She Built That | Get Inspired! | Weekly interviews with female founders building their empires on their own terms!

It's never too late to start. [...] I am a late bloomer when it comes to entrepreneurship. ~ Bonnie Foley-Wong on She Built That

In 2012, Bonnie Foley-Wong had a hunch that has proven to be paying off. Investing in female founded companies is smart business. As someone who has always been very attentive to her intuition, Bonnie founded Pique Ventures and spent several years building an investment methodology that integrated analysis, emotion, body and intuition into investment decisions. It's called Integrated Investing; Impact Investing with head, heart, body, and soul. This meant challenging the status quo and the traditional way of investing, which was rather exclusive towards women, and setting up a new type of investment standard that not only provided remarkable returns but felt good as well. Presently at Pique Fund, the fund at Pique Ventures, there are 21 investors, 19 of whom are women, representing 80% of the capital.

In today's interview you'll learn:

• The three things that allowed her to transition from the corporate world to the entrepreneurial world.
• Why she has always been very attentive to her intuition.
• How the investing ecosystem has been set up to be non-inclusive.
• How having a baby forced her to prioritize.

To learn more about Pique Ventures head on over to www.shebuiltthat.com

It's better to be memorable than perfect! ~ Andrea Scott on She Built That

Ever since she was a young girl Andrea Scott has always been very entrepreneurial. Whether it be selling lemonade or selling her mother's jewelry, which her mom ended up having to go and get back from her neighbors, Andrea has always considered herself to be relatively resourceful and entrepreneurial. 

It was that sense of resourcefulness that allowed Andrea and her husband Chris to launch their first Skoah spa back in 2001. Since then, Skoah has grown to a total of 17 locations spanning Vancouver, Calgary, Boston and Seattle, 14 of which Andrea and Chris own themselves.

And while some might think that owning your own facial business means that Andrea is regularly indulging in facials, think again. While Andrea enjoys a much-deserved Skoah facial from time to time, spending time outdoors with her four kids and two dogs is where she is happiest.

In today's' interview you'll learn: 

• Why Andrea and her husband decided to go into the spa business
• How she balances a growing business, four kids and two dogs
• Why she takes failure pretty seriously
• Why she would encourage all wannabe entrepreneurs to think, Why not you?

To hear from more rad women building businesses, head on over to www.shebuiltthat.com

You've got to put your time in, you've go to work hard and you've got to work for other people before you work for yourself ~ Heather Odendaal on She Built That.

Like many women I have interviewed for She Built That, Heather Odendaal has a hard time "slowing down." She's a new mom to seven-month-old son Luke; the founder and CEO of Bluebird Strategies, an event production company she founded in 2010; and the co-founder of the WNORTH Conference, an annual gathering of global women on the rise that she launched with her husband in 2015. It's easy to see why slowing down for Heather really isn't an option.

Since the inaugural WNORTH Conference, it has sold out both years, gained national media attention and attracted speakers from around the globe. Heather founded the WNORTH Conference when she couldn't find a resource that brought together women aspiring to senior leadership roles and female entrepreneurs who wanted to grow their business all under one roof. So in true entrepreneurial fashion, she created her own conference. Similarly, she organized the second conference with a newborn attached to her hip.

In today's interview, you'll learn:

• Heather's secret to balancing a new baby and new business
• Why Heather believes it's important to ask for help
• The Third Industrial Revolution and what that means for women
• Why she encourages all women to get technically savvy

To hear from more rad women building businesses and initiatives on their own terms, head on over to www.shebuiltthat.com

Raising money is like being punched in the face over and over again. You need to have a thick skin ~Manica Gautam on She Built That

It is often said that business is all about relationships, and in Manica Gautam's case, that couldn't be more true. Her business, Campfire Capital, a venture capital firm that invests in retail companies leveraging technology to innovate, is the direct result of a friendship she developed with her current co-partner and former lululemon athletica Director of Business Development, Brooke Harley, after meeting during a job interview at the lululemon headquarters back in 2011.

While Manica didn't take the job, the two remained friends. Manica continued to build her career in the financial industry and was working as the Funds Group Director at Onex, one of the top private equity firms in the world.

Over the course of the next couple years, a few girls trips and a break-up here and there, the two friends quickly realized that they shared many of the same business goals. In January 2015 both women moved in together to build Campfire to its current success.

In today's interview, you'll learn:

- How Brooke convinced Manica to leave her lucrative career to join her at Campfire.

- The hardest part about starting a new venture capital fund.

- The advantages of blind optimism, and

- What four qualitative and quantitative criteria she looks for when investing.

To hear from more rad women building big businesses, head on over to www.shebuiltthat.com

It's going to be the creative people leading the next generation because you can't automate creativity ~ Sarah Bancroft of She Built That.

Sarah Bancroft has spent most of her career forecasting trends. As a buyer for international fashion brand Aritzia, and the Western editor for national publication FASHION Magazine, Sarah always had a knack for knowing what's hot, making her the go-to resource for both family and friends visiting Vancouver.

Sarah's passion for being in the know on all things fashion, food, and lifestyle, ended up being the catalyst for Vitamin Daily, the online lifestyle magazine that Sarah co-founded and launched in 2004. In 2013, Vitamin Daily was acquired by Glacier Media Group, and this spring, Sarah stepped down as editor-in-chief at Vitamin Daily to pursue new adventures with her family and husband abroad.

In today's interview, you'll learn:

• Why Sarah believes creativity will be the secret weapon to success in the future
• Why she believes you have to pick your partner before you pick your path
• The two women she admires in business
• Why she believes intuition is one of your strongest tools

To hear more from rad women building and running companies head on over to shebuiltthat.com

Danielle Lovell knows first hand the challenges of moving for your job. As a child, her and her family moved approximately every 3 years as a result of her father's career as a geologist, which had Danielle and her siblings attend 9 different schools before graduating High School. She attended Yale University where she graduated with Bachelor's degree in Psychology, before moving to Vancouver where she worked for B.C. founded company SPUD.  After two years at SPUD, she was let go, and enrolled in a self-employment course offered by the YMCA. It was in that course that she founded Lovell Relocation Solutions, a service that would help manage all aspects of an employees move from finding them a house to assisting with their children's school enrollment, which she had for a year before Lululemon scooped her up as one of their own.

After almost 3 years at Lululemon, she began to get the entrepreneurial itch and left to help her partner John scale his own video game business. However, her passion for helping companies and employees navigate the challenging waters of HR and work relocation still remained and in December 2014, her and former Lululemon colleague Izzie Egan launched BLANKSLATE Partners, an HR company that helps entrepreneurs and leaders attract, retain and onboard the right talent for their business – letting business leaders focus on what they do best: create, innovate and evolve their business.

 In today's interview, you'll learn:

• What big shot Airline owner Danielle worked for as a kid.
• Why she eats the same thing every day and wears a "uniform" to work.
• Her definition of success and biggest business girl crush.
• Why she wants to be like Brene Brown when she grows up.

To hear from more rad women building incredible businesses, head on over to www.shebuiltthat.com

"I don't think anyone knows that their idea is going to be a billion-dollar idea. That success comes with execution, and knowing the right points where you have to pivot, push harder and admit failure." Mona Akhavi on She Built That

Mona Akhavi is not your typical 35 year old. An engineer by trade, she has lived and worked all over the world in places like Paris, New York and Toronto working for major organizations such as the Olympics, Walmart, Macy's and CBC to name a few.  While she had always felt very satisfied with her career and where it had taken her, her father, an entrepreneur and businessman, had always encouraged her to explore the possibility of entrepreneurship.

After years in the media buying space and the era of bloggers and social media influencers on the rise, Mona recognized that connecting brands with the right bloggers made sense, but the process was tedious and there was no way for brands to measure their return on investment. So Mona put her innate engineering skills to work and set out to build her own platform. With the backing of the former founder of Recon Instruments Hamid Abdollahi and a couple other prominent business investor, she launched SideBuy in October 2014, and has been hustling non-stop ever since.

In today's interview, you'll learn: 

• The three things she does every morning before she starts her day
• How she had the confidence to start SideBuy
• The biggest challenge she has encountered since founding the company
• The difference between masculine and feminine energy and how you can leverage your feminine energy in business

To hear more from rad women building and founding companies, head on over to www.shebuiltthat.com

"Burnout comes quick so it is important to be able to say I'm done, take time for yourself and surround yourself with good people" Sarah Goodman on She Built That

From running her own personal training and nutrition business, to owning her own music management company, Sarah Goodman always knew she was going to be the boss of her own company. As she sees it, she had no choice: she was never really big on following other people's rules.

When her dad, a medical doctor, reached out for  feedback on a wellness product he had developed Sarah offered to help him refine the product before bringing it to market. She knew how hard her dad had worked on it, and she wanted it to sell.

What started off as a volunteer gig quickly turned into a 24/7 venture, where Sarah was tasked with all outward facing facets of the business: from branding, marketing, product design, businesses development and customer service, Sarah was running it all. That was just under four years ago! Since then Sarah has been the CEO of Vital Sines, the creators of the iheart, and has achieved numerous successes: she had the opportunity to pitch on Dragons' Den, and was personally invited by the US Embassy to join the President at this year's Global Entrepreneurship Summit.

In today's interview you'll learn:

• How Sarah put together a successful crowdfunding campaign and what it taught her about her customers.
• How regular aortic stretching can reduce your internal age, heart disease and dementia.
• Why she refers to the last three and a half years of her life as a 'home-schooled MBA program.'
• Why she appreciates surrounding herself with people who shoot from the hip and tell it like it is.

For more information on phenomenal women building big businesses, head on over to shebuiltthat.com

"Playing poker is like telling a storing blinded. You are trying to convince your opponents that the story you are telling is true by the cards you play" Anne Ngo on She Built That.

Annee Ngo is a straight-up hustler. She dropped out of law school to co-found her first company, Good Health Nutrition (GHN), at the age of 23. She had noticed an opportunity in the market for novice fitness supplement users, like herself, interested in learning more about supplements and how they worked. In three years, they have scaled their company to be in 11 locations in the Lower Mainland and have amassed a devout following of predominantly young fit-conscious males.

While running GHN, Annee was introduced to the world of professional poker (a world I know absolutely NOTHING about) and has become quite well-known in the international poker scene. She has played across Canada and the US and has won up to $65K in one sitting.

Earlier this year, Annee stepped away from GHN to pursue an opportunity with Protohack: a one-day hackathon that offers non-technical individuals the opportunity to build a product prototype and pitch it to a panel of judges and investors all without writing a single line of code.

In today's interview you'll learn:

• How Annee leveraged social media, specifically Instagram, to grow her business.
• What it takes to be a successful poker player.
• What she loves the most about facilitating hackathons.

To hear from more amazing women doing phenomenal things, head on over to www.shebuiltthat.com

"Say Yes more than you say No" Mallorie Brodie on She Built That.

Mallorie Brodie and Lauren Lake, both 24, are the co-founders of Bridgit, a mobile and web communication platform for construction teams.

Since its launch in March 2014, Bridgit has managed the communication of over a billion dollars in construction projects, recently secured 1.7 million in funding and have already begun expansion into the states.

Not surprisingly, they took home the top prize at the first ever Google Demo Day: Women's Edition this past winter and were also the winners of former Dragon's Den Bruce Croxon's new show The Disruptors.

In today's interview you'll learn:

• How they started their business without having an actual product in mind
• How hearing the stories of other entrepreneurs helped them have the confidence to pursue their business idea
• How they overcame the challenges of founding a tech company despite either of them having a technical background
• Why they would encourage all entrepreneurs not to wait for a BIG idea to get started

To hear from more rad women running and building cool companies, head on over to shebuiltthat.com