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Challenging the Status Quo: Building a Platform for Social Impact with Meredith Curren and Bari Harlam · The Growth Class with Phil Masiello

• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody and welcome back to the Growth Class.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Phil Mastiello, your host, and today we're joined by two individuals who aren't just thinking about changing the world.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're actively building the tools to do it.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Meredith and Barry are the founders of troublemakers.org, a hub for those who refuse to accept the way things are as the final answer.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're here today to discuss what it takes to challenge the status quo, spark meaningful disruption, and why sometimes being a troublemaker is exactly what we need.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, Meredith, Barry, thank you for taking the time to come on the show and explain to us what you're doing.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having us.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my pleasure.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, why don't you take us back, give us a little bit of a background in uh both of you, and then uh let's talk about where you are today and and how you got there and why you got there.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Who wants to go first?
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Barry, why don't you go first?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, sure.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Meredith and I founded Trouble in 2020, um, and it was on the hundredth anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which many of your listeners know that uh that was the time that was meant to give all women the the right to vote, which in fact didn't come to be, um, but it gave a subset of women, privileged white women, the right to vote.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then later in the 60s, um, the Voters' Rights Act uh helped advance um so that all women could vote.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: But we found it on that day.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was sort of a race to the launch date because we knew that it was going to happen once, and if we missed it, uh we wouldn't be able to turn back the clock.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we launched Trouble with the intention of creating a platform and a community that was all about um changing the status quo, as you said, and very much about uh putting um uh dismantling all as much as possible around the areas that create inequity between women and men.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so um we have a chance to highlight and and share the messages from courageous disruptors, those are troublemakers as we like to call them, and they are generous and they're amazing, and that becomes really the main inspiration for the work that we do.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Meredith?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: So we're an online marketplace that uh interviews troublemakers for good, and those are men and women uh that care about gender equity, and then we uh sell cool products and give the profits to uh organizations doing the good work of promoting gender equity.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: Basically, health, education, and welfare organizations that uh are focused on women and girls.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: And you may not know this, but only 1.9% of philanthropic dollars go to gender equity organizations.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a giant gap that we're looking to fill.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's getting bigger.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Not to get political, but uh it doesn't seem like it seems like it's uh getting more of an uphill battle now than ever before.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: I would say we never imagined when we started Troubles six years ago that we would have experienced such backsliding.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's concerning.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: It it's uh yeah, it's a bit it's it's a bit concerning for all involved.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: I have, I think I told you, I have four daughters and obviously a wife and uh you know sisters, mothers, grandmothers, and I grew up in a household of all women, aunts, grandmothers, Italian households.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, so you know, it's uh it's difficult.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think, you know, and I I think that there's so much uh propaganda that it's really difficult for some people to truly understand what's really happening, in my opinion.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's just you know what I see out there.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Even for the younger generation that are smart, just they're they're they're getting influenced by people their own age that are sort of pushing these agendas and um and then this whole trad wife trend, which I think is just uh it's just an agenda.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just being pushed because it's not real.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, there's no way in the world that that, you know, people can exist on one well, I mean, uh that's not true.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there are some people out there making a lot of money, but most of these trad wives are just influencers that are that really are making their money off of being influencers.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: They're not really trad wives, right?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Which I think is also pushing things back in a different way.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like I I certainly don't want, you know, to come home with my wife in the little skirt every day and making me dinner.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's just not not a healthy environment.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Not a healthy environment.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: They're selling um I think uh sorry, go ahead, Mayor.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: They're selling this like that's all.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: They're all working women who are talking about women not working.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's so disturbing.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And and and that and to to the discussion, I mean, it is political, um, it's turned into even more polarizing political.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the reality is that there are some, um, there's a lot of data, and those data show stubborn stats that haven't moved.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that isn't one person's fault or one category of people's fault.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's societal um influences that lead to things like women making 80 cents for every dollar that men make.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's not a woman's problem, a man's problem.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's an equity problem in our society, and that's something that we want to change and um and have people have an opportunity to be more equal and have more equity.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and there are many folks that are committed to that, but it is something that is remarkably stubborn that hasn't changed for many years, and to your point, is only getting worse right now.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you think that uh there why do you think that there's a lot of women that aren't supporting um the women's movement or the women's rights movement?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think part of part of it is a misunderstanding.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think that people are reluctant to have change, especially if they're in a situation that's comfortable and they enjoy their lives.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: But there are people I I'll speak for myself.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very comfortable.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: I enjoy my life, and all of my life I've known that I've had access and opportunity to things that many other people don't.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm grateful for that, but it doesn't mean that I want it to be limited to people like me who have an opportunity to have that access.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I think if you're, I think for many people, if you're happy, you're comfortable, and you really don't step back and take a perspective that addresses um the community, the society, then you can easily say, hey, it's good.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Why do I want to change anything?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: But it but if you step back and reflect, I think it's pretty hard to do anything but say there are some things that would benefit all of us, whether we're in the have category or the have not category that that would really improve our society and our community and let's all band together and make some of those changes happen.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't think about it as much as the haves not supporting it.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: I just am astounded by the have nots who support some of these things.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think to myself, how how could you how can you accept the fact that you know we want to pull back uh women's voting rights and women's, you know, uh uh rights all around?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I just it astounds me.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: I you know how do you change that?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, if you've been told your whole life that you're inferior, we know that a at age five, girls think they're not as good as boys in general.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: So it happens very young.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's astounding, but girls don't think they're as good.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: So we're sending messages that are inaccurate uh from the get-go.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: So we have to push against that constantly.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you change that with what you're doing?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when we when we when Meredith and I said, hey, we're at a point in our lives where we can be all in on this, it's been an area that we've experienced personally and also wanted to be um mentors and leaders in whatever roles we were in.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: But this was an opportunity for us to say, we are gonna be all in on this, and how do we do that in a way that's gonna have the most impact?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: We looked at creating services to help um grow women's confidence, to help uh all of the structural barriers that get in the way.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: And what we realized after spending some time studying it is we realized there are many organizations that are set up to make a difference.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: And many of them are exceptionally capable and really good at what they're doing.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that they need is more capital.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: They need to grow.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: And in order to accelerate the impact that they're having, um, that would be dramatically enhanced with more capital.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: So we step back and said, why don't we be in the business of generating capital to accelerate the growth of the organizations that are out there doing the good work, fighting the fight every day?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: I see.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: So what you're really doing is you're you're raising, you're essentially uh using your platform to raise capital that gets dispersed to these other organizations that are um doing good good works, right?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can't you can't do it all, right?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Barry's a marketing specialist.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: I have a background in finance.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: We said, what do we know how to do that's gonna have an impact?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: And we said, there's these great not-for-profits out there doing uh incredible work like I Have the Right to, which was started by Chessie Prout, and is she was assaulted uh her freshman year in school, and she fought back against the boy and took him to court and was vilified for that.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: So organizations like that who go into the schools, teach those students about what appropriate behavior is, and uh provide resources are incredible.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: And we don't need to reinvent that.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: We need to support that.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we decided to do.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we can do that with money, um, because they all need more money, and we can also do that by growing a troubled community and using that community to lend eyeballs and and education to the work that they're doing.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's really that is what we do.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: We sell stuff, we sell swag.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a hundred percent of the profits go to the organizations that are our trouble-giving partners, and we highlight their work by highlighting their their troublemakers, the folks at those organizations that are working hard every day, and they're generous in in spreading their message through trouble, and we can use our platform then to bring more attention to the work that they do.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean I think that I uh it's I I think that there needs to be a lot more a lot more attention to it because we've sort of taken we've slid back dramatically, um, as you said, and you know, even in the colleges where we've, you know, sort of strong armed colleges to change their um curriculum uh or else they lose funding, which I think is just unbelievable.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Unbelievable.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and it's not just that.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean there's there's the whole uh uh uh women's health pulling funding from women's health and uh and you know, Roe v.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Wade and uh everything that's happened in the last bunch of years.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I and I just to me I just I always think about I'm a student of consumerism and I'm a student of people and I and because I'm a marketer and I always look at people and what motivates them and what drives them.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I just am I'm floored by how for lack of a better term, how stupid we've become as a society.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it just it it amazes me how easily manipulated we uh we are.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Social media is easily manipulating people, um the press is easily manipulating people.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean social media in general, I think we've it's just b been very destructive to uh to uh our our youth.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, we're i certainly when you have a you know, you you have half a brain, you hear something that doesn't sound right, you do a little research and you come up with a conclusion.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: You don't just take the headline as face value, but people do.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it just it's uh it's amazing to me.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and it's also right, it's so much harder to control or monitor messaging given the incredible increase in volume that is created by social media and other digital media.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, when we used to monitor five networks, it's it's very different today.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so different.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: And as you said, it's just too easy to create content with AI, put it out there, it looks real, it looks even realer as as things evolve, and there's just too much of it to monitor.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um what about you know, aside from the website, like what else can you do?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, do you do you have a YouTube channel?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you could theoretically be posting content daily, which is real content, and and trying to build a platform that way, because the youth of today really doesn't pay attention to television news or the traditional news channels.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: They sort of get their news off of these people that they follow on social.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: YouTube, uh especially.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, my kids, they're they're all smart kids.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: They all graduated college, they're all intelligent, but they they get their information from online.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they don't believe everything, but they still get it.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we do have a YouTube channel where we feature the interviews with our troublemakers.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we have uh we would love for people to go to our website, troublemakers.org, sign up for our newsletters.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: We send out regular weekly emails that highlights our troublemakers and the trouble-giving organizations.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we'd also love for people to follow us on social at troublemakers for good.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and we put the content out there, we get some great engagement.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And as we've already said, the people that we interview are remarkable.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: They are people that are fighting the fight every day, making a difference.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the work that they do covers a tremendous number of sectors, like you said, health, um, cultural trends.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: There are folks that are for-profit businesses that are focused in a variety of areas, and they're they're there with a social mission to help make our communities stronger and better.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then do you expand, do you do you go after the larger groups, the people that are, you know, that you're given the funds to, and getting those people on your channel and and getting those people some recognition so that, you know, you sort of snowball it, right?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: You you if everybody gets involved and everybody starts talking about it and everybody starts promoting the people that are out there that are doing good, then it becomes a snowball, and that becomes the message, right?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: We absolutely do that.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: And uh we found that LinkedIn is a great resource too, because that was surprising.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: But a lot of our troublemakers that we profile are on LinkedIn, and so they send it out to their networks.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's how we grow.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell Yeah, LinkedIn I think is a little bit better.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: I I spend more of my time on LinkedIn than anything else.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, unfortunately, we're we're an advertising agency, and so we spend a lot of time on on social media and studying it, but it just uh it's to me I can't take it.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I have a very difficult time reading the news in the morning.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: I have a very difficult time with social, you know.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I I mean I we do it for business, but I I can't spend a lot of my time on it.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: It just aggravates me.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: But LinkedIn, I I do spend some time on it because generally it's people providing information or providing uh some sort of factual data about something.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there are some lunatics on it, but you know, it it I think it does a better job of moderating than anything else.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I can see that because everybody and every woman who's, you know, an executive or has a job or whatever has a LinkedIn profile and they're sort of focused on, you know, improvement.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I could see that.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you can post your link your YouTube stuff onto LinkedIn and push it out there.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And and if you're doing lives, you can push that out on as you do it live on onto LinkedIn, which becomes a powerful medium because it's not just the people that follow you that see it.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can push it out live and uh and more people will see it.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because I guess what I'm saying is it's a bigger it's a bigger issue than just, you know, not to downgrade what you're doing, but two women trying to push this agenda.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of a it's like pushing a little stone up a hill when the when the you know there's a bigger rock up there.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: So Yeah.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Our model is exactly as you're describing, Phil, um, in that we we partner with the troublemaker organization.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: So they're generous to let us interview them, and we in turn can shine a light on their work.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: But they are our marketing engine.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: We don't spend money on marketing, and that's an area that we continue to look at.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: But the marketing is through our troublemakers, their organizations, and our trouble-giving partners, and that allows us to give almost a hundred percent of all of the margin from our sales to um to our trouble-giving partners.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: We have a remarkably low burn rate, which is a balance that we try to strike, but we're looking to give away as much money as possible.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't invest in paid advertising.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: We do it exactly in the way that you described.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, paid advertising's not going to do it.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people don't pay attention for social causes and things like that, people aren't gonna pay attention to paid ads.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I would think that, you know, uh I I think that uh social is obviously a better platform.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, how do you get to the youth?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because the youth is really what needs to change, right?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there is a lot of confusion out there.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Even my kids, when we when we have talks about discussions about politics, there's some things that everybody agrees on, but there are some things where I think, where the heck did they get that from?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because and so I think that there needs to, you know, a targeted effort at the youth.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you get to them?
• 21:12
  unknown: Yeah.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we have youngsters on our staff, and that's helpful because they bring a different perspective.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: And some of our trouble makers are focused on younger populations.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: One example that Meredith and I were talking about earlier today is Emily Oster.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: We featured her.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: She's a Brown University professor, economics professor that focuses on new moms and new parents, and she has a remarkable following.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so troublemakers like that get us exposure to some of the younger folks.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I would imagine using, you know, you take taking a playbook out of, you know, the um more conservative side, you know.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: the the ability to use social media in a way like TikTok and and uh where where the youth is, you know, TikTok and reels to sort of create that um messaging using really factual data.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um because you know, one of the problems that people um one of the problems that people um or that I see on social is it's just words going out that people listen to.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's no fact behind it.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's just words and people listen to it and believe it.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that just drives me up a wall because when the you know if you try and give and again, you know, you can't change somebody, right?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: They they're they're gonna think what they're gonna think.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna believe what they they believe, right?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: The f I watched the thing about flat earthers last night and fl this guy, they wanted to disprove that the earth is round.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: So they went out and did these experiments and all they did was prove that the earth was round.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: They did like four or five experiments and they still didn't believe it.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: So they tried they they wound up with some cockamie uh uh experiment that proved that the earth was was flat and I mean uh after going through you know four or five scientific experiments they came up with one and it just astounds me people are going to believe what they're gonna believe but I think if you can get to the youth and you start hitting it that you know you'll start to change some mentality you know in my opinion.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah one one of the other avenues that that we haven't mentioned that I'd love to mention is we've we also run a number of um training events and um and development events with companies that are very much mission aligned with what we do.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: So high potential women groups high potential groups women and men um in organizations and we come in and do a session on what it means to be a troublemaker and how they can think about um being more courageous in their workplace and setting ambitious goals and those companies in lieu of paying us for the events by merchandise for all of the attendees and that's another way where we get great exposure to to younger folks and older folks um but a lot of them are younger employees that are high potential within the companies so that's a another avenue of growth.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if you go into an organization let's say a business and you're you're talking to the the the people about you know the mission do you find that um men are receptive or do you think they just go through the motions?
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: Most of them are very receptive.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: They understand uh they are much more aware than when I was starting out in business about the inequities and about comments and about communication and how that impacts the workplace and they also are starting to value the different voices in the room because there's great data that you make better decisions when you have.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so the more courageous and disruptive people can be in the workplace because everybody reverts to the status quo.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're trying to say we're saying and teaching people how to not revert to the status quo and you get better outcomes you know I I uh I had a business that was in retail and we got acquired by a supermarket chain.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: And um I I remember like sitting in the room everybody every retailer has like the Monday morning meeting where you start going over the numbers and the stores and blah blah blah and then you know you look at ads and what worked and what didn't work and and you start crafting other ads and and it amazed me because the number one shopper right overwhelmingly is a woman.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: She's the one who comes to the supermarket right even if the guy goes right when I go I go with my wife every week because we make a thing out of it and I like shopping but you know it's obvious that that my wife is sort of guiding the whole thing right I can throw cart stuff in the cart but at the end of the day she's she's the one who's you know going to determine.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and I I sat there one day and I looked around that room and you know you've got all these different departments right you've got grocery you got Haba you got you know and everyone was a guy.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you sit there and talk about the ads and what's going to move the needle.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and so I just said you know we should get some women in here.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like what get this get the admins in here, get somebody else in here to look at this and tell you whether or not that's going to move the needle.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: And they all just looked at me like I had three heads because like what what do they know?
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: They don't understand the business.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: I said they don't have to understand the business.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: They have to understand what they want to buy.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: You're sitting there saying that you think by taking ground beef down 10 cents it's gonna drive the business maybe there's something else that maybe is more impactful than ground beef because you're doing the same thing over and over again.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you how many times I've sat in this room and listened to the ground beef was going on sale for you know$1.99.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it makes no sense to me.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it really didn't it made absolutely no sense to me that there was not a woman in charge of any of the stuff.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then you look at I don't know if you guys have Wegmans by you, but you look at Wegmans.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the best grocery stores in the country and you know who runs it?
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Colleen Wegman and her sister and and it's a very very well-run grocery store and they have a if when you go into their corporate office they must have I would say 60% women decision makers.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: We did a a line on um shopping channel and uh Beauty line we launched it and this woman Mindy Grossman who used to be this she she worked for Nike apparel she worked for um Ralph Loren whatever you know a bunch of places.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: She w wound up taking over um uh uh the diet place uh I can't Weight Watchers yeah weight watchers but she was a I thought she was a brilliant woman and it was all women at HSN all women decision makers every department was a woman decision maker and they all used to sit when you go in there and you present you know they would sit there and and they would speak about her you know well you have to talk about her you know how's she gonna how is she going to relate to this product?
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: How is she gonna relate to the message?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what they're really talking about is the fact that you know you're talking on a camera but the w the person on the other end is a is a woman, right?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: She's the decision maker and so you have to think about in terms of her.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll never forget we went in there we we did a beauty line but we also were helping somebody else and we went in there with this um cloth fashion line for this woman Forbes Riley she wanted an athletic leisure line and so this guy that she had with her named it athleisure and I th I said that's just a terrible name it's a category it's not a it's not a brand it's a it's a category.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: I said and don't go in there and say atleisure because you're gonna get you got you're gonna get thrown you're gonna get thrown out and he was like no no no it's a great name it's a great name it's a great name and I kept saying to Forbes I said Forbes it's not a good name and she's like we went in there and here's Mindy and like she's got all her people and she said well what's what's the brand name and the guy says athleisure and she looks at me and she goes that's a category that's not a name of a brand I was like I said I told you dude I tried to save you but I thought she was uh she was wonderful but that place was so well run she turned it around and she fired all the guys that were really in charge and brought in all women and that and then it it turned around because you know that's who's buying how can I make a decision I can make a decision like I don't know a guy who would buy a pair of uh or or clothing for their wife that that's just off limits, right?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: You don't buy furniture for the house without your wife.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't happen, right?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can buy different things, but there's certain things that you can't do because you don't understand it.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like I I wouldn't never be if I I go home the my wife goes out shopping I go home and I find new clothes in my closet.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: She doesn't come right out and say you're dressing terribly she just buys new clothes for me and says these would look better on you.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: And she's right.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you know anyway that's my rant.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah well and I think I we love this story and going back to Meredith's point I mean there's and your point too there's hard research that shows the improvement in company performance not if it's all women all men all anything really the mixture of thought and backgrounds and experiences is what makes teams perform better.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so we look forward to a day where it's more equal.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Not all women not all men but a really good mix of all different types of folks that are going to create better outcomes and the research proves that over and over.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah I agree I think uh I think a good blend but I see uh I just see a different world sometimes when I I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of businesses and I see the older like older men don't have the same outlook on women coming in they look at it entirely differently and I I just think you know dude you gotta get with it man like you know this person's brilliant and you're like downplaying what she's got to say it's just it's amazing to me.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway I worked with my brother and my father in a family business and they get pregnant and they were like he's never coming back by the third kid they were like can you come two weeks later and like attend this meeting and I was if I can bring the kid.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the beauty of that's sort of the beauty of um sort of the beauty of working remotely is that women can um you know they can be home for the kids.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm an ad I've I'm I've always been an advocate of remote work.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: We've we've been we did raw raw essentials which was a beauty line we were totally remote we were constantly on the road we had people all over the country doing stuff because Carol and I were just going out we were at HSN we were up in Canada we were in the in Europe we were just doing shows we were at Sephora, Ulta blah blah blah.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we were just I I was we were never in an office and so we just had people everywhere and we had a lot of young women doing things social media design you know formulation and they were all home and they loved it because and what what I found was that they worked actually longer than if they were in an office because they may work odd hours, right?
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because you know it's got okay I'm not working between you know 6 a.m and and 9 a.m because I got to get the kids ready for school and then they're they're at school and I'm working then I get them off the bus and I go back to work at seven o'clock at night after I feed everybody.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: But they work till like you know midnight and stuff.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: And you're going, dude, you got to slow down but you know the did you see the new study that just came out about the CEOs who are requiring everybody to be in the office?
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's all about ego.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: It it's about performance.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: And that penalizes women because we don't want to give up our kids to be successful.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: We we don't want to sacrifice our kids to be successful.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: And we can be because we're willing to do what you just described but uh the flexibility is key for 100% it's about ego.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: 100% they want to walk around like a fiefdom.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: I got all these people in the cubes this is my world I can call people and you know I I it makes absolutely zero sense to me.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want the overhead first of all I hate having it we had offices I they all we shut them down and I I'm happy without them because it takes it's so much aggravation that I don't have to worry about.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: And um but yeah and it's easier to hire people we have people that work for us that have their kids.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the kids get up on the uh on the calls with babies and there's nothing better than babies and puppies so you know brighten your day.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: But women are happy people are happier when they're like you know I'm happier when I'm home and my dogs are with me.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm you know if I I would love to have babies again but you know unfortunately we have five they're gone they're in college and stuff they're all done with college but you know I think everybody's happier when you're around like babies and puppies.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: So well and the research also shows that in families where both folks are able both parents are able to work remotely the men do play more of a shared role in those responsibilities.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: They see what's going on everybody sees what's going on you coordinate calendars you try to stagger calls and those the the studies show that there's a 28% increase among um shared parenting when that kind of situation exists.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: So flexibility all around yeah I mean what my wife is is a SVP at a uh senior living company they have places they have like 80 locations from Virginia up to New Hampshire and um you know she's in charge of ops of uh of um uh uh what do you call it um IT and marketing and so it's a and it's a big job right and there's also like a real estate component to it but uh my life was more flexible it always was because I I founded my own businesses after raw after we did the the skincare I had a a shaving business I had a warehouse down the road so I could work from home and be and so we still had three young ones right two of them were were in high school and college but we had three young ones so my wife had to be in the office I didn't so I would get up I'd make sure everybody got on the bus you know make sure everybody had their lunch and got on the bus and then I went to work but if something happened during the day I could leave and then I would be home I'd get home at, you know, to get them off the bus.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: I could still work from home.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I loved it.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was just the the greatest.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: And my wife she used to say she felt guilty.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was like what are you feeling guilty about?
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know I'd get them to take them to their errands.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought it was fantastic because I think that fathers don't spend enough time with their kids to really get to know them or really understand who they are as people right and I think that the kids don't really get to see like their parents in a different light.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: So he's the mom taking care of everything.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: But when they say because the you know it became like okay well mom doesn't have to be the only one to take care of us.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: He's pretty capable, you know?
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: Which which they used to say to me well, you know, you did a good job today.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was like okay good.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know my husband used to call for a babysitter and then the babysitter's mother would call me back.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah I'm not responsible for that.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: He's cutting the babysitter Yeah well it got to the point where the school would call me which I which I thought was great, you know and then so the kids it took a I think it took a load off my wife but you know it is it's a it's you gotta co-parent, you gotta do everything together.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: One person's got more to do than the other person, you pick up the slack.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: I loved it.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: I loved having kids.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was like the greatest thing in the world.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: Kids and dogs.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's my favorite thing to do.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway but listen we're almost out of time so where do people find you and and where can they support you?
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: Troublemakers.org troublemakers for good and uh online and follow us on social media on LinkedIn on YouTube on Instagram on Facebook.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: Is it all troublemakers when you're on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, is it all consistent?
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: Is it troublemakers?
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: For Facebook and Instagram it's uh troublemakers for good.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: On LinkedIn it's trouble.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately That's good that's good.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: All right well I appreciate you coming on and uh thank you for sharing and I think it's great and I hope everybody supports you.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for sharing.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you thank you for being part of the community and like minded we really appreciate it.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well I'm surprised I'm I'm surrounded by women if I wasn't I think I'd get beat.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_03: No great