Women of Influence by SheSpeaks

On Her Terms: Redefining Success with Erica Lockheimer of HumanizeHer

• SheSpeaks, Inc. • Episode 200

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In this episode, we welcome Erica Lockheimer. Known for her remarkable career in tech, Erica shares insights from her career  journey at LinkedIn, where she not only played a crucial role in the growth of the platform, but also founded the Women in Tech initiative. Erica shares her story and challenges she faced as one of the few women in her field. 

We discuss the pivotal moments that led her to redefine success on her own terms, breaking away from expectations to pursue what she had a passion for. Now, as the founder and CEO of HumanizeHer, Erica is passionate about cultivating a world where women can thrive and shatter glass ceilings. Tune in to discover Erica's journey, her thoughts on the evolving role of LinkedIn, and her vision for women in tech and careers beyond. This episode is inspiring and a must-listen for anyone looking to follow their own path and possibilities.

Episode Highlights:

  • Redefining Success: Erica talks about how challenging societal norms and expectations was a pivotal step in her personal journey. She emphasizes identifying and pursuing what truly resonates with you, even if it means straying from the path expected by others.
  • LinkedIn's Evolution: From leading LinkedIn's growth team to spearheading Women in Tech, Erica shares behind-the-scenes stories of her dynamic experiences and the platform's transformation over the years.
  • AI and Diversity: Erica discusses the critical role of diverse representation in algorithm development, especially in AI, and how biases can be mitigated.
  • Empowering Women: Learn more about HumanizeHer, Erica's inspiring initiative aimed at creating a world where every woman can thrive, excel, and define success personally.

Key Quotes:

  • “You better have diverse people at the table, building products, because representation matters in everything we create.”
  • “We can’t be our best-kept secrets—women’s voices need platforms to be heard and celebrated.”
  • “I never worked harder, but I’ve never enjoyed my work more than I do now.”

Connect with Erica and HumanizeHer: 

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Speaker 1:

One of our taglines is redefine success on her own terms. The world has conditioned us to be a certain way and act a certain way and do that next thing. So to break away from that mold of expectation is the first thing that I had to go through. Everybody expects me to do this, but I'm going to do this because I have to do this. When else am I going to do it? If you have that struggle, that's number one, identifying it, and then you have to go through the process. Well, what is that other thing?

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to the show. Hope you're all having a great week so far. I am so excited to be talking in this episode about one of my favorite social platforms and, honestly, the one I use the most, which is LinkedIn. If you're not familiar with LinkedIn, it's known as a business networking platform and it's really evolved over the years, and I remember joining it back in probably 2006, 2007. And the platform has really just done such amazing things for people in terms of finding jobs, finding connections, networking, building their business all of these really cool things.

Speaker 2:

So, on today's episode of the show, I have Erica Lockheimer on. Erica is the founder and CEO of HumanizeHer, which we talk about, but she also spent 13 years at LinkedIn. She was a VP of engineering and she was the founder of Women in Tech at LinkedIn, and she really has had this amazing and prominent career over the course of the last 30 years in tech. And what I loved about my conversation with Erica is we talk about the early days of LinkedIn, which I, as I just mentioned, love the platform, so loved learning a little bit more about LinkedIn and how it started and how it's grown. And then we talk about what it's like to be a woman in tech as an engineer, and what that journey was like for Erica, and then to today, where she's the founder and CEO of Humanize Her, and she has been building this amazing platform that is aimed at cultivating a world where every woman can thrive and shatter the glass ceilings and really redefine what success means to her on her own terms.

Speaker 2:

So I really loved this conversation with Erica. There's a lot of really interesting insights in here. So with that, I'm going to let you hear my conversation with Erica Lockheimer. Here we go going to let you hear my conversation with Erica Lockheimer. Here we go. Erica, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I'm so excited, so excited yeah.

Speaker 2:

I am too. Well, first of all, you worked on a platform, one of the social platforms, and I consider it a social platform, right, linkedin, absolutely. It's the platform I am the most active on and always have been it's. It's a platform I understand, I guess, the best, just because I think everyone has the platform that you know that they kind of naturally gravitate towards, and for me it's always been LinkedIn. When did you start at LinkedIn? Let's start with that, and how long were you there?

Speaker 1:

It's a great question and I'm glad it's the platform of choice for you and I think I understand it the most as well, probably because I helped build it. I was there for 13 and a half years. Wait, was that the beginning? Yeah, so it was 2010 when I started and I was there when we had less than 150 million members on the platform. Linkedin has now than 150 million members on the platform. Linkedin has now over a billion members on the platform. It's insane.

Speaker 1:

And when I joined, I was asked to lead the growth team and, to be honest, I was more from the camp before that. I'm an engineer by trade, so I was working behind the server, you know, in the server room, behind the server wall. I just like making sure systems would work on the back end. I'd never like thought about doing social platform at all, and you're right, it is a social platform. It's where it was like the time of if you could be there and you know you had Facebook, you had all these things that were coming up and they're like hey, you know, can you lead the growth team? I honestly stepped into a role that I didn't really know how to do, but I remember hitting every single milestone. We'd hit 150 million members, 200 million members, 300. We would just go go crazy. It was all about growth. So I was in charge of the registration flow, the emails that you would get, push notifications, all the growth strategies. I was responsible for that. And then we got smarter about quality growth as well, so it sounds a lot like.

Speaker 2:

So I I spent the first part of my career at American Express doing credit card marketing all all the different kinds of credit card marketing stuff that there was to do there and one of the marketing teams was acquisition and one of the marketing teams was acquisition and engagement. Like a new member engagement and it sounds like a lot of the things you're talking about with the registration, the email, the push notifications. Those are all things you do early in, as soon as someone almost becomes a member, so that they have a path to understanding the value of what this platform and for me it was the credit card, but in your case it was the platform was going to do for them. What would you say is the way that you think about LinkedIn and how maybe professionals and other people should think about LinkedIn?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a great question. And just to respond to your experience as well, you're right, like retention, acquisition, all of that was critical and once you get someone on the platform, the worst thing that you can actually do is you get them on the platform and they have no one they're connected to, right. So that's why importing your address book, all those types of things, and connecting to the people that you know so that you're there and then you have a great experience. And so when you think about LinkedIn, it definitely has evolved over time and I've had many jobs at LinkedIn so I've also led their learning business. When we acquired Linda, I also led their LinkedIn talent business, which is recruiter on the platform and jobs on the platform.

Speaker 1:

So if you think about the evolution of LinkedIn, it was, at first, just your professional identity online. You know that is number one thing that I think honestly, everybody should do so, even as a student, and I think that's what's challenging is when I speak to students. I speak to them a lot and they're like, well, I don't have a job, I don't have job experience, but you know you got to start somewhere and you also have projects you worked on and such, so you need to showcase yourself. It's your professional identity. And if you think about it, if you do a Google search, someone searches for your name. They're like who's this person that I got an email from? The first thing you're going to do is you're going to search for that person and you'll. Seo is a great solution for LinkedIn. So, number one be there, and then number two, depending on what your needs are. Like some people are they want to look for a job. Well, guess what? They have so many jobs on LinkedIn across multiple industries. That is going to be your first place to. Number one look for one. Number two apply. They make the process very seamless.

Speaker 1:

And then also there's a recruiter platform. That recruiter platform does search and algorithms to do matching of skills to find someone, a match really for that job that they have posted and that person that's online. So if you're not there, guess what? You're never going to have an opportunity. So, depending, if you're looking for a job, definitely be there. If you're in the recruiting space, definitely be there. And then also the other part is learning. There's LinkedIn learning. On there you can learn about different topics on the professional, you know, and the tech side. I mean the vast majority that they have is content is pretty high. And then the other part is networking. I will tell you, I was at LinkedIn for 13 and a half years. I wasn't looking for a job, so I wasn't using OutPrize, but I've never used LinkedIn more than now in my life when I'm not there.

Speaker 2:

Interesting.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm able to reach out to people because I have a podcast as well, so I need to recruit I'm in sales, guess what? I want different people that I don't know outside my network. I got to reach out to them. It's the platform of choice to actually reach someone.

Speaker 2:

I'll just tell you about my perspective on LinkedIn versus the other social platforms. And as a company our company, she Speaks. We work on the other social platforms, much more so than, let's say, we work on LinkedIn because we're working with social media influencers. But I think, from the perspective of reliability, I feel like the other platforms there are a lot more bogus accounts, so to speak, in the sense that someone's representing themselves and you don't really know if that's actually who they are. I feel like on LinkedIn there is a lot more checks and balances for that, in some ways, I find it more reliable when I'm looking up somebody on LinkedIn versus the other platforms.

Speaker 1:

You're absolutely right. When I was working there, there were some countries that would actually use the identity on LinkedIn as a proven thing because it's like a number one trusted site. So you're absolutely right. Your opinion is massive across the world. I liked your perspective that you brought up the differences between like Instagram depending on who the person is. I'm like they are amazing on Instagram, not on LinkedIn. And then you see that opposite, it's so like oh, I'm going to post this and it's not going to go well for this person here on LinkedIn, but it's on Instagram, so I'm learning that as well. Everybody has their platform of choice, especially on the creative side. I see a lot of that, like you said, on influencers on Instagram and TikTok.

Speaker 2:

I definitely see more influencers just in the space that we're in. We work with, you know, social media influencers who are probably big. Their following is mostly on, let's say, a TikTok and an Instagram, because what we're working on is B2C, so business to consumer products. So think your Coca-Colas of the world and your Mars Wrigley's. Those are the types of products we're working on, so usually we're trying to reach people who are everyday consumers. But what's really interesting that we're finding is a lot of those influencers are realizing that they have huge opportunity if they can build their reputation and some thought leadership, even on LinkedIn, for finding clients Yep, yep. Finding partnerships, because that's how influencers make. A big chunk of their money is through partnerships and sponsorship dollars. So I'm definitely seeing a lot of those social media influencers migrating, probably in the last year and a half, two years, to LinkedIn.

Speaker 1:

Like Reese Witherspoon, she just joined LinkedIn. Snoop Dogg's there, I mean. It's been kind of a crazy fun ride to see. Like Reese Witherspoon, she just joined LinkedIn.

Speaker 2:

Snoop Dogg's there, I mean it's been kind of a crazy fun ride to see. So, yeah, well that's, I mean, what an amazing opportunity to be there to see that. It like sort of hockey stick growth that the platform had. Let's talk a little bit about your engineering background, because I love coming across women that have this type of background. One of my daughters is very much this is like the way she thinks and it's really interesting to me to see how successful women who have that background can be in non-technical environments, can be in non-technical environments Like go on to become chief marketing officers, go on to become successful entrepreneurs and like not just in the technology realm. Let's talk a little bit about engineering for women. How is the field evolving for women? I know there's been a lot more conversation to try to make STEM more inviting for young women so that that becomes a field that they want to go into. What was your draw to engineering and how do you think it sets you up for success?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so fabulous question. And when I got involved in engineering, I was really good at math and it was a math teacher in high school that said, hey, why don't you try this programming class called Pascal? If anybody still knows what that is? Okay, good, you do. So.

Speaker 1:

I remember being in that classroom and it was just an amazing experience to have this computer. You could do inputs and outputs. I mean I it was a revolutionary game tic-tac-toe that I programmed. But I created it and it's just that feeling of innovation and creation. I was hooked. I was honestly, honestly hooked and I was like, okay, maybe this is something I wanted to do. But then you quickly look around the classroom and then you realize you're the only one, right. And then I also wasn't your. I was like a cheerleader. I was like just everything did not compute of. You know the stereotype of what an engineer should look like, or you know they would call us nerds at the time, right? So I still am. I love being called a nerd. I am a total big geek and I love it, but yeah.

Speaker 2:

Word is a badge of honor.

Speaker 1:

I know it is, and so I actually stepped out of it and I didn't know what to do. So I basically went to junior college. I was the first person in my family to graduate from college, but I walked the halls of San Jose State after two years in junior college and I saw this plaque of women and society engineers and that's honestly how I chose my major. It was another sense of belonging, of like. Oh, maybe I could be like her, and I always wanted to go to those grassroots of an engineer. My dad was always wanting to be an engineer as well, and then I majored in computer engineering. But again I got there and the room, the classrooms were again not like people like me. So it took me seven years to graduate. I did. I was working 30 hours a week and I had my one friend girlfriend that was there. We're still friends today because of slim pickings right, we're the only two in the classroom. But I completed my studies and I was so proud. But I just realized every stage then I get to the workforce and it's again the same thing. It was just. A lot of this stuff that I'm focused on now is really born out of frustration and just not feeling that sense of like oh, I fit in, even though I want to do this. So that's why I started Women in Tech at LinkedIn in the early days, because when I joined there, we were less than it was like maybe two or three of us women in the field, and so it's always just been kind of in my blood and my DNA. It should be a better feeling and we need more women in this field.

Speaker 1:

The global population guess what? Half of it are women. So if you're going to build and create, you better have them at the table, you better have them in the algorithms and then with AI, if those biases are in the systems, it's going to take forever to like re-undo all of that work. So I think it's so, so critical to have diverse people at the table building products. And I've seen this and it's not just saying it, right, I've seen it. I give you an explicit example when I worked at LinkedIn, worked on the recruiter product, right, if you're going to search for I want to find an engineer, I want to hire for this job how you decide to display those results on the first page. Say, you have 60% men, because those are just what the odds are, and 40% women. That first page that you render on those search results. Guess what it better be that representation, because that's also how you're deciding guess what.

Speaker 2:

It better be that representation, because that's also how you're deciding.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to go out, I'm going to have that person apply for the job, right? So you have to pay attention to those algorithms, the data that you have, the missing data, missing data that you have, in order to get the right results. So it's everywhere. You just got to start paying attention to it and make sure that's there. But I feel, even with I mean I can go on and on I'm going to pause. But because I have a lot of examples, like even with sexual harassment and women on the platform, I remember early days like I would show them like are you guys getting this? They're like I don't get any of that. It's like, okay, we need to work on some of this stuff in the platform because there's just there's use cases that we have that other people don't have, and we just have to look at the world with a different lens and we have a different perspective.

Speaker 2:

Well, you mentioned AI, artificial intelligence and how do we ensure that just from the start, that there's not bias in the system and as it relates to gender, Can you talk a little bit just so people understand? Because, let's say, you know someone who's listening to this understand, they're hearing a lot about AI, they're not sure how it impacts what they do. But can you talk a little bit more about what you meant when you said this? Like there could be some introduction of bias in the system as it relates to women? Just give us a practical example so people can understand what that means and why it would have a negative impact.

Speaker 1:

Right. So I'll go back to the example and maybe I wasn't as clear. But if you think about, I mean, ai is really not like new, right, we've had these algorithms like for years. It's just more that now AI is more accessible to folks like ChatGPT or Gemini for Google. I use it every day, which is fantastic. But if you think about what AI is right, it's basically you have data, right, so you're only as good as your data, and then you build algorithms on that data and then you get output based on prompts and such like that. So if you think about the use case that I brought before, where it's like I'm going to search for a software engineer right. So then, if I'm going to search for a software engineer, what data do I have? Well, guess what? I better have diverse data on the platform, right? So am I going to have the right representation of people on the platform? Or how? Think about how I'm even getting you to sign up for LinkedIn or me. What represents those individuals? How are we going after those individuals? Can you get them on the platform in the first place? So are they there?

Speaker 1:

And then look at, I think, also saying people are sometimes like, oh, I don't want to say what my gender is or whatever, but that also helps all these algorithms to make sure that you have representation. Like what else? What if you're also giving these results and you're like, wow, all my results are men, but that's not true, right? It's like no. So you need some identity, self-identity in some of these algorithms, which is hard to get. So sometimes you do things like by name, which is hard, and you'll do misses, but you kind of have to still like do the inventory of the data that you have. Does it represent the world and what you're trying to accomplish? And then you create algorithms on it. If you're not paying attention to what those data sources are and you just blindly create algorithms, output is going to be shit. Sorry, garbage in, garbage out.

Speaker 2:

One hundred percent.

Speaker 1:

Everybody has their different use case, so you need to understand who you're building, for what you're building, what that data is, to get the right outputs.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, you need the human element in it. You can't just let these.

Speaker 2:

AI algorithms go rogue. It's not going to work. Were at LinkedIn. You started Women in Tech at LinkedIn, which talked about and understand why, but you recently relatively recently left LinkedIn to start Humanize Her. Can you talk about what Humanize Her is and why did you leave this amazing place that you had, you know, spent years in and obviously been part of the growth to take the leap into entrepreneurship?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I am still honestly having an identity crisis. I'll be honest, I've been in tech for nearly 30 years. I mean I never took a break in my career. I had two kids six weeks max. I'd never. I mean, I was just trained to. That is my path and it's interesting.

Speaker 1:

Many things happen of like the why, and I'm still processing the why. I'll be honest, but I went a lot on feelings of how I evolved as a human and the things that were bringing so much joy to my life. I loved leading. I was building, I was leading a team of over a thousand people and half nine and a half billion revenue of LinkedIn. It was like a huge ass job. It was a job I cried for, I fought for, I wanted so bad and I had for many, many years just climbing that corporate ladder and then, all of a sudden, I'm like why am I not happy anymore? It's like I don't know, like what happened, erica, you know, but many things happened in my life around that time and I'll and I'll be transparent I was going. I'm not going to share all my, my family drama, but there's some stuff that happened in my family and there's when you go through we all go through stuff right, and so when that happens, that kind of gives you a perspective like, okay, I was creating more time to have more control about when I did things, how I did things, and so that became a part of it. And my kids are 16 and 18. I'll never get those years back and I just wanted a little bit more connection time and I felt they needed it.

Speaker 1:

Then the second thing I, you know, I had a health scare. I had cancer smacked in the middle of my face. I looked like Frankenstein and there's nothing like that that makes you wake up and like, okay, mortality, your mortality is, is, is possibility here, and and then also getting to 50, that mid perspective, and so, putting that all together, I'm like, you know, I'm going to take a break. And I didn't know what I wanted to do and that was the scariest thing. It's not how my dad raised me or my parents. You put a job, you get another job like you're making a whole bunch of money in this company, like why? But I wanted to just go with these feelings and so I just quit and I said I'm going to take a break, and I didn't know what it meant. But that only lasted like three months so, but I traveled, I did a lot of trips with family and friends and girlfriends, and then I was on a run and one of the things that I realized that I missed the most was how I had built a community for women at LinkedIn and outside of LinkedIn, and so many women were still coming to me, like Erica helped me manage this next phase.

Speaker 1:

And then I started meeting other women like entrepreneurs, and I always thought this loneliness of women in tech is just that's how I was conditioned for so many years, like this problem is everywhere, it's in sports, it's in entrepreneurship, it's like everyone and just gosh, you know, can we all come together and maybe build a community, share these stories, a lot of what you're doing, which is, you know, amazing? And I just was on a run and I just said you know, I'm going to create a community, I'll just create my own. I don't know what it is and I was on a. I used to. When I was in product meetings at LinkedIn, they would go through all these product specs and they'd talk about what this feature is and I would always say can you humanize it for me for a second? And then, when I was on a run, I was like humanize her so literally. That's how it came, and so I said the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to build a podcast, because we can't be our best kept secrets and we need a form to share our stories. Also, I've been using it. Honestly.

Speaker 1:

I feel like some of these sessions have been therapy for me, where I'm learning from all these incredible women that I've never met before, across all industries, and they're going through things that are similar, but then also they've figured it out in some ways and so I join their stories and then I'm also like buy from them, support them, invest in them, elevate their voices, like a simple thing.

Speaker 1:

I was like I need some art on the back of my podcast. This woman I found from Dubai it's all custom art from her, and she just decided to leave tech and focus on her arts. I'm like all these collabs that we can do and we're so much stronger together, it just feels good right now. And so I have a crew. My whole crew is uh, I'm not going to half-ass anything, as I'm an engineer by trade, so I probably spent a shit ton of money on all my cameras and equipment and the team, but they're all from LinkedIn. They created LinkedIn learning videos, still there and having a good time, and we're building and I'm elevating women's voices and it feels good work. I feel like this is my purpose, but to be honest.

Speaker 1:

How do I make it a business? That's another thing. I want to prove that that can be possible too. But I'm figuring out. I'm just kind of following how I feel right now and it feels like I'm helping and I'm women, you know be more successful, and it feels fantastic and that feels great.

Speaker 2:

So I love that Well, so many of those things resonate, I think, probably with the people listening to this. I think that there is, first of all, there is something that like I don't know another word but magical. There's something magical that happens when women come together. And I don't think there is. I think there are so many reasons why you can go into like, what's all the rationale? I mean, my last name is Freud, so I love psychoanalyzing things, but there's something about, I think, how women we are earnest and want to help. There is something about, I think, how women we are earnest and want to help. And so when you get a group of women together, our orientation is to help and to be of service and to be in service to others, and that is not a small thing. And in thinking about how important that is for each of us and how we live our lives, it is not a small thing. And I think that there is something that, as women and I again, I can't speak for men because I am not nearly as expert in the men's space as I am in the women's space just done, doing what I've done for as long as I have I do think that there is something about how women are built, that we need to feel like we are being in service in some ways to others, that it's not just all about me, it's about how can I help other people. So it is so not surprising to me that you built this career for yourself. You've achieved those things. And then you looked at it and you thought, well, how, how, what's the next step, what's the next thing for me? Because what? Maybe what I've done before is not necessarily the thing that's going to serve me and that I can be helpful in moving forward. And I think a lot of women go through that. And the question just is you know, do you listen to that voice in your head? Do you listen to that little, you know that little thing that you have a big company and knew that I wanted to do something different, but it took me a while to figure out what it was. And the other thing you said that I also want to highlight it made me think that when I was going through the process of you know what do I want to do? What's it going to be? I know there's more I can do want to do what's it going to be? I know there's more I can do, but I don't know what it is. There's this thing that kept coming into my head, this phrase of master of my own destiny. That was just, it was there and I could not ignore it. And then there's. Then there's a process, and this is what I want to. I'm going to get to the question, because I'm so fascinated when women share the kinds of story that you're sharing. What was it? Did you have a process?

Speaker 2:

Do you have anything you can recommend to our listeners who maybe are at a similar point in their life where they're like what I've been doing up until this point was it served me for a lot of years, but now I feel like this sort of discomfort and I want I know there's more, I know there's something else, but getting to. Okay, what is that thing? Do you have any advice or from what you went through that you can share? Was it running? You said you ran? Is it like exercise? Is it journaling share? Was it running? You said you ran? Is it like exercise? Is it journaling? What is the like? Are any tips for people who are listening and maybe can learn from what you did?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a great question and thank you for sharing your journey. I could probably listen to you and about so many things to learn as well. I, it was the scariest thing that I've ever done, right, because everybody you being in a corporate job as well everybody expected you to do this other thing, but you, you go through that process and you're like I'm going to. One of our taglines is redefine success on her own terms, right? So I think we're the world has conditioned us to be a certain way and act a certain way and do that next thing. So to break away from that mold of expectation is the first thing that I had to go through. In my head, everybody expects me to do this, but I'm going to do this because I have to do this. When else am I going to do it? So, if you have that urge and you're fighting and you have that struggle like you had to even describe, and it took you three years and I'm still going through it, I'm like, oh, did I make the right mistake? Did I make the right move? And you know you're still questioning yourself. So I think if you have that struggle, that's number one, identifying it and then you have to go through the process. Well, okay, well, what is that other thing? And I'll be honest, I went crazy. So, like it's kind of like software.

Speaker 1:

I honestly have been AB testing myself. I'd been in real estate for some investment properties and I thought, oh, maybe I'll just do that full time, maybe you know, and we built this ADU that I'm in right now and I was like, oh, and I'm going to work with the contractors, I'm going to do all this stuff. Maybe I'll become like there's not many women in contracting and so that's what I'm going to do. Like I was thinking that's what I was going to do. I built this thing with the contractor and guess what it was? Now it turned into a studio. I had no idea that it was going to be this, but sometimes you just have to play through stuff and then I realized, no, that doesn't bring me joy.

Speaker 1:

So, again, go back to A-B testing stuff. I had to do exploration. I did so many talks. Also, I go, maybe I need to be a public speaker and maybe that's what I need to do. And so I spoke at Google, I spoke at Handshake. I was going through all these. Maybe that's what I should do and I enjoyed that, but it just wasn't enough for me. So I was like, oh, that's not enough.

Speaker 1:

So I think, just going through those emotions and I did a lot of exercising, did a lot of mentor talks I all of a sudden I would be posting on my LinkedIn Maybe you could see, maybe a year ago, walked with this person, learned this and realized everybody else is going through stuff. So I think you have to figure out that struggle, identify it, maybe test some things and then, when you just kind of feel like the podcast was one thing that I got a whole bunch of amazing, you go back to the community aspect of women, like to help women. I got five amazing people and I said, what do you think? They were sitting in this room with like nothing on the wall that hurt my advisors and friends and they were like you should totally do this. This is you, this is people that have that know you in a different way, and then they also give you that light to say go for it.

Speaker 1:

And you just, sometimes you just need that. So I think, surround yourself with your believers and then you just do. I'm just doing right now and I'm learning.

Speaker 1:

I only released 10 episodes and I've created, I think, 27. And we released every two weeks and I'm the engineer, I'm the deployment, I'm the all the things and the marketing sales, all of it. And you just do and I'm living through it. But I've never worked harder, never enjoyed as much as my work, as much as I have now in this new phase of my life and I have the flexibility to go pick up my daughter from school, drop her off, do all those things, go on a trip with my son to an airport ride. So it checks all those other boxes of my why.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's what I'm doing right now. Yeah, I love that. Well, you spend a lot of time encouraging women to dream bigger. What is your next big dream for? Humanize Her.

Speaker 1:

I well, I'm. I feel like I'm doing it right now. We are going to be going to South by Southwest in about a week. We're nervous. We're bringing the whole crew 10 of us and what's great when we record is we basically have a slumber party. They all sleep here for like a week and we record like nine at a time. It's insane. So we're going to South by my sister's coming, my advisors, the people on the team.

Speaker 1:

So I want to be successful and it's going to be live for the first time. As you know, live is a little bit different than recorded and editing and publishing and doing all that. So a bit nervous, doing all that, so a bit nervous. And then after that I want to see if we can have bigger reach and I really want to get the community aspect behind the podcast. So I did do one event, launch party and had about 200 people here and it was super fun just to see a room full of women just wanting to support each other. So I want to bring them together, promote their businesses, have kind of like a mini trade show type of thing, and plan on doing that again. Maybe you'll be around, I'd love to have you so.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I love this idea and let me just tell you, as someone who has been involved in seeing a lot of other, you know, women starting businesses, building businesses this you are. You have the right approach because you're not saying this is a hundred percent how it has to be and this is like it's. You know, if it doesn't go this way, then then it's not going to go anyway it's. It's this explore and learn approach, where you're recognizing that you're going to find the value as you go and you have the kernel of. You know what the value is ultimately, but then it's how do you create structure around that? How do you create scale around it? How do you create monetization around it? Those are all the things that come as you explore and as you do it. So I am, I mean, I am so excited for you, erica. If people want to follow you and the journey of Humanize Her, what is the best way for them to do that?

Speaker 1:

Well, since we put so much time and effort into a video podcast. So YouTube would be the platform of choice, but we're on Spotify. You know Apple, obviously. Go to humanizehercom and you can find all you know the places where to go. But yeah, that's, that's where we're at. We're on all your shorts on Instagram and LinkedIn and TikTok, everywhere. But we're growing, we're starting, we're new, so appreciate it.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for spending the time with us today. Thank you.

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Aliza Freud

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