12:09
  I do have a finance person who looks after our life.
• 12:11
  I called that person to talk through options.
• 12:13
  That's where I learned about SBA loans, bank loans, seller financing.
• 12:18
  There's so many different vehicles available, built out pro and con sheets for each of these.
• 12:22
  And then my husband and I had to talk about what are the non negotiables.
• 12:26
  Would we put our house up for collateral, for example, or was that off the table?
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  How much of personal investment would we be willing to tap into?
• 12:35
  What's the limit there how long could we float this if it didn't really work out?
• 12:39
  All those really hard conversations, real conversations we had to work through.
• 12:43
  Ultimately you start to narrow down your choices based on your values, based on what the different options are.
• 12:47
  So you get to something that you're like, okay, here's a workable solution for us.
• 12:51
  And I really felt I'm going to do one step at a time.
• 12:54
  And if at any point it falls apart, if the deal falls apart, it's okay, this one's not meant for me.
• 13:00
  Yes,.
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  And I'll find another.
• 13:01
  And that's how I approached it.
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  And I had a friend who said, you're usually such a stress ball, but you're not stressed about this new thing you're doing.
• 13:08
  And I said, I think because it's just if it's meant to be, it'll come together and if not, this, something else.
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  Isn't that a wonderful thing?
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  You know?
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  And so why not start a company from scratch?
• 13:19
  I had one of my advisors say that to me, instead of paying this much money for this company, what if you just theoretically took that much money and started your own?
• 13:29
  I thought about it.
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  I've been building businesses for 15 years.
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  It.
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  Is hard.
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  To start from scratch.
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  So props to everybody out there who's building from the beginning.
• 13:38
  It is tough.
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  And what I felt ultimately was I could buy this business that had a 25 year track record, had a great brand.
• 13:48
  I knew as a client, I had actually worked with them as a client.
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  It was in a space that I knew already, B2B space.
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  They had contracts with all of these incredible brands and great long term relationships and I had confidence in myself, in the ability to come into that business and continue that on, pick it up from the owner because we
• 14:07
  were values aligned and the team was going to stay in place.
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  So I thought, I feel like I can acquire this business and build it.
• 14:14
  That is a better use of my time versus starting from zero.
• 14:17
  That's amazing.
• 14:19
  I couldn't agree with you more.
• 14:20
  I have built five companies and it was not this time.
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  I didn't know that this was such a really realistic option to go and buy a company and that it's way more.
• 14:34
  There's a lot more funding options, frankly, especially non dilutive funding options for cash flowing businesses.
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  You can buy them through all kinds of mechanisms, as you explained.
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  And you don't have to write a check for the amount of the business.
• 14:49
  No one does.
• 14:50
  I don't know anybody who's ever, I don't know, maybe there's been A situation like that, but most people don't.
• 14:55
  In seller financing or SBIC funds or SBA loans, whatever, there's different ways to make the deal work.
• 15:04
  So building your business as an asset, you notice something striking.
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  Almost none of the businesses offered for sale were women owned.
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  Many women you knew saw their firms as women work with their name on the door, not necessarily an asset.
• 15:19
  Why do you think this is?
• 15:20
  And what should a woman found or start thinking about doing now to shift her perspective about this?
• 15:29
  I often think it's like, if you need scale, maybe the faster way isn't organic.
• 15:36
  Like, how do we think differently about how to build our existing businesses?
• 15:42
  Such a big topic.
• 15:43
  I'm not sure what the psychology is around this topic, around being in business and building an asset.
• 15:48
  I have felt in some conversations I've had, it's almost like a dirty word when I call it an asset versus a business that somebody has.
• 15:56
  People will get upset with me and say, it's more than an asset, it is my life.
• 16:01
  And I think both things can be true.
• 16:03
  And so I looked at lots of different examples of people who built businesses and then had some kind of exit.
• 16:09
  And what I saw is there's lots of different ways to move the business into someone else's hands and have different roles to play in all of that.
• 16:17
  So when I started asking women when I was at Hotwire and I was saying, are you interested in selling your agency?
• 16:23
  Would you be interested in selling to us?
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  Oftentimes I'd hear from people like, I would never sell it.
• 16:27
  It's my baby.
• 16:28
  I think I'll just wind it down at some point.
• 16:30
  Those were the hardest things to hear.
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  And like that you're such value that you've built up.
• 16:35
  And I think maybe that conversation wasn't happening in those communities.
• 16:38
  It is a valuable asset.
• 16:39
  You can move it on to someone else, whether it be your employees or a third party buyer or a partner or somebody in your ecosystem who will take it to its next form of life.
• 16:48
  So I had all of those conversations and I don't know how to change the perceptions of it beyond talking about, I am building businesses.
• 16:56
  They are assets and they have great value and I want them to be even more valuable than they were yesterday.
• 17:01
  That is part of what we're doing in business.
• 17:03
  And I think you could have a really great business with a great culture and still be building it as an asset for yourself.
• 17:10
  And so when you think about acquiring businesses, what are you looking for?
• 17:15
  What makes a good business one that you could own?
• 17:20
  Yeah, I'M looking for a founder who has really built a business that has a clear definition on service offer position in the market, an expertise that they've been able to monetize, either technology or service oriented, that brings value
• 17:34
  to the customers they want work with.
• 17:36
  I want to see that they've got a track record with building the business over time.
• 17:40
  So acquiring clients, keeping clients, having long term relationships and also being able to build a culture that people want to be part of.
• 17:48
  They are leaders and they've attracted a team in that feels ownership of the business as well.
• 17:53
  It's a place that they want to be.
• 17:54
  Not just show up every day and then head home and not have any attention or attraction to that as a big vision.
• 18:01
  And so taking a step back for a second.
• 18:03
  So your approach, your strategy might be different certainly than mine.
• 18:09
  Right.
• 18:09
  Because I have a different background, different expertise.
• 18:13
  And for you, your strategy is looking for businesses in the marketing and PR space.
• 18:18
  That's right.
• 18:19
  Right.
• 18:19
  And you are going to accumulate over time, multiple businesses.
• 18:24
  Yeah.
• 18:25
  Some you'll accumulate because they have great customers that you want to continue to serve, some because they have a technology that you want to bring in, some that has certain talent that you want to bring in or profit.
• 18:38
  Right.
• 18:39
  So tell us about that part of it, because it's not over.
• 18:45
  You're not done.
• 18:45
  You're just beginning.
• 18:47
  We're just beginning.
• 18:48
  Yes.
• 18:49
  Yes.
• 18:49
  To our listeners.
• 18:50
  Imagine your business and how this team idea could be played out for any type of company.
• 19:00
  Whether you're in PR and marketing or you're in healthcare services, there's a way to look at this as a strategy for growth through acquisition.
• 19:11
  I love when I see smaller businesses deploy an acquisition strategy to help with their own scale.
• 19:17
  And I do think smaller business owners have less awareness about acquisition as part of their path.
• 19:23
  If there was any kind of business owner out there and felt that they needed to scale to the next level and wondering how they're going to do it person by person.
• 19:30
  Build your network in your area, in your industry and start to talk to different owners about what their exit is, what's their growth plan.
• 19:39
  You could probably cultivate fairly quickly a list of potential companies to acquire.
• 19:43
  You do not need to pay cash for those companies.
• 19:46
  There's lots of financing methods for a business owner in terms of acquisitions based on my approach, you can accelerate your technology base, it can accelerate your capabilities, it could move you into a new geography.
• 19:57
  That's a really interesting form of acquisition.
• 20:00
  There's so many paths your business can take.
• 20:02
  If you're Thinking about acquisitions, you might end up with a fantastic team and that owner may stay with you for a very long time once they've sold, because they might need the partnership of a larger organization and be
• 20:14
  a great number too.
• 20:15
  So you can build your team through that.
• 20:17
  That is a strategy.
• 20:18
  I love that strategy.
• 20:20
  Everybody has a different strategy, but I love that one personally.
• 20:24
  To be like, I could buy somebody else.
• 20:26
  Like, yes.
• 20:26
  Now, it's not just for the big organizations.
• 20:29
  Sometimes one of the hardest things as a early stage founder is the go to market.
• 20:34
  It's getting that product market fit so that you put it out there into whatever channel you market to and people buy it.
• 20:43
  And then you do it again.
• 20:44
  And people buy it.
• 20:45
  You do it again and people buy it.
• 20:46
  That consistency that's really hard to get to to with an early stage company.
• 20:51
  So if you can buy that channel, that go to market strategy that's working and just build on it, it's going to actually cost you less cash probably to get there than to just do it organically through trial and
• 21:07
  error.
• 21:07
  Okay, so we talked about building your business as an asset.
• 21:10
  Now I want to talk.
• 21:11
  We're going to go to a whole other place.
• 21:13
  The unstuck model.
• 21:15
  Every founder hits a wall.
• 21:17
  Every.
• 21:18
  Some of us feel stuck for a long time and some of us get stuck all of a sudden.
• 21:23
  So in your book Unstuckable, you share how tech innovators keep moving through the unknown, including how easily they pivot from idea to idea and model to model.
• 21:37
  So talk to us about this unstuck model.
• 21:42
  Why did you write this book and what is it?
• 21:45
  The book and the topic of the book is interesting and I'm really glad it's out in the world.
• 21:51
  I have a life philosophy.
• 21:52
  I have to not be stuck.
• 21:53
  If I'm stuck, it's horrible.
• 21:54
  I have to keep moving forward.
• 21:56
  And I've only ever worked in the technology industry.
• 21:59
  So the real story of the book is it was in 2020, I was at Hotwire leading the team and all of our clients were doing online events and they were saying to us, bring us speakers.
• 22:09
  You know, we want to have speakers for our online events.
• 22:11
  We want authors who's coming out with books.
• 22:14
  So my team was doing this bunch of research about new authors.
• 22:17
  They came back and it was mostly men, two women to every hundred men in terms of authors.
• 22:21
  And I said, go find me some diversity.
• 22:25
  And they would come back and they'd say, there's not that many women publishing business books.
• 22:28
  And I was so upset.
• 22:30
  Coco,.
• 22:30
  Serious, right?
• 22:31
  Yeah.
• 22:32
  Because there is an elevation with authorship that happens, and you're quoted.
• 22:36
  You can have whole new careers based off of being an author.
• 22:40
  And so I was raging around my house, like, I need more women writing business books.
• 22:44
  And how my husband said, I think you're gonna have to write a business book so that you can help other women do it.
• 22:50
  And I was pissed at him.
• 22:51
  Cause I said, I am a CEO.
• 22:54
  We have children.
• 22:55
  It's Covid.
• 22:56
  Like, how dare you suggest that I take on one more thing?
• 23:00
  And he just did this.
• 23:03
  And I like, God damn it, I'm gonna have to write a book so that I understand the process of it.
• 23:08
  And I'm so glad I did, because it is a process, but worth it.
• 23:14
  So I sent out emails to hundreds of people in my network saying, I want to write a business book.
• 23:18
  I don't know how.
• 23:20
  If you would also like to write a business book, please join me.
• 23:22
  I had a zoom meeting, and I had 12 women show up, business leaders.
• 23:26
  And we all.
• 23:27
  Every week, we met and we invited in authors, publishers, people who were in marketing, everybody we could find that had anything to do with writing books so we could learn together.
• 23:37
  Everybody had their own book idea, and we went through the process of it.
• 23:40
  So the book, for me, is a catalyst to have more women writing business books so that we can elevate women's visibility in the boardroom, on television, on stages, within the media, everywhere you can be visible in business.
• 23:54
  Tell us a little bit about the unstuck model.
• 23:57
  So we.
• 23:58
  Know,.
• 23:59
  Just because I think it's so great and it's got the letters and, like, I feel like it's helpful in our lives.
• 24:05
  Right.
• 24:05
  And you were.
• 24:06
  It's like you had a moment of being stuck.
• 24:09
  How do I write this book?
• 24:10
  And then you wrote unstuck.
• 24:12
  Yeah.
• 24:12
  And I didn't know the book idea when I started the process of putting the book together.
• 24:16
  So you can want to write a book and not know what you want to write about and just get going on it.
• 24:21
  So I put together the unstuck model, and it was a loose model I had been using for probably about 15 years in my career anyway.
• 24:29
  And the first one, the, um, is understand where you want to be.
• 24:32
  And so I recommend people spend time thinking three to five years ahead, but to think about, what kind of life do I want to have three years from now?
• 24:40
  What am I doing?
• 24:41
  Where am I living?
• 24:42
  What's the day look like?
• 24:43
  How do I feel about what I'm doing?
• 24:45
  Try to imagine as deeply as you can what that Looks like.
• 24:49
  And then I always tell everyone, if you know where you want to be, baby, I can get you there.
• 24:53
  Like, I will help you.
• 24:54
  So that's why I say understand where you want to be is the you part from there.
• 24:58
  In each of the sections, I tell stories about tech innovators who have specific techniques they use to always keep moving forward.
• 25:06
  And that's why I've loved the tech industry.
• 25:08
  It doesn't matter what's going on in the world.
• 25:11
  The innovators keep moving forward no matter what.
• 25:14
  Bad day, good day, terrible market, great market.
• 25:18
  All these conditions that arise, challenges that come up every day, there are specific things they do.
• 25:23
  So in the model, I talk about very specific tools anybody can use, and they can be micro sometimes, and sometimes I need just a very tiny step to help me move forward.
• 25:32
  And sometimes they're very big ideas.
• 25:34
  What would be an example of one of these ideas that help you move forward?
• 25:39
  Yeah, well, one thing that I do consistently is look at other industries for inspiration, and that always gives me insight into an idea that I had never thought about before.
• 25:53
  So I'm in tech, but I love travel and hospitality, so I read wildly about.
• 25:58
  I like the trade publications for the hospitality industry, which I have no business reading, really, but they always have different things they're doing in hospitality.
• 26:07
  And I.
• 26:07
  If I'm reading that, I always have a catalog in my mind of completely different ideas that I could then bring into what I'm working on today.
• 26:14
  That gives me enough energy to just take a few more steps.
• 26:18
  What if in hospitality, wellness resorts is a thing?
• 26:21
  They're gonna all focus on wellness.
• 26:23
  How could I integrate wellness into what I'm doing today at work?
• 26:26
  That would make my team feel great and keep us moving forward.
• 26:29
  That's one small example.
• 26:31
  It's interesting you talk about that, because with my home care business, home health business, where it was like hospital at home, I pulled a lot from Ritz Carlton.
• 26:41
  And.
• 26:42
  Even Disney, making people happy and figuring out those moments of what we called remarkable care.
• 26:49
  Really personalizing the experience, making it special to our patients as well as our employees.
• 26:56
  And so I love that.
• 26:59
  Heather, as a.
• 27:00
  Ideas from other places.
• 27:01
  Yeah,.
• 27:02
  Yeah.
• 27:02
  Moving forward.
• 27:03
  Yeah.
• 27:03
  Great.
• 27:04
  And talk to us about.
• 27:05
  I know you also talk a lot about pivoting, and one of those examples you shared was like, the idea came into your mind, I will move to San Francisco.
• 27:15
  That's a pivot, right?
• 27:16
  Tell us a little bit about pivoting and how as a leader, as an entrepreneur, you get into moments where sometimes you're stuck and knowing the difference between a wall you need to break through and a signal that it's
• 27:31
  time to pivot.
• 27:32
  Pivots are so.
• 27:33
  I don't know.
• 27:34
  Tax really builds up this whole pivot culture over the past 20 years.
• 27:39
  And some of the greatest success stories in technology have been the result of a pivot.
• 27:43
  Slack is a company I took inspiration from.
• 27:46
  They started out in one very specific way that they were executing tech, and it just wasn't working.
• 27:52
  So they made a pretty hard shift to be in chat mode, because one of the features of their first technology solution was chat.
• 27:59
  And then they decided, let's try.
• 28:01
  If we only worked on the chat feature and built that, what would that look like?
• 28:05
  So they pivoted and became a gigantic, successful company and sold the salesforce.
• 28:09
  I think about small pivots to big pivots.
• 28:12
  In my business and people I work with, a small pivot can be.
• 28:17
  What if I made one or two decisions that weren't ahead, but to the sides of what I'm working on today?
• 28:22
  What would that look like?
• 28:23
  Give yourself room to imagine what those other options could be.
• 28:26
  Even if you think right away, that would never work.
• 28:29
  Because that comes into my mind all the time, right?
• 28:31
  If something's not working, I have a different idea, and then I think automatically, well, that would never work.
• 28:36
  But why wouldn't that work?
• 28:37
  Let's explore it a few more steps.
• 28:39
  You can make those small pivots weekly with your team,.
• 28:43
  And it.
• 28:43
  Opens up creativity around problem solving, even if you decide not to take that small pivot.
• 28:49
  But sometimes you can.
• 28:51
  I've been in this situation in business where maybe I've opened a business line or a practice area or a geography that was not working, and I had to have a hard conversation about what was going to happen next.
• 29:04
  And to make a hard pivot away from it, building up courage to make hard decisions and accepting that that's not a failure, that it didn't work out the way I thought it was going to be.
• 29:14
  We're just going in a different direction now because I have new information that I didn't have before.
• 29:19
  And so that those are the bigger pivots that a person can make without feeling like they've failed.
• 29:24
  And I think that's really important pivot.
• 29:25
  They're not failure.
• 29:26
  They are really moving you forward because you get new information all the time,.
• 29:30
  Every day, right?
• 29:31
  And the market's changing every day.
• 29:34
  Things are, you know, the customer's changing, everything's changing.
• 29:37
  The competition, if you think about it, right, it's changing Right.
• 29:41
  Like, think about the differences in marketing and PR pre 2020.
• 29:46
  Right.
• 29:46
  Like, the world has changed.
• 29:48
  Oh, even now, right after I bought Content Bureau was really when AI was impacting marketing organizations in a significant way.
• 29:55
  And I had moments where I thought, have I made a gigantic mistake?
• 29:58
  I've just bought a content business and AI is now going to own marketing.
• 30:05
  What do I do now?
• 30:06
  Okay, how do I start to move.
• 30:07
  The movement?
• 30:08
  Like, how do you keep moving forward?
• 30:09
  Yeah, no matter what, you can always keep moving forward.
• 30:13
  And that's the philosophy of tech is like, keep moving forward.
• 30:15
  Just don't stay where you are.
• 30:16
  Because if you stay where you are, that is not growth.
• 30:19
  You're going to be done.
• 30:20
  Well,.
• 30:21
  It's true in every market.
• 30:22
  The world is moving and growing and we need to be able to do that.
• 30:26
  I just love this.
• 30:27
  Thinking big, you say, is always the right time to think big, act big and keep going.
• 30:34
  Some days of ownership still bring moments of real fear.
• 30:37
  How do you hold both at once, the big vision and the hard Tuesday.
• 30:43
  Where people will say to me, what's the business going?
• 30:45
  Owned it for more than a year now.
• 30:46
  You've launched Novella Ventures more than a year.
• 30:48
  I was like, oh, the mornings are great, super optimistic.
• 30:51
  I'm on fire.
• 30:52
  I'm crying at 3 o' clock in the afternoon.
• 30:54
  There's just so many highs and lows and they all happen within a day.
• 30:59
  So I'd say over the past decade, running bigger and bigger businesses, I've learned to have both things be true, that I can be scared and I can keep moving forward.
• 31:07
  And I really kind of think about it like a circle in my mind.
• 31:10
  Something will happen.
• 31:10
  I'll feel some fear.
• 31:11
  Usually in my body.
• 31:12
  If I feel it first, I constrict a little bit, my breathing gets shallow and I'm thinking, okay, something going on.
• 31:19
  What am I scared about?
• 31:21
  Normally it's something related to revenue or team or partnerships.
• 31:25
  Then I think, okay, well, what am I going to do with that fear?
• 31:28
  Am I going to just sit here and ruminate on it?
• 31:31
  No.
• 31:31
  What are two or three things I could do right now just to get me out of that cycle?
• 31:36
  Call a customer, call one of my team members.
• 31:39
  I have a list of things that are to get me out of that swing and then get back into the movement that I need to be in to keep moving forward.
• 31:47
  So it's a practice, I think, holding both of those things.
• 31:51
  But earlier in my career, it would paralyze me.
• 31:53
  There would be weeks when I was a new CEO where I'D be a bit frozen and not unsure what to do.
• 32:00
  And so I needed to build my capability in that area.
• 32:04
  You can actually build capability to hold both the fear and the optimism and keep going forward.
• 32:10
  I love that you talk about this with founders and leaders, because I see this being one of those things that holds us back is we get afraid and then we freeze, and we just keep doing whatever we've been
• 32:24
  doing, avoiding a certain part.
• 32:27
  And then, you know, we sort of.
• 32:31
  We.
• 32:32
  We end up putting our businesses in a place where they're not going to grow, and it just keeps perpetuating in a negative way.
• 32:40
  Can you talk more about that and what simple ways that we can identify?
• 32:46
  Okay, I'm in that space.
• 32:48
  I'm in that rut.
• 32:50
  And you talked about a couple of things that are go to for you that help you not stay stuck.
• 32:58
  Yes.
• 32:58
  And I dedicate a little bit of the beginning of the book to this.
• 33:01
  It's really understanding yourself and knowing your patterns around when you are in a little bit of a downward spiral.
• 33:06
  So I journal, and it's been a way for me to discover what my thought patterns are and how to help get out of those bad thought patterns.
• 33:16
  The bigger things I've done is I've built communities, and I am part of communities.
• 33:20
  And that has been transformational for me as a leader because I might be having a bad month.
• 33:25
  I go to my women Presidents organization.
• 33:27
  I'm part of that group.
• 33:28
  I'll go to my WPO meeting, and I will be like, I can't afford to spend half a day.
• 33:33
  But I get in community with other business owners and realize I'm not alone.
• 33:37
  Other people are going through this, and I've come out energized and ready to go again.
• 33:41
  So find community is a big one for me.
• 33:43
  Understanding when I've got those doom loops and then thinking right away, okay, that's the fear.
• 33:49
  But Heather's the fear.
• 33:50
  Gonna win today?
• 33:51
  Nope.
• 33:51
  Here are the three things I'm gonna do and writing down those three things in a notebook.
• 33:56
  I will just work on this for the next hour.
• 33:58
  I will always feel better at the end of that hour.
• 34:00
  And I've got then energy and momentum to keep going.
• 34:04
  Beautiful.
• 34:05
  I like that advice.
• 34:07
  It's really powerful.
• 34:08
  Simple and powerful.
• 34:10
  Now we're going to go on to the fast fire round.
• 34:12
  Okay?
• 34:14
  Five questions in five words or less.
• 34:17
  You.
• 34:17
  Ready?
• 34:18
  Ready.
• 34:19
  All right, first question.
• 34:20
  Build or buy?
• 34:23
  Well, I'm a buyer right now, so buy.
• 34:26
  The trait every acquirer needs.
• 34:31
  Every acquirer needs Curiosity.
• 34:33
  Deep curiosity.
• 34:35
  One sign it is time to pivot.
• 34:39
  You spending day five on the same problem and you do not have a better solution.
• 34:46
  Time to pivot.
• 34:48
  What does unstuckable feel like?
• 34:53
  Oh, kind of relief.
• 34:56
  Things are moving.
• 34:56
  It's a full body relief when you're unstoppable.
• 34:59
  Fill in the blank.
• 35:00
  The world needs more women who.
• 35:05
  Behave famously.
• 35:06
  Oh,.
• 35:08
  My gosh,.
• 35:09
  Yes.
• 35:09
  Yeah.
• 35:10
  This is a mantra I've used for probably about 12 years.
• 35:13
  And behaving famously is raising your visibility.
• 35:16
  It is doing what famous people do, being visible, connecting, using your voice, having a point of view, being on stage, being in the press, being at events.
• 35:25
  So think about famous people, what they do, and behave famously.
• 35:29
  Behave famously.
• 35:30
  This is gonna be your next book, isn't it?
• 35:32
  Yeah, it may be.
• 35:33
  I'm getting enough good feedback on.
• 35:34
  People are like, oh, I wanna behave famously.
• 35:37
  Yes.
• 35:38
  I think it's so important for women.
• 35:40
  Right.
• 35:40
  It's like, behave famously.
• 35:42
  Be visible, get out there, share your voice, share your light, Set examples for others.
• 35:47
  Right,.
• 35:48
  Yes, all of those things.
• 35:50
  Okay.
• 35:50
  I wanna know about how listeners and viewers can learn about you.
• 35:54
  But this is how, like Heather, we could have another six hours together.
• 35:59
  Davos for 2027.
• 36:02
  Okay.
• 36:02
  So a couple of years ago, well, maybe five years ago, my team decided that we were going to go to Davos and we experienced it for the first time.
• 36:09
  So went to the World Economic Forum at Davos and what we discovered is that it is not as exclusive as it appears to be.
• 36:15
  And there is a place there for many different kinds of leaders.
• 36:19
  So we have a program running for Davos 27.
• 36:22
  We've got a delegation that we form, formed and are going over together.
• 36:26
  So if there's any executive out there who's wondering if they could attend Davos, yes, they can.
• 36:32
  You do not need an invitation to attend Davos.
• 36:34
  Please contact me on LinkedIn and I will tell you about how you can get to Davos in 27 or 28.
• 36:40
  We're also having a full day event that we're hosting as part of Davos, a summit called Layers of Trust and Resilience Summit.
• 36:47
  2027.
• 36:48
  When is it?
• 36:48
  It's the third week in January every year.
• 36:51
  That's when.
• 36:51
  The World.
• 36:52
  Economic Forum it is.
• 36:53
  It's really soon.
• 36:54
  It's late to start planning if anybody planning now.
• 36:56
  That's why I say maybe 2028, if people are interested.
• 36:59
  Yeah, but it's one of the global stages where the agenda is set for narrative for the year ahead.
• 37:05
  So people who can go and participate there and you do not need to be invited.
• 37:09
  There are about 1200 fringe events that happen around the Congress center where the official delegations go.
• 37:16
  And you do need to be invited into the Congress center, but you can participate in these more than 1000 events that are happening around the main event.
• 37:23
  There's leaders from all over the world that are coming to see, speak and share ideas and be part of it.
• 37:27
  So it is accessible, although it is difficult to get to.
• 37:30
  Why is it so important to you?
• 37:33
  I just.
• 37:34
  I really.
• 37:35
  Gosh, Coco.
• 37:36
  I want to be able to shed light on ideas and places and people that seem inaccessible but are actually not.
• 37:47
  With the book.
• 37:48
  That's something I want to do.
• 37:49
  I want to help people understand.
• 37:50
  You can write a book.
• 37:51
  It's going to be hard, it's going to take time, but you can actually do it.
• 37:54
  You want to go to Davos?
• 37:56
  You can actually do it.
• 37:57
  Let me show you how.
• 37:58
  Let me be your BFF to figure out.
• 38:00
  How do you get there?
• 38:01
  You want to buy a business?
• 38:02
  Let me show you how.
• 38:03
  It's one step at a time.
• 38:05
  I want to make things that seem inaccessible accessible so that more women in particular can step into those places.
• 38:12
  The idea of using community is so powerful.
• 38:16
  I would offer to any founder the same advice around.
• 38:20
  Find your eo, your ypo, your wpo, find your whatever.
• 38:23
  It is even better if it can be a group of women, seriously have those connections.
• 38:29
  Those are so important.
• 38:30
  And then this is a way, like you said.
• 38:32
  So I like how you have decided that when you have a desire like to write a book or to go to Davos and get involved with Davos, you just build a community around it.
• 38:42
  I don't want to figure it out by myself.
• 38:45
  I.
• 38:45
  Don't want it.
• 38:45
  That's hard.
• 38:46
  But there's other people who want to figure it out together with me.
• 38:49
  And that is so much more joyful.
• 38:51
  You're on LinkedIn, right?
• 38:53
  I would love to connect with people on LinkedIn.
• 38:55
  That's the best way.
• 38:56
  If you reach out to me, I will accept and I'd happily talk to anyone about any of the topics we talked about today.
• 39:01
  Book writing.
• 39:02
  You want to get to Davos, you want to figure out how to buy a business, Any of those topics or more.
• 39:05
  I'd love to chat.
• 39:07
  And your website is content bureau.com.
• 39:10
  You can learn all about that business and pick up the book.
• 39:15
  Unstuckable.
• 39:16
  Never be stuck in business again with tools from tech innovators and there's a link for you in the notes.
• 39:22
  Anything else you'd like to share with us today.
• 39:25
  Oh my God.
• 39:28
  Finish with whatever you're thinking that you want to do and you think is impossible.
• 39:32
  Just start saying it out loud.
• 39:33
  You're going to surprise yourself and you're going to move yourself forward.
• 39:38
  Just do it.
• 39:39
  Say it.
• 39:40
  That's it.
• 39:42
  Thank you.
• 39:42
  Go, go.
• 39:43
  Thank you so much, Heather for being on the Wisdom of Women Show.
• 39:47
  Thank you for limiting the path to unlocking opportunities of prosperity for each of us.
• 39:53
  I value you.
• 39:55
  We value your experience and wisdom.
• 39:57
  Be sure to like, follow and share the Wisdom of Women show on whatever your favorite listening or viewing platform is.
• 40:04
  And remember that the world is made better by women led business.
• 40:09
  So let's all go make the world a better place.
• 40:13
  Cheers.