Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Tips to launching a successful platform rooted in community and professional growth, with Jordan Taylor, Co-Founder of Medley

Transcript

Tips to launching a successful platform rooted in community and professional growth, with Jordan Taylor, Co-Founder of Medley · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Jordan Taylor for Female Startup Club.
• 0:11
  Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. I'm your host, Doona Roisin, and joining me on the show today is Jordan Taylor, co-founder of a platform called Medli. Medli is a membership platform redefining personal and professional growth on a mission to make high quality experiences accessible to broader audiences. Members are algorithmically matched into small, diverse groups that meet monthly in sessions led by certified coaches.
• 0:40
  Medley members benefit not only from these curated sessions, but also a community built on diverse perspectives, leading to positive, enriching, and engaging interactions. In this episode, we're covering Jordan's experiences that led to her launching this business in partnership with her mom, Edith Cooper, the importance of testing your idea and speaking to your customer before building a product, and her experience on fundraising, including lessons learned and tips.
• 1:07
  And while I've got you here, if you haven't done so already, please do subscribe to the show so you can have our three weekly episodes delivered straight to your phone and your ears. This is Jordan for Female Startup Club.
• 1:20
  Jordan, thank you so much for joining me on the Female Startup Club podcast today. Thank you, Dune, for having me. Really excited to be here. I am so excited to dig in and learn all about Medley and what you've been building. But before we get started, can you introduce yourself and explain a bit about what your business is and who it's for?
• 1:39
  Absolutely. So my name is Jordan Taylor. I grew up in the New York area in the suburbs of New York City. And I'm the co-founder and CEO of Medly, which is a platform that is designed to enable our community to grow professionally and personally. Membership includes access to a group that meets every month under the guidance of an expert leadership coach, as well as really high quality and engaging programming.
• 2:03
  Members of our community are lifelong learners. So people who are really excited about learning perspective of others. We are a range of people range in age from 20s to 60s. And we have men and women. And people are really excited about the prospect of having a dedicated group experience where they can learn from perspectives outside their narrow lanes that they're in at this point.
• 2:26
  Sounds so interesting and something that I haven't heard of before. So I'm really excited to learn all about it. Before we, you know, kick things off about the how and the why and the marketing and all that kind of thing, can we go back to life before you started the business and what was kind of happening at that time that led you onto this entrepreneurial path and deciding to launch a business?
• 2:47
  Certainly. So Medley is really founded from my own personal experience of someone in their early and mid 20s living in a big city and trying to figure out what I wanted. What I wanted at work, what I wanted in my personal life, how I wanted to show up every day for myself and how I needed to take care of myself. I sort of found myself in the middle of this big transition point and didn't have a place to really understand how everything integrated together.
• 3:15
  And at the same time, I'm someone who also really loves communities and team environments. So I grew up playing a lot of sports, a lot of activities. I was fortunate enough to be able to do art classes and ice hockey and soccer, football, as you'd say. And in university, I was also an athlete. I was on the crew team.
• 3:36
  And so it was this confluence of both really needing a dedicated space to figure stuff out, as well as really creating the dedicated type of community that you get in a school environment and in a sports environment as well. That stuck with me. That pain point really stuck with me. That experience was really difficult. It really affected my mental health.
• 4:06
  And I worked in consulting for two years after, after college. And then I worked at a startup media company called Mike and the team grew incredibly quickly. And it was a really exciting time. And then I went to business school because I, I,
• 4:22
  knew that I wanted to have, I mentioned I really love communities. I knew I wanted to, you know, hopefully try and create something or explore something in terms of a business idea. And I was excited about the prospect of having a little bit more structure and people around me who are, who are excited about pursuing a similar path. And so I,
• 4:40
  When I was there, began testing and researching. And I think that's the first step in any idea. And from other friends of mine who are entrepreneurs, they say that too. It's understanding your customer. It's understanding what other solutions are out there. So I really dove right in after I graduated.
• 4:58
  I was fortunate enough to join with my mother, actually. Her name is Edith Cooper, in building the business. She realized that there was such a big opportunity in her background. You know, she was a leading finance and HR executive. She was running HR at Goldman Sachs for 10 years and then ran a lot of businesses there.
• 5:17
  it was the sort of perfect combination of both of our lived experiences. And so about two years ago, we were off to the races and yeah, I'm happy to dig in on more of the tactical day ones, if that's helpful, but it's certainly been an adventure ever since.
• 5:33
  Gosh, it sounds like it. And it also just sounds so special to be working alongside your mom and learning from her as you go. Before we just jump into the how, what are the kinds of things that she's taught you since launching the business together?
• 5:48
  Oh, and it is very special. And I do feel very lucky to get to work with her. Some of the things that she's taught me, trusting your intuition is a really huge one. I'm really someone who loves to have all the data and know as much as I can about a given topic. But when you're running a company and starting something, you don't have a lot of data. So that approach actually doesn't really work. You need to be able to read what you're seeing, but you also need to be able
• 6:16
  need to have the confidence to really trust your own instinct. And she, uh, has just helped me become more confident in my own instinct. And I've also just seen her time and time again, um, really be clear about, no, I think we should do X, Y, Z. I think we should hire this person. Uh, and, and, uh, that's really helped me as well.
• 6:36
  I think the other thing that I've realized is just an important life skill that I've learned a lot from her is her ability to connect with people and to listen to them and to help them feel heard and seen as themselves. And that shows up in a lot of different forums, you know, whether it's she and I approaching working with a partner, you know, working with a freelance designer or working with someone.
• 7:03
  you know, another potential company as a partnership, she can go into meetings and get people on the same team in a way that is truly her unique special skill in the world. And so I've also learned a lot about how to connect with people and motivate people. And from that point of view, it's really just like listening to them and coming in with an open mind.
• 7:29
  Gosh, that just sounds so amazing. I love that. Okay, so you have the idea. How do you then go about actually bringing this to life? What are the steps that you used to launch this business, get it off the ground, get it funded potentially, you know, that kind of thing?
• 7:46
  Yes. So first thing we wanted to do was to both really understand the problem that our customer is experiencing, as well as start to test out initial versions of the solution. So we really dove deep into the problem first, because we just felt like,
• 8:02
  we weren't going to be able to make decisions on the product side without having that deep, deep expertise. And so what that meant for us, we did interviews. We did interviews both with people who we knew as well as people who we didn't know. And what was fun about the interviews that we were doing for Medley and something that I think
• 8:20
  honestly, is because so many products and services can impact multiple parts of people's lives, that experience is actually really fun because I got to even just get to know my friends who I was asking in a very clear way. So step one was really writing down, okay, here are the questions that I want to ask, making sure that they were open-ended enough and not leading and gave people space to share really what their experience was like, making a list of, okay, these are the types of people I want to interview.
• 8:50
  setting those up, taking copious notes, going through it again, talking about that with them with Edith. We did focus groups, we did surveys, and we really spent three to four months just understanding, okay, how are people going about finding community and growth in their lives now? And what does that look like? People are setting goals for themselves. Some people I spoke to had their own systems where they were setting goals every year and they did like little annual reviews for themselves.
• 9:16
  I love that. Yeah, I also did a lot of competitive research. So I went and looked at existing programs out there, courses, you know, there's everything from self-help books to life coaching programs to individual one-on-one coaching. And that was also really helpful to understand, okay, here's what's working in the existing solution set. And here where we see the opportunities are.
• 9:41
  So that was probably the first four to six months of Medley. And then from there, we started prototyping the group experience. And so we held free group sessions for us to work out the content, the coaches, the group composition, those types of things.
• 9:57
  But I think that that framework of really, okay, understanding the problem, understanding the solution, then starting to test on the solution as soon as possible is pretty applicable to any type of business. And looking back, I think the only thing, the thing that I would really wish that I did sooner was to push to test even faster than we did before. And I think that's something we're working on now is just continuing to iterate. Got it. I have a few questions on different points that you mentioned. Going back to the interview process, how many kind of
• 10:27
  people did you interview? Probably 20 to 25 in that very first batch, but we've done different sort of sprints of interviews since then. So overall we've spoken to, you know, a couple hundred people, a lot of people over the past two years, but you know, what we found was after 10, 15 interviews,
• 10:51
  you become able to anticipate what the person's going to say. Interestingly, you know, there's certainly a wide variance in people's experiences, but there's certainly a path to identifying different customer personas. And, you know, there are diminishing returns after doing more than 15, I think. Got it. And when you were asking those questions, what were the clear problems that were coming out of that? And was anything unexpected? Yeah.
• 11:21
  Yeah. So I think one of the clear problems, I mean,
• 11:26
  One was that there were a lot of communities out there and people were saying, oh, there's a lot of, you know, there's membership club type things where you go to a place. There's social media where that's definitely a community where I show up with people. There's free panels and events and speaker series that you can go to. But the consistent pain point on the community piece was just that there's a lot of low engagement and sort of lower commitment type experiences. Yeah.
• 11:53
  And what we heard from people was that they really liked that. They liked being able to just drop into a speaker event or something they find on Eventbrite. But they weren't really necessarily meeting people or forming new relationships in a way that they were hoping for. So, you know, that we just saw was a really big learning from the community standpoint. And even just talking to people who belong to various membership type clubs, because originally Medley was going to be an in-person experience. Yeah.
• 12:22
  We just heard a lot of really consistent feedback that, yes, you know, I feel connected to others in the sense that there's people around me, but I'm not meeting these people. I'm not forming new relationships. And that's where our big insight was like, you know what, there's a lot of lower commitment type experiences out there, but the best benefits often come from really being engaged and from really being committed to other people. And yet those like high commitment experiences are really hard to access.
• 12:50
  You know, I had a really incredible experience when I was at business school where I took a leadership course and I had a learning group of six and we spent two hours together every single week. Nobody missed a session. It was utmost confidentiality. And
• 13:06
  That just jumped out at me as, wait a second, like, why is there so, why is it so difficult to ask this experience like this, if you're just sort of a broader consumer? So I think that was the biggest thing on the community front. And then on the growth front, people were just saying that they felt like there were a lot of individual practitioners out there and a lot of content, very targeted things. But it was the integration that they found challenging.
• 13:29
  where it's like, yeah, I can think about how to grow my career, but what does that mean for the rest of my life? Or how am I going to think about fulfillment outside of work and my relationships? And what does that mean? And so it was that integration, that sort of messier space where, you know, you're, everyone's exploring and trying to figure out how it all comes together is something that people also found difficult. Totally. That all resonates with me when you're
• 13:57
  When you moved on to building the product out and deciding what these group sessions were going to be like, what that structure looks like over two months, three months, six months, what is it like? What happens when someone gets into a typical like monthly, I think I read that it's 90 minute catch ups. Yep. And what's the format? What does it look like?
• 14:17
  Yeah. So the way it works is the group meets every month and it's a year long commitment. But in the first month, there is an extra meeting. And that's because we found that we need an extra session for the group to really gel and get to know one another and sort of set their ambitions over the course of the year.
• 14:34
  So even backing up before the group experience, people fill out a pretty detailed application, which we use to match the groups of people together. And it's in the matching, actually, that really creates a big piece of the Medley group experience and something that we view as our sort of competitive differentiator compared to other types of businesses.
• 14:54
  And so what we've been able to do is we've been able to match people together that have a similarity in terms of what they're trying to get out of the medley experience and their sort of broader priorities. But we also really push for a diversity of experiences and diversity of perspectives.
• 15:10
  And so throughout the year, they go through a journey that is charted for them at the start with their coach. So the coach is in every single session and is leading that for them. And it's a series of exercises reflecting on topics like leadership, values, your relationships, relationships.
• 15:27
  self-awareness and a huge piece of the benefit is not only in the content, but also in the live coaching that the coach is able to provide. So right now the sessions take place via Zoom. We have people in the community from all over the world. So I think it's 11 countries and 20 states in the US. And then the group is also sort of engaging with one another and checking in in between the sessions.
• 15:51
  Um, we also have developed and really invested in our programming outside of the group and everything for us is like, how can we make this as engaging, uh, and as interactive as possible? So everything is pretty small format. Um, we do workshops and we do conversations and we are really collaborative with their community in creating experiences that people are asking for and that they want. So we got a question, like we'd love to have a session on entrepreneurship and we were able to make that happen. So...
• 16:19
  Yeah, that's kind of how the experience is now. And we have a big vision for what we want this to be in the future. You know, creating a digital product to augment the group experience and the membership, really thinking about how people can understand their own growth over time and how technology can enable them to do that. But we're certainly trying to really just now focus on our first our first customers.
• 16:42
  Yeah, gosh, that sounds so fascinating and so needed because when do you have those kinds of conversations? And, you know, for the for the average person, you know, getting a coach can be very expensive. It can be, you know, you've really got to rely on a good recommendation or know someone. So, yeah, that's it's such an interesting problem that you're solving. And I really do see the benefit.
• 17:04
  I want to go back to that early, you know, once you're ready to launch and once you're ready to bring on your first batch of customers and the first batch of people who are going through the program. I did read that you launched.
• 17:16
  with a pilot program. Is that correct? For the beginning? Yeah. Yeah. So we, we did a pilot last year, actually. So we had a shorter term, it was just two months. It was free to participate. And we had five groups really for us to validate
• 17:36
  validate Medley a little bit further, but also to test out the matching as well as the coaches. And this past summer, we launched in July 2020. So just a few months ago, we launched with discounted pricing. So a founding membership. And I would say the biggest thing about pre-launch and sort of launch is...
• 17:58
  We definitely didn't feel ready, but I don't think any founder I've spoken to really feels like fully ready for the day that you sort of press go. And so what we've really tried to do is frame it as, you know, we're continuing to learn and we will be continuing to learn even as the business grows from where it is now to hopefully, you know, reaching thousands, if not millions of people one day. So, you know, that's we really try to infuse learning into every aspect of what we're doing. But we were really happy with how the launch went this summer.
• 18:28
  And how did you launch? What were the kinds of things you were doing in marketing to attract people to sign up and reach new audiences? Yeah. So for us, we were really lucky in that the press was really excited about our story and what we were bringing to the table. I think two Black women founders is pretty rare, as well as mother-daughter team is also pretty rare, as well as the fact that we're doing something that is certainly different from a lot of things that are out there.
• 18:57
  So we were fortunate enough to be featured in several different publications. We were in Forbes, Fast Company, TechCrunch. And the thing about press is you don't really know. We did some interviews. We weren't really sure what was going to come out, of course, from those interviews. And we were sort of hopeful.
• 19:15
  And we told them, okay, this is the day that we're launching. You can't publish anything until then. And so on the day itself, we did everything from sending an email to our existing email list of people who had attended a free session or something like that, as well as our immediate networks and the networks on our team. And so we probably emailed personally, maybe a couple thousand people, as well as posted on social media and asked...
• 19:42
  people directly who we knew who had bigger followers. Hey, Hey,
• 19:47
  like would be incredible if you could support our lodge by resharing this, like really, really appreciate it. And I think that's something that I would encourage anyone to do. It's a pretty easy ask and people love to be supportive if they know you. And so I think that's something that I wish that we'd actually even been more organized around is just really tapping our networks and friends of friends and things like that to ask for sort of that organic boost. But yeah,
• 20:14
  Yeah, our launch was a combination of press, email, and starting to post on social media. Is it also part of your strategy to actually kind of connect with bigger companies and get like a whole company on board? I'm aware that like they wouldn't have them together, but like bringing in, you know, the company aspect versus like the individual.
• 20:35
  Yeah. So we're currently exploring that still. And we already have a few B2B business to business clients, actually, who are paying for Medley membership for a few of their employees. And we definitely view that as a core part of our strategy and the opportunity that we see going forward. And especially with Edith's background, you know, she knows a lot. She knows a lot of CEOs. She knows a lot of CHROs, the chief HR officers around the country. And, you know, she's on the board of three public companies.
• 21:05
  We view that as another area that we really want to lean in more on. And at this point, we're talking to a couple more business-to-business partners, but really fleshing out, if anything, how we would change and adapt the Medley experience or deliver even more value to companies. But we really are doing that because of a reaction to what happened this summer where we got so much inbound interest. We got so much...
• 21:30
  It meant interest from people who wanted to get their companies to pay for their Medley membership, from people who worked at companies and were interested in providing it. And so we sort of had to adapt and try to seize that opportunity for sure. Totally. Sounds amazing for companies for sure.
• 21:47
  I always love to ask about the money side of things, how you were funding it in the beginning. I know you've done a fundraise now as well and how that kind of evolved. And then when you're talking about the fundraise, you know, how that experience was and what was it that you learned during that process?
• 22:05
  Yeah. So we closed around a little over a million dollars earlier this year in January. And it was primarily from, you know, a couple angel investors who are also entrepreneurs. You know, one VC fund put in a small check for them and...
• 22:22
  And yeah, it was mostly, it was mostly entrepreneurs actually. And we set out to raise in Q4 of 20 of last year, thinking that we could raise, you know, two to 3 million. We'd done a pilot. We had really good traction and data from that. And it was a really difficult experience. It was really hard, harder than we thought it was going to be. And so, you know, there's some tactical learnings I have from the process, but
• 22:49
  you know, everyone says, make sure that you're careful about when you have meetings and you're not raising until you get your first check in. And there's sort of this whole...
• 22:59
  sort of mumbo jumbo and unspoken language that happens in the fundraising process. So basic things, you know, making sure you have a very clear target spreadsheet of who you want to talk to. You track all of your calls, all of your notes, every question that you're asked, you should be writing it down because you're going to get that question again. So that's a very simple tactical thing. Recognize that it's a numbers game and that we probably did
• 23:27
  60 or 70 meetings and got four or five yeses. But I have friends who took, you know, 100 plus meetings and ended up with, you know, seven or eight yeses. And I didn't fully recognize that beforehand. And I think if I had, I would have just been a lot more aggressive about saying, okay, I'm going to do all my first meetings within these two weeks.
• 23:50
  And then hopefully see what happens next. But the more you can sort of stack those conversations, the more you can get momentum in the process. And that's what it's really all about at this early stage. Yeah.
• 24:01
  Yeah, gosh, it's so many meetings and I've spoken to women who have been like, you know, it took me 200 or 300 meetings to get my first yes kind of thing. Like really that grind of back to back to back. Like someone I spoke to was like, we did like six meetings a day, like, you know, something crazy or six calls or whatever it was. And you really have to get comfortable with rejection and people being like, no, sorry, not interested. I don't get it or, you know, whatever. Mm-hmm.
• 24:29
  which is, it's a tough learning curve, I think. It's really hard. It's a good life experience though, because, you know, up until this point, I've been super lucky to be able to go to incredible educational institutions. I really love school and, you know, enjoyed that experience. I hadn't had a lot of no's like this before, before we started fundraising. And I think ultimately it's really increased my resilience and, you know,
• 24:57
  And as well as my, it broke down my confidence a little bit, but now I'm sort of building it back up again and building that muscle of, okay, just because someone says no to you, it doesn't reflect on you. It most likely has a lot to do with whatever they're dealing with. And the practice of just being able to respond with, you know, confidence and self-assuredness is a pretty valuable life, life practice for sure. Oh, 100%, 100%.
• 25:24
  What are the kinds of challenges that you face in building the business today? And what's happening kind of now for building the business? You know, I think one of our biggest challenges is that sort of this broader opportunity of intentional community, as well as like growth experiences, it's certainly becoming more crowded. So there's a lot of...
• 25:47
  group programs. There's a lot of online memberships with content. And the space is certainly becoming more competitive. And so I think I view that actually as a challenge and an opportunity because I think it'll force us to really crystallize and emphasize our differentiators and our value proposition ahead of, not ahead of, but in the face of other businesses. And so
• 26:12
  You know, right now we're doing a lot of testing on the go-to-market front, really trying to build out and think through, you know, how we're going to reach new audiences and share the Medley story. You know, we're going to test different types of content, of course, social as well as, you know, as part of social exploring LinkedIn even further. I think there's a big opportunity on LinkedIn as a platform, actually.
• 26:37
  So, yeah, I think that's really the biggest thing for us is how we can reach reach the right people. Totally. Absolutely. I guess that's a big challenge that any business has to face and figuring out where their people actually are hanging out, you know, online in real life, all that kind of thing and finding ways to get in front of them and spread that message. What advice do you have for women who have a big idea and want to launch their own business?
• 27:04
  I would say two things, which one, which I mentioned earlier is really just test, test, test and do it before you feel like you're ready. Put up a landing page. You can spend $50 on Facebook or Instagram ads and you can learn something from just $50 and talk to as many people as you can and do.
• 27:25
  Don't be so precious with the idea itself because so much is in the execution. I would say the other thing is to ask for help much more than you want to instinctively. I've been amazed at how willing people are to share their knowledge, share their expertise, make an introduction, give me feedback on something. But you definitely have to ask for it. And that's something that I certainly have learned over time and wish I had taken to heart much sooner.
• 27:53
  Yeah, I've heard that one as well from other women on the show. And it's something that sometimes it doesn't feel easy to ask and you're like afraid to take that to take that step. But then you're it's often the case that you're met with such a beautiful response of people going above and beyond and really wanting to help. And you're like, wow, there is so much support out there. But you have to take that leap forward and and, you know, possibly also face not hearing back from someone or whatever it is. Yeah, I totally understand that.
• 28:21
  We are up to the six quick questions part of the episode. Question number one is what's your why? To create experiences and help people be their best. I...
• 28:38
  I personally love being on a team and in a group experience where people are just rowing in the same direction and are supporting one another. And I want to make those types of experiences available to anyone who wants one. And I try to do that even just in my personal life and how I show up in the world.
• 28:56
  And the other one, the other big why for me is, is there's so few examples of black women entrepreneurs and success stories. And I really believe that Edith and I have a responsibility to try and make Medley as great as it can be, because we need more examples of black women success, especially in entrepreneurship. And I just feel like with so much privilege that I have at this point to be able to start a company. I can't let that go to waste.
• 29:26
  Oh, 100%. So true. Absolutely. Question number two is what's been the number one marketing moment that's made your business pop? For us, it was definitely launch. Um, it was, we, it was, and it was the press around launch for sure. Um, it really told our story from different facets and different directions, um, from day one. And I think it just, it just helped us establish a level of credibility, uh, that, that would have been challenging.
• 29:56
  Yeah, totally. You got some really amazing press and just so cool to have companies like Fast Company or Fortune or, you know, those really huge hitting media brands coming out and supporting you and giving that credibility from day one. So cool. Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What are you reading? What are you listening to? What other corners of the internet are you on? Yes. To get smarter, I'm
• 30:25
  I'm really into listening to memoirs. And so I'll listen to audio books and I'll listen to memoirs. But to be honest, for me, the biggest, the biggest things that I find will spark inspiration is like reading different fiction books and thinking about different parts of the world and different people's life experiences. I think for the business that Edith and I are building, we really need to be able to like connect to humanity. And so I,
• 30:53
  Of course, I spend time on Twitter and I follow a ton of really smart and savvy sort of business type people. And I'm very exposed and plugged into like startup business culture. But yeah, for me, fiction really helps me expand my mind and feel sort of more connected to the human experience. Do you have any recommendations of, you know, your favorites?
• 31:14
  Yeah, I read a great book recently called Anxious People that was written by a Swedish author. And I really enjoyed reading it. The other book that I really love lately is The Three-Body Problem. It's a sci-fi book that is written from a Chinese perspective. And so much of the literature that I usually read is written by very Western or American or British point of view. And just hearing...
• 31:41
  And reading this, this exploration of what the world could be like in the future from a very different perspective was, was really powerful. Yeah, that sounds really cool. I'm going to link them in the show notes for this episode for anyone listening who wants to check those out. Question number four is how do you win the day? And that's around your AM and PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and motivated and successful and productive.
• 32:06
  So in the morning, my husband and I got a dog. And so we have minimum 30 minutes, sometimes an hour walking with him. And the three of us will walk together through our neighborhood. And that has become an incredibly calming morning ritual. I get a matcha from the coffee shop right across the street. And we sometimes go to the dog park. And so especially during these times, you know, getting some fresh air is really critical. Yeah.
• 32:30
  Um, I also do make my best effort to work out, um, probably four days a week, three or four days a week. And for me, um, I've really been working on, uh, accepting that the, the world right now is sort of very much out of my control. And so every little thing that I can do for myself feels like a victory. And so, um, I've really been working on my own inner dialogue around, especially exercise, you know, it doesn't need to be a super intense, you know,
• 32:59
  hour long run. I used to be an athlete in college and it can just be a 20 minute run or it can be a 30 minute yoga session. And that's still a win and it still counts as taking time for myself. And then lastly, I really do try to wind down at the end of the day. And it's nothing that unexpected, watching TV and cooking food and trying out different recipes. My husband certainly helped give me joy.
• 33:27
  Totally. Me too. I'm getting a dog in two weeks and I am just so excited. What kind of dog? She is a little chihuahua and she is just so heaven. She's just so heaven. I'm so excited. So I totally just...
• 33:45
  feel like I'm going to be you in two weeks time when I can like go and walk at the dog park. Totally release the, release the stress for a walk with the dog. Um, where were we? Question number five, if you only had a thousand dollars left in your business bank account, where would you spend it? A thousand dollars left. I would, I would,
• 34:10
  I would spend it for us. So much of Medley is really around the group experience and around like the membership community. And so I would actually invest in our current membership and probably, you know, I would put that towards, you know, five more programming sessions and hope that that benefit would really come back in form of referrals, which has also been a huge source of marketing for us. Because yeah, in thinking through, you know, where I'd spend it,
• 34:39
  I'd really want to be enhancing value for our current customers, given that it's such an ongoing experience, because I really deeply believe that if we're delivering on what we hope to, that that is what's going to enable the sort of a flywheel of sharing the medley story that we're hoping for. Totally. Absolutely. Question number six. Last question is how do you deal with failure? And that can be around a personal experience or just your general mindset and approach.
• 35:08
  Uh, so I let myself react and I let myself feel sad because, uh, I'm a human who of course does not like to be rejected, but I also give myself a time period of where, okay, I'm going to let myself be sad about X, Y, Z, and then I'm going to close the book. I'm going to put it in a drawer and I'm going to move on. And I'm going to ask myself a couple of questions. I'm going to say, okay, okay.
• 35:32
  like, what can I learn from this situation? What can I learn that can be applied to the next situation? And, you know, I really try to embrace a growth mindset across every aspect of my life and into sort of the culture of the medley team. And so an incredible book I'd also recommend is, is growth mindset actually by Carol Dweck. It's a, just a classic. And it's,
• 35:54
  yeah, I let myself feel sad. I let myself feel that low, but then I also really try to move on and focus on learnings going forward. Love that. Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. I've really loved chatting with you and I'm so excited to see, you know, how the brand goes and grows rather and what's to, what's to come. Thank you so much, June. It was really wonderful chatting with you. Um, enjoy the rest of your day.
• 36:24
  Hey, 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.
• 36:49
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 37:11
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.
• 37:28
  Hey, 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.
• 37:52
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 38:15
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.