011 – How Big Dreams Come True – Carmen Feliciano of PennyandMary.com

If you’re reading this, you probably have a dream. Maybe it’s a big dream. But do you have what it takes to follow through on your dream. Are you realizing those dreams?

What are the mechanics of this dream machine? What happens if you live in a small town of a small island, say in the Philippines? How do you imagine yourself outside of your environment?  How do you imagine yourself at a better school, then at a top university in your country, then at the top business school in the world? The World! That would be somewhere far away from where you are right now.

How are all of these dreams supposed to become reality?  Because right now, you are in a small town, on a small island, and there are problems on this island, and you are just this small person, playing with your friends, on a small street, off of a small road, in a small town.

Do you just scrunch your face up and concentrate?

And what’s beyond the top business school?  Is it working as a consultant, a hedge fund, a start-up? When do you start giving back?

This podcast highlights Carmen Feliciano’s journey, how she followed her dreams, the importance of her mother’s support, how she gets help from others, and how today she inspires 20,000 students back in the Philippines through http://www.kendii.com/ to write and broaden their world.

Carmen is CEO of Penny and Mary, which helps couples and wedding planners collaborate to create their perfect day.

Watch a video describing their service at  here

TRANSCRIPT -

Kent: So right now you are traveling in Charleston, South Carolina.

Carmen: Yes, it’s my bachelorette weekend, so I am living and breathing weddings.

Kent: And you are meeting with clients down there as well?

Carmen: Yes. So it’s a mix of work and play.

Kent (1:43): Carmen, tell us a little bit about your background.

Carmen: I grew up in Southern Philippines. My love for tech brought me here to the US in 2009 when I attended the MBA program at Wharton. My very first job was in a mobile tech company, back in 2004 when startups were not cool. At least not in the Philippines. I love building products that solve problems and people enjoy using. I am now currently the CEO of Penny and Mary. It’s a wedding planning collaboration site, focused on helping couples getting things done. So we help couples go from inspiration to actual planning, via our visual collaboration tool, you can organize your thought, engage your mom, planner, close friends, even find potential vendors.

Kent (2:30): What’s a problem that your clients will typically come against that you will help them solve?

Carmen: Wedding planning is a project management nightmare. You have finite resources, time and budget to have a wedding that you will hopefully have only once in your life, so there is a lot of pressure. All the other products out there just add to the overwhelm because most of them focus on inspiration and retail and none of them really help you get from inspiration to the actual doing. We help you get from the inspiration to doing by first helping you organize, helping you streamline what you want. Your very visual plan on our platform to help engage with the people helping you make your wedding happen, whether it is your mom, your wedding planner, or potential vendors. They are engaging with you on what you want for your wedding. The part which no-one is addressing which is when you are planning your wedding, there are so many tasks you need to do. You are always talking to different people and you find yourself repeating the same information over and over again and you end up with a lot of email threads and it just adds to the overwhelm that you feel when you are wedding planning. I know this because I am in the middle of planning my own wedding.

Kent (3:52): So your clients are both wedding planners and couples?

Carmen: Yes, DIY brides mean brides without planners. Use the tool and it helps them plan their wedding more effectively.