Future Tribe - Business Podcast

On this episode of the podcast, we had a chance to chat with the founder of the CBR Gals, Rae Knopik. For those who don’t know, the CBR Gals is a not-for-profit organisation that focuses on helping females in Canberra connect and support one another through networking events. As Rae says in the episode, she started this initiative simply because she wanted it to exist. Being an American transplant, our guest knew all too well about how hard it is to find ways to connect with like-minded individuals in a way that isn’t forced or time-consuming. Despite realising this dream, however, our guest now faces a new set of challenges due to COVID-19. Thus Rae spends a great deal of the show discussing how she has adapted to running CBR Gals in this ‘new normal’, as well as the process behind running large scale events more generally. In this discussion, Rae highlights that authenticity, collaboration, and careful planning are the cornerstones of any successful event. Following this, the show then concludes (ironically we might add) with a discussion about how men being more closed off emotionally would make it difficult to create a group similar to the CBR Gals for males. 

What we talk about

• The CBR Gals and what networks like it can offer

Links from this episode

https://cbrgals.com/ (CBR Gals Website)

https://www.facebook.com/cbrgals (CBR Gals of Facebook)

https://www.instagram.com/cbrgals/(CBR Gals on Instagram)

https://twitter.com/cbrgals (CBR Gals on Twitter)

Find us elsewhere

https://futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe Website)

https://www.instagram.com/futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe on Instagram)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/germainemuller/ (Germaine on LinkedIn)

https://www.instagram.com/germa_ne/ (Germaine on Instagram)

https://futuretheory.com.au/ (Futuretheory Website)

Transcript 

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated automatically and as such, may contain various spelling and syntax errors

[00:00:00] Rae: [00:00:00] But we did not get the grant and we're about two weeks out. And $20,000 down,

[00:00:10] Intro: [00:00:10] welcome to the Future Tribe podcast, where we're all about taking your future to the next level, whether it is interviewing guests or unpacking strategies, you know, we will be talking about getting things done and backing you a fellow optimistic, go get up. And now as always, here's your host, the formidable fortunate and highly favoured 

[00:00:31] Germaine Muller.

[00:00:34] Germaine: [00:00:34] Hello, future tribe. Welcome to another episode of the podcast on this week's episode, I've got Rae Knopik from CBR, gals or Canberra gals. Um, how are you today? Right. 

[00:00:44] Rae: [00:00:44] Great. Thanks for having me. 

[00:00:45] Germaine: [00:00:45] No worries. It's really good to have you. One of our first guests was Georgie from the women's collective. Um, and when I saw your name pop up and, and what you guys do, I sort of thought, ah, there's, there's some synergies [00:01:00] there.

[00:01:00] I'm sure between. What the women's collective do or, or used to do. And then, um, what you guys do, um, tell me a bit, bit more about what you aim to do. 

[00:01:09] Rae: [00:01:09] Great. Thank you. Um, the Cambra gals network is a feminist not-for-profit organization that focuses on enabling every Canberran woman to be more in her personal and professional capacities and to connect to the greater act area through inclusive events.

[00:01:27] So long story, short events based, not for profit for women. 

[00:01:30] Right. Okay. So, so very like completely events based or just majority events based or, um, 

[00:01:37] we like to create events through social media and through, um, like in person face to face meetings. 

[00:01:43] Germaine: [00:01:43] Right, right. How are you tackling COVID-19 and, um, everything that we're sort of facing at the moment there, 

[00:01:51] Rae: [00:01:51] it's a great question.

[00:01:52] And when lockdown started happening in Cambra, um, anyone who's in events, we kind of say, Oh gosh, you know, what are we going to do? [00:02:00] How are we going to survive? But this was a really meaningful time for us to be there for our network. And what that meant was. Creating creative, online events where people could still meet and connect in a meaningful way.

[00:02:14] Um, but it got a bit tricky, right? Because zoom exhaustion and going to a happy hour is really different than having a glass of wine or a bevy with 40 other little tiles. So we decided to get creative with it. And every half hour that we've had virtually, we actually deliver a goodie bag full of local kind of nibbles and drinks from local women run great brands to their doors.

[00:02:41] So we're all kind of eating the same things and drinking the same bubbles, um, to kind of create that atmosphere. 

[00:02:48] Germaine: [00:02:48] Nice. Nice. So it's really been a time to experiment and innovate. One could say in how you deliver events now, are you sort of thinking when things go back to normal, I'm sure you can't replace like [00:03:00] in-person connections, especially when it comes to networking, but do you think there'll be an element of.

[00:03:04] Virtual connections for, let's say Canberrans, who've gone overseas on a posting for three years. Or have you thought about that or is it still early days in terms of working out how you deliver in a postcode sort of scenario? 

[00:03:17] Rae: [00:03:17] Well, I think here we're gals network, we really try to turn all feedback into quantitative metrics.

[00:03:24] So, um, what our metrics have been finding from these events is that. People love the virtual events. And there are women in Canberra, you know, we're neighbors who wouldn't necessarily go to person happy hour, but are perfectly happy meeting online. So because of that reason that these virtual events actually add a level of inclusivity that we didn't.

[00:03:48] Have previously, so they're here today, for sure. 

[00:03:51] Germaine: [00:03:51] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you, you raise a good point because if you're a mother or, you know, had a pet or had some reason why you didn't, [00:04:00] you couldn't get out of the house, this, or just didn't have a car, let's say, um, this sort of breaks down those barriers because you can sort of hop on and I guess it also removes.

[00:04:11] An aspect or an element of in our, how am I going to present myself? Do I have really nice clothes and jewelry, but you, you sort of remove that to an extent don't you, when you sort of have to meet virtually, because it's almost in the control of, I mean, right now you could just turn off your screen and.

[00:04:27] That's it like there's, there's nothing that I can do here. So it almost gives the power back to the people attending rather than, rather than having those social pressures that might, might be felt. 

[00:04:37] Rae: [00:04:37] And that's absolutely right. Jermaine. And in addition to that, we learned very recently that a lot of our, the people involved with this network don't drink.

[00:04:45] And so a happy hour wouldn't necessarily early be something that's super interesting to them of interest. So in those kinds of goodie bags actually offer non alcoholic beverages and they feel like this is the best event for some people, they [00:05:00] feel this is great because it removes that kind of extra barrier as well.

[00:05:04] So virtual events definitely here to stay. We're excited to get back into 'em face to face as well. 

[00:05:10] Germaine: [00:05:10] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, that's not a very good point. Like I found myself especially coming right out of school where a lot of people enjoyed the drinking. Um, I didn't enjoy it so March and that left me a little bit isolated.

[00:05:25] And then, you know, not in like a that they obviously don't mean it in that way, but if you don't partake in those activities, You know, to the, to the full extent that, how does my it, um, then, then it does isolate you in some way, shape or form whether it's intentional or not. So, um, yeah, it sounds like it's been an interesting time for you guys and you've sort of almost found a different offering, um, that can sit.

[00:05:48] Sit alongside what you are used to do and what you'll do hopefully, um, moving forward. So when did you start this whole endeavor? 

[00:05:57] Rae: [00:05:57] We'll be two in November of this [00:06:00] year. 

[00:06:00] Germaine: [00:06:00] Okay. So about a year and a half, or get getting close to two years now, you don't have. And Australian accent. Um, don't mean to, I don't mean to single you out, but, but give me an idea of, um, how old you are now.

[00:06:13] How old are you, how old you were when you, I mean, did you come to Canberra or did you just grow up in Cambra with an sort of an American sounding accent? I might be wrong. Tell me a little bit about yourself. 

[00:06:25] Rae: [00:06:25] Thanks Jermaine. I am a Floridian, born and bred. After uni, I moved to Italy for two years, Florence to be specific.

[00:06:34] I met my partner there and he's from Canberra. When he returned back to Canberra, he invited me to come and see where he lives and I did, and I never left. So that was two years ago in 2018. I had just turned 23, 25 now. And I've been here ever since. 

[00:06:52] Germaine: [00:06:52] Yeah. Wow. Okay. So what made you start this whole thing?

[00:06:57] Like being. Was it, was it sort of a [00:07:00] being new to Canberra? I need something like this. Why don't I start it myself sort of thing. Or 

[00:07:06] Rae: [00:07:06] as you know, um, I always tell people that I never wanted to found this organization. I just wanted it to exist. And when I came here and if you've been in Canberra for a while, um, you'll see the changes that have happened to the city.

[00:07:20] And it's amazing, remarkable. Even in the past two years, the social and infrastructure changes that are happening. It's amazing. Two years ago, though, there was no group for women that was a casual meeting place for people just to make connections. There was always some sort of activity that you had to partake in, whether it be bowling or.

[00:07:43] Running around the Lake or things like that. And as a busy person, I found that I couldn't make those meetings. And also, I don't know if you've noticed this, but if you've ever moved to a new place and you find that it's hard to make connections, it becomes actually harder because you're not in your most confident [00:08:00] self.

[00:08:00] And so it's not like a situation where you can say, Oh, I'm just going to go to a bar and meet people. If you're not in that mindset, it's very difficult. So after awhile, um, I. Was looking around trying to find this organization. And I just couldn't. So I decided, okay, I'm going to just make an Instagram page and see what happens and that's how it all started.

[00:08:22] Germaine: [00:08:22] Wow. Okay. So about two years ago, you start an Instagram page. You call it CB or gals, I assume at the time as well. Yeah. Yep. Yep. And then give us an idea of sort of, what, what are the steps now the, my intention around asking this question is just trying to understand how you you've brought it to where it is now.

[00:08:41] Like what were the early days? Like, because if there's someone who's listening who wants to start a community and, you know, especially nowadays I think with COVID, it's becoming even, even more. Essential, but like Facebook groups, forums, community groups, whether it's online, virtual staff or whether it's in person.

[00:08:58] Um, I think [00:09:00] there's this huge, huge, I mean, even, even places like Reddit and discord, what they are to an extent is a community, right. Of people with ms with a common sort of goal or understanding. So for anyone who's listening, who wants to. Stop that, that journey down that path, give us an idea of what it was like at the start, what you did and how you were able to sort of grow so that we can learn from what you've been able to do.

[00:09:26] Rae: [00:09:26] So I think that if you're listening to this and you're thinking about starting some sort of community of some kind, it's important to think about what it is you want to do and what the right thing is to do. And the more lineup you have, the more successful you will be because, um, goodness is recognized by everyone mostly.

[00:09:49] And then what you want to do, if it's also what you want to do, you will pour yourself into that. And it won't matter if you're making money. It won't matter if there's millions of people following it, because it'll [00:10:00] be your baby. And it'll be exactly what it is that you want to do. And that was the camera gals for me.

[00:10:06] And still is, and it holds it off. Sorry with this idea that it didn't matter who you were. Where you were from what you did, every gal of every age profession and in every season of life partake in this community, in whatever capacity you wanted. Um, and we would connect to just based on the idea that we are women and women together are so powerful, especially when they support each other women, when they support each other.

[00:10:36] Magic happens. 

[00:10:38] Germaine: [00:10:38] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I couldn't agree more. I think they're like, I don't know if you watch the bachelor and this is people are going to judge me about this, but I was watching it yesterday and I just felt sad. Last night's episode was all like, everyone was just fighting, arguing, crying, and, and I just felt like it was a step back for [00:11:00] modern, like for society, just to, because it just.

[00:11:03] It just set this wrong tone. Like I think I get it, they competing for a guy. Um, which just sounds weird to say. Um, but, but yeah, you know, you, you, you speak about the, the collective power that you have. Right. Which is, which is so true, because I think if you take up any, any sort of demographic and you.

[00:11:21] Bring them as a collective group, they can really thrive in those situations. Right? Like I used to travel a lot when I was younger. I'm like move a lot. And we'd, we'd always been born in Sri Lanka. We'd always find the Sri Lankan community in the, in the new contract we go to, um, not intentionally, you just bump into like genuinely, we found the Sri Lankan community in Canberra because we went to church and there was a guy that was like, he looks really good going to go say hi, and that was it.

[00:11:47] Like that was it. It wasn't like, yeah, it wasn't, you know, I'm going to go on Google, I'm going to on Facebook, try and find the Sri Lankan group. But, but all that's to say is that, you know, when you, when you come into a group, whether it's women or whether it's [00:12:00] Sri Lankans, or whether it's people with black hair, whatever the group it is, you can really create this.

[00:12:06] This environment where everyone's comfortable and everyone can really thrive. But yeah, I don't know why I mentioned the bachelor, but I think it was because I'm just still disappointed about sort of how everything was portrayed yesterday and last night, sorry. That was just a lot of crying anyway. Um, but yeah, not losing track of what we're talking about.

[00:12:26] So you started the Instagram page, you see, you started connecting with people I would assume. And then did you find that. People were messaging you or what was that next stage? And when did you have your first event or, or why did you like, was events going to be the ultimate goal when you started Instagram page in the first place?

[00:12:43] Or how did that happen? 

[00:12:44] Rae: [00:12:44] You know, I had a feeling that it would be, um, I, there, I always start projects with the goal in mind or. The end in mind, that's really the goal. And I always imagined women getting together in this kind of way, like just to let's meet, you know, let's [00:13:00] just have a good time. And so I imagined it would be that way, but actually Jermaine, it took me so long.

[00:13:08] And by so long, I mean about three or four months to gain the courage to actually put that first event out there because, um, I didn't tell anyone that I was doing this, not my friends that I had made here, um, about my partner knew of course, cause he was the one cheering me on. But, um, I didn't tell anyone because I was so afraid that somebody would turn to me and say, How could you start a page called the Canberra gals?

[00:13:33] You're not even kidding from camera. You're not even Australian. Right. And when you're starting something new, you just want to keep going. You just want the momentum, right? You don't want anyone to tell you, you can't do this because. Everything's so scary and everything's so big that you feel like you might crumble under that.

[00:13:52] And that's how I felt. So it took until February of 2019, a few months after I started the page for me to [00:14:00] actually get the gods. Put it on meetup, put it on a Facebook event, make it a free, happy hour, just come buy a drink, like not going to argue anything. And we're just going to get together. And I had no idea how many people were going to show up people RSVP, but with free event, you can just decide you're not 

[00:14:17] Germaine: [00:14:17] going to exactly which I used to be involved with.

[00:14:22] Um, Um, events and sort of marketing for a, for a big business, I guess you would call it. And, you know, it's very true, like having a free event. I think there were times that we, we were getting like a 10% turn up rate. So, because it's so easy to click, you know, and, and you know, so we're still talking like 300 people said that come and we prepped for like 80 and we'd get 40.

[00:14:45] So it wasn't, it wasn't sort of too crazy. Cause I think 300 people, I don't think the venues would have even. 300 people, but it is a good point that you raised, like, you can just hit, okay, I'm going to go and events take a [00:15:00] lot of organizing, but as it sounds like, what you did was you lowered your well, everyone else's barrier to entry, which makes it much easier.

[00:15:09] And then you low lowered sort of what you were attempting to do with the first one. So that it's almost like a proof of concept rather than, you know, This amazing conference over three days and you had to organize every single moving part. Um, so is, is that sort of a tip there that you just want to, you know, just test the waters initially?

[00:15:29] Rae: [00:15:29] I think that that's a really good tip, um, for sure to just test the water, see interests, see who might want to do this. Um, but also. Be very clear with your marketing, what you're doing. And we had 12 people come to the first event. And for me, I created the page because I wanted to change one person's life.

[00:15:49] Other than my own, I would already change mine. I knew that, but if I had just changed, made a difference for one person, it would have been worth it. But for all 12 people to RSVP and then come, [00:16:00] I was thinking to myself, okay, like this is needed and I can do free events. Like this is not a big deal. It's bringing.

[00:16:07] People into a venue that may have not had people on a Tuesday night. Um, you know, people are out spending money, which is great for the economy and we're connecting on something that's bigger than ourselves. Something that will have a legacy later on. So I would say if you're thinking about doing events of some kind, be very clear about what the event is and what people can expect, and then just.

[00:16:29] Let the rest happen. 

[00:16:30] Germaine: [00:16:30] Yeah. And if it's a proof of concept, you know, all you've got to deliver as an event organizer. Um, well, all that is within your control. So, you know, if you say, um, all it is going to be is you turn up, I've booked a table and you buy yourself a drink and you sit down and we talk.

[00:16:46] That's pretty easy to deliver,

[00:16:52] Rae: [00:16:52] deliver. 

[00:16:53] Germaine: [00:16:53] Exactly. And then set the bar as, as, as low as possible that it's still something, but [00:17:00] it's so, you know, it's higher than what, what someone would be able to just do by themselves. And what you then do is really facilitate the coming together of. People. Um, now that can, as, as you've found now with the virtual stuff, it might also then evolve to, to facilitate the delivery of goodies and nibbles.

[00:17:18] It might, it might be booking, booking an event. I know that, uh, a lot of them people nowadays, one they're busy, but two. Probably because they're busy and maybe because they're lazy, they're just the last thing they want to do is organize things for themselves. Like, I don't want to, I want to catch up with friends, but I'm not going to organize past sort of messaging one person being like, Hey, do you want to catch up for lunch?

[00:17:40] And that, that would be it. And, and so what you've been able to do at the core is to bring and facilitate those, those groups of people. Now, as you sort of. Started to get momentum. What, what sort of business structures or did you, did you, I think you mentioned that are not for profit. Is, are you like a registered?

[00:17:58] Not for profit, not for [00:18:00] profit or. 

[00:18:01] Rae: [00:18:01] Yeah, so in, um, Oh gosh, it was a, about a year ago now. Um, we had just hosted our first panel and the reason why this is important is because before we were hosting happy hours, we were hosting events called clothing swaps, which I'll get into later. Um, and we were hosting mostly fun, very what I would classify as feminine things, um, just to do for fun and 

[00:18:26] Germaine: [00:18:26] like social events.

[00:18:27] Really? Yeah. 

[00:18:28] Rae: [00:18:28] Absolutely. But we would do like very photo graphic picnics up at Mount Strom, low with gorgeous grazing boards and photo shoots and things like that, 

[00:18:39] Germaine: [00:18:39] of that nature.  just, just sort of re you know, really, I mean, it's not, I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just, it's what people, that's what your target group wants to do.

[00:18:49] And that's, that's awesome. And it probably helps being in the dark target group as well, because you sort of finger Oh, I want to do that. Well, I'm sure everyone else wants to do it. [00:19:00] Let's do it. So sorry. I got you off. Keep going. 

[00:19:04] Rae: [00:19:04] We decided to host this panel and it was called the moment of yes. And it was, the idea was when five powerful Canberran women had found their calling that moment of yes, I did it and I was at the time working alone and I basically cold called anyone.

[00:19:24] I knew. Uh, I didn't know anyone. I had no contacts that I came here except for my partner. Um, and I called everyone that I knew of and was just like, we're doing this panel. It's going to happen in a month. Would you be interested? Um, this is kind of the idea and. I reached for people like Julia Gillard, like people that I knew, I probably wouldn't be able to get a hold of.

[00:19:48] And I reached for local people like Trish Bergin, who at the time was the first assistant secretary for the office of women who I also knew because she lived nearby me. So I thought that we might have that connection. [00:20:00] So there was a range of people, right? I had an okay chance of maybe getting, and then probably not.

[00:20:06] I will tell you Jermaine over the coming months, although not everyone responded right away, every single person responded and said, this is something that I would love to do. 

[00:20:18] Germaine: [00:20:18] Wow. 

[00:20:19] Rae: [00:20:19] And so that for me was a big wake up call. Cause I was thinking to myself, you know, it's not just me, I'm not in this echo chamber of this is awesome.

[00:20:26] You know, this was a moment for me of yes. When I realized that this is something that's very important, this is something that much is much bigger than me. It's something that's much bigger than just the people that were on that panel. What do we do with it? What do we do? Um, and this was also the first event that people paid for.

[00:20:45] Every other event up until that point was completely free to attend. Um, so we had to decide what we were going to do with finances, um, and how we were going to be responsible to keep the integrity of what we had. And that [00:21:00] was when, um, I collaboration with my partner decided that we would move into the not-for-profit field and.

[00:21:07] We had no idea what we were doing. You got a lot of advice. Um, we tossed up whether to be a social equity startup or a not-for-profit and we ultimately ended up deciding that. The integrity of what we had built was a not-for-profit. So we took about two months to fill all of the paperwork became incorporated and then started building our board of people.

[00:21:33] Now, what was interesting is that the board pretty much assembled based on interests. So who was there? Um, at the time and Shannon Beckwith who had been at every event, she had helped me, um, really from. Early early days. I think I had just hosted the first event. And then she came on and wanted to help with everything.

[00:21:52] We had no experience between the two of us, but we were ready to learn and we were ready to build this thing that was going to be bigger than us. So she [00:22:00] became my vice president and still is of the board. And then the team assembled from that. And since that day we've been in, not-for-profit made of a completely volunteer board.

[00:22:08] Um, with the president, secretary treasurer and vice president. 

[00:22:13] Germaine: [00:22:13] Yeah. Wow. Okay. So, um, is, has that been about 12 months? Did you say. 

[00:22:18] Rae: [00:22:18] Yes. 

[00:22:19] Germaine: [00:22:19] Has that, has that allowed you to, has that changed sort of how you can, um, how you do what you do to an extent by having, having that, um, that structure around you, do you think that's added anything or do you think it was more just nice to get that sort of legal standing, um, and legal establishment?

[00:22:38] What, what what's sort of changed since then? Do you think. 

[00:22:42] Rae: [00:22:42] Well, what's been so amazing is that we're really particular about who would come onto the board. And the reason for that was because I had read. So many horror stories of, gosh, what is it called? It's it's, there's a word for this in, not for profit [00:23:00] world where you build your board yeah.

[00:23:01] Around friends and family, and that your board gets lazy because they don't feel like they have to contribute anything. Um, so I decided to build the board based on the best people available. And what that is created is an amazing, an amazing network. Sorry, my phone keeps going off. Sorry about that. An amazing network of, of individuals who bring so much to the table.

[00:23:26] So for example, you have me, you have Shannon. Shannon is to lay in Australian and brings a wealth of experience from living all over the planet. Declan Nori, who is my partner, is the treasurer of the board. He's also the most qualified person for numbers that I could imagine. And he brings a male perspective, which is very interesting and so valid because.

[00:23:47] Um, as a male feminist for change, um, he brings up perspective of how can we still be inclusive for everyone? While still effecting change in Canberra. And then finally we have Ruth [00:24:00] Asher. Who's the secretary of the board who grew up in the UK. So she brings another rich international experience to this and also a, an element of.

[00:24:11] I understand what it's like to be on the outside of things. Um, what it's like to be an announcer or, and how do we create a more inclusive environment for everyone? So it's been wonderful to have this team working on this with me because they bring such a wealth of different experiences. Yes, we're all young, but we're also ready to see real changes in Canberra and the world.

[00:24:31] Germaine: [00:24:31] Yeah, that's amazing. And like you said, bringing that, what I loved hearing when you were mentioning that there are, um, I mean, part of your board is a person who's not even a female. And then there there's, um, people who are from overseas or everyone's from overseas that will grow, grew up in Australia for a little bit, perhaps.

[00:24:50] But what they already know is what it is like to be, you know, be a bit of an outsider. Feel not quiet, like you fit in because it's easy to fit in when everyone has the same acts, [00:25:00] everyone has the same hair color or whatever it may be, or the same upbringing. So what you, what you can then do, obviously with this team is create scenarios and situations where everyone feels accepted because you go in without any sort of prejudice around things.

[00:25:14] Now you mentioned your partner who is involved with, with what you guys do. I've got a bit of a interesting question for you and, um, you probably get this, but I find that there aren't many groups like this for men. Um, has he ever felt that, have you ever had this conversation with him? Why do you think there isn't aren't groups like this for men?

[00:25:38] Um, or, or perhaps there are, and I've never heard of them. 

[00:25:42] Rae: [00:25:42] That's a good question. And it's actually something that we've discussed since the beginning of the Cambra gals at the very first camper gal is happy hour. I love to tell this story. He. Came to the bar with a couple of his guy, friends to make sure that people showed up and if they didn't be there.

[00:25:58] Um, and [00:26:00] he would always joke to say, we're going to start the Canberra guys network that has not happened yet, but I would love to see that happen one day, because I think that there's so many, there are groups that form our own sport, but you run into the same exact problems that. Women toxic women groups can have, um, you can have them in male groups as well.

[00:26:20] And one group that I would love to see happen for Canberra for men would be around like an actual. Friendship based group that, how do I say this? Um, doesn't contribute to the lack of emotional connections. Cause I feel like it is met. Male relationships are so different because there's so many stigmas around sharing how you're feeling.

[00:26:45] And what is actually going on in your life that I would love to see like real connections form and real change happen within male culture, which would be a really difficult group to host. But I hope to see it happen one day. 

[00:26:57] Germaine: [00:26:57] Yeah. I mean, I've, I've gone down [00:27:00] this road myself. Um, when I was at the university of Canberra, um, I was sort of part of the initial group that founded the entrepreneurship society at UC and.

[00:27:11] That experience alone, let alone everything else that I've, that I've sort of experienced, um, has shown me how difficult it can be to create groups like this, but then you take for better or worse sort of the, the mindset around a lot of men. Um, and you know, you get in, you get scenarios where when you group bringing them to groups, it can sometimes bring out, bring out the toxic.

[00:27:35] Um, it happens in, in all sorts of groups, you know, I can even think of even talking about, say, A group of Sri Lankans. I can see how, you know, they all get together. They all get together all the time suddenly. Cause they says, share something in common that might be toxic from the outside, but for them it isn't because it's this, it's what they've grown up with.

[00:27:54] Um, and like inevitably you end up with. Something that's toxic, but, [00:28:00] but only it's not really toxic. It's just because it's exaggerated supported and then encouraged within that group because it is accepted within that group. Um, yeah. And so bringing, bringing sort of men into this sort of equation and conversation, there are a number of things that I can see that can, um, For worse, really get exaggerated.

[00:28:21] And then, and then, you know, you talked about real connection, I, for some reason, um, and, and, you know, I would love to be part of some group that changes this, but I don't see, you know, the, the group. Getting really around exaggerated, like fear. It's probably going to be around. Yeah. Like, it'd be awesome, but it's probably going to be around cars and street racing or drinking or, or gambling and, you know, And this is not to say that that's what all guys do, but there is always that risk.

[00:28:53] And like you mentioned, it's, it's gotta, it's gotta be very carefully managed because, um, guys for better or worse thing can [00:29:00] sometimes get a little bit carried away with something and, you know, go take that one step too far, like do 140 Ks an hour in a, in an 80 straight, you know, when you're going for a cruise with your mates, cause you think it will be the coolest thing to do.

[00:29:13] So. It does bring that sort of dimension of difficulty, but like, like you I'd love to see something like that happen, I think is it could 

[00:29:20] Rae: [00:29:20] be those activities as well that contribute to it. But what I'm thinking more of is I'd love to see men can be so guarded, um, and women aren't. Really like this in, they can be, of course, but if you get women together and you talk about a specific part, they're more willing.

[00:29:37] I find in my experience to share their, their personal experiences and for men, that's much harder to do because we have these societal culture of. I'm not really, I'm going to tell you something, but I'm not going to actually share. I'm going to hold back a bit. This is good for men. Um, because the emotions then that they bring [00:30:00] into later in life, when they have more confidence, they bring to their partners, they bring to their kids, um, and it kind of just all comes out at once.

[00:30:07] Well, you know, this comes later in life, but how can we kind of prevent that from happening? Can we create stronger connections with men without a stigma of, I can't talk about things that are going on. Do you find that that's something that has happened? Yeah, 

[00:30:20] Germaine: [00:30:20] completely. I mean, what it brings this brings out in me is so I, I think I'm an introvert.

[00:30:26] Most people would disagree with that, but I also like to have genuine conversations and now it's nothing forced. It's just something that, you know, I like to get into the actual nitty gritty stuff. Um, and it's never going to be me saying, you know, tell me, you know, I like all the, all the bad things happening in your life and on rebel to me, it's just more, let's have an actual conversation.

[00:30:47] And funny enough, having that approach, I hear it from, I've heard it from partners. I've heard it from friends. Um, the response to that tends to be, wow. You know, you, first of all, you like to [00:31:00] talk a lot, but second, you also like. Talk about like, you really get, get in there sort of. And I, and, and, and it's almost like there's a way, like, it's almost traded as like, this is peculiar.

[00:31:12] Like, um, we, we moved recently about, I was in February and I know both neighbors really well, and you know, my partner is, so it is a little bit like. Like I don't, I think she's spoken to one of them maybe, but like, I know what they do for work. How many kids they have, you know, what their partners do. Like I know everything, but it is seen as, sorry.

[00:31:36] Rae: [00:31:36] That's lovely. 

[00:31:37] Germaine: [00:31:37] Oh, it's awesome. And I, and I enjoy it, but I think it is definitely seen as a little bit of like, I don't want to say weird, but you know, not, not what people expect 

[00:31:47] Rae: [00:31:47] out of a guy. 

[00:31:49] Germaine: [00:31:49] And that's what I don't understand. Yeah. Like why can't we, why can't guys have this conversation that like, I think you would probably, is it fair to say that you'd be surprised if a guy came up to [00:32:00] you and had a conversation to you in a similar style that you would have with one of your, um, sort of female friends?

[00:32:07] Um, is that, is that fair to say 

[00:32:08] Rae: [00:32:08] most women would assume they're being hit on, which is terrible, right. Puts men in this box of what they can and cannot share. And that's not good for men. It's not good for women either. 

[00:32:19] Germaine: [00:32:19] It's not good for anyone. It's really not good for anyone. Exactly. Cause what we're talking about is compartmentalizing and then just not sort of really reflecting your, your true self, um, which.

[00:32:31] Which you just end up, you know, um, either putting away and then forgetting that like you're, uh, yeah, you're a guy you're also a human being or, you know, it just gets worse and worse and worse. And then one day you just have a, have a meltdown or, um, have a midlife crisis and, and there's a normalized aren't they?

[00:32:52] And it's just a sad thing, but, you know, perhaps, um, Perhaps something that I can, I can get involved in and try and try and [00:33:00] change now, um, let's get into, we've talked about the awesome stuff that you've been able to do. Do any mistakes come to mind or things that things that you've done that, you know, next time around you'll, you'll, it'll just be easier to avoid than to do again, 

[00:33:14] Rae: [00:33:14] you know, I.

[00:33:16] I have a hard time talking about mistakes because I learn from them and the camera gals would not be what it is without those mistakes. So I wouldn't change them, but I will talk about a huge error that I, um, that I personally was responsible for. Uh, last month when we were creating the connect up gala, and this was a, an in person gala that was.

[00:33:40] For 100 people at hotel realm. Now we initially there was a grant created by a governor body here in Canberra for event makers like us to create events, um, for Canberrans. So we applied to this grant and. Jermaine, we assumed we would get it. Like [00:34:00] it was, it was one of those situations where we made it made a gala that would cost $20,000 to create, um, for a hundred people.

[00:34:09] And it would have all of these beautiful things. It would bring in all of these vendors, local vendors at hotel realm, people get fucked up. There's a photo wall, there's live music, there's giveaways and action items. And all of 

[00:34:21] Germaine: [00:34:21] that. 

[00:34:23] Rae: [00:34:23] For real event, you know? Right. Yeah. And so we submitted that grant application mid June, I think.

[00:34:32] And they would let us know mid July, but the event was going to be on for, um, the 25th of July. And so that meant we had to get started before we knew. Right. And I think that you're going to be able to tell how the story goes, but we did not get the grant and we're about two weeks out and $20,000 down.

[00:34:59] We'd already [00:35:00] sold 50% of our tickets way below the price of what it would cost to actually attend the event. The like cost per head is about $150 and people were paying a hundred dollars or less. Um, so we found ourselves in this position of if you're a not for profit board. Um, nobody owns the company.

[00:35:22] It's not like a standard for profit company where you can go into debt and foreclose. If the not-for-profit own owes money, the board is responsible. Right? 

[00:35:35] Germaine: [00:35:35] Wow. Personally, 

[00:35:37] Rae: [00:35:37] personally liable. And if we were to. The bite off more than we can choose. Say for 20 something year olds with no money, I have to pay $20,000.

[00:35:48] The company would go under. Um, and we would never be able to legally, I don't remember the legal term, I guess it's not really that relevant, but we would never be able to. Open a company in our names in Australia, [00:36:00] again, if that happened. Wow. 

[00:36:01] Germaine: [00:36:01] Yeah. So you basically like get blacklisted. 

[00:36:06] Rae: [00:36:06] So, um, we didn't get the grant and, you know, we thought that we would at least get something.

[00:36:10] Even if we didn't get the full 20, we thought we'd at least get something. We didn't get anything. Um, and so we had already started moving forward. We already had 10 panelists. Who were pretty high color Canberrans, um, that we really respected and we wanted them to respect us who had never heard of us before.

[00:36:29] Um, and it, it was, again, one of these situations of, I really believe in what you're doing, let's do it. And my mistake there was selling tickets. With the sure. Surefire thought that we had that grant and not having a backup plan. So then basically the story does end well. Um, we scrambled, we had to adjust ticket prices.

[00:36:52] We went to every sponsor that we could possibly think of and offered them amazing deals on advertising [00:37:00] and we made it work. Um, wow. 

[00:37:03] Germaine: [00:37:03] That's amazing. 

[00:37:04] Rae: [00:37:04] Um, and we actually didn't go into debt. None of those terrible things happen, we were able to move forward. But yeah, that mistake of not creating a backup budget was that I lost a lot of sleep over that.

[00:37:18] Let's just say, 

[00:37:19] Germaine: [00:37:19] yeah, that would have been insane. And I think the big takeaway to me is that in life, nothing's a sure fire thing. So don't, don't do things, make decisions and act, act, and plan as is. Everything's just going to happen and it's going to be like, it's good to have. I think that possibly positivity, like, don't get me wrong because you know, in, in my business every day we do stuff that we're not like no one goes into something saying I'm going to work hard at this and it's going to fail.

[00:37:49] No one, no one goes into it with that, that sort of approach. But you've got to always temper it with a, with a. Bit of, you know, just being realistic about it and sort of going, you know, there's [00:38:00] actual money involved yet. There's people who actually have to cough up money. We actually have to pay all these different entities and just never losing sight of the fact that it is real life.

[00:38:11] There are real implications and they're real, real things that need to happen and real things that don't happen. So, um, yeah, that's a, that's a massive takeaway, but it's impressive that you were able to get out of that. Um, That hole that you dug yourself? 

[00:38:26] Rae: [00:38:26] I think that part of it too, is my team. The three Rohit, Shannon and Declan are all very logical, realistic people.

[00:38:34] So when I went to them and told them this, they basically said, if you don't come because I was in charge of the budget, um, for sponsors, if you don't come up with. This much money in sponsors by this week, this time, um, we're cutting the cord. You're no longer allowed to do this. So they were the kind of there.

[00:38:54] But I think the reason in a way with that in mind, so you have that, [00:39:00] but I think another reason why we were so successful is because I saw it happening, like. It was one of those moments where I was like, I see this it's going to happen. I don't know how, I don't know why. Um, but I even like one very sleepless tonight woke up and like scribbled on a piece of paper.

[00:39:18] I think the exact words were, I'm excited to see the connect up gala succeed have more sponsors than we need and be a total hit. And so it was. So I think that if you, you know, if you're scared, you know, a lot's at stake, but if you have that real vision and it's really there and you see it, um, the red sea will part so to speak and it will happen well and, 

[00:39:40] Germaine: [00:39:40] and envision what the final product looks like.

[00:39:43] So you know where you want to go. And then it's much easier to reverse engineer. You know, if someone told you, build me a car, That's that's very difficult, but if you, someone said he a car, you can actually take it apart and look at it. You want, and then put it back together. Okay. It's going to be harder, but it's [00:40:00] not impossible.

[00:40:00] It was, you know? Um, so by doing that by envisioning, okay, this is what it's going to be. I'm sure you have to reverse engineer. Like sounds like they did the numbers, for example, very simple, but they did the numbers and they went. Okay. We are $10,000 short. You need to find, you know, whether it's 10 different sponsors at a thousand dollars each, or, you know, whatever it may be, we need to get to this Mark.

[00:40:22] And by doing that, you just really map out a blueprint of how you get, get, where you want to go. Um, and you just got a temporary or with realism, you know, Yeah. Yeah, that's it. That's it. And just, just work for it. So that's awesome. What do you, what do you guys hope to do moving forward in the next six to 12 months?

[00:40:40] Rae: [00:40:40] This is always such a beautiful question. Um, when people ask, but the goal of Canberra gals is what it's doing. It's currently functioning exactly the way that it's supposed to. So I think that the most important thing that we do is manage the growth because over the past, Six months alone, we've doubled in size.

[00:41:00] [00:41:00] And so knowing how to manage that growth and still connect to people on that, like very small 10 people happy hour one-on-one level, even if 

[00:41:09] Germaine: [00:41:09] there's intimate. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. 

[00:41:13] Rae: [00:41:13] You really important. So what I think that means is more advisors to the board. You know, we always need to be learning about this growing entity that we've created and also having more spokespeople for the Canberra gals so that you can go around the room.

[00:41:29] You can have. More board members basically go around the room and say, how are you going? How's the event for you? Make sure everyone feels welcomed because at the end of the day, like Kimbra gals was created for Canberra, not the board, not me, no one else. So we need to make sure that we're managing the individuals that are involved with this network, um, and making them feel welcome and included.

[00:41:52] Germaine: [00:41:52] Yeah. I mean, that's, it's really exciting to be being the position that you are. Um, and, and it's really smart that you're thinking [00:42:00] about how, how to manage growth and, and do those things that I think sometimes you can forget in the excitement of it all, because managing growth, isn't very fun because it's much, much more fun to be like, Hey guys, we're doubling every month, whatever it is.

[00:42:12] And, and just, you know, sit in, sit in that success as people, you know, Comments comment, congratulations, and give you all the likes and all that stuff. It's very easy to get lost in that, that it's, um, it's much harder to sort of think about the real things that you've got to go to, got to work on and navigate, and really, really finesse as you, as you grow and change while still maintaining what it is that, especially in what you do, like you mentioned, maintaining the same level of intimacy and connectedness and conversation in a 50 people group is much.

[00:42:46] Much more difficult and different to doing that in a 10 person group. So, um, you've got to, yeah, you've got some exciting things ed for you now, where can people find out more about what you guys do? 

[00:42:56] Rae: [00:42:56] We're on every social media as CBR gals, [00:43:00] or you can check out our website, CBR, gals.com. 

[00:43:03] Germaine: [00:43:03] Awesome. Okay. Um, Are you ready for the top 12?

[00:43:07] Rae: [00:43:07] I'm ready. 

[00:43:09] Germaine: [00:43:09] Okay. Let's roll into it. So top three books or podcasts that you recommend. 

[00:43:13] Rae: [00:43:13] So I'm on a mission to read 52 books a year. I started this last year and met my goal and this year and there again, so I'm a big fan of books. Um, my favorite two books that I've read in the past decade have been the four hour work week by Tim Ferris because Tim Ferris.

[00:43:32] Taught me so much about creating your own dreams. And I read his book for the first time when I was probably 17. So it was really fun, foundational, and like, just following your notes. And then I love Don Norman's classic design, the design of everyday thing. Um, and his whole notion is that people don't see bad design or people don't see.

[00:43:54] Good design, good design is invisible because. You live in this world where everything works. People [00:44:00] only see bad design. So I love to create events and to create programs around that idea that. If nobody says anything, it means it's been a total hit. People will tell you if it's bad. 

[00:44:11] Germaine: [00:44:11] Yeah, definitely. 

[00:44:13] Rae: [00:44:13] And then my favorite podcast is probably a drink with James by four.

[00:44:17] Um, and this is a podcast all about social media, specifically Instagram and James Ford founded this, not for profit company in New York city called for co that helps people become influencers on social media, but it really talks about. All of the changes in social media, and it gets really down into the dirty, meaty gritty of how these social platforms work.

[00:44:39] So listening to him and meeting him in person when I visited New York city was so, um, it helped me learn so much because you know, when I started this page, I didn't know what I was doing. 

[00:44:51] Germaine: [00:44:51] Love it, love it. Those are really solid recommendations. Um, top three software tools that you can't live without. 

[00:44:58] Rae: [00:44:58] Oh, gosh, Google [00:45:00] analytics, tick Canva tick.

[00:45:03] And then, Oh, third one. I think the Elementor I couldn't live without. It's a, um, it's a, yeah, exactly. Yeah. 

[00:45:13] Germaine: [00:45:13] Yeah. Um, how do you, how do you take it, your events? Do you use, uh, event ticketing platform, like event bright? 

[00:45:19] Rae: [00:45:19] No, I, we did for a long time. I, um, I ended up getting a little bit frustrated with all of the ticketing platforms out there, because even if you're a, not for profit, they still take.

[00:45:31] Money from, um, the gross sale. And so I was thinking to myself, I'm just going to build one. So we use one through Cambra, gals.com. 

[00:45:38] Germaine: [00:45:38] Okay. Nice, nice. That's um, that's awesome. Um, top three mantras. You try to live. 

[00:45:45] Rae: [00:45:45] Gosh. Um, my first one is just follow your nose. Like you don't need to have this plan of what your life of what you want your life to look like, because things are very fluid, especially in 2020.

[00:45:56] So follow what you love is number one. [00:46:00] The second one is, I think I mentioned this earlier. If what if you're trying to figure out what you want to do with your life, if you figure out what it is you want, and then what is the best thing for everyone else, you will be successful. And then finally, I don't know, third mantra.

[00:46:17] It's hard. It's very hard. Follow your gut. Gut feelings are real fearful feelings. 

[00:46:22] Germaine: [00:46:22] Yep. Love it. Love it. Awesome. And then top three people you follow or study and why. 

[00:46:30] Rae: [00:46:30] You know, I knew that this was going to be us. There's so many people that I know Meyer this life. Um, recently I met Kim Rubinstein here in Canberra and she's the co-director for the 50 50 foundation at the university of Canberra.

[00:46:49] And she was one of the first people that I met, who embodied leadership in like. Her own feminine sense. And [00:47:00] I was so impressed by that because leadership has been a masculine thing since time started, but Kim is her own kind of warm leader that makes you actually like she's a transformational leader.

[00:47:14] So she makes you want to do that, that thing that she does because she's so in it herself. Um, so I definitely follow Kim Rubinstein. Um, People, one of my, my mom, probably Andrea shady got out in Florida. And then finally, who shall I pick last, at least for today, I have to pick Tim Ferriss. I'll probably be embarrassed by this later.

[00:47:40] I love Tim Ferris. I always have, there's a couple of things that we don't always agree on, but I think he's unapologetically himself and I'd like to be a bit more like that too. 

[00:47:50] Germaine: [00:47:50] That's true. He likes to experiment with like, um, different, weird herbs and stuff like that. Doesn't he is that is that I always mix up.

[00:47:59] There's this [00:48:00] sort of group of people who do awesome stuff, but then, um, do borderline stuff that I don't necessarily agree with that I lumping as, as one group. Cause yeah. They like to experiment on their body and do stuff that I just, I don't have the luxury of doing so 

[00:48:16] Rae: [00:48:16] nice. 

[00:48:18] Germaine: [00:48:18] Exactly. Just watching. Just go cool.

[00:48:20] That's happening to them? Not to me. I'm I'm okay with that. Awesome. Um, once again, Ray, thank you for your time. Um, and um, yeah, all the best with, uh, Canberra gals, 

[00:48:32] Rae: [00:48:32] Thanks Germaine, this was super fun. 

[00:48:35] Outro: [00:48:35] Thank you for listening to the future tribe podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review on your podcast app.

On this episode of the Future Tribe Podcast, we had a chance to chat with Alanna Davis, who is the Community Development & Engagement Manager for Canberra’s Domestic Violence Crisis Service (DVCS). Alanna is currently on the hunt for Canberra’s 13 cutest pets so that they can be featured in the DVCS’ upcoming fundraising calendar. Naturally, we ask our guest about the logistics of running such an ambitious online campaign, what tools she uses, and what marketing channels the DVCS have used to promote it. On top of this, Alanna talks extensively about the challenges that arise when crafting communications strategies for a non-for-profit organisation who deals with such confronting social issues. The show then concludes with a very informative conversation regarding the statistics behind domestic abuse in Australia and the resources that are available to the victims of such crimes. 

What we talk about

• What services the DVCS offers

Links from this episode

https://dvcs.org.au/get-involed/events/ (Information on the 2021 DVCS Pet Calendar)

https://dvcs.org.au/ (DVCS website)

Find us elsewhere

https://futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe Website)

https://www.instagram.com/futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe on Instagram)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/germainemuller/ (Germaine on LinkedIn)

https://www.instagram.com/germa_ne/ (Germaine on Instagram)

https://futuretheory.com.au/ (Futuretheory Website)

In this episode of the Future Tribe Podcast, we had the pleasure of chatting with Ian Lindgren, an army veteran turned entrepreneur who currently owns and operates four companies here in Canberra. After suffering a career-ending injury during one of his deployments, Ian was forced to forge a different career path which eventually led him to create his first and most successful company, PayMe, Australia’s #1 payroll services provider.  As you can imagine, our guest has a bevy of knowledge regarding the steps behind starting a company and implementing a strong workplace culture. Additionally, Ian also shares how he and his wife are able to simultaneously manage staff across multiple locations who work in completely different industries. Later, Ian shares how he used many of the lessons learned during his time in the army to inform his business philosophy relating to areas such as competitor analysis and information gathering. The show concludes with our guest talking about the future of his businesses given COVID-19 as well as his commitment to using his success to help support the veteran community within Canberra.

What we talk about

• Overcoming adversity

Links from this episode

https://payme.com.au/ (PayMe website)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-lindgren-b15a93/?originalSubdomain=au (Ian on LinkedIn)

Find us elsewhere

https://futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe Website)

https://www.instagram.com/futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe on Instagram)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/germainemuller/ (Germaine on LinkedIn)

https://www.instagram.com/germa_ne/ (Germaine on Instagram)

https://futuretheory.com.au/ (Futuretheory Website)

Transcript 

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated automatically and as such, may contain various spelling and syntax errors

[00:00:00] Ian: [00:00:00] So I started PayMe at home with, with no clients. I think within the first six months we had a $600,000 turnover. The next year it was 9 million and then 15 million. 

This episode’s guest is Eric Daams, the co-founder of Studio 164a (creators of the WP Charitable WordPress plugin), who talks about the niche industry of WordPress plugin development. After studying history and Spanish in university, Eric discovered he had a  profound interest in coding and eventually used this passion to create WP Charitable, WordPress’ top-rated donation plug-in. We start off our interview by asking our guest to discuss why he believes WordPress has continued to grow over the past decade and if he sees another platform overtaking it in the near future. Afterwards, Eric delves into his personal story and shares how difficult it was initially to develop a clientele base for his plugin. The show then concludes with our guest outlining the current health of WP Charitable as well as the marketing strategies he is currently implementing in order to further grow the plugin further. 

What we talk about

• The advantages of WordPress and its future viability

Links from this episode

https://www.wpcharitable.com/ (WP Charitable’s website)

https://au.linkedin.com/in/ericdaams (Eric on LinkedIn)

https://twitter.com/ericnicolaas (Eric on Twitter)

Find us elsewhere

https://futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe Website)

https://www.instagram.com/futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe on Instagram)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/germainemuller/ (Germaine on LinkedIn)

https://www.instagram.com/germa_ne/ (Germaine on Instagram)

https://futuretheory.com.au/ (Futuretheory Website)

Transcript 

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated automatically and as such, may contain various spelling and syntax errors

[00:00:00] Eric: [00:00:00] You know, and so you kind of come away feeling like you're a bit of a cheapskate, even though you say just donating, you're like you're actually giving your own money. And, um, but you still kind of coming away with this sort of unsatisfied, 

Boy does time fly when you’re having fun! This episode marks the one-year anniversary of the Future Tribe Podcast, which means a full year of sitting down with amazing self-starters and having them share their personal experiences/advice for your listening pleasure. Our team here is so proud of how far we have come over the past year and want to thank our audience for your continued support, it truly means the world to us.

To commemorate making it this far, our host (Germaine) and producer (Hayden) decided to sit down and chat about the podcasting industry as a whole and where they see it going in the future. In their discussion, the duo shares some lessons they have learnt about podcast production over the past year and give the audience a rundown on what it takes to produce an episode of the show. Afterwards, Hayden and Germaine touch on the benefits podcasts provide creators outside of mere financial return and whether the medium is an optimal advertising channel. The show then concludes with our two team members reminiscing about the show and highlighting what their favourite episodes are.  

What we talk about

• The podcasting landscape

Links from this episode

https://futuretribe.podbean.com/e/the-journey-to-becoming-a-full-time-youtuber-with-a-quarter-million-subscribers-e56-jarrod-farncomb/ (Our episode w/ Jarrod’s Tech)

https://futuretribe.podbean.com/e/how-to-break-into-the-entertainment-industry-e51-pip-rasmussen-part-1/ (Our episode w/ Pip Rasmussen)

https://www.hyperxgaming.com/us/microphone/quadcast-gaming-microphone (The microphone we use to record)

Find us elsewhere

https://futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe Website)

https://www.instagram.com/futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe on Instagram)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/germainemuller/ (Germaine on LinkedIn)

https://www.instagram.com/germa_ne/ (Germaine on Instagram)

https://futuretheory.com.au/ (Futuretheory Website)

Transcript 

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated automatically and as such, may contain various spelling and syntax errors

[00:00:00] Hayden: [00:00:00] That's the biggest problem we run into constantly where our best guests, sometimes I've had the worst equipment and it's ended up being like an episode that I'm not happy with just because I know how good it could have been. 

For this episode of the podcast, we invited Tom Falco to chat with us about his vintage clothes business, Primetime Pickups. Tom is a local entrepreneur who, like many, fell on hard times due to COVID-19 and found himself with limited job prospects as a result of the virus’ effect on the job market. However, instead of sitting idly by waiting for the right job opportunity to come to him, Tom used his free time and marketing prowess to start a successful e-commerce business from the comfort of his own home. During this episode, our guest goes into great detail about how vintage resellers structure their businesses, what he has learned from his competitors, and what Primetime Pickups does differently. Additionally, he talks about the marketing tactics he uses to cut through the noise in such a crowded online marketplace, as well as the importance of authenticity when engaging with your consumer base. We finish up talking to Tom about the future of his business and whether he intends to continue to grow the brand into a physical storefront. 

What we talk about

• Starting a business during COVID-19

Links from this episode

https://www.instagram.com/primetime.pickups/ (Primetime Pickups on Instagram)

https://www.primetimepickups.com.au (Primetime Pickups' Website)

Find us elsewhere

https://futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe Website)

https://www.instagram.com/futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe on Instagram)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/germainemuller/ (Germaine on LinkedIn)

https://www.instagram.com/germa_ne/ (Germaine on Instagram)

https://futuretheory.com.au/ (Futuretheory Website) 

Transcript 

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated automatically and as such, may contain various spelling and syntax errors

[00:00:00] Germaine: [00:00:00] Hello, future tribe. Welcome to another episode of the podcast on this week's episode, I've got Tom Falco from Primetime Pickups. How are you, Tom? 

In this week's episode we had the pleasure of talking with Canberra-based YouTuber, hardware reviewer, and all-around tech guru, Jarrod Farncomb. Jarrod started his YouTube journey just over five years ago as a creative side hobby, and now has amassed 230k subscribers across all of his accounts. In 2019, he decided to quit his job in IT in order to pursue content creation full-time and hasn’t looked back since. As you can imagine, Jarrod’s has a lot of great insights into the best tactics for getting your YouTube career started, picking your content type,  as well as how to sustainably grow your audience. Our guest also lifts back the curtain on how YouTubers monetise their content in 2020 as ad revenue becomes less lucrative for content creators. The show then concludes with Jarrod discussing his humble beginnings and how he has evolved as a YouTuber over the past five years.

What we talk about

• Jarrod’s journey to becoming a fulltime YouTuber 

Links from this episode

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2Rzju32yQPkQ7oIhmeuLwg (Jarrod’s channel on YouTube)

https://twitter.com/JarrodsTech (Jarrod on Twitter)

https://www.facebook.com/jarrodstech (Jarrod on Facebook)

Find us elsewhere

https://futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe Website)

https://www.instagram.com/futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe on Instagram)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/germainemuller/ (Germaine on LinkedIn)

https://www.instagram.com/germa_ne/ (Germaine on Instagram)

https://futuretheory.com.au/ (Futuretheory Website) 

Transcript 

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated automatically and as such, may contain various spelling and syntax errors

[00:00:00] Germaine: [00:00:00] Hello, future tribe on this week's episode, I am joined by Jarrod Farncomb. A YouTuber, or,  how would you describe yourself? Jarrod? 

In this week’s instalment of the Future Tribe podcast, we chat with CMO of Thycotic and best-selling author, Steve Kahan. Steve has worked in the start-up scene for over 30 years and in that time has been able to help companies such as Thycotic go public or be sold, resulting in a total value of more than $3 billion. As you can imagine, Germaine and Steve spend a great deal of this episode talking about the benefits of starting your career off at a start-up as opposed to a large corporation. Our guest also gives some solid advice on how to differentiate a good start-up from a bad one and how to find positions in these companies, as they can often be hard to find. The episode concludes with Steve talking about how he was able to find a good work-life balance despite his busy schedule. 

What we talk about

• Working at a start-up vs. working at a large corporation

Links from this episode

https://beastartupsuperstar.com/ (Steve’s Website)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevekahan (Steve’s Linkedin)

https://www.amazon.com/Be-Startup-Superstar-Ignite-Working/dp/1119660408 (Steve’s Best Selling Book)

Find us elsewhere

https://futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe Website)

https://www.instagram.com/futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe on Instagram)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/germainemuller/ (Germaine on LinkedIn)

https://www.instagram.com/germa_ne/ (Germaine on Instagram)

https://futuretheory.com.au/ (Futuretheory Website)

Transcript 

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated automatically and as such, may contain various spelling and syntax errors

Germaine: [00:00:00] . [00:00:00] Hello, future tribe. Welcome to another episode of the podcast on this week's episode, we've got Steve Kahan from Thycotic. How are you, Steve?

[00:00:08] Steve: [00:00:08] I'm doing great. Thank you for having me.

[00:00:10] Germaine: [00:00:10] No worries at all. Um, let's get the ball rolling. What's what's Thycotic all about to start off with and what do you do there?

[00:00:17] Steve: [00:00:17] So Thycotic is a cybersecurity company focused on protecting, what's known as privileged passwords that exists throughout any organization's infrastructure. And I'm the chief marketing officer.

[00:00:31] Germaine: [00:00:31] Okay. So is it sort of like a last pass, but you know, were way more advanced for sort of enterprise? Is that, is that how we can think of you?

[00:00:41] Steve: [00:00:41] In a way, right? So  last pass a good product, and it sort of works for, personal users, some, sometimes small businesses and really where Thycotic  focuses in on is nonhuman passwords as well as human as well. So if you think about [00:01:00] it, Every operating system, database application, et cetera, has a password associated with them.

[00:01:06] And big companies have no idea how many passwords they have. And so they go unmanaged and as a result, they're not secured and we help to secure them and reduce their risks.

[00:01:19] Germaine: [00:01:19] Right? So API keys, things like that as well, I assume.

[00:01:23] Steve: [00:01:23] Yes.

[00:01:24] Germaine: [00:01:24] Okay. And how big Thycotic to get, give an idea of, the, the team behind you?

[00:01:30] Steve: [00:01:30] Sure. So actually when I started at Thycotic a little over four years ago, we were 6 million in revenue. And now , four years later we'll be 106 million. So we've been on a rapid growth, Trajectory. And it's really the result of the market that we play in. And I think working with some amazingly talented people and just really great solutions,

[00:01:56]Germaine: [00:01:56] let's, um, let's sort of rewind a little bit.

[00:02:00] [00:01:59] How did you find yourself at Thycotic? You give us an idea of sort of your journey to get there. Yeah. And, let's start with, what you sort of did out of school. and you know, Give us a bit of a timeline.

[00:02:12] Steve: [00:02:12] Sure. So, uh, now, as you might be able to see if you, if you happen to be able to see the video that I've got a few lines in my face and some gray hair.

[00:02:22] And so I've actually been in the technology space and mostly in cyber security for 30 years. And so, when I graduated university, I  went to school and would hear very often from my father when I would grow up, he'd say, Steve, get your degree, go to work for a large corporation. You work hard. They'll take care of you and you'll have a great career.

[00:02:47] And of course he would say your mother and I would much prefer that you become a doctor or a lawyer. But short of that, getting a job at a large corporation will do. So that was the path I took. And so I [00:03:00] graduated university. I went to work at a. A large, organization processing claims. And I remember staring at my bank statement and the pile of claims.

[00:03:11] I had a process that day. Wondering how on earth will I ever get ahead? And I work long hours, the student loans would take a hold of my paychecks before they ever get a chance to hit my bank account. So about a year or so into that role, I asked myself an important question and that was how could I earn a great living and love the work I do.

[00:03:36] And that led me into the startup world. And now I am, at my seventh startup, in a 30 year span. all six prior have either sold or have gone public, generating over $3.5 Billion in shareholder value.

[00:03:53] Germaine: [00:03:53] Wow. That is a, that's some big numbers right there. so how's the Thycotic. So cause you know, one of a [00:04:00] 106 million, quite a solid sort of traction for, for a startup, how old's Thycotic to start off with.

[00:04:07] Steve: [00:04:07] So Thycotic. When, when I joined, I joined along with our CEO. He and I had worked together in the past when a venture capital company invested in the company. And, and Thycotic was a few years old when we joined and now, we've are about eight years, uh, in the making. And so the, the first few years, it sort of struggled the around, around it was bootstrapped company.

[00:04:35] It had a good product, uh, but really the founder, uh, needed some help and capital to grow the company. And it's when the. Insight venture partners actually bought into the company and brought in people like myself and the CEO. When we. Really took a great start and a great foundation that the company had also a tremendous culture [00:05:00] and, uh, built on it and did sort of the things that, that experienced, technology executives would do too.

[00:05:07] help, the company, get on that growth path that we have been fortunate enough to achieve.

[00:05:13] Germaine: [00:05:13] Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. And, we're jumping around a little bit, but now you said this is your, this was his seventh startup you worked at, is that correct?

[00:05:21] Steve: [00:05:21] That's correct.

[00:05:21] Germaine: [00:05:21] Yeah. So let's rewind. I'm actually, how old are you now, if you don't mind me asking, just to sort of pull things on an actual year, year sort of timeline.

[00:05:30] Steve: [00:05:30] For sure. So I'm actually 58 years old, so, I'm old and over the Hill.

[00:05:37] Germaine: [00:05:37] Hey, Hey, you, you don't know how science is going for, for all we know we've got a, you know, another hundred years left in ya. ,So let's go back 30 years. So that'll put you at say 28. Um, is that when you started your first startup job?

[00:05:51] Steve: [00:05:51] Yeah, actually a few years before that. Right. So I, I started, at first startup, I kinda made all the mistakes in the world just in terms of [00:06:00] joining that company. But,  the company that I joined, it was pretty cool. It was a, I was the first person hired into marketing. And, it was, hired into a company with a small team of crazies hell bent on changing the world and changing the way applications were being developed.

[00:06:18] And so it was pretty cool. I mean, uh, when I joined, uh, interestingly in the first week, I remember looking at the office next to mine and there were people. Rolling out the copy machine. They unplug, plugged it, put it on a Dolly, roll that right out. And I came to find out a few days later. It was because of the company couldn't afford to pay for that copy machine.

[00:06:43] Germaine: [00:06:43] Wow.

[00:06:44] Steve: [00:06:44] And, uh, it was, you know, pretty interesting, but I was blind to it. I was so pumped and excited to work on this venture with this team that just was so passionate, had this just a total commitment and belief that somehow we would figure it out. And just a [00:07:00] few years later, that company that couldn't afford to pay.

[00:07:03] For the copy machine, it went public and I got the bug and never left the startup world.

[00:07:08] Germaine: [00:07:08] Wow. , what year was that? When you joined?,

[00:07:11] Steve: [00:07:11] Oh my goodness.

[00:07:11] Many, many years ago. I mean, it was probably 25 years ago.

[00:07:16] Germaine: [00:07:16] Yeah. Yep, yep. Yep. So you were the first person going into marketing or into that? Sort of the marketing roles at that, that organization.

[00:07:23] How did you manage to actually nailed that one down? Like, did you have marketing experience before? Did you study marketing? how did, how did you manage that?

[00:07:32] Steve: [00:07:32] I really didn't. Right. And so, I was just super aggressive just in terms of, being persistent with the company's executives. Uh, they probably couldn't afford a, an experienced marketer either.

[00:07:44] So circumstances were such that it worked on both ends and they knew that I'd stop at no ends to,  do what it would take to really learn the ropes. That it was cool because, you know, if you think about, if you're hired [00:08:00] into a large corporation, you're oftentimes hired into a smaller pigeonholed role where your sphere of influence is quite small.

[00:08:09] And so, being hired into that startup, if the work was going to get done, I was going to be the one to do it from a marketing perspective. And so what that gave me the opportunity to do was to try everything right. And it was just so cool that get that opportunity to try things that I had never before.

[00:08:28] And I took the opportunity if I would read articles or read about some cool marketing that organizations were doing. I would contact the people that were referenced in those articles at that time. And oftentimes those people, um, they realized that there were others that helped them to achieve the success that they had achieved.

[00:08:50] Yeah. And we're happy to talk about themselves and. share some of the lessons that they learned to help me to, navigate around some of the [00:09:00] trial and error approach to helping a small company, um, learn how to market effectively. And so it was really cool. I was working, you know, sort of, very closely with some amazingly talented, executives.

[00:09:13] Again, if I. Was working at a large corporation, for example, even right now at Facebook, I mean, you couldn't even get it around Mark Zuckerberg, security ever rub elbows with him. Right. And so I wasn't working with people of the Mark Zuckerberg type, but also very talented people, very smart. And so, I took the opportunity to learn everything I could to go to, to just take control of my own training.

[00:09:42] To,  really focus on doing and learning and failing forward sometimes. And, and as I mentioned, we were more successful than, I had ever dreamed when I joined. and it was why the company just a few years after I joined, was able to grow to the point that we're able to go [00:10:00] public,

[00:10:00] Germaine: [00:10:00] go public.

[00:10:01] Yeah. I mean, this, this story, your story really hits home because, It's sort of similar to how I sort of did things, you know, going my first real job, was at a not for profit who couldn't afford to be honest, you know, couldn't afford a hot shot marketing guy. ,In fact, they could only afford me two days a week, or three days a week.

[00:10:20] I think it was, and the beauty of it and why I can see why you fell, fell for startups is that you go into this. A organization who's just essentially created this role and, you know, yes, there's, there's individuals in there who can have the foresight to see that marketing is important and that marketing sort of something that they've got to focus on, but there's, there's not the rigidity around it that you're for forced to sort of go in and you're boxed in and there's people saying, no, this is what I want you to do.

[00:10:51]especially when you're starting off, it gives you that. Freedom to experiment freedom to, you know, look into things and say, okay, let me try all this. And, [00:11:00] and yes, Hey, the budgets might not be there and you might not know be making, you know, a hundred thousand dollar ad purchases and things like that.

[00:11:07] But what you get instead is. This very, I mean, this bootstrapped, you know,  everything that you do you have to test yourself, you have to understand the parameters within which to work.

[00:11:19] You have to report,

[00:11:20] and it's almost like you just get a whole bunch of training. It's like the real life  training that you can't necessarily get from school and college.

[00:11:30] Steve: [00:11:30] Yeah, no doubt. And I learned a very important lesson early on in my career from getting that opportunity. And essentially it was, this is that at least, uh, from a marketing perspective is you can talk to all sorts of marketers. And, you know, the world of marketing certainly has changed. It's changed for the last couple of years, but I can assure you, it has changed dramatically from, from that time.

[00:11:57] But the important lesson that I learned [00:12:00] was that, that marketing needs to contribute to revenue. And it might sound like, well, of course it does. I mean, that's a simple statement, but you be surprised how often you will talk to those who happen to have a marketing expertise and like the last thing that they'll focus in on, or.

[00:12:24]that they'll talk about is the stuff that they're doing and how they're actually contributing to the revenue growth story of the company. And it was that very simple concept that I have always kept in the back of my mind, no matter what the challenge, no matter what the industry or the, the stage of the company.

[00:12:44] And it is that perspective and lesson learned has served me well, in 30 years.

[00:12:51] Germaine: [00:12:51] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, it can be, revenue can be valued, but market marketing has to generate something. I think, [00:13:00] um, especially nowadays I'd know, I'd know what you, what your thoughts are out there.

[00:13:04] But marketing is one of those, you know, everyone seems to have their own marketing agency or their own digital agency. they build a websites and chatbots and it seems to be this thing that. Anyone and everyone sort of does, because you know, relatively low barrier to entry, saying that, you know, we both know that, you know, the difference between someone who really knows what they're doing in marketing and has no idea is just huge.

[00:13:29] Like, there's, there's just no comparison between the two, but, but the lay person doesn't see that. which makes marketing, I think one of those spaces aware. People see it as a black hole. Sometimes, you know, people just say, you can spend a whole bunch of money on marketing, but all you're doing is giving Facebook money or giving Google money.

[00:13:48] What are your thoughts on, on that sort of perspective on marketing?

[00:13:52] Steve: [00:13:52] Yeah. I mean, I see that all the time and I, of course work with Thycotic, but I meet with, uh, companies and entrepreneurs [00:14:00] that sort of ask for advice. And essentially when you look at sort of a strategy that I found that works, it's, it's essentially this.

[00:14:09] First of all, if you want to be successful from a marketing perspective is that you, you have got to know your customers as well as you know yourself. And so it really starts with that understanding the customer, implicitly and oftentimes. What you'll find, is not what you think. So, take Thycotic, for example, we're in cybersecurity.

[00:14:31] However, the users of our technology actually, oftentimes aren't security people, they're, IT admins, right? And these are people who are very busy, have diverse roles. Security is one of them. And so they want technology. That's super easy to use. It's customizable. It works away. They want to work. It doesn't get in the way.

[00:14:53] Right. It's fast and simple. And so, you know, you would say, well, gee, you're in [00:15:00] cybersecurity. You're, you're supposed to be all about, you know, value proposition. That includes security. And of course we have that. But, but we focus in on our customer. We realize who's who's influencing. So it's really first and foremost understanding the customer.

[00:15:14] And then I think once you do that, I have learned that I spend a great deal of my time. even right now on I'm making sure that we are creating a. amazing value proposition. That is a differentiated vis-a-vis our competition on the basis of that understanding  , I focus personally a good deal of my time on our company's content.

[00:15:39] Uh, and when I say content, I'm saying things like free tools or trials or educational materials or surveys that they could take to find out how they, and relative to their peer group where they'll get immediate feedback. And so, and it's that content that has to be so great that it [00:16:00] causes. Those target buyers to actually respond.

[00:16:04] Right. And so, and the response is a lead, right? And so most people. if you're like me, you almost never give away your contact information online.  And so, , when you come to our website, what you would see as a 6% visitor to a, to a lead conversion rate, which is world-class. Wow. Well, I focus on the content because I know it's gotta be so good.

[00:16:31] That the people that come to our site, actually give up that information and enable us to get that a visitor to website conversion rate in. And if you're able to then drive that conversion rate, those are leads. Then you're tracking that ultimately, too. Pipeline and then, and then revenue, right? Yeah.

[00:16:50] And it's some of those very basic points , that may sound quite funny or simple, but you'd be surprised how few [00:17:00] companies actually get that overall mix. Right.

[00:17:04] Germaine: [00:17:04] Yeah. I mean, and it sounds like what you're talking about is, yeah, you guys do a lot of content marketing and content marketing has been big for a long time.

[00:17:11] I've been going on about it. And you know, , when we start talking to clients who are just starting off and, you know, Let's say they don't have a huge budget. What I generally tell them to do is start writing blog posts that are very insightful, very, very niche are very specific to what they do. and it sounds like you guys have sort of grown past that, which is no surprise, because you would have, you know, run out of the run out of content, right.

[00:17:36] About or running out of people who just want to read about that stuff. And you've. Kicked content marketing up another level. And that is to create surveys, create tools, basically put in more investment into what is content, but content that is providing, more value to the, to the end user as well. And therefore, like you've been able to do, get [00:18:00] them into sending you their contact details because.

[00:18:03] You've shown them that you've got the expertise and you've essentially helped them for free because, I mean, all these tools, I'm going to guess these tools take once. You've set it up. Yes. There's maintenance, but there's no, there's no manpower needed, you know, a tool that just scales up, completely sort of hands free.

[00:18:21] And is that, is that right in terms of what I'm thinking, how, how that the, the reason that you've been able to sort of really leverage those tools.

[00:18:31] Steve: [00:18:31] Absolutely. Right. And you said a key word and that is value, right? And so a lot of times people create content that is more self serving in a way, rather than serving the customer and the contents got, gotta be hugely valuable.

[00:18:46] I'll give you a couple of examples. So, you know, one example is we do, what's known as a privilege. Password, risk assessment. Right? And so in this case, it's, it's like very, the [00:19:00] methodology is sound and basically someone could come in, take, answer some questions and then they will get a grade, like university a through F how they're doing.

[00:19:12] It's,  really solid for them to, to understand where they stand relative to their maturity within, and what's known as a privileged access management. And so they will not only get a grade. They will find out where they're doing well, where they're not doing well. And then, they will also find out, yeah.

[00:19:35] Where are they stand for each of the, questions that they responded to relative to their peer group, which is companies in the same industry and, of a similar size, around the globe. And so people love that stuff. Like they want the immediate feedback. They want a grade, they want to understand where they stand.

[00:19:53] And then what's cool is because it's integrated then with our Salesforce, the sales people could then be [00:20:00] very consultative and say, gee, tell me a little bit about the results that you. That you achieved and let's talk about how we might be able, we'll help you, you know, that is real value. Or we have retool that discovers these, passwords that you might not know that exists and we do it for free.

[00:20:20] Right. So, you know, people have no idea. Yeah. Just given the complexity and the size of. Of of their infrastructure, what they have. And so this is functionality that is actually, or paid for product that we decided to give away for free. Right. And so,  it's offering real value. And when you do that, you create a great first impression, of the company.

[00:20:46]it's a win, win, and then you have positioned yourself to earn the right to do business with  the people that requested that,  content.

[00:20:57] Germaine: [00:20:57] Yeah. That's something that I've found. naturally [00:21:00] as, these channels get inundated, the quality has to increase. And again, that's what you're talking about as well.

[00:21:07] It's it's. Increasing quality. And that, that, that takes just more investments. So it's no longer, you know, getting someone to spend two, three hours writing a blog post it's, spending hours and hours and testing it all out. But what you're able to do is get, get some of that proprietary information that you've been able to collect and understand why working with all your clients and then, boxing that up in a way that, gives value, provides value, not the complete value, but enough to sort of.

[00:21:34] Show them what life can be with what you guys are doing and, you know, becoming a customer. so that you're sort of raising that bar where in the past, I mean, there was a time where, you know, all you needed to do to, you know, ask someone to give you, give you the email address was just put a box and say, enter your email address.

[00:21:54] And nowadays I think people are much more hesitant to do that sort of thing. I mean,  I sure am. So [00:22:00] you're, you're. Sort of it's, it's becoming more competitive. Right. and you just gotta, you just gotta beat it, beat out your competition cause, I'm actually not sure. Who, who, who are your competitors?

[00:22:10]you know, Thycotic is competitors. Are there some really big players in the,

[00:22:14] Steve: [00:22:14] Yeah there's a larger competitor public company by the name of CyberArk. Right. And so, you know, it's key that, they're a good company, a good people, that products. Right. And so, you know, we think we've, we have some, , competitive differentiation that actually a lot of customers desire.

[00:22:33] Right. And so, you know, for us, what we try to do is we try to focus on how we can, offer value in ways that they cannot. And, and obviously, the, the growth that we have achieved is, is pretty fantastic. It's, it's, three times the growth of the industry. Right. And so, clearly we're, we're doing something right.

[00:22:55] And, and probably, , doing a good job of being a worthy competitor to [00:23:00] CyberArk.

[00:23:01] Germaine: [00:23:01] Yeah. That's, that's a, that's a very politically correct way of saying you guys have a better product.

[00:23:07] Steve: [00:23:07] Well,

[00:23:07] I think so. I, you know, I think we do, but, you know, it's, I, that ultimately is judged by a share of wallet, right.

[00:23:15] We definitely were customers or potential customers. They buy technology and they want it to work and meet their needs. Right. And so they want to be good stewards of their company's money. And, you know, we have focused on , some areas just in terms of differentiation of, for example, ease of use, simplicity of the product.

[00:23:37]just being, being one area that, that we think we shine. And we think that a lot of people, they, they, you know, they want to move away from complexity, now more than ever. And, and that has been a big focus, uh, namely usability of our

[00:23:54] Germaine: [00:23:54] technology. Yeah, just making things simple. Um, I mean, again, um, when I'm looking, looking for a [00:24:00] particular type of software, what I do is I sign up for trials around with it and if I can't work it out, um, within the first five or 10 minutes, I just, that they get.

[00:24:11] Crossed off, straight away, because it doesn't matter how powerful it is, but, you know, if the onboarding process, especially nowadays with so much knowledge around that area, I mean, there's, there's just, I'm sure there's millions of articles around just optimizing the onboarding process and make it easier for people.

[00:24:28]and my thought processes that if that first five minutes is difficult, Oh boy, you know, I would hate to think how that the next five minutes and so on and so forth and let alone, you know, if it's a program that I have to train someone else to use or that I need other people to use, that's just not a road that I want to travel down.

[00:24:46] So usability is a huge thing these days. cause again, the, the usability, just in general, I would say that usability has, has improved across the

[00:24:55] board.

[00:24:56] Steve: [00:24:56] Yeah. I mean, and certainly, It worked for Apple. So if [00:25:00] it's good enough for Apple, I think it will be good enough for Thycotic.

[00:25:04] Germaine: [00:25:04] Definitely, definitely.

[00:25:05] Hey, I know you've released a book recently as well. Tell me a bit more about that.

[00:25:10] Steve: [00:25:10] Yeah. So, I wrote a book, called be a startup superstar. And so, it's really geared towards, young professionals or those who feel stuck in their corporate career. And so it focuses in on why someone should choose.

[00:25:26] A startup over a large corporation, how to find and land a job at a good startup and how to select a good startup. Uh, and then what I call under seven keys to the C suite 35 actions, attitudes and behaviors. One would have. to achieve success at a startup, it's very much, a quick read it's written in a, how to, format and, it actually has become an Amazon bestseller.

[00:25:55] Germaine: [00:25:55] Oh, wow. Congratulations. it, do you have an audio book company that as well?

[00:26:00] [00:26:00] Steve: [00:26:00] Yeah. Yeah. So it's a, it was published by Wiley as well as Audible.

[00:26:05] Germaine: [00:26:05] Okay. Awesome. I've got an audible subscription. I'm a big audio book fan. It sort of, it's just a good way to digest content while I'm still getting things done. I find so, we'll, we'll link to that in the description as well for, for you to check out, but could you give us, could you distill some, some of the, some of the messages you pass on in that, in the book.

[00:26:24] Steve: [00:26:24] Yeah. I mean, I think that, uh, one of the key messages is some of the things that I, I look for when I select a startup, right? So there's lots of startups, , the CEOs of which have, great stories. But, but for example, how do you. Differentiate a startup, that has a good story versus a startup that has both a good story as well as a good chance to succeed.

[00:26:48] So I talk a little bit about some of them, the criteria that I look for when I joined a startup. so for example, one of the things that I look for is [00:27:00] quality. People who share the same values that I have. And so people reflect a company's culture. And so, you know, if you're meeting with the you're interviewing with the company, if you, if you are meeting with the management team and, you know, look for a team that really rocks your world, and if you sort of.

[00:27:20]see that there could be some disconnect in terms of values. I oftentimes say move on. And one of the questions that you could ask to determine those values, if you're in the interview process that I often ask is if you weren't building your startup, tell me what you would be doing. Right. And so that really gets at a question that, um, Highlight some of the values that that person has, for example, are they potentially going into the direction where they're a micromanaging workaholic?

[00:27:55] Do they have other hobbies or things that perhaps you may share in common, [00:28:00] in which you might, start to build a little bit of a deeper relationship? Does the person, for example, talk a little bit about their family. as well. Right. And so, you really could uncover some gems. another question that I'll ask, to understand the values, uh, is tell me what you love about your team and why are you the ones to solve that problem?

[00:28:24] And so there again, you're is a very insightful question where you'll oftentimes be able to find out if, if this is an organization that is team-oriented. Are they, I, people where they're taking all the credit or are they, we people where they're sharing the credit. Right. So I go into a number of, items that I look for, uh, as well as the very specific questions that I would ask underneath those items, such as the ones that I've, that I've outlined.

[00:28:57] And these are sort of. [00:29:00] Some of the lessons that I've learned in being fortunate enough to having selected now seven amazing startups that, that achieved a great growth.

[00:29:11] Germaine: [00:29:11] I mean, it sounds like those, those tips can be used for almost any sort of job interview or, I guess even, even just other interviews, I could imagine asking some of those similar questions on a first date.

[00:29:23] So maybe, maybe we've uncovered sort of a whole new market. Maybe you can change around the title and, look at selling into, you know, maybe, maybe the dating and relationships space as well.

[00:29:34] Steve: [00:29:34] Yeah, well, actually my wife who is listening to me right now probably will ask me to shy away from that. but, yeah, I mean, that's a, that's not a bad idea.

[00:29:46] Once the book sales start to trail off.

[00:29:49] Germaine: [00:29:49] Exactly. You can, you can diversify swap out the cover. Um, I guess it's just my way of saying that, you know, it's, especially nowadays. You know, I think it's, it's a big thing. [00:30:00] Everyone's sort of saying you should start your own business status, get into a startup.

[00:30:04]but you know, there are a lot of people out there who, who, wouldn't do well starting their own business. but then the next best thing is to join,  an organization that is doing that is in line with what they want to do that shares their values. and arguably, you know, there's more power now for someone to do that, then.

[00:30:21] Than ever before in history,

[00:30:23] Steve: [00:30:23] with that. And I, you know, I could give even your listeners a couple of tips of how to find them, right? So for example, in most, every , major city throughout the world, there's a, what's known as accelerators and these, accelerators particularly in technology. But what they do is they provide capital, expertise.

[00:30:46]to the, companies that they, uh, that they perhaps might fund. And you'll often find if you Google the startup accelerators, within your given city or city that you might want to [00:31:00] live a lot of the portfolio companies or the ones that are, involved with that accelerator, they are listed and a lot of times they will be posting their jobs.

[00:31:11] Online right there and think of it like that. Startups. These are not the companies that like are they're going, they're not going to career fairs. They're not doing some of the things that the large companies have, the benefit and the resources to do to go find talent, but they'll put their jobs. , on these websites.

[00:31:31] Right. And a lot of times they're, they're, they're unknown. And so I encourage people to take a look at those accelerators in the Google then. And another is. That if you start, , following some, some companies and in particular, some of the executives at those companies that you might consider that you might want to join and take a look, what they say online and, uh, with, uh, technologies like LinkedIn.

[00:31:58]so long as you try to [00:32:00] do an outreach in a non salesy way in a sincere. In a heartfelt manner to the executives at those companies, if you're following what they're saying and, oftentimes, talk about how you would like to be able to learn from them to get some advice for your career. what you'll find is that, as I'd mentioned earlier, that a lot of executives, they realize there are people that help them throughout.

[00:32:28] Uh, their career. And, now don't be dissuaded. If not, you don't get a response from everyone cause they're busy people. But what you'll find is you'll get more response than you actually imagined. And, and so long as you take the approach that I mentioned, and then typically you're able to bridge the conversation to you and then start to talk about, uh, yourself and what your aspirations are in terms of your career.

[00:32:53] Which then opens you up directly to jobs that may exist within [00:33:00] that organization or within that executives network. And so people do not go to the executives often enough directly. They oftentimes sort of apply in the same old way as everyone else, which is the standard HR route, which isn't to say that that's a bad way that you shouldn't do that.

[00:33:19] But I've had a number of people, for example, outreach to me over the years. And,  they, have. Created a strong relationships with myself, some of which, uh, I've hired or have referred on to others and many others just like me do the exact same thing.

[00:33:35] Germaine: [00:33:35] Yeah. It's just, you know, that advice of, um, talking to people like, like they're people, not like the, you know, big job opportunities or, you know, Opportunities to earn money or also on and so forth.

[00:33:48] It's something that bugs me on LinkedIn. For example, I, I get these opening like four or five paragraphs about, you know, um, and it's a classic format of, you know, this is what we do. this is how cheap we are. [00:34:00] These are, there's some examples of some work that we've done. Hey, why don't you work with us?

[00:34:04]there are no other, I I'm looking for someone like them. 100% of the time. I'm not. And second, if someone did that to me in person, I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even know what to say. I mean, how would you like that? If I can just sit you and said, you know, Hey Steve, you know, there's a description of who I am.

[00:34:21] I am. I am very cheap. I any 25 bucks an hour, You know, I want to say someone while work, here's my iPad. Just go through some of my work. How about we work together like that? It just wouldn't happen. And, and you know, you're talking really just about bill, just treating them like people and having that conversation.

[00:34:37] And I think even I'm putting it out there, And just, it's not about sort of, you're not owed anything, but if you approach it like, like a sincere individual who would love a helping hand, most people will look at that in that way. that they, that yes, they're time poor and yes, they're busy, but, they're much more likely to look at it in a favorable way, [00:35:00] if you would approach it correctly versus just spamming people and asking for things.

[00:35:05] Steve: [00:35:05] Absolutely. and as you mentioned, you sort of are talking about people, selling you. I mean, probably a lot, like you, I get tons of, emails or even calls to my cell phone on a regular basis. In exactly the same approach and manner and style that you outlined. And I respond to none of them. Yeah. I mean, because at the end of the day, I mean, whether, you know, in the case that I mentioned, it's, it's really about people helping people.

[00:35:40] And, and again, not everybody will be willing to do that, but what you'll find is, more often than not is that good people will. If they were approached in the right way, try and help others. , I certainly do. And I believe many others do. And so, I encourage people to, to try that.

[00:35:59] Right. And in [00:36:00] particular, if you're thinking about, uh, changing jobs or thinking about taking your career forward,

[00:36:06] Germaine: [00:36:06] Yeah, and, and it won't hurt. I just can't think of any situation way. If you do it correctly, that there's any sort of damage. The worst thing that can happen is that they won't respond to you or they'll just respond saying, sorry, you know, very time.

[00:36:19] Poor. Appreciate it. But, but can't chat right now. Hey, have you, um, you you've told me so fondly about startups. Have you ever thought about getting into starting your own business yourself?

[00:36:30] Steve: [00:36:30] Yeah, I actually did. I did start , a technology company that,  grew rapidly. It was ultimately sold to Novell and, there was a lot of fun.

[00:36:42] Uh, I like, uh, typically, getting in with a company that's a little, a bit bigger. Right. And so there's a couple of stages of startups. You know, one is starting it from the absolute ground floor. you know, in that case, you know, writing a business plan over a weekend and [00:37:00] seeing it through finding the funding and all of that, , I, I tend to prefer, I think that there's a lot of amazingly great small startups, much like Thycotic was.

[00:37:11] And so I, I really enjoy those types of companies because they've gotten through the initial sort of. Prove it a phase and then it really, is all about can the company scale and grow. And it's really that stage of startup that I, I in particular, enjoy it. Okay. And a lot of people are concerned about, starting a startup from scratch.

[00:37:34] I mean, you know, sort of. Well mentioning the name, Mark Zuckerberg. There's not a lot of them. You can find the phase two, you know, maybe you're like me and you're not Mark Zuckerberg. Right. But yet you can still have a amazingly great career , professionally and, and personally, and financially.

[00:37:56] Germaine: [00:37:56] Yeah.

[00:37:56] Yeah. I mean, it, it is, it's sort of funny because I [00:38:00] got in, I started my own business so that I can do more of what you were talking about and going, obviously we go in more as a, as a partner, as a, as a service provider, but, you know, just being able to jump in and, almost just like propel things forward, feel that fire.

[00:38:15] So you're not, you're not trying to help someone just even work out if there's a market for what they're, what they're trying to do. They've already got past that stage. and it's just a matter of then really, looking for exponential growth or, or looking at sort of triggers of exponential growth versus just trying to get traction.

[00:38:31] And, that's, that's definitely a really fun, Hey. In your last 30 years, you know, in, in your career, what are, what are some mistakes that you've made, whether it's sort of specifically marketing related or if it's just career related, would love to sort of look into some sort of a teachable learnable moments.

[00:38:49] Steve: [00:38:49] Sure. So I think one of the biggest. Concerns people have of startups in particular that I hear is that you're going to have to work 24 [00:39:00] by seven. Right. And so that it is just all work all the time. You're never off right hand. So, um, a lot of people just simply. I don't want to, be out of balance from a work life perspective.

[00:39:15] And so I, am without question a workaholic, but what I learned early on, and it was such an important lesson was. how to actually, achieve more of a balance. And actually, I really don't like the phrase work life balance because it suggests that there's a right answer. I think that, there was a phrase I heard called work life harmony, and I really liked that because I think things ebb and flows.

[00:39:42] But what I learned specifically was this. Yeah, any of your listeners are like me. They live a lot of their life through their calendar, right? So you're scheduling meetings, you're scheduling your appointments. And that really guides a lot of what you might do during [00:40:00] the day. And so, um, What I would say that you can do to kind of have better work life harmony essentially is this is you've got to learn how to protect your calendar.

[00:40:13] And so, if you're listening right now, what I would challenge you to do is to open up your calendar and take a look at it right now and see how many meetings that you have scheduled with yourself. And I'll bet if you're like most people, the way I was as well, many years ago that you probably have too few.

[00:40:35] And think about what that means. What that means is, is that people will. A scheduled time into another, you know, soul sucking meeting or you're you're missing time with, with your family or a kid's game or not having a meal, a dinner, or maybe even a breakfast occasionally at home with your, with your family.

[00:40:57] You're not, perhaps [00:41:00] working out at lunch. If that's something that you like to do. Maybe you're not blocking out time to think strategically, or maybe even to learn something new and focusing on your own education. And so what I learned was, was how to make myself the most important priority on my calendar and go schedule those meetings and I'll do so in advance.

[00:41:24] And that really helped me too. just gain a, a better sort of harmony from, you know, both the work side of things, as well as. my family and, it is a lesson that has served me very well over the course of the years.

[00:41:42] Germaine: [00:41:42] Yeah. I never heard anyone sort of put it the way that you've put it, but you know, it makes a lot of sense.

[00:41:46] You, you book in meetings with other people or, or clients, but why what's stopping you from booking in, in our meetings with your family meetings, with yourself. whether it, whether it is like you said, working out or even just going for a walk [00:42:00] at lunchtime, it doesn't have to always revolve around just work.

[00:42:05] And I think, when you're sort of in that hustle mentality, you, you, you probably falsely think that just. Every hour in front of a computer or every hour doing work , is how you maximize your time and maximize the productivity. But, , I've found again, you know, there, there are nights or there are there even days where yeah.

[00:42:23] I have more or less checked out, you know, I know I'm not as productive, but it's just, it's what I need because you know, maybe I worked for six, seven days straight. maybe I just, I'm, I'm a bit more tired than I usually am. And I just need to sort of check in with myself and sort of go, okay. You know, today is a day that I spend, Doing more of the working on the business, more of the fun stuff, you know, let's work a bit on branding or work a bit on signage and you know, it's not stuff that, , is essential.

[00:42:50] Um, but it's stuff that sort of reminds you of why you, why you're doing this in the first place, because let's be honest, life is full of things that you have to do just, just absolutely have to. [00:43:00] And then, , all the other things that you can do or, or optional. So it's a matter of balancing  that as well.

[00:43:06] Steve: [00:43:06] Yeah, absolutely. And I would say right along with that, , one of the things that I had so learned is, uh, everything can't be a high priority. Right? And so when you, you are someone that tends to work their tail off, and that's a, it's a attribute that I respect in people is that you tend to take on massive workloads, but, What is, very much true, is that not every thing that you're focused in on, uh, can yield the same results.

[00:43:38] I actually liked the way, Sheryl Sandberg referred to sort of ruthless prioritization. And so, what I try to, also realize is not only am I sort of protecting my calendar, but I try to put as much focus as I can on the. Actions and the activities that will actually move the [00:44:00] needle. And so oftentimes you'll see people kind of major in the minors.

[00:44:05] Right. They're getting a lot of things done that really just don't move the needle. Right. And so I think if you're protecting your calendar, you're the most important. A priority and you are making sure that you are focused on the right priorities with the time that you have available. Sounds simple, but it's amazing how, uh, you know, many people don't do it or they do it and then they sort of slip out of it.

[00:44:34] And it's not about perfection. It's not about sometimes you want to do the smaller things and maybe it gets you going or. , it's just a day that you feel like focusing on it. Okay. Right. And so, or if, for example, there was a, a business got in the way of something, uh, family side or vice versa. It's like not getting freaked out about it.

[00:44:54] Like you've got to be perfect. Right. It's. It's realizing that you're, you're striving to [00:45:00] get as good as you can be. And good enough oftentimes is, is what I strive for on, on both of those fronts.

[00:45:07] Germaine: [00:45:07] Love it, love it. And that's, you know, putting in that effort is probably more important than trying to keep a close eye on, on everything and making sure that, I mean, we're not robots.

[00:45:16] There's no reason that we have to fit in, you know, the exact hours and exactly. Blocks that we've, we've sort of outlined because we're humans and sometimes our minds and our bodies are much better at telling us what we need then our calendar is as well. So, no, I love it. Hey, where can people find out more about you?

[00:45:34] Steve: [00:45:34] So you can find about me at the book's website, which is be a startup superstar.com. And I have a number of people who've read the book who have reached out to me and I try my very best to respond to each and every outreach that people make.

[00:45:51] Germaine: [00:45:51] Awesome. Thanks for that. We'll include the link in the description as well.

[00:45:55] Um, so you can connect with Steve on there. are you ready for the top 12? I surprised you a little [00:46:00] bit with it, but you ready?

[00:46:02] Steve: [00:46:02] I'll try my best.

[00:46:04] Germaine: [00:46:04] Awesome. Let's get the ball rolling. So top three books or podcasts that you recommend that are not your own.

[00:46:10] Steve: [00:46:10] So, , I, I'm going to give up a couple of books for you that I really love.

[00:46:15] So one is an oldie, but a goodie, which is winning by Jack Welch. Jack Welch recently passed away. He was the former CEO of general electric, and he has some absolute gems in that book. And, uh, to me, , it's a book I've re-read many times. I also like a book, a little bit on newer cars, zero to one, which is by Peter Thiel.

[00:46:38] Peter is one of them, world's most successful venture capitalists. And he also has some just amazing, advice in terms of, startups and really building a successful future in your career. No matter where you're at.

[00:46:56] Germaine: [00:46:56] Love it love it. Peter Theil is from PayPal. Is that right? Or [00:47:00] PayPal fame.

[00:47:00] Steve: [00:47:00] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:47:01] Germaine: [00:47:01] Awesome. Knew that name was familiar. So, top three software tools that you can't live without.

[00:47:08] Steve: [00:47:08] So I'm gonna, give, uh, two again, since I'm, stuck on that. So, for me, salesforce.com is a, is a technology I can't live without. but then also Tablo, that is a, sort of a BI, dashboard that is, uh, able to distill the nuggets that we've actually built on top of salesforce.com, where I can see everything that I need to see in exactly the format.

[00:47:34] I need to see it. I love it.

[00:47:36] Germaine: [00:47:36] Yeah. And what do you use for your calendar app? Is it just the built in sort of iPhone or Google calendar or,

[00:47:44] Steve: [00:47:44] yeah, use the calendar app right in aisle.

[00:47:48] Germaine: [00:47:48] Sorry, I lost you there. Are we back?

[00:47:50] Steve: [00:47:50] Yes, you did. I am at my beach house in Galveston, Texas, and I, my internet, all of a sudden became unstable.

[00:47:58] Germaine: [00:47:58] That's all good. Um, I [00:48:00] missed your response. So you just use the built in Google app. Use the built in calendar solution

[00:48:05] Steve: [00:48:05] from outlook.

[00:48:07] Germaine: [00:48:07] Oh, yep. Yep. Awesome. I mean, why not?

[00:48:10] Right. I think, even for myself, just the built in calendar apps are really awesome. I know some people like to go down the road of getting their own apps subscription, but often, it does what you need and, and I think people sometimes get a bit too complex with things that just need to be simple. So love it.

[00:48:26] Um, top three mantras, you try and live by.

[00:48:30]Steve: [00:48:30] I try to live by, , nothing matters more to winning than surrounding yourself with a plus people. I found that, , A-plus talent, , wins. , I also, , live by a mantra that is call out the elephant in the room. Right. And so oftentimes there are, , elephants that are there.

[00:48:51] That is the big sort of issue that people sort of dance around and, , And just basically, uh, never really focus in [00:49:00] on, and then I think I'm built to last. Right. And so what I try to focus in on is making sure that, then I'm always creating, focusing on creating longterm value, and being in it for the long haul.

[00:49:15] Germaine: [00:49:15] Yeah, definitely. I think too many people again, um, are too shortsighted and talk about, you know, just making his money, my mass much money upfront as possible. Just, you know, let it out. And that, that, that way, I think you also make sure that you're in it for the passion of what you're doing versus the, the money.

[00:49:35] Steve: [00:49:35] Totally agree. And what happens is, is that oftentimes if you are in it for the long haul and you know, good things happen along the way, but if you're in it for the short, quick, uh, and easy, it, it rarely is.

[00:49:49] Germaine: [00:49:49] Yeah, definitely love it. Ah top three people you follow or study and why?

[00:49:55] Steve: [00:49:55] Uh, these are, I would say the people that are my, [00:50:00] my mentors, honestly, so I'll, I'll give one.

[00:50:02] So. one, in particular is, um, is Doug Erwin. Doug Erwin is not known to your listeners, but, he is a serial entrepreneur. he runs a venture capital company and is. one of the best, managers I've ever known. and so, Doug Erwin is someone that I, I, without question, follow and, and, and, and if folks could Google him, I suggest that they follow him as well.

[00:50:31] Germaine: [00:50:31] Awesome.

[00:50:32] Awesome. Yeah. I never heard his name, but, I'm definitely gonna look him up as well. Awesome. Um, so that's wrapped up the top 12. thanks for your time, Steve. and yeah, hope to keep in touch and connect in the future.

[00:50:44] Steve: [00:50:44] Yeah, it was a lot of fun. And, uh, I appreciate you having, thank you.

[00:50:49] Germaine: [00:50:49] No worries.

In this week’s episode of the Future Tribe Podcast, we had the pleasure of talking to young business owner and inclusion consultant, Katie Zink. For those who are unaware, inclusion specialists such as Katie consult with businesses on how they can improve their workplace culture in order to make it as inviting and equitable as possible. We start off this episode with Katie and Germaine discussing this new burgeoning industry as well as how Katie herself transitioned into it from her typical 9-5 job. During this discussion, our guest also outlines how she was able to finance her startup by developing supplementary revenue streams and living frugally. After this, Germaine asks Katie what it was like starting her own business during the COVID epidemic and how she has handled client acquisition at a time in which most companies are tightening their budgets. The show then culminates in an interesting discussion pertaining to why exhibiting social responsibility is becoming an integral part of corporate strategy in 2020.

What we talk about

• What is social consulting

Links from this episode

https://katiezink.co/ (Katie’s Website)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/katieszink (Katie’s Linkedin)

Find us elsewhere

https://futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe Website)

https://www.instagram.com/futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe on Instagram)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/germainemuller/ (Germaine on LinkedIn)

https://www.instagram.com/germa_ne/ (Germaine on Instagram)

https://futuretheory.com.au/ (Futuretheory Website)

Transcript 

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated automatically and as such, may contain various spelling and syntax errors

[00:00:00] Germaine: [00:00:00] Hello, future tribe. Welcome to another episode of the podcast on this week's episode, we've got Katie Zink. How are you today? Katie?

In this week’s episode of the Future Tribe Podcast, we chat with the Founder and CEO of Crediverso, Carlos Hernandez. Crediverso is an informational software suite that is aimed at helping Hispanic and Latino Americans become more financially literate. As Crediverso is a young company that is growing rapidly, Carlos shares a great deal of information about how the initial stages of business/product development work,  as well as how he sought out funding from venture capitalists. Later on in the show, Germaine and Carlos discuss the cultural gaps companies need to cross when entering into new markets and why even large companies fail at doing so. Finally, both our host and our guest discuss the importance of staffing your company with the right people and the benefits of having colleagues to vet your ideas.

What we talk about

• Business/Product development and how to seek out venture capital 

Links from this episode

https://crediverso.com/en/ (Crediverso’s Website)

https://www.facebook.com/crediverso (Crediverso on Facebook)

https://www.instagram.com/crediverso/ (Crediverso on Instagram)

Find us elsewhere

https://futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe Website)

https://www.instagram.com/futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe on Instagram)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/germainemuller/ (Germaine on LinkedIn)

https://www.instagram.com/germa_ne/ (Germaine on Instagram)

https://futuretheory.com.au/ (Futuretheory Website)

Transcript 

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated automatically and as such, may contain various spelling and syntax errors

[00:00:00.750] - Germaine

Hello, Future Tribe. Welcome to another episode of the podcast on this week's episode. I've got Carlos from Crediverso. How are you today Carlos?

[00:00:11.370] - Carlos

I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for asking. Really excited to talk to you. 

[00:00:14.520] - Germaine

Yeah. I mean, let's get the ball rolling. What is Crediverso to start off with? 

[00:00:20.520] - Carlos

Absolutely, so we are an online financial products marketplace designed for U.S. Hispanics, a huge population here in the States. 60 million, 60 million people, which is about 20 percent of our population. Yeah.  it's a big portion of the population. And the amazing thing is that they are very much underserved by existing financial institutions and financial intermediary platforms like the companies that give you personal finance information resources.

[00:00:46.500] - Carlos

First of all, many, much of it is not available in Spanish. They don't advertise in Hispanic neighborhoods and the content is not designed or presented in a way that is accessible to the typical Hispanic consumer.

[00:00:56.880] - Carlos

So what we tried to do is provide easy to access bilingual tools that help consumers understand complex financial decisions like how to pick the right credit card or how to apply for a mortgage. We also offer a ton of educational resources, like a Step-By-Step Guide on how to get a free credit report or in a particular economic circumstances, we find ourselves in right now how to make sure you get your stimulus check or a government loan and things like that.

[00:01:21.000] - Germaine

1. So is there such a need? I mean, so 20 percent of the population, you said, is Hispanic.  Is that is there a need then that they get that information in Spanish or in the in that in a different language or what ways? Why is that need sort of there? I guess what I'm trying to identify are there then if they are 20 percent of the population are that then other groups as well in the US where they would be better served if they where delivered that information in their own native language?

[00:01:54.720] - Carlos

Absolutely, and you know, we're starting with Hispanics as the consumer base that we know best. But you're you're absolutely right. The one of the great things about being in the United States and about what I love about living in Los Angeles is that you can stand on a street corner in L.A. and see street signs and storefronts in six different languages English, Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, Tagalog, all sorts of languages. And so what we're starting with, with the Hispanic audience in the United States, ideally, I think there is a need for for a service like ours, for many different communities.

[00:02:26.550] - Carlos

And the way that I approach how that need plays out for the Hispanic population is you can look at the media landscape, for example, and in the US, you know, it certainly is different where you are imagine. But in the U.S., we have something like, I don't know, 400, 500 channels that are offered in English and we have two that are offered in Spanish. And so the need is just absolutely not met in many of these different verticals.

[00:02:53.820] - Carlos

Finance is a really important one for many, many different reasons.

[00:02:59.280] - Carlos

Access to small business loans, access to student loans, and anything as simple as getting a credit check or getting a credit card. And so while that's not the entirety of the 60 million person population speaks only Spanish, we go beyond just a you know, we're not just a translation service. There really is a cultural relevance component to this in terms of the way it's presented. You can take a credit card, for example, and a typical general market site might focus on, OK, what's a what's the best credit card if you want to build up some travel points to go to Europe next summer.

[00:03:33.950] 

And that's great. You know, it's play folks are taking those kind of trips, maybe if maybe not right now, but hopefully soon in the future. Yeah. With our specific demographic that we're offering the service towards, many of them maybe have, you know, never been on a plane more interested in things like what is a good credit card if I don't have a Social Security number?

[00:03:52.290] 

What does a good credit card if I just say so, you can sort of you're looking positive. It's the language is sort of the easiest way to identify who your market is. But then that has implications that sort of spread much further into the community, into how they live their life. And even, you know, as you've touched on sort of what then normal is versus, you know, what the average Americans and normal is as well. So you're really just I mean, money at the end of the day is a very lifestyle thing.

[00:04:21.570] - Germaine

So that's what you're trying to do, is sort of talk about that from a lifestyle style sort of perspective. We didn't talk about what your role is and you know what you do at Crediverso.

[00:04:34.530] - Carlos

Yeah thanks for asking. So I founded Crediverso about at this point just over nine months ago. So we are a very young company, but we are growing very quickly. I think we are getting close to 20 people or so on the team across all the different capacities. We just brought on a summer internship team of about seven people, all MBA students, all fantastic everywhere, from engineers to finance backgrounds. So we're growing very quickly. We're expanding into different product verticals.

[00:05:00.930] - Carlos

But, yeah, you know, I started this company in late October of last year. And really the idea behind it was that I just started noticing that, hey, why am I not seeing advertisements in Spanish with Hispanic imagery or things that are relevant to the Spanish community on TV, on social media, on Instagram, Facebook? Why is that not there? And after a little bit of research, I realized, hey, it looks like the typical financial institution spends less than two and a half percent of their marketing budget on marketing toward Hispanics.

[00:05:33.630] - Carlos

And as I mentioned a minute ago, 20 percent of the population is comprised of that group. So there's a big mismatch there, which, you know, it's bittersweet because on one hand, it means that there is a for a long time there has been a population that has been very much underserved. On the other hand, it provides a business opportunity. And so that's we're kind of approaching from bothof those.

[00:05:49.680] - Germaine

Yeah. Right. Very interesting. So you started this about nine, 10 months ago. How old are you now, if you don't mind me asking? 31. So you were probably 30, 31 when you started as well. What drove you to stop this, apart from seeing this market?

[00:06:09.820] - Germaine

You know, I'm sure there are a lot of things in life that people come across that, you know, oh, this is a good business opportunity here, but it takes a bit more than a good business opportunity to jump into a business. What what what were the other factors that sort of came into it, you know? Well, you sort of leave me another job or you're finishing up at another business that you started. How did that sort of happen?

[00:06:32.410] - Germaine

Perfectly.

[00:06:33.820] - Carlos

Yeah. Thanks for asking, Germaine. And really, the way that kind of played out is that I not too long ago graduated from grad school and I did a joint degree program at Harvard in Law and Business. I graduated with my JD and my MBA. And that, you know, I was lucky enough to get to have that great education and learn across a variety of subjects from law all the way to finance how to start a business, how to incorporate a business, all those things that really it's kind of an essential skill set for a founder.

[00:07:08.020] - Carlos

So I figured, OK, you know, now I'm young, I'm not married, no kids. Now is probably the best time, if there is one, to take this big risk because it is a big risk. You know, many colleagues went on to very secure jobs in investment banking or consulting or private equity. And that's a that's a very hard wrap because of the hours that they make you work in the lifestyle, but you don't have that same job insecurity.

[00:07:34.090] - Carlos

You know, you don't know whether your company will still be around in a year. So I figured if there's any time in my life I'm going to take a big risk, it's right now where I don't have people depending on me. And I think it's a social mission that I really care about. And that makes all the swallow.

[00:07:51.940] - Germaine

And how do you make the financial side of things sort of work? Like not not in terms of the actual product service, but at the business side of things that is coming out of school? I would imagine, you know, 20 people cost money to obviously to to pay their wages, things like that. How is that sort of how have you managed to navigate that sort of things?

[00:08:13.730] - Carlos

And while that is a a tough path to choose for a wide variety of reasons, most of which you have missed out one side, it puts you in a position where you have a an actual product that you can look at, walk through, get a really good understanding for the business and the revenue model before you begin asking for venture dollars. And you have a little bit more leverage that way and just better economics in terms of the terms that you get from venture capital partners.

[00:08:40.300] - Carlos

Now, to answer your question, that makes for a tougher stretch from inception to funding. Right. And I was lucky enough to have had a few jobs before, before and during grad school. And I was able to put away some money. I knew that I ultimately wanted to start something on my own. So between putting away that money during grad school, investing it where I could. The fact that up until a couple of months ago, we were in a long bull market.

[00:09:05.470] - Carlos

All those things kind of helped to put me in the position to be able to fund this thing internally for a little while until we got the MBP up or running, which we have now. And now we are aggressively in the ABC funding strategy phase of our resistance.

[00:09:20.140] - Germaine

1. Wow. So your your very intentionally now looking for outside money to come in and and use that. Does that funding to I guess, take the business into the next stage. 

[00:09:32.510] - Carlos

That's right. And I'm really excited about it because it means that, you know, where we have been very intentional about approaching some of these cost and some of these big expenditure items previously. Now, we are kind of starting to get to the point where we can think about, OK, what does this thing look like when we really juice it up with some financing?

[00:09:51.100] - Carlos

And that is everything from bringing more engineers in-house to accelerate our growth of the product development side to really taking a heavy crack at paid ads. And we have a few strategies within that. But additional money never hurts.

[00:10:07.300] - Germaine

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's an interesting thing that I think I think about all the time, because, you know, when you when you get additional money, you'd be looking to give a give away portion of the business. Is that is that correct? In this instance, in terms of what you look at. 

[00:10:24.210] - Carlos

Unfortunately, I think they generally will make money.I mean, if if anybody wants to give me free money, that's even better.

[00:10:30.670] - Germaine

But but you're looking at, you know, giving away shares of the business versus like debt or venture debt and those sorts of options. 

[00:10:38.450] - Carlos

We're considering both. We have a team comprised of a few very smart people. Some  lawyers with experience on the VC side, some folks with finance backgrounds like my own. And that's one of the major decision points. We're trying to make it through this process. And we look at the the really the real decision points of the fundraising strategy. It's. What do we want to spend the money on? How much will it costs? What is the best way to pursue that money?

[00:11:05.030] - Carlos

And based off of all those factors? Who are we targeting from an investment missing standpoint? Is it. Are we looking at a seat or are we looking at a series A.. Are we looking at traditional venture or are we looking at angel or family office or strategic partners? These are all decisions that we're actively making right now. And it makes for a pretty interesting process. But the the end goal, again, is, you know, if we can, like I said, juice this company up with the resources that it needs to really have a a wide reach.

[00:11:34.310] - Carlos

I'm really excited about the potential impact it can have. I think if we can be the difference between somebody getting a small business loan and being able to open up a business or getting a student loan to be able to go to college. That is really what this company is all about. And the existing financial resources, personal finance resources that are out there in the U.S. right now are, I think, lacking in many of those areas for our demographic.

[00:11:58.070] - Germaine

Yeah. Yeah. So there's a strong sort of social mission here. But then looking at, you know, asking people for money, did you want to get to a stage where the way I like to think about it is that you want to come up with a very clear or good formula of what it takes for your company to grow things like, you know, how much money do you have to spend to acquire a customer, a customer acquisition costs?

[00:12:23.060] - Germaine

Did you do you spend a lot of time doing that before you started this process? Or are you still sort of are you trying to define that as much as possible before you start to look for money? Is that is that a very intentional thing that you're doing here?

[00:12:38.420] - Carlos

 Absolutely, and I can tell you two seconds in that this is a process that you are very familiar with. The the benefit I have is that my sister is a principal at a venture capital firm, and so I kind of have a secret weapon in her.

[00:12:55.250] - Carlos

That was intentional about those approaches on my own. She is able to really guide me in that sense. And so, you know, again, in terms of that strategizing up front, when we approach the process, like you said, you know, we are we are really selling a product here. Not I'm not talking about the Crediverso the website to the consumers, but I'm talking about the best opportunity to venture capital investors. Whenever you're selling something, you need to understand exactly the perspective somebody has who is a potential buyer and relevance there is what are these KPI is that a typical D.C. investor will look at? You mentioned customer acquisition costs. Our revenue model, that is perhaps one of the most relevant metrics that an investor will look at. But there are other ones as well. Burn rates. What our major milestone for spending are in the next few months and the next year. These are all very relevant pieces that need to be able to be answered before we can have serious conversations within the VC community.

[00:13:55.800] - Carlos

And we've, I think, done a pretty good job so far of trying to come to those answers. But, you know, it's a it's a start up. Things change. We're rolling out new products as we speak. So what our what our burn rate looks like, what our revenue structure looks like, it's different for every product. So it's been a fun process to answer that question.

[00:14:14.120] - Germaine

Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting sort of time for us to talk with you because you're sort of nine months in. I would call that a very young business. But then you're getting to you're starting to look for funding. And, you know, you're in a position where I would say, again, businesses would find themselves more at, you know, twenty four months rather than nine, 10 months. I mean, granted, this is this is not a short crisis.

[00:14:35.450] - Germaine

It's not like, you know, you're going to wake up tomorrow and you're going to have a deal. And by next week, you're going to have all the funding through. But just look at it. It's interesting to have a conversation with someone who is going through this going through this journey and looking at it.

[00:14:50.930] - Carlos

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're really looking at this as an opportunity to get money to make an end sort of social goal, a reality vs., you know, setting a bit of the company to keep the company alive. Besides, your your your you look at the social side of things and what that what that power, the power that you have in that that sort of sentence. Is that fair to say?

[00:15:18.740] - Carlos

Well, you know, I think the good thing about the position we're in right now and the way we've built out the different teams is that our burn rate is actually very, very low. So we are under no immediate time pressure in terms of how much we need to raise. But in terms of the end goal of why we're trying to do this, I think I think there are two major goals. I mean, there is absolutely that social mission enough potential for generational change that I think we have within this community.

[00:15:44.600] - Carlos

I think it's very much needed. And we with through the power of the Internet and the opportunity that has been created through other firms, a large financial institutions not being able to access or not simply carrying enough to. This market, there is a big opportunity there to have a social mission. The flip side of that coin is that this is a space that is phenomenally. It makes phenomenal sense from a business case because there are all these different products.

[00:16:13.590] 

I mean, credit cards, personal loans, student loans, credit checks, these are in many cases, especially through doing it in unmamable or on an Internet platform, very high margin products.

[00:16:27.290] - Carlos

I think the beauty of the model that we've we're pursuing is we will never charge a penny to the consumer, to this being a consumer in the US. Our revenue model is entirely tied to the financial institutions with whom we partner 

[00:16:39.920] - Germaine

On the back end, essentially. So once once something goes through, you get like a reimbursement, a commission, whatever terminology you want to use for sending that person to that institution.

[00:16:51.110] - Carlos

Exactly. And, you know, the specifics there are somewhat different depending on the product vertical we're talking about. But that's the gist of it. And again, that those commissions are provided by the financial partner and not by the consumer.

[00:17:08.090] - Germaine

So how are you finding your clients? Is it all your customers? Is it a lot of word of mouth at this stage or are you doing you mentioned sort of, you know, increasing spending in advertising, but is that something that you've pursued? How have you sort of started to find these costs, clients and customers? And could you give us an idea of how many customers you would say you have? Just just a just a general ballpark?

[00:17:35.090] - Carlos

Sure. So the the approach we're taking. I would say is two pronged. First is on the organic side. And this is really important because, you know, I mentioned the beginning of the conversation that the our competitors that I've described them are both the financial institutions where direct providers of financial products loans, credit card issuers, etc., and the financial intermediary platform. So those are things like least in states lending, tree credit, karma, nerd wallet, and not one of those platforms is available in Spanish.

[00:18:09.110] - Carlos

So what that means on the organic customer acquisition side is that when we write an article about five things you should do if you a credit card payment, and that's in Spanish. We are the only place you can get that information. So as you can imagine, that does phenomenal things for your SEO 

[00:18:25.260] - Germaine

Because you can rank almost number one straight off the bat.

[00:18:28.160] - Carlos

 Exactly. And so every week, you know, the the competitive landscape is different for every one of these products.

[00:18:33.020] - Carlos

But in many of them, we are the only place, for example, where you can compare credit cards in Spanish in the country where they allow a credit check in Spanish in the country.

[00:18:42.440] - Germaine

So I have been sorry to cut you off, but haven't been competitive, so to speak, in the past. I mean, to me, I'm looking at it and I guess this is the hallmark of any business that has identified a really good opportunity, is that, you know, once once you sort of hear about the idea, you sort of go, why hasn't someone done this before? But has someone done this before?

[00:19:03.460] - Germaine

Okay, so that is a question that I spend a lot of time thinking about. And I know the answers to whether they've done it before. And the question is why? What happened? Right. And yeah, why did they go bust or did they did did they get bought out?What happened? 

[00:19:18.590] - Carlos

So there hasn't been anybody in our particular space to try to do what we're doing in terms of a platform that goes across multiple financial product verticals, comparison, customer attrition, et cetera, in Spanish targeting this platform. But the let me give you an analogy that I think will kind of encompass what has happened in the space.

[00:19:38.660] - Carlos

So when a what I call a general market company, so somebody who targets the general market as a whole and doesn't specify niches with regards to specific demographics, when a general market company wants to go from targeting the general market as a whole to one specific demographic. The way that they have done it in almost every instance is take the existing infrastructure for that they use to build out there, in many cases, very successful general market platform and try to apply that to a new specific demographic.

[00:20:09.410] - Carlos

So, for example, you can get a a bank that is headquartered in the middle of the country, has a in a state where their population of Hispanics is almost zero percent. And they say, hey, you know, they're looking at the same numbers. We are we got 60 million people here. We're not addressing them. We're not available Spanish. Let's do this. Let's go after this market. And they say, OK, hey, Karen, from Accounting, you want to you want to take this on?

[00:20:35.210] - Carlos

She said, I've never really tried Mexican food, but yes, sure, I'll try it on and they try it. It doesn't work. No surprise. And it goes bust. And the most recent example of this is a company called Mundo Fox, OK, which Fox tried to develop a competitive television station in Spanish called the Fox. It started, I think, in 2014 and by 2016, if I'm not. And it was bust and how I think the approach of trying to transplant in a general market infrastructure into a new market, much like if you were to try to go into a different country, does not work.

[00:21:11.710] - Carlos

Whereas if you build ground up with people who are familiar that markets move with the audience and know how to speak the language in more ways than one. I think that's the appropriate way to target that market.

[00:21:23.740] - Germaine

So so what you've been able to do is essentially it's almost the benefit of not having a product that already sort of does a similar thing, is that you can build it up and you can customize it so that the customer is really in love with it in all in all aspects of it. And it sort of is really fit for purpose. This is just getting something and then trying to make it all, trying to make it work, which is, as you've mentioned, the competitors have tried to do in the past.

[00:21:50.830] - Carlos

That's the goal. And, you know, it's funny, for example, this is all stuff that I love seeing the examples. But again, it's bittersweet because it just means that this is an unaddressed market. And so there are there lists that come out every year of who the top advertising spenders are within the Hispanic population in the US. And on that list, there is only one financial institution, OK, that does lending credit card, et cetera.

[00:22:17.920] - Carlos

And that's Wells Fargo, great company that a lot of great things. But if you go. So presumably because they're the only one that's in the top 50 by spend the best rate. They should be. If you go to Wells Fargo, dot com slash Espanol, that's the Spanish landing page. The text is, I think, all in English. The photos are of imagery that I would not exactly describe as relevant for this demographic. And there are there is a pun in English.

[00:22:48.460] - Carlos

So if you don't speak the language, not only are you going to not understand what the what the words themselves mean, but you're definitely not going to understand what the plan words means.

[00:22:56.250] - Germaine

Yeah. So this is really interesting for you. And really interesting exercising in nation down and then almost localizing it, isn't it. Like you're in the US. But you want to localize it to the Hispanics. Now, that does sort of bring up an interesting thing, though. Is it fair to say that I mean, the Hispanics come from everywhere. But is the majority of the majority of the Spanish population in the US from a certain country or descendants of a certain sort of group of people?

[00:23:30.420] - Carlos

Well, that's another really important nuance, and I'm glad you raised it, because it's a huge population in the country. And to just say Spanish speakers is almost like looking at the world and saying English speakers and assuming they're all from the US right, it doesnt work?

[00:23:46.860] - Carlos

Phenomenally different cultures, just they share a language. And so what you've brought up is a very  important nuance in the sense that I think something like sixty five percent or so, maybe 70 percent come from Mexico. That's a big chunk. And the remainder is kind of spread across Latin America, the Caribbean. We've been of some Spaniards in the US. So very different countries, very different cultures. If you share the commonality of the language. But the one thing that I've seen, for example, is that the the way that.

[00:24:23.210] - Carlos

Immigration has played out over the past 50 years, 100 years or so in the country. Is that the Cuban population, for example? When that immigration process started and this is a bit didak at the risk of being a bit didactic, because that was a they were political immigrants, political based immigrants for the most part. And speaking in broad terms here, when they came to the country and prominently was to Florida, the people who were able to come were of high education levels, generally wealthy, high socio economic status.

[00:24:54.950] - Carlos

And so that created a community in Florida that was very different from some other cultures that were maybe not political immigrants, but rather economic immigrants. And so when you leave a country in Mexico, as has been a perfect example of this, in many instances when you leave a country because there is no economic opportunity for you there, then you are not someone who typically has it. By definition, it means that you don't have economic opportunities. So when you get to this country, you're not arriving here with a medical degree behind you or a law degree behind you.

[00:25:29.460] - Carlos

You are arriving here to look for whatever work you can, often with your pockets. And, you know, I have relatives that were in that situation. And so it's one with which I'm really familiar. But the way that plays out is that when you look to what you asked, how how companies have traditionally approached this, when you look to how a company in whatever part of the country approaches it, say, OK, hey, let's we want to get into the Hispanic market, let's go hire a Hispanic owned marketing firm.

[00:25:58.610] - Carlos

Great. Where are they? Other Miami, OK. There. That is a firm that is very well suited for targeting their specific demographic of Florida and the immigrants that have arrived in Florida and that communities develop there. But that may not be the one that captures the largest percentage of the population in the country. You may end up coming up with a message that is perfect for one portion of that pie, but missing the larger portion of that pie.

[00:26:25.460] - Germaine

And so what's your heritage?What's your background? 

[00:26:29.270] - Germaine

So I grew up in a Mexican-American family in Los Angeles. My mother was born in Mexico, moved the United States. You go to college. My father was born in a Mexican neighborhood in Los Angeles. East L.A.. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:26:45.830] - Germaine

So you've got sort of that mad Mexican heritage. Is that fair to say? Yeah.

[00:26:49.640] - Carlos

Absolutely. I actually have a little Irish in me. You should see the baby pictures of me where I had orange hair. Yeah.

[00:26:58.940] - Germaine

I guess what the reason I'm asking this is because, you know, you've just talked about how how hard it can be and how important it is that you have, you know, quite, quite firsthand knowledge and firsthand experience. When you're when you're targeting your demographic. But how do you then make sure that you do that? Because I can imagine that. Do you literally just sit down and look at all marketing collateral, look at the website and make sure that it sort of matches you going off to.

[00:27:30.500] - Germaine

Do you have different people you you invite into this mix? Do you talk to a marketing agency, get them involved? How have you managed to do that? Because I mean, you've got the distinct benefit here of actually having heritage, all the background and the upbringing that could that is related to you on each. But I could imagine that if you didn't have any of that, this would be near impossible. But how do you make it happen?

[00:27:55.890] - Carlos

Well, listen, it is it is very, very hard, even for me of having the benefit of growing up in a neighborhood that is very Hispanic.

[00:28:03.170] - Carlos

And, you know, I think I just had tacos for lunch. So that's even. Having had that exposure to the culture, it is still a very hard thing to do to build a product that somebody wants to use and they feel is right for them. We've had the benefit of having a woman on the team who was the founder of multicultural marketing. So has a phenomenal background in this space.

[00:28:26.720] - Carlos

But really, I think the first step as we've approached develop the product development and every one of these verticals, whether it was our credit card comparison platform, whether it's the credit checks or loan proxima, working on the first step in every instance is understanding the consumer, understanding the pain points, understanding what they like and don't like about the existing offerings if they even know about the existing offering. I mentioned that there is very little marketing for these products in those neighborhoods.

[00:28:55.280] - Carlos

So sitting down and actually having surveys, interviews, questionnaires, talking to people, getting their stories, that is the most important thing we can do. And then building from that standpoint, that actually has been a much harder process now, given the epidemic area of not being able to have accused you of your actions. But we're making it work and we're still I mean, with people out there doing surveys today. OK.

[00:29:17.130] - Germaine

Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's very hit the ground running. And, you know, I talked to the PayPal. The demographic and just putting the work that it's going to take to understand what they're often what they want. 

[00:29:28.300] - Carlos

But I'll give you an example as to why this is so hard. So I know you speak a bunch of languages. I don't know if Spanish is one of them, but in Spanish. You can refer to someone using either the informal tu toOK, which is you or the formal usted, which is generally easier for parents.

[00:29:49.820] - Carlos

Things like that. If I'm talking to one of my buddies, I say to if I'm talking to a professor, I say, use that. Now, which one of those do we use when we're writing these articles? Right. That's. You think that's a simple question, but is it. Are the people reading this? Are they younger? Are they younger than me? Are they my age? Are they older or are they first generation parents or are they second generation children?

[00:30:12.650] - Carlos

Those are all. That's a very nuanced question. And to my point earlier about what happens when you put Karen from accounting on this project, who's never been to California, you know, that to tu or usted thing that I have trouble figuring out the answer to that question.

[00:30:28.330] - Germaine

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let let alone someone who hasn't even had had a Hispanic food and and any sort of Hispanic contact before, so. So to speak.

[00:30:41.630] - Germaine

What are some like we've talked about, you know, the the things that you've been able to do. What are some things that you've some mistakes that you've made, some things that you've sort of gone, oh we could have been, you know, a month or two ahead if if we'd avoided this mistake? Anything come to mind?

[00:31:01.880] - Carlos

Honestly, the it's it's not a question of what comes to mind. It's a question of which item from the list to tell you.

[00:31:11.330] - Germaine

Oh, that's fantastic. Because normally people just sort of say, oh, you know, I can't really think of any yet. It just took a long time, but I can't think of any mistakes. But what are some big ones that do you think the the audience can really learn from and understand from?

[00:31:28.280] - Carlos

Yeah, absolutely. So I think probably the the most interesting one is that I mentioned that we have a lot of different product verticals, that we're the ones that I think are the most interesting, both from the business case and from the potential to have like real dollar impact. Putting dollars in back in people's pockets are some that we're working on right now that are going to be launched over the next hopefully few weeks. But it is a well, if I if I give you a deadline, then my product team is going to yell at me.

[00:32:06.440] - Carlos

But and I said, OK, in order for us to get there, we need involvement from these partner financial institutions. We need buy and we need to be able to show them that we are legitimate, we are active, that they are competitors. If they're not already on board with us, they will be on to capture those facts. And I said, OK, to get there, that's going to be hard. We need to build up some groundwork first.

[00:32:27.050] - Carlos

And what you can see on our Web site right now, while they are I certainly think they're viable business lines on their own. I think they are in many ways, steps we took in order to position ourselves to be able to chase down that that that really big fish. Now, I mentioned that I wasn't an engineer by background, and that's where this gets important. And that's where it's relevant to the process that I understood to be very much a business development process in order to access the information and the software that we need to create those products that I was mentioning.

[00:33:01.040] - Carlos

I thought that was gonna be really hard, really time intensive, very much a business development thing based on relationships and demonstrating value. It's really easy. It's just a software thing. You know, they they ended up joining the team later and they said, well, why have you been waiting to do this? Oh, this reason is that, you know, you can just go here and you'll get it.

[00:33:21.010] - Carlos

You know, in terms of distilling that into an actionable mistake and how to fix it, I think trying to put people around you that round out your skill set and know things that you don't know and more importantly, that can identify you. I'm always trying to figure out what questions can I ask that I don't even know to ask yet. And so having those around the console for that is really, really important. And because this was a very lean team at the start and we were self funding, I tried to solve for a lot of that on my own.

[00:33:52.520] - Carlos

At the risk of not getting questions answered in the first place, that could have saved me a lot of time and resources.

[00:33:58.710] - Germaine

Well, and to an extent, what you what you sort of, I think, take away from that as well, is that it's okay to ask questions and it's okay to sort of put it out there, because, you know, there are instances where you just know that this is the answer. This is it. Like there's no there's no alternative. But then just as just as much, there are instances where you sort of go. I'm not sure all other.

[00:34:23.520] - Germaine

I don't know what I don't know and I'm not sure that over there, but over here I see a lot of that, that this Facebook groups that I've basically like this one quote, Ask Canberra, for example. That is literally designed and meant to for people to come in and ask questions. And what I've found is that people ask questions. And then I sort of look at the question. I go like, that's not even a question like that.

[00:34:48.690] - Germaine

It's obvious, you know, you all like, what's your favorite Chinese restaurants in Canberra? Now I'm just going like everyone knows what the best ones are yet. Then I click through the comments and I go home. And I didn't know that, you know, that that that that places like right around the corner. I didn't know that they even existed. And, you know, that's just me. I guess my example of when, you know, you ask those questions, you get answers, even though you think that you know the answer.

[00:35:15.610] - Germaine

And I mean, your example was a similar thing. Yes. You didn't have the team in place at that time. And if you had the team, one would hope that you'd have sort of got that answer much quicker. But it's just saying that, you know, you had to ask that question. And there's so many online forums and opportunities nowadays where you can just put it out there. Sort of over the years, I've used, you know, those sorts of platforms just to ask all sorts of questions that help me understand, you know, how much someone willing to pay per hour for  X, Y  service .

[00:35:47.620] - Germaine

Is there a demand for this? And why why is there a demand? Why is there no demand? And so on and so forth. So there's a lot lot of sort of I think your your example was very product led or product based, but that that sort of can apply for all sorts of facets of someone's business and someone's journey. So, yeah, that's awesome. What do you guys sort of plan to do moving forward? What's what's sort of the next step?

[00:36:19.300] - Germaine

Are you. Is this a game or is this a play where you need to get as many providers on board? Is this a play? Because it's sort of a almost chicken or the egg situation as well, isn't it? Do you get you know, you get complete coverage of all Hispanics, but then not have complete coverage of all financial products or the opposite or both together? What's what's the plan there?

[00:36:45.120] - Carlos

No, you just highlighted something that has been very much an idea that it has not kept me up at night, but one that I that I struggle with trying to solve for. And that's the I think it's the reason why people don't pursue this type of business often is because it's a two sided marketplace. And building a two sided marketplace is very hard. You have to align the supply and align the demand at the same time. And it like you said, it is a chicken and the egg problem.

[00:37:12.420] - Carlos

So, you know, for with regards to our specific two sided marketplace, on the one hand, we have all these consumers that they will only want to be on our platform if they can see relevant offers for loans, for credit card, for credit checks, etc.. On the other hands, on the supply side, these financial institutions, they're not going to want to put their products on their platform unless they're strapped. Right. Unless they're consumers, unless there is demand.

[00:37:38.210] - Carlos

So how do you how do you get both there at the same time when either one wants to be there or the other one is there? Yeah. And that's that's an interesting challenge. The way that we've approached it is basically we. Built out the supply. I don't want to say artificially, because it is Real's. It is real supply. It is just not in the ultimate iteration that we want it to be in from a technological standpoint or from a monetized standpoint.

[00:38:07.220] - Carlos

So we brought in a bunch of personal finance experts, and I am certainly not a personal finance expert yet working on becoming one. We brought in people who write for Forbes, write for CNBC, write for every major financial editorial you can think of. And we said, hey, help us build out this platform with content that is relevant, interesting and showcases the right products for this demographic that, by the way, on its own was a very difficult process because as you can imagine, finding somebody who has a knowledge of the specific demographic of financial products.

[00:38:39.680] - Carlos

Yes, you can find them. They're probably gonna be in Mexico. And those from the same ones that we want to showcase in the US. So it was very much, you know, finding the right people and refining it in the way that is relevant. And so we stocked our platform with all this content about what are the best credit cards? What are the best was. And while we didn't have that done in a technologically sophisticated way that we are bringing it to now, and in many cases, those products weren't monetized yet, that at least create supply such that the demand can now have something to look at and have something to demand for.

[00:39:15.620] - Carlos

So that's how it is now. OK, now we're in the position where we have that demand and we can go back and pluck out something that isn't exactly what we want. Pop it back in with something that is monetized, that is technologically sophisticated, et cetera. And that's how we kind of approach that chicken or the egg problem.

[00:39:29.790] - Germaine

Yeah. So it's sort of being frozen with almost indecision of, you know what, I go with chicken or the egg. You just picked one and just just ran with it and then you just knew that it might not be perfect. You might not be the exact demographic, it might not be generating the exact results, but that you can then leverage. It's almost like, you know, the first step, right. You sort of get that step going and then you know that because you've got that first step, you can then go to the next step, but you can't sort of jump over that step.

[00:39:59.690] - Germaine

And I guess the takeaway here is just to pick one, maybe pick ones out of the market and just try and try and go after them. And at the end of the day, you can't get the exact same exact market that you want, because to do that, you need that sort of supply demand two sided marketplace, but try and get at least a general gist of it. And in this case, it's people who are interested in money, who have a Hispanic background or who speaks Spanish.

[00:40:26.990] - Germaine

And then you can go from there. And yes, it's still making all the money. But next step is to sort of go to the bank and say, hey, guys, we've got X amount of traffic on our Web site. They need solutions. We're looking to monetize. Let's start working together. Is that is that basically what you did? 

[00:40:44.700] - Carlos

That's that's absolutely it and I wish  I'd had you around early on to help me work through these.

[00:40:52.300] - Germaine

So you could have done this many, many times. The you know, what you were mentioning a moment ago? I think it really, really struck home to me because all the other jobs I've had and, you know, like I mentioned, I worked at law firms that worked on the banking side. I have been surrounded by these fantastic, intelligent people who are good at what they do. And they're hard working and they challenge you. And they they provide a sounding board for complex questions that you're trying to figure out.

[00:41:19.650] - Carlos

So you're just like you are right now. And when you take that leap to go into a startup, I mean, if you don't have a co-founders, I did not. And you don't have a team right from the outset as I did. We do. And how to spot. But you all of sudden don't have anybody to ask questions, do you? Tell yourself. And it's a very different process.

[00:41:40.720] - Carlos

So, you know, I was lucky enough to have, like a mentor, my sister. My parents have been involved with Hispanic community for a long, long time. They were great sounding boards and a riot of other, I'd call them advisory board role type people. But still, that's a that's very different from having somebody sitting right next to you saying, hey, what you think about this? Okay, great. Move on. Yes.

[00:42:03.110] - Germaine

Yes on a day to day basis who is there to you know, the way I see it, a cofounder is fantastic because at the very least, it's just another another level of sanity check. You know, either they agree with you. And that's awesome. Or they disagree. And then you've got to you've got to sort of work it out and prove it out. And that's what I try and do as much as possible is sort of.

[00:42:23.850] - Germaine

And, you know, the being sort of the same as the leader, the CEO, the founder. I think some people get the wrong idea within a team that whatever they say, whatever that's found or the leader says is how it has to happen, where it's much more beneficial for somebody in that position as a leader or founder or manager to put an idea out there and actually get actual feedback. Because I'm sure, as you found out with your team, it's not just about shutting.

[00:42:51.450] - Germaine

The bad ideas, but also getting energy and buying on the right ones and the right ideas and then, you know, getting that excitement and passion so that you can push that across to other individuals, that you're not the only guy who's that, you know, all excited. And then you got 19 team members are going far out. We're just doing this because he wanted us to. You want it to be much more sort of passion driven. Now, do you guys all work in an office or remotely? How did how's that happening?

[00:43:19.870] - Carlos

So typically, the office is located in Santa Monica. Great place to be. Really easy to recruit. We can say, hey, you know, Santa Monica, you want to come down we take our breaks at the beach. That is no longer a reality with the pandemic era. So we have been entirely remote. But even, you know, prior to when that started, we have rolls across the team that don't need to be in person.

[00:43:46.090] - Carlos

So we have team members who produced all this. We're look at in New York. So we're located in Los Angeles. I traditionally spend half my time in L.A. and have in New York, and most of that could be done prior remotely. It has now all been done prior. I would love to get people back into the office just because of what I was talking about with that communal feel and bouncing the other ideas that you didn't expect. We'll see when that's a reality and whether people are excited or interested to be back in the office. But for the moment.

[00:44:17.320] - Germaine

Yeah. But I mean, especially when it's sort of, you know, there's a social mission as well. I personally believe that there's a there's a benefit to having people there. And, you know, it's just that energy to bounce ideas off, to build out the community, build out the team sort of internally so that, you know, I mean, you get to I'm a huge fan of sort of working in an office and we've now transitioned back to coming into the office.

[00:44:43.180] - Germaine

Things are not as bad of years there. They're over them for better or worse. And, you know, Canberra, really, at the end of the day, I think we had about a hundred cases of coronavirus, which is insane compared to what what the numbers you guys are getting and seeing over there. So we've transitioned back, and you know, I just think there's a huge value. I personally don't think that remote work is where the workforce is going to, at least not the workforce that's driven with a mission, you know.

[00:45:19.130] - Germaine

Yeah. The people who just go to work and, you know, money, they don't care where they work out of. But I think that, you know, we we at Futuretheory, thats  my business, we do marketing websites, all that stuff. We have a social mission. We want to help as many people as possible, help as many business ideas as possible. And that's just much easier to infuse when you're there in person.

[00:45:45.650] - Germaine

And that's the same thing for you guys. It's much easier to push that across, saying, listen, we're not just a financial services provider or financial comparison site. We're way we are the number one place for Hispanics and we're everything Hispanic and that needs to sort of guard and permeate through the whole chain.

[00:46:04.150] - Carlos

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And, you know, the you asked a moment ago about one of the major mistakes I made. And I have another one for you, if you'll humor me. I keep mentioned that I wasn't from an engineering background. And so for our first product, I guess the credit card comparison, which was the first thing we did, it was a very basic and we're say we're actively working on bringing the technological sophistication of that up.

[00:46:27.670] - Carlos

I basically was the product manager on that. I don't have a background in product management. And so the amount of learnings that have come with going through that process on my own and then having people who have really strong engineering precommitment backgrounds coming on board telling me what I did wrong. It's interesting. So one of the pieces that's to what you're saying about being a person and having, you know, the those ideas get developed. One of the things that I thought was really fascinating is that we have switched from a model where I said here's to the engineers, to the engineering team.

[00:47:00.790] - Carlos

Here's what I want to do. Here's what it should look like. Here's what I want it to do. Go build it. Let me know when it's done and we'll run through it, too. Now, we've switched to an agile software development, our product development platform. So that's much easier to do in person. But in the same vein, I think the way that that ideology was presented to me is that you can on the if you look at the way I did it and say the product is not credit card comparison, but it is getting a car built the way I did it and I said, OK, I want this car here.

[00:47:29.290] - Carlos

It's going to look like go build it. And if the engineers start by building a wheel, then they build an axle, then they build the undercarriage and they put the body on it. Then they paint it and send it to me. And when I get it, you know, I'm not happy because it took a long time. It might not be the type of car I wanted. Maybe I wanted convertible. They gave me a truck, etc.

[00:47:46.150] - Carlos

the agile method that we're switching to. And this is just kind of one of those learnings from having been a around. Team members now. The process is much more OK. You want a car? Let's start by building you a scooter. OK. You build that better. I like the scooter. You know, like I want to go a little faster. I kind of need it for this. For this. OK, then we turn it into a bike.

[00:48:03.920] - Carlos

That's the next phase. I have a bike. I try the bike out. There's that customer feedback there. Then they turn it into a motorcycle. All right. And we're now it is taking a lot less time. And maybe I want that motorcycle more than I ever wanted that car. And that won't solve our problem. I save time. I save resources. I save frustration. And there's feedback baked in at every point. So that's wanted to learn.

[00:48:22.180] - Carlos

And I think that, again, just having had the benefit of being in person with people versus working in a silo and maybe this room, maybe that's just as a sole founder. That's one of the things I think you learn for people.

[00:48:34.740] - Germaine

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a really good tip as well, because I think sometimes people find and people think that they need this end goal. That is, you know, let's call it the Rolls Royce, when in reality they just needed a scooter. But they think they've been led to believe that without the Rolls-Royce that it's despite succeed, the idea won't be accepted and won't be respected. When in reality, as it as you put it, you can go through that journey and actually find out that I didn't need a car all along.

[00:49:04.820] - Germaine

In fact, you know, the the negatives around a car are much worse. And therefore, you know, even if the car's a better product overall, just I don't need all those things that take away from and I might as well just have the core of what it is. And, you know, the same goes for even sort of coming up with a minimum viable product and just proving out. This is what you need. No. Yes.

[00:49:27.390] - Germaine

Okay. What what elements can we change and then going from there? This is because I guarantee you this this service, this this software foundations and frameworks and bases that you can buy that build that comparison websites like guaranteed, you can just buy it, pop it in, translate everything to Spanish and you could go. But that wouldn't serve what you're trying to do. And what what what end products you're trying to arrive at. 

[00:49:56.410] - Carlos

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right and so that's the  learning curve. It's all part of the fun. 

[00:50:03.380] - Germaine

Hey, where can we find out more about you guys and you?

[00:50:06.650] - Carlos

Thanks for asking. So our Web site is Crediverso dot com, thats c r e d i v e r s o dot com. We're also on social Instagram at Crediverso  and Facebook dot com saturated. So if you don't know why you would. But if you for some reason want to talk to me, my. It's linked in dot com slash CP Hernandez.

[00:50:27.050] - Germaine

Awesome. So we'll link all that in the description as well so that people can find you. Now, do you know about the top 12?

[00:50:34.790] - Carlos

 I know about the top twelve

[00:50:42.330] - Germaine

Well, let's get the get the ball rolling with top three books or podcasts that you recommend. 

[00:50:46.500] - Carlos

All right, I'll give you I'll give you my three favorite books that I think your listenership might might like to read. One is The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. It's an absolute classic. The reason I like it because it talks about value investing, how you never want to pay something that is more than something is worth. And it sounds like a simple idea.

[00:51:04.980] - Carlos

But when you start talking about stocks and companies and other investments, it is very easy to get caught up in speculation rather than investing based on the value of something. So I think that is just a fundamental read for anybody who's interested in finance, history and personal finance and how to manage investments. A second is what I would call investing book that I really like is called The Most Important Thing  By Howard Marks. And these are kind of macroeconomic letters that he writes out to his investment community.

[00:51:35.460] - Carlos

So he's the chairman and I think co-founder of Oaktree Capital, which is based here in Los Angels. They're private equity, the distressed debt investing, amongst many other things. And he sends out these letters that are phenomenal in terms of how they cover the macro economic landscape, the predictions he makes. And while they can be very, you know, professorial and theoretical, I think they're really fascinating. Read. So those are two. The third book that I found has really shaped my world view, maybe not from an investing standpoint, but just in terms of, you know, being a student of history of the US.

[00:52:12.960] - Carlos

I really like a book called A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. And this presents a different viewpoints of American history. And so it tries to tell the story of, for example, the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Native Americans of the Constitution, from the standpoint of the civil war as seen by the New York Irish up the Mexican war as seen by deserving soldiers. And so that's it's a totally different viewpoint than what is often taught in history, class and middle school and seen on TV, so I thought that was really interesting.

[00:52:47.880] - Germaine

Yeah, that's awesome. I think. I think this is been or the, you know, no offense to anyone, any of the guests prior, but this has been a very interesting start to the top three because I've never heard of these any of these books before. So and usually, you know, there's at least one that I sort of got. Yeah. Heard of it. But love, love the diversity so far. Next one, top three software tools that you can't live without.

[00:53:12.120] - Carlos

OK, well, I don't know if this will be as exciting. 

[00:53:16.270] - Germaine

That's OK. That's all right.

[00:53:17.940] - Carlos

I'll give you the boring version of the fun version. So that's the boring version. Excel, PowerPoint and Google Hangouts, OK. These are tools that I think every startup country needs Excel. You know, I had the benefit of having done investment banking and they really grind into those those hard skills. It is a  very approachable software package the end of the day, it is not rocket science. Like everybody likes to make it out to be.

[00:53:41.010] - Carlos

I think people like to think that what they do is really hard. They tell people that it actually is really easy to learn. The trick is learn how to do everything on your keyboard without using a mouse. You'll save tons of time down the road. But for, you know, it is a financial modelling tool. I think what our platform does in the first personal space finance space is all about giving people tools to understand finances. Excel is one of those tools.

[00:54:04.050] - Carlos

And when you're looking at things like valuing businesses, valuing stocks as we are pitching venture capital firms, excel is something that's absolutely necessary. PowerPoint is the next step of that. And that's taking the learnings that you generate through financial modelling excel and putting them in a narrative that is interesting, that is compelling, that tells the story of your business or whatever it is you're trying to describe. And, you know, it doesn't need to be PowerPoint, but just something that can create that presentation that tells your story.

[00:54:36.390] - Carlos

I think storytelling is such an important skill. It is a soft skill. It is not one that is that is taught as a technical thing in high school or college. But it is so, so important being able to tell your story. Then the last piece know we are in the pandemic era and Google Hangouts is a I think it is a totally free service and it has been, phenomenal for our team been able to connect. I mean, as the team grows, I think the other day I was I sent out an invite to something like 50 people and I thought, well, what's the limit on Google Hangout?

[00:55:04.830] - Carlos

So am I to hit that. I know, no pun intended. Google it.

[00:55:09.360] - Carlos

And it's people you can get on Google. 

[00:55:12.630] - Germaine

Yeah wow. Which is enough for most people. You would say that basically enough for everyone.

[00:55:18.470] - Carlos

So so that's the that's also where the fun answer software can't live without Mario Kart and Super Smash Brothers.

[00:55:26.670] - Germaine

I mean I guess that it's software technically so.

[00:55:29.970] - Germaine

So you get up, you get a point for the top three mantras you try to live by.

[00:55:36.570] - Carlos

1. That. Let me I'll start with one. And, you know, not to double down on the video game comment, but I think I'll give you a Star Wars quote here. Yoda says, Do or do not? There is no try. And I think that is such a powerful message to live by, because it is so easy to say, oh, you know, one day I want to start a company, one day I want to volunteer.

[00:56:05.190] - Carlos

One day I want to do X, Y, Z, whatever it is, just do it, you know, get out there and do it. Don't don't worry about trying. Don't worry about failing. Do it or don't do it.

[00:56:14.790] - Carlos

And stop talking about it. And that's why I like that one.

[00:56:18.840] - Carlos

A second quote that I find phenomenal is by one of my personal hero, Bruce Lee. He says, To hell with circumstances. I create opportunities. And, you know, this is something that I think rings really true for the community that our product is intended to serve. Not everybody starts with the same circumstances and not everybody has access to the same resources, tools, education, financial backgrounds, etc. But being able to put your head down, work, do what you can with what you have and create an opportunity out of it for yourself or for others.

[00:56:55.290] - Carlos

I think it's such an important message. The third one is by someone who actually I'd be interested in to know if his message is reached. Just really he's a hero kind of among the Hispanic community here in California, it looks like migrant farm workers names Cesar Chavez. And he said, if you really want to make a friend, go to someone's house and be with him. The people who give you their food give you their hearts. And as somebody who has been known to enjoy a heavy meal here or there, I've always preached that the best way to get cultural understanding amongst people who may have nothing in common is through food.

[00:57:34.380] - Carlos

You give me a good plate from some culture that I've never tried before. I eat it. We talk. That's the best way to get understanding.

[00:57:40.020] - Germaine

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. That is that is again, does a lot of diversity in this top twelve, which is good because, you know, that's what your product is all about as well.

[00:57:50.430] - Germaine

I think certainly the last one. Yes.

[00:57:53.530] - Carlos

I think just amongst our internship team, we have someone from South Korea or someone from Chile, someone from Colombia, someone from Mexico, someone from Taiwan, someone from San Diego. There a lot of different accents being spoken in our intern program. 

[00:58:06.930] - Germaine

Oh, that's awesome. I mean, growing up my friendship group, we called ourselves the U.N. because we had Serbian, Italian, Ozon, British myself. We had a Lebanese guy. It is it to me, it's just awesome. And it's just, you know, something that should be embraced and. Yeah. Onto the last one, top three people you follow or study and why. 

[00:58:30.890] - Carlos

Okay. So I'll, um, I'll start with the quote that I gave from, you know, Bruce Lee. So he is someone that I've always considered a personal hero. And the reason is that, you know, we all have these platforms that we work hard on developing. And whether that is something simple, like, you know, our social media presence makes our friend group something in between. Like a company or something major, like a national following in international following, like we had through what he did with martial arts.

[00:58:57.840] - Carlos

I think the important thing is whatever you can do to get yourself a platform and then do something good with it. That's that's why I think Bruce Lee was really interesting, his platform of martial arts. And he did a contribute a lot to that from an academic perspective, an athletic perspective, everything. But what here where he really had a lasting impact was on, I think, the cultural understanding that took place between Americans and Chinese Americans in the West or at the time he was alive in the 60s.

[00:59:24.120] - Carlos

There was a lot of racial tension between within the Chinese community and the American community. It was an immigrant community that had previously been pretty closed off, mostly to ethnic enclaves.

[00:59:37.380] - Carlos

And there was a lot of racial tension. And by using that platform that appealed to the general markets, he was able to create a lot of understanding amongst that, that those cultures there. I think you did a lot for Chinese American community over that time period. He was active.

[00:59:54.060] - Germaine

Yeah. I mean, he I love Bruce Lee even growing up, sort of even as a kid. So, yeah, that's some I, I couldn't agree more. Anyone else that come to mind. 

[01:00:02.070] - Carlos

Yeah.I'll, I'll cheat a little bit here and mention my parents. So their names are Roland and  Marguerita and I don't think I could even begin to describe a list of heroes of mine without having them just be flat smack dab in the middle of it. The you know, my mom moved here from Mexico to go to college and she has done so much. She became a lawyer. She has had a successful career business. She was a couple years ago appointed as an ambassador to the UN and I'm so proud of what she does. And on top of all that, she's been a fantastic mother. And so she's always made time both for her career, for her family, for absolutely everything. So she's someone I very much look up to my dad. You know, same thing. He was born in East Los Angeles. Son of a cop went to. Got himself a great education and ended up devoting much of his career again to his community. So he worked for a long time as the chairman and CEO of Telemundo, which is one of the major Spanish TV stations in the US.

[01:01:10.930] - Germaine

Yeah, I've heard of them. 

[01:01:13.900] - Carlos

So being able to be active in your community, you contribute to the community, but also challenge yourself from an intellectual and business perspective. A professional perspective is something I very much look up to and aspire to. And so having my parents as role models, even just within the house, is something that I'm very myself very lucky and constantly grateful for.

[01:01:36.760] - Germaine

Yeah, that's awesome. I think there are a lot of people I mean, growing up as well in Australia. It's it's easy to forget the suffering that people's parents and grandparents have had to go through with that the life changing, life altering things that they've had to do, like moving whole country, you know, just in search of opportunity usually or in search of something different. I mean, my parents did the same thing we did. I was born in Australia.

[01:02:05.650] - Germaine

We moved to Australia in sort of this pursuit of something bigger, something better, something more. So, yes, I can totally relate to that. I think that basically wraps everything up. Any sort of parting words.

[01:02:20.350] - Carlos

I think no, I think that we do all 12 there. You. That's such great. Yeah.

[01:02:25.090] - Germaine

Yeah. That was all 12 and you just breezed right through it. That was so good.

[01:02:29.810] - Carlos

 Well, this has been a phenomenal opportunity to get to talk to you. It so it's not often that I get to have an hour long conversation with someone on the other side of the world, let alone someone who knows this space so well, ask such questions, provide such great feedback. So, you know, I hope that when this pandemic era is over, we get the chance to meet person someday. Grab a drink and that'll be fantastic.

[01:02:52.300] - Germaine

 I've been meaning to. I've never been to the US. So that's some definitely on the cards over the next fewyears.

[01:02:59.560] - Germaine

Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna let you know when I'm when I'm gonna be around and we'll we'll grab a drink.

[01:03:04.210] - Carlos

Well I'll tell you, our offices are in Santamonica so I'll meet you there. 

[01:03:09.700] - Germaine

Awesome. Thanks so much for your time. Call us. Everyone listening, as always, we'll have links in the description and you can go out there and say hi to Carlos, find everything that they do, the Web site and all that on there as well. So thanks again for your time. This has been a really nice conversation. 

[01:03:27.600] - Carlos

Absolutely, thank you.