Career Memos withSarina

Most startups fail, but, as today's guest Jessica Chang reminds us, it's what you do with the failure that matters. What can you learn from the experience? What will you do better next time?

Jessica is the CEO and Co-Founder of Upwards, the largest childcare network in the United States, which connects families with trusted providers through an online marketplace and partners with government entities to improve access to sponsored care.

Upwards experienced major challenges during the pandemic, losing 90% of their revenue overnight! While they made major cuts and pivots to survive, they came out stronger than ever with a new business model and product.

In this episode, Jessica shares her inspiring story about co-founding Upwards, how she compartmentalizes her time as a Mom, her motivation to work 12 hours a day, plus her advice for fellow co-founders (especially co-founders who are parents!)

At the end of the day, she says it's not the hardest-working person who wins – it's the person who is the smartest with their time.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Jessica's background in finance and the pivotal turning point that made her change paths out of finance and into entrepreneurship
• Her efforts to learn about the childcare industry's biggest problems, which involved interviewing 200+ providers and becoming a preschool owner/operator while pregnant
• Why the loneliness of entrepreneurship inspired Jessica to bring on co-founders, how they work together, and what each of their strengths are
• The pandemic's effect on Upwards, dropping 90% of revenues overnight, and how they got through it by making cuts and creating a new product
• How Jessica balances parenthood and being a Mom, the value of compartmentalizing time, and the importance of having a WHY during very difficult days

LINKS/RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Learn more about Jessica Chang's company, Upwards (formerly WeeCare), which is the largest childcare network in the United States.

Sarina is a career coach and consultant who works with startup leaders and entrepreneurs. Connect with her on her website, on Instagram, via email, and check out more episodes of the Career Memos podcast.

Pivoting a business is a risky and difficult decision to make. How do you know it's the right choice? Today's guest, Amira Rasool, says you've got to listen to the market, to the people around you, and most importantly, to your gut.

Amira is the founder and CEO of The Folklore Group, a supply chain software company that helps retailers access underrepresented brands, particularly from untapped markets in Africa, South America, Asia, and the Caribbean.

She's been taking business risks since she was a teenager, when she'd skip school to attend New York Fashion Week. In college, she interned at various fashion magazines and launched an online thrift store called Midnight Marauders. When it came time to start her own business, her inspiration came during a trip to Cape Town.

Amira shares all the details of the origin story of Folklore and the MAJOR pivot she made in 2022, turning Folklore into a solely B2B business – and how this has allowed her to build something she is passionate about that supports underrepresented people all over the world.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Amira's beginning in the fashion space: her blog, fashion magazine internships (Women's Wear Daily, Marie Clare, V Magazine) and her online thrift store
• Warm introductions and building trusting relationships, which Amira accessed by being a member of the press and through Techstars
• How Amira leveraged Techstars to build relationships and get the intros she needed in order to raise $1.7 million in pre-seed funding
• Direct-to-consumer vs. business-to-business – how Folklore tried to do both at first, but eventually pivoted to focus on B2B in 2022
• The impact the murder of George Floyd had on demand for Black designers, including those that Folklore worked with

LINKS/RESOURCES MENTIONED

Learn about the work Amira is doing at The Folklore Group and The Folklore Connect, a premium B2B wholesale platform.

Sarina is a career coach and consultant who works with startup leaders and entrepreneurs. Connect with her on her website, on Instagram, via email, and check out more episodes of the Career Memos podcast.

When Victoria Thain Gioia co-founded Perelel Health, she was a self-proclaimed "Type A Millennial Mom" who wanted better maternal supplements – especially after her daughter was born with a nutritional deficiency.

Within 6 weeks of launching, Perelel was shipping to all 50 states! She thinks part of the company's success is due to their ability to make moms feel seen through every step of their pregnancy – and during pregnancy loss, too.

In this episode, Victoria talks in-depth about what it's like to run a company with her co-founder and co-CEO, Alex Taylor. Defined roles and communication, both about professional and personal matters, has helped them have tough conversations with a deeper understanding of what the other person is going through.

There were a lot of risks involved with starting Perelel, and Victoria is a self-described "risk-averse" person. But just like with having kids, there never is a perfect time. If you feel passionate about it, you just have to do it and get through, one bite at a time. IN THIS EPISODE:

• Victoria's career journey, from merchandising at J.Crew, investment banking, and then business school – and her mission to create better supplements after her daughter was born with a cleft lip
• How Perelel broke through the noise of maternal supplements through authenticity and making moms feel seen and were shipping to all 50 states within 6 weeks of launching
• Inside Victoria and Alex's partnership, including their clearly defined roles and how they navigate tough conversations
• How Victoria built warm relationships with seed investors early on – and using this feedback to propel the company forward
• The unexpected challenges Victoria and Alex faced with funding and bootstrapping at the beginning of the pandemic

LINKS/RESOURCES MENTIONED

Learn more about the company Victoria Thain Gioia founded with her co-CEO Alex Taylor, Perelel Health.

Sarina is a career coach and consultant who works with startup leaders and entrepreneurs. Connect with her on her website, on Instagram, via email, and check out more episodes of the Career Memos podcast.

What are you good at? What is your "secret sauce?" And more importantly, what are you not good at? What should you get help with so your company can grow?

These are some of the questions posed by today's guest, Nicole Wegman, the founder and CEO of Ring Concierge, one of the fastest-growing fine jewelry companies in America, which focuses on designs for women, by women.

Nicole founded her company with just a $2,000 investment in 2013 after ring shopping with her now husband in the Diamond District in Manhattan. At the time, it seemed like every other jeweler was an antiquated, generational, family-run business. Few had any kind of ecommerce presence or understood millennial shopping behavior.

I'm excited for you to hear Nicole's journey of self-funding her business, to growing a team and how she became profitable. She's done some pretty badass stuff, and is full of great advice for all the founders out there.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Nicole's background in the fashion industry (majoring in fiber science and apparel design at Cornell, then working at Macy's and Bloomingdale's) and how she fell into the jewelry world
• How starting things very small and investing profits back into the business each year allowed Ring Concierge to be fiscally responsible, privately-held, and self-funded
• How Nicole acquired office space, grew to a team of 60, and became one of the first in her industry to utilize Instagram
• The pros and cons of starting a business with funding vs. without, and the power of transparency
• The magic of hiring people who can help you with the aspects of the business you're not comfortable with, and the importance of relying on your gut
• Why Nicole hired a CMO, and how she's thinking about leveraging other social media platforms to create a Gen-Z funnel

LINKS/RESOURCES MENTIONED

Connect with Nicole on LinkedIn. You can follow Ring Concierge on Instagram and check out their website!

Nicole also recommends The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, which is what she read when she started her business.

Sarina is a career coach and consultant who works with startup leaders and entrepreneurs. Connect with her on her website, on Instagram, via email, and check out more episodes of the Career Memos podcast.

Henley Vazquez, co-founder of Fora, is creating opportunities and jobs for people who love travel and want to turn their passion into income.

One of the worst pieces of advice she received early in her career was to hire a certain kind of person. When you do that, your company becomes an echo chamber, where everyone has the same expertise. There's no diversity. So when she launched Fora, a modern travel agency helping people plan their dream trips, she started it with two co-founders, each offering a different level of expertise.

In today's episode, Henley talks in depth about the importance of relationships in a company – between the leadership, staff, and investors – and gives us a peek behind the curtain into her thoughts on failure.

Plus, she shares the ups and downs she's experienced as a founder, from having to close a company amidst a worldwide pandemic, to finally starting something that has meaning to her. IN THIS EPISODE:

• Henley's growing up experience on a Virginia farm, attending Princeton, taking a job at Town and Country, and eventually finding her way into the travel industry
• Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable (and the idea you can learn anything by getting on the bike and pedaling)
• How Henley started her own travel agency, Passported, in 2014, and the decision to shut it down in the midst of the pandemic
• The intricacies of travel advising, including its similarities to real estate and what it takes to become an advisor
• How Henley pivoted her career and started Fora with two co-founders, each with clear expertise and roles (from tech, to business, to travel), which took the burden off launching a business solely on her own
• Starting a company "from her bootstraps" vs. going the venture capital route, and the importance of getting answers fast so you can get to that "yes" so much faster

LINKS/RESOURCES MENTIONED

Follow Henley on Instagram and learn about her company Fora. If you want to turn your travel obsession into your next career move, you can also join the waitlist to become a travel advisor (P.S. Use code CareerMemos to get to the front of the list)!

Sarina is a career coach and consultant who works with startup leaders and entrepreneurs. Connect with her on her website, on Instagram, via email, and check out more episodes of the Career Memos podcast.

What do you want your life to look like? Can you imagine it? Can you picture yourself there?

According to today's guest Kat Garcia, imagination has been instrumental in getting her to where she is today – from television actress to co-founder and co-CEO of Ground, an AI-powered assistant for brand owners and growth marketers.

Kat began working at 14, when she was cast in a show. To be a successful actress, Kat says you have to be relentless, and you have to have a strong imagination. As adults, it can be hard to protect our imaginations. There are so many variables coming at you, and so many brilliant people don't take the leap!

Her advice? Lay out your fears. Our fears are valid, and if you're acting from a place of constraint, you'll never be honest with yourself. It's okay to consider different options. What are you afraid of? And what are the steps you need to take to succeed?

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Kat's background as a television actress during her teenage years, which helped propel her into the corporate world
• The relentlessness required of acting that served Kat later on in her career – she became well practiced at not taking "no" for an answer
• Kat's journey to co-founding Ground, from being selected by the startup accelerator Techstars, to a 3-hour conversation with her co-CEO before taking the plunge
• The importance of imagination and visualization, from filling in holes to imagining ourselves in certain places despite the fears we may have
• How Kat's network eventually led her to where she is today, plus, her advice for potential founders and people who are in the thick of it

LINKS/RESOURCES MENTIONED

Kat Garcia is the co-founder and co-CEO of Ground. Learn more about Ground's powerful AI tools on their website and their upcoming collaboration with the Tory Burch Foundation.

Sarina is a career coach and consultant who works with startup leaders and entrepreneurs. Connect with her on her website, on Instagram, via email, and check out more episodes of the Career Memos podcast.

If you're ready to leverage your influence at work and make a serious impact, you'll love this conversation with Mary Sheehan, who held a long-time Product Marketing role at Google before becoming a Marketing Lead at Adobe.

Mary shares so many gems of wisdom about growing your leadership muscle on a team, how she built up her product marketing expertise and why she finds it valuable to oscillate between larger companies and startups.

You'll also hear about her podcast, Women In Product Marketing, and how it's served as a passion project to give back and be a mentor to others in the industry. Enjoy!

LINKS/RESOURCES MENTIONED

Adobe

Careers at Adobe

Listen to Mary's Podcast, Women In Product Marketing

Sharebird, Mary's peer-to-peer networking company for product marketers

The Three Signs of a Miserable Job by Patrick Lencioni

Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One by Jenny Blake

The Job Seeker Lab withSarina - Enrollment Is Now Open!

Sarina's Free Networking & Job Search Tracker

As a huge fan of sci-fi fantasy novels, Chelsea Maclin has always been fascinated by artificial intelligence. And today, she's the Chief Marketing Officer at Lunchclub, an AI-powered social networking platform for professionals that engineers incredible connections and conversations to help you build your network around the world. If you've been listening to Career Memos for awhile, you know how much I value the art of networking and why it's so important.

Chelsea's career journey is fascinating. She worked her way up to leading the publisher development team at influencer platform rewardStyle before joining Bumble as a Director of Marketing when they were just a team of 6 or 7. We talk about the rewarding phases of early stage startups, her day in the life as a CMO, how she's built her team, and why Twitter is an amazing place to start building your network. Enjoy!

Lunchclub

Careers at Lunchclub

The Job Seeker Lab withSarina - Enrollment Is Now Open!

Sarina's Free Networking & Job Search Tracker

Jiggy is a DTC brand for beautiful puzzles featuring the designs of emerging female artists. Founder & CEO Kaylin Marcotte was inspired to launch Jiggy after enjoying the ritual of finishing a puzzle week after week, but finding the designs dated and ordinary. Self-care was heating up, and it was the ultimate way for her to find presence and unwind without the glare of screens and technology.

As the first employee for trending newsletter company theSkimm, Kaylin quickly caught the entrepreneurial bug, and after bootstrapping Jiggy for awhile, she landed an amazing opportunity to pitch the sharks on Shark Tank at the beginning of the pandemic.

Kaylin shares the behind the scenes details of what it was like to be on the show during the beginning of the pandemic, how she prepared for the influx of attention, and what came out of it, along with the importance of taking bets on yourself. I know you'll enjoy hearing her story today.

LINKS/RESOURCES MENTIONED

Jiggy

Follow @jiggypuzzles on Instagram

The Job Seeker Lab withSarina - Enrollment Is Now Open!

Sarina's Free Networking & Job Search Tracker

Michelle Arnau is the CEO & Co-Founder of Rowan, the first of its kind clean beauty brand for dogs. Disrupting a category that was previously uninspired and desperately seeking change, Michelle went from launching with just 5 products to getting features in Sunset and goop and raising a seed round just a few months in.

Learn how 11 years at method shaped Michelle's career journey and honed her leadership skills and style, and the importance of having trusted mentors early on.

Michelle describes what it was like to raise capital for the first time and shares so many helpful tips about pitch decks, tapping into the investor community, and how to find the right investor. This conversation is jam-packed with so much inspiration! Enjoy.

LINKS/RESOURCES MENTIONED

Rowan

Follow Rowan on Instagram

The Job Seeker Lab withSarina - Enrollment Is Now Open!

Sarina's Free Networking & Job Search Tracker