2B Bolder Podcast : Career Insights for the Next Generation of Women in Business & Tech
Host Mary Killelea interviews guests who share their career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. On the 2BBolder Podcast, you will hear inspiring stories of how successful women in business and tech have worked hard to build great careers. Learn about their passions, their journey, their challenges, and their advice to the next generation of women. The 2B Bolder Podcast is designed to provide you first-hand access to some amazing women. Guests will include women from leading enterprise companies to startups, women execs, to coders, account execs, engineers and innovatorsLearn more at www.2BBolder.com.
2B Bolder Podcast : Career Insights for the Next Generation of Women in Business & Tech
#121 Alyssa Pollack, Fello Co-founder Transforms Loneliness & Drives Impact
On episode #121, join me as I sit down with Alyssa Pollack, a well-known and respected entrepreneur who has navigated the corridors of corporate giants and the fast-paced lanes of tech startups. Alyssa takes us on her journey from her early days at Walgreens to her transformative role in launching Uber Eats and ultimately onto co-founding Fello, a startup tackling the loneliness epidemic with a groundbreaking peer-to-peer model. Her story is a testament to the power of resilience and the impact of pushing one's boundaries in pursuing personal and professional growth.
Throughout my conversation with Alyssa, we discussed her startup life, which was filled with exhilarating challenges and unparalleled rewards. Discover how she helped scale Uber Eats into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise by staying relentlessly customer-focused and resilient in the face of obstacles. Alyssa generously shares her strategies for building self-confidence and asserting value in high-stakes environments, especially for women striving to make their mark. She also shares her approach to leadership and compensation strategies, emphasizing the importance of self-recognition, leveraging personal strengths, and advocating for fair compensation in the entrepreneurial world.
Alyssa offers invaluable insights into the significance of nurturing supportive networks and securing financial backing. Learn her secrets for building robust business foundations and fostering transparent relationships with mentors and investors. We also touch on the importance of energy management and maintaining passion over the long haul. This episode is brimming with actionable advice and inspiration, perfect for anyone looking to carve out their path in business and tech. Don’t miss this captivating exploration of empowerment, entrepreneurship, and the pursuit of meaningful connections.
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Hi there, my name is Mary Kiloalea. Welcome to the To Be Bolder podcast providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. To Be Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you, encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of it's totally possible. So sit back, relax and enjoy the conversation. Hi there, mary here. Thanks for tuning in. Today's guest is an inspiration to women running their own businesses and those who aspire to become a founder someday.
Speaker 1:Alyssa Pollack is a well-known and highly respected female founder. Before co-founding Fellow, alyssa rose through the ranks as an early Uber employee and a founding member of Uber Eats team. She then joined the founding team of Mill, a climate tech startup, and led the business for its first four years. Earlier this year, alyssa took the plunge as a co-founder and first-time CEO of Fellow, a startup focused on solving the loneliness epidemic. Outside of work, alyssa enjoys skiing and hiking with her husband and two children, mentoring emerging startup leaders and reading copious amounts of both fiction and nonfiction. Alyssa, it's so great to have you on the show. I appreciate you being here.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to talk.
Speaker 1:And I love that you're a mentor in your day-to-day life. I just think women who give back and help other women in their careers just are good people in general.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's fun to do. It feels really rewarding when what you've done can be a playbook for someone else.
Speaker 1:Exactly Okay. So let's dive into your impressive career. Tell us about your career journey and your current role as the co-founder of Fela.
Speaker 2:Sure. Well, I grew up in the Midwest and when I was growing up there, the tech scene wasn't really a thing that I knew about, so I took a little bit more of a traditional career path. My first job after I graduated college was at corporate Walgreens and their financial rotational leadership program, and it didn't take too long before I realized that the big corporate life really wasn't for me. I kind of got my first taste of the tech scene by being proximate to Chicago, and after I saw the growth of these new interesting companies and the products that I was using that were being built by these scrappy little teams, I knew that I wanted to figure out a way to get in the mix. So I kind of hustled my way into a role at Uber in 2012. And this was back when it was just black cars on demand and my job description was kind of like do whatever it takes to make this business grow. And as daunting as that felt as someone in their early 20s, it was exactly what I was looking for. It was fast paced, full of autonomy, and I was working on a product that people were so excited about using and telling their friends about. So I spent a few years leading operations in the Chicago market and then actually moved out to Uber's headquarters in San Francisco where I was on the founding team of Uber Eats, which operated like a little tiny startup within Uber, which was a little bit more established at that point. So I got the taste of the early stage grind again, which I love.
Speaker 2:I spent the following five years doing a bunch of different roles within Uber Eats, but usually at the intersection of operations, product and business strategy. So how are we going to make this thing work, how is it going to make money, where are we going to have to spend money and what is the product that people are actually excited to use? After about seven years and one child later, I felt the pull to do something that felt a little bit more impactful and again kind of the pull to go early stage again. So I joined as employee number one at Mill, which is a climate tech startup focused on food recycling, and it was just a huge learning experience for me from moving from kind of building a consumer marketplace over into climate, the climate sector, into hardware and building something that's physical, that actually goes in someone's home, and furthermore, we were building this company at the height of COVID. The company was incorporated, I think, in May of 2020. So that was a whole learning experience in and of itself and loved every minute of my time at Mill.
Speaker 2:But when I met my now co-founder, pete Cadens, about this time last year, he pitched me on an idea that he and our other co-founder, jeff Waring, had been thinking about and starting to tinker with, and the idea was around using a peer-to-peer model to address the mental health crisis and the loneliness epidemic, and there was kind of just only one thing that might have pulled me out of climate, and that was mental health. And so when Pete came to me with this idea, I saw it as a really interesting opportunity to work on something that was really high impact and also be able to pull from my bag of tricks of building early stage marketplaces and put those to work. So I stepped in as co-founder and CEO in February this year, and it's been nonstop excitement and a roller coaster ever since, but you probably won't be surprised to know by now that I've loved it all, because this is the stage that I thrive in.
Speaker 1:That is a fascinating career, especially for someone who had her own business. And then I went and worked for corporate where I feel like you know, your hands are tied so tightly for several years. And now I'm kind of migrating back into working for myself again. And there is something very tangible when the risk is higher.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you feel like your fingerprints are on everything, right, right, and if you're upset about how something's going, it's up to you right, yes. You don't get to look around and say who's going to fix this? Who's going to make this better? Like, the answer is you. Who's going to fix this? Who's going to make this better?
Speaker 1:Like, the answer is you, and that is to me really empowering and energizing, and you know it's tiring and stressful too. You said there was only a few things that could take you away from climate change, no-transcript.
Speaker 2:And when I was considering the concept of fellow and sort of this power of accumulated wisdom of humanity, I thought back to a few really transformational moments in my life. I was diagnosed with stage four cancer when I was a teenager and didn't know anyone else who had been through that and and so you know I had a loving family and access to incredible medical care. But there was this kind of missing piece which was like wouldn't it be amazing if I could talk to a 20-year-old who had been through this, who'd gone through the same type of treatment? So I thought back to that moment. I also navigated infertility as a relatively kind of young woman as a result of my cancer treatment and again, I was kind of the first of my friends to navigate this whole new world with new words and financial implications and health outcomes and all these things I was unfamiliar with.
Speaker 2:And since then I have been really open about my journey with infertility and I've been able to help probably a dozen women understand their options, figure out what great doctors to go to help them, not lose hope if the first cycle of whatever doesn't work, and so thinking on those two experiences really made me believe in the power of experienced-based peer support. And then you know, I've kind of like learned how to lean into my vulnerability over the years, and doing so has enabled me to help people through some of these difficult challenges. So kind of thinking on that side of things, like wouldn't it be amazing if we could empower humanity to use those hard fought battles and put those to work to help those around them? It just is such a good feeling. So that was kind of the pull to me and once the seed was planted in my head, like there wasn't a day that went by that I wasn't thinking about it.
Speaker 2:How do you vet the people who come on that help others? Who are the three steps ahead where someone on our team further understands the experience that they've been through, what help they leveraged along the way, make sure that they're in a good mindset to be able to offer help and make sure that they're a good communicator and a good listener right, that's half the battle. Then we do two reference checks and make sure that they have personal references that can kind of verify that they're the type of person you'd want to get help from. Then we do a background check, then the fellow undergoes training and an assessment and only after that can they be listed on the platform. So we go through a lot of steps to make sure that these folks are well positioned to provide that support, guidance and empathy to people who need help.
Speaker 1:And what are the topics that someone could come to Fellow through the app to seek help with?
Speaker 2:Yeah, honestly, our vision for this is that for anything you're feeling stuck on or that you're navigating alone that's challenging, you can come to Fellow. We're a startup so we got to start somewhere, and the areas that we've started focusing on are drug and alcohol use. So I'm sober, curious, or I've decided I want to stop drinking, or I'm ready to reassess my relationship with drugs or alcohol. Parenting this is one that I am actually a user of. I'm parenting a neurodivergent child and I've tapped into our network of fellows to help me understand. How do I support my son's self-esteem, how do I navigate a school system? What academic milestones should I actually be worried about? Or what is more, like icing on the cake.
Speaker 2:So parenting is a bunch that kind of rolls up into the parenting vertical. And then relationships is actually our most popular vertical where we have people coming to get advice around interracial, interfaith relationships and some of the tensions that arise from that. Inter-racial, inter-faith relationships and some of the tensions that arise from that. Navigating a divorce, if it's come to that, or just navigating tension in various different types of relationships in your life. But again, the vision is much broader than that. But those are the verticals that we've started with and have gotten some traction in.
Speaker 1:That's exciting because it's just so relevant today. I think it's always been relevant, but I think we just are seeing the demand and the impact of the lack of support today more than we have in the past. Yeah, you talk about being attracted to or drawn to startups because of the kind of scrappiness and the hustle that comes with that. What is it Do you think um about? That type of business excites you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a lot of it is the pace. I am just like, if you ask anyone who knows me, I'm always on the go. I've always been described as a little bit impatient, or maybe a lot impatient, depending on who you ask I'm not great at sitting still. I'm not great at sitting still, I just like an object in motion tends to stay in motion and that is me.
Speaker 2:And I love that at a startup the pace of decision making, the feedback loops directly with early customers, and being able to say, oh hey, we heard from a dozen customers that this feature would be super helpful, and then two days later, like here you go, customers, like we were able to, we were able to solve that problem for you. And so the agility of it all, I think is, is really what attracts me. And, and then I also think, like you know, to take the leap into an early stage endeavor, you have to really believe in the problem that you're going out and solving and that you've got a solution. And I think, just having something that feels really useful, that you're building for people like when you describe fellow to someone, they're like, oh yeah, I could have totally used that back when I was going through X, y or Z or, oh my gosh, I need to tell my sister about this because she's navigating this situation. So I love building things that people actually love using.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to step back and go to when you worked at Uber Eats. You grew Uber Eats from zero to 15 billion run rate business across over 6,000 cities and 43 countries in just four years, and I have to look at those stats again to really believe that. What lessons have you learned about resilience and handling challenges when scaling a business so rapidly, and how did you personally stay resilient through those ups and downs during that time period?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think the interesting thing that not many people know about Uber Eats is that it took us about a year maybe a little bit longer than a year with a different type of food delivery concept before pivoting into the Uber Eats food delivery marketplace that we all know and use and probably spend way too much money on today and that year was. It was a slog. Right, we were putting something out there, we were doing limited meals, but they could be delivered in five or 10 minutes in a tight geography, and we thought, wow, this is cool. Who wouldn't want their lunch delivered in five minutes? Right, and we had the technology. Right, we had Uber drivers around every corner so we could get something to people in five minutes.
Speaker 2:But it took us a while to figure out why it wasn't really sticking.
Speaker 2:People would use it, they would find it to be novel, but they wouldn't use it on a weekly basis, which is kind of what you wanna see when you're building a product like that.
Speaker 2:And we decided to ask our customers, hey, why don't you use us more often? And they came back and said, hey, we need more selection, right? One option or two options for lunch or dinner each day just isn't enough, especially if I'm trying to get an order in for the office or for my family. There's just not enough there and so we were able to then kind of pivot with that information and focus more on building on a breadth of selection. And I think you know that was like a little bit of a hard pill to swallow, honestly, because they're like why would, why would someone want more selection with a longer delivery time, if we could get them something in five minutes. But I think the lesson is like stay customer obsessed and if you can just really keep the customer front and center in your mind, they will help you kind of guide in the right direction. I love that.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's so simple Just ask the customer. Yeah, I love that. Okay, let's talk about confidence. As women, we often face challenges with self confidence and high stake environments. How have you navigated this and what advice would you give to women working on building their confidence in their careers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think this there was a big unlock for me. Later in my tenure at Uber Eats, I was around the table with executives from some of the biggest restaurant chains in the country, in the world, and once you get a seat at that table, it's really interesting. You realize people around that table don't have all the answers right. That's not what it's actually about. It's about asking the right questions. It's about bringing kind of your superpower to the table and knowing where others need to bring theirs.
Speaker 2:And I think that was a big unlock and that gave me the confidence to really raise my hand, even if I wasn't 100% sure that I was going to be able to do the thing that I was setting out to do. I think that that was the biggest learning for me. And then, you know, I think another thing is to the extent that you're able to just surrounding yourself with people who really value your perspective. And I was lucky enough to have that in the leadership team at Uber Eats and then in subsequent positions where I was able to say, hey, here's what I'm really good at, and they were like, oh, that's important and we need you at the table to provide that point of view.
Speaker 1:I love that fact where you said this is what I'm good at. How do you encourage women to identify what they're good at and to take the stance to raise their hand and make that louder and known?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's. You know, I've always, since I've been a leader, I've really subscribed to kind of a strengths-based team approach. It's like let's not focus on, like, making all of our hundreds of weaknesses better, like let's make our handful of strengths, like extra strength, right, and so I think, you know, trying to instill that in the teams that work for me and with me is part of it. But I actually think the key here is leading by example, and what my teams will tell you is that I'm the first person to say, hey, this isn't my area of expertise, like let's loop in someone else. Or hey, this is something that I've done a handful of times. So I'm going to have a little bit of a stronger opinion about how we go about this, so we don't learn lessons that I've already learned the hard way, and I'm just very transparent about the things that I know and the things that I don't know, and I think then that gives people the confidence to do the same in other venues.
Speaker 1:I love that leadership quality and I don't think I've ever heard anyone articulate it like that, and I think that's a very unique quality in your leadership. Many women struggle with making sure that they are compensated appropriately, and you know they one need to identify the value they bring, but then they need to articulate hey, I need to be compensated for that. What have you learned or what advice do you have around salary and compensation and negotiating for women out there listening to this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think this is particular for early stage startups and that in many cases when you're starting something yourself or when you're the first or second or third employee, there's not. You're often walking into a cash strapped situation and there's not a lot of comparable data points. For your salary, You're probably wearing a half a dozen hats. You may not even have a job title. For your salary, you're probably wearing a half a dozen hats. You may not even have a job title. Your sector is like roughly established, but there's just you can't line it up on a table of comps to say this is the salary that I deserve, because I looked at these seven other roles at these other companies, Cause it's just apples and oranges at that stage. So my approach really has been to get in the door to make an impact, prove your value, quantify it and then use that as leverage to get the compensation you deserve.
Speaker 2:And I think one other really important thing to remember, especially in startup land, is that if you really truly believe in what you're building and your ability to contribute to the success of the company, you actually should be looking to maximize your equity stake in the company. So salary is just one component. So whenever I'm coaching or mentoring people on, what should I ask for? I always am like OK, how much do you believe in this company? How big of a risk are you in a position to take? And that typically fluctuates depending on life stage, financial situation, all of that. But to me it's like, if you're going to spend day in and day out and a lot of times late nights on this, on this startup, like, get the equity stake so that you can share in the upside of the success that you're going to have a big hand in creating.
Speaker 1:How do you help women transition their mindset from terms or words like where they're almost belittling their passion project, their passion project, little hobby, you know? Where I mean, where they believe it's a business and they have the dream and hope it's going to go big, but yet the words that are coming out of their mouth don't emulate where they see the vision or how much they believe in the company money?
Speaker 2:That's a good question. I think that it can be a little bit cheesy feeling to do, but the practice of manifesting and I think one of the things that you learn in marketing and PR and positioning is this sort of aspirational language right, you market the company that you intend to be, the product that you intend to have, and win hearts and minds through that vision, not necessarily through what you're at where you're at today with it, what you're at where you're at today with it. And I think, just going through that practice and manifesting, even earlier, when I was explaining to you what Fellow covered, right, it started with what's the vision for Fellow. Right, and we're on stepping stone number two or three of who knows how many. But as long as you can kind of paint the vision and that gets you excited, that's what you should be sharing with others, even if it's just a weekend project right now. Figure out what the vision is, own it and then share it.
Speaker 1:Great advice Having your own business from women I've talked to, and even my personal experience can be lonely. You know you feel a lack of support. What have you done, or what's your secret sauce to building a strong, supportive network of people around you, both professionally and personally?
Speaker 2:What I've experienced is that startup teams become incredibly close because usually it's a small team and usually you're navigating highs and lows together. So I think my secret sauce has been hiring people or working for people that I want to be on the roller coaster with. It's like who am I going to be happy when things are good, when things are not so good and when things are just all mixed up right, who am I going to be happy working with? And these people are typically people who bring positive energy and just a fearlessness when it comes to diving into the chaos. So that's kind of like.
Speaker 2:My professional trick is just like work with great people, and I know it's not always possible. But the good news is, in early stage companies, a lot of times it is a lot of times you're building the team from scratch or you're joining a small team and you can you should interview every single person on that small startup team, because, even if it, even if they're not in your department, even if it doesn't seem like you guys are going to be working together, the minute there's a crisis, even if it doesn't seem like you guys are going to be working together, the minute there's a crisis which there inevitably will be. Everyone's going to be in it together. So that's sort of how I've navigated that in my professional life. And then you know I don't take for granted in my personal life. I have an incredibly supportive husband and two kids and they just are my biggest, loudest cheerleaders, most energetic cheerleaders, and that really keeps me going.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Speaking of support, what are your go-to resources or mentors that you've had along the way that have played crucial roles in your success and your business acumen?
Speaker 2:I am constantly reading. I love reading about journeys of other startups, other founders and I find it really know much about Um. I didn't know anything about transportation before I started at Uber. I didn't know anything about climate or garbage before I started at mill. I knew a little bit about um kind of the mental health space before I um started building fellow and I love going deep on those sectors. So you know, at mill you would find me reading books about the garbage industry, um at fellow I'm currently consumed on anything about the loneliness epidemic or about social connection or um social health.
Speaker 2:So I like to just like throw myself into those types of resources. And then you know, I think I've had some success with this concept of mentorship before, but it might not surprise you that, given what we're building at Fellow, I've actually found more valuable connections, like calling up my friends who are founders, who started their companies two years ago, who are just a couple steps ahead of me, and they would probably laugh if I said like, oh, you're my mentor, but they're kind of my GPS, right, and those are usually lower pressure, you know, lower stakes type of engagements, and so I would encourage people to not get too hung up on what you know the definition of mentorship is, and it's sort of like okay, can I find someone who is a couple steps ahead of me on this journey, and they may not have all the answers, but they may have one of the answers that I'm currently trying to find.
Speaker 1:I love that. Let's talk about financial funding. It's a significant hurdle for women-owned businesses. Do you have any tips, insights or resources that you can recommend for securing funding or grants, especially at that early stage?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think no amount of tips or tricks is going to be more important than good business foundations, right? So like building a business that's healthy and that has solid economics and a vision and a path to get to that vision, I think is like step one. You cannot skip that and it's also not sufficient. And I think the other piece of the puzzle that I have found to be most important is relationships and calling up those mentors or the people that are a couple steps ahead of you and saying, hey, who's been the best investor to that you've worked with, or who did you find to be most collaborative in your process? Can you introduce them to me? And even if they're not a good fit, maybe they'll be able to introduce me to someone else.
Speaker 2:And I think the trick is like starting to build those relationships very early, nurturing them, bringing them along for the journey, doing that before you need money. If you're in a position where you need money, you've waited too long to start building relationships. So I just encourage people to leverage your network, build the relationship, nurture the relationship and be transparent. I think a lot of times I used to feel pretty intimidated by investors, like, ooh, they have all of the control and power and in some respects they do, especially if you're in that position of needing money from them. But really they just like solving interesting business problems, like you do, and they try to do it from a different angle. And so I found that taking some of the hard problems that I'm trying to solve to investors has actually gotten them really engaged in what we're building and invested in what we're building, and that ends up coming back and paying dividends when it's time to ask them to write a check.
Speaker 1:That's super smart advice. The next thing I want to talk about is you as a leader and how you've evolved and kind of some of your recommended books, podcasts or habits that have helped you become the leader that you are today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I am kind of a creature of habit, so this is a good question for me. I think one of my most impactful habits which actually started day one, week one at Uber was looking at the metrics every day, every week, right. And so at Fellow we have a weekly huddle and at the top of that meeting each week we're going top to bottom on the key business metrics and if I'm confused about why a number is going in one direction when I expected it to go in the other, we double click on that. We figure out okay, is something broken? Are we looking at this in the wrong way? Do we need to optimize or iterate on what we have out there?
Speaker 2:And I just don't think you can be, especially in these early days. I don't think you can be in the numbers too frequently. Be especially in these early days. I don't think you can be in the numbers too frequently. And I think that also builds a lot of respect with the team that I lead, which is like, oh, all this is like invested in how things are going and and really interested in how the work I'm doing is contributing to business outcomes, and I always like to have the people who are closest to the metric, speak to it, and so oftentimes that gives more junior team members an opportunity to really showcase the work that they're doing.
Speaker 2:And I think there's another thing that I feel really proud of, and that is when the numbers aren't going in the direction we want. We just there's no hiding it, there's no sugarcoating. We just say, hey, like this isn't, this isn't working the way we thought it would, what are we going to do about it? And we take a really kind of decisive action oriented approach to that. So I think that's one of the habits that just like so ingrained now that it just happens really really naturally.
Speaker 2:The other one is talking to customers. Any chance I get, at least weekly, I'm talking to customers, and I want to talk to the happy ones, I want to talk to the mad ones, I want to talk to the ones who actually decided that they wouldn't be a customer. Anyone who will spare 15 minutes talking with me. I make room on my calendar and I find that those anecdotes are actually a lot of times even more powerful, especially at the stage when sometimes the data points on certain things can be lacking in volume. I find that the anecdotes really power us through and help drive important insights and action.
Speaker 1:What would you tell your 20-year-old self?
Speaker 2:I think I would tell my 20-year-old self that energy management is important when you're diving into startups. If you're doing it right, it's going to be a multi-year thing right. And so managing energy and finding those pockets where you can kind of exhale and not feeling ashamed about taking that minute to exhale because you know that minute is not going to last very long and it's going to be kind of back in the trenches I think I would tell myself to be a little bit more intentional about energy management and I think I've gotten much better at that as I've gotten a little bit older.
Speaker 1:And I think post-COVID and just in where we are today, I think, with companies laying off people, women, older women, you know, let's just say 40 and above. You know that they've already had successful careers or their burnout there. They're starting to step away and there's a growing number of older women starting businesses. Um, what advice do you have for them, again, where they have a great idea but they feel maybe they're late in their career.
Speaker 2:yeah, I think you know. First, I believe that every entrepreneurial journey starts with falling in love with a problem. So what's the problem you're looking to solve with the thing that you want to do? And you've really got to love that. And, honestly, a lot of times I do this myself and I give people this advice when they're thinking about starting something try to think of all the reasons why pursuing the opportunity is a bad idea is a bad idea.
Speaker 2:And then if you still feel drawn to the problem, that's your sign to take the leap right when it feels inevitable, when it feels like there is no other choice. And if you don't feel like that on the first idea you have or the first problem, that doesn't mean you're not cut out to be an entrepreneur. That means you need to dig deeper and think more critically about the problem you're solving, who you're solving it for, and go back to the drawing board. And because if you don't have that pull, it's going to be hard to get up early, stay up late, juggle all the things work on that Saturday, miss the soccer game, you know, do all these things that these make, all these sacrifices that you have to do when you are an entrepreneur, and and so you've really got to love it. You've really got to love the problem that you're working on.
Speaker 1:I love having this opportunity to pick your brain. I just find it like my little secret time, but even though I get to share it with so many people. But let's talk about personal brand. To me, it's something I'm very passionate about and I see women get ahead in life once they're clear on having a personal brand. How have you intentionally taken that and put that into motion for your own brand, separate from your businesses, throughout your career?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have to be honest, I'm very early on this journey of personal brand and I think part of it is I've been in the weeds for many years in startups and sort of carving out the time and the space to prioritize.
Speaker 2:That has felt difficult.
Speaker 2:I think the other part of it, if I'm being honest, is I love I like being behind the scenes, I like making the magic happen in the business right, and so stepping out and having my face, as you know, as part of the representation of what we're doing as a company or as a thought leader in the social and mental health space, that's, you know, that's daunting, and so I think you caught me kind of early on my journey.
Speaker 2:This podcast might be a really good example of one of the things that is taking me out of my comfort zone. That that's an effort to kind of tell my story along with the story of the company that I'm building, and I think you know I kind of straddle the era of. You know I remember life before social media and before we shared everything on the internet, and so I think I still have a little bit of apprehension about putting more out there. But the thing that has motivated me to really prioritize this is the fact that every time I put up a LinkedIn post or speak on a panel or take a random cold call introduction to an early career woman, I get inbound. Oh, thank you. This helped me think about something in a different way, or this really piqued my curiosity, or this motivated me to go do something that furthered my career, and so I'm kind of taking that as fuel and motivation to continue investing in building a personal brand.
Speaker 1:I love it. Well, I think you should continue, because I think you're amazing, thank you. What does to be bolder mean to you?
Speaker 2:I think to be bolder means challenging the status quo. You know, the way things have been doesn't mean that's the way they should continue to be. In fact, it probably means that it's not the way they should continue to be. I think it's about having the courage to try new solutions. I think we are trying to embody that at Fellow and sort of kick off a paradigm shift with the way that we think about supporting one another as humans.
Speaker 1:Lastly, what's next for you and Fellow?
Speaker 2:What's next for me and what's next for Fellow are kind of one and the same at the moment, we have so much that we're doing that I'm so excited about, and we're gearing up to really bring experience-based peer support to the mainstream, normalize getting help for life's challenges. We don't have to do this stuff alone, and one of the things I'm really really excited about is an upcoming partnership that we have with the WNBA star, who has just an incredibly inspiring story, and she is excited to help us spread the word about fellow and reach even more people. So I would encourage everyone listening. If you're interested in what we're doing at fellow, follow along, check us out on the app store. I attempt to post on LinkedIn as much as I can about about what we're doing and about the broader landscape and, uh, would love to have you along for the journey.
Speaker 1:It has been such a pleasure meeting you and I've enjoyed our conversation. Thank you for being here and sharing your story.
Speaker 2:Thank you, mary, it was so fun.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guest. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at 2BBouldercom. That's the number 2, little b, bouldercom.