2B Bolder Podcast : Career Insights & Advice from Succesful Women in Business & Tech
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2B Bolder Podcast : Career Insights & Advice from Succesful Women in Business & Tech
#130 Susan Sly Talks about Revolutionizing Menopause Support with AI & Her Career Journey
What if AI could finally solve one of the most overlooked challenges in women’s health?
Millions of women experience menopause, yet real support has always lagged behind, until now.
In this episode of the 2B Bolder Podcast, I sit down with Susan Sly, tech founder, health advocate, and CEO of Pause AI, who is transforming how women navigate menopause through the use of artificial intelligence.
Her journey is anything but traditional, from working on facial recognition algorithms in the ’90s, to building a career in holistic health, to a life-threatening illness that nearly derailed everything. But that experience lit a fire—and brought her back to tech with a new mission: to build real-time, personalized solutions for the 1.1 billion women facing menopause.
We talk about:
- The spark behind Pause AI at a Women in AI event
- How wearables and real-time data are changing the game
- Why only 2.5% of VC funding goes to women founders—and what she’s doing anyway
- The resilience it takes to walk away from what’s working to build what’s needed
Susan gets real about leadership, aging, and why women should solve women’s health issues.
🎧 Tune in and be inspired, as bold leaders innovate and listen to what women truly need.
Search 2B Bolder wherever you get your podcasts, or listen now at 2bbolder.com/podcasts.
Resources:
Susan Sly on LinkedIn
Official Website: https://susansly.com/
Company website: https://thepause.ai/
Learn more about AnitaB.org
When you subscribe to the podcast, you are supporting our work's mission, allowing us to continue highlighting successful women in a variety of careers to inspire others helping pay our wonderful editor, Chris, and helping me in paying our hosting expenses. 🎉
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. Hey there, Today's show is for all women.
Speaker 1:Menopause is finally getting the attention it deserves, and it's about time. Millions of women go through it. Yet the solutions and support have lagged behind until now. Today's guest is on a mission to change that. Susan Sly is a powerhouse entrepreneur and tech visionary who's using the power of AI to reshape how women experience menopause. She's the founder and CEO of Pause AI, a groundbreaking platform that's bringing personalized, real-time support to the space. That's been ignored far too long, and this isn't her first bout with technology and solving problems. Before launching Paws AI, she co-founded Radius AI, an award-winning company in the visual intelligence space. Susan's passion for solving problems that matter to women using cutting edge technology to lead with purpose makes her the standout leader in AI, and I'm so honored to have you here joining us today.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much Well thanks, mary, and to all of our listeners, I think you know. First and foremost, I want to acknowledge you. I mean, as a podcast host myself, I always start my day with a podcast and I just commend all of your listeners and everyone here because I know we're going to have a great conversation.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Okay, so let's start with your origin story. What's your background? Let's start there, since you're obviously in the tech space now and you've had an interesting background eclectic, so tell everyone about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, I've been on the bleeding edge of artificial intelligence since 2018, but I haven't written a line of code since 1992. And part of, I think, the big piece for women to understand is we are going to have anywhere from seven to nine I think is the latest statistic Mary career iterations. And for me, when I was in university I was working on early facial recognition algorithms from 90, 91, 92. And then I really wanted to be Jodie Foster from Silence of the Lambs and I thought I would use this technology to go catch criminals, and you know that that would be it. But I went into that world of federal law enforcement right out of college and realized very quickly that, to be candid, it wasn't conducive to rehabilitation. What, especially for serious offenders? What the modalities being used then and nothing has changed in 30 years really only supported recidivism, and by that I mean, like you know, offenders would go into the prison and they'd have a drug problem and they'd have a worse drug problem. And so I became very easily jaded in my early 20s with that and I decided to pursue a passion in the holistic side of health and I went into the sales and marketing side of the house and built sales teams that generated over 2 billion in sales.
Speaker 2:But in 2016, I've had many near-death experiences. But in 2016, I've been to Africa many times. I've been to Cambodia, I've gone undercover, rescued girls from sex trafficking and I went to Africa. But this time came back very sick and I was misdiagnosed and I was gaslit by several physicians. One told me it was all in my head and gave me a personal development book and I said listen, I do speaking events with people like Tony Robbins and I've written seven books. So no, it's not all in my head. Swipe left and then another doctor said it was just PMS and it wasn't. And I had an amoeba, mary, and it was shutting down my organs and I was dying and so inhale Mary. A friend of mine said there's a doctor who specializes in tropical diseases in New York and he's in his eighties and I flew to see him and he had worked in over 30 UN camps for Doctors Without Borders, diagnosed me.
Speaker 2:I went on two years of antibiotics, holistic modalities, and came out the other side and said you know what? I was given a second chance at life. What do I want to do? And I wanted to go back into technology and so I ended up co-founding a company with four guys and they were looking for someone with my skillset raising money, sales. And because I hadn't written code in so long, I went back to school. I went to MIT, sloan, and then last year I graduated from executive education, the engineering department. So there's a lot more to the story. Being homeless I'm sure you read about my background. You know turning things around, but those are. You know that's some of the career highlights.
Speaker 1:That's fascinating and so life-changing. I mean just being working with the traffic, you know, rescuing young girls or women in trafficking. I can't even imagine what that does to you and how it shifts your perspective on life. But I guess in all that you have an incredible drive. What derives you personally?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. You know, as women, especially in our age cohort and I did a post in our private Facebook group today for the company, for all of the women. You know, at this stage of the game, we either have aging parents or we've lost parents. But my father passed last summer. We may still have kids at home, we are navigating career, we may be one of my friends has three months to live, which is heartbreaking we might be going through separation, divorce, I mean the list goes on and on and the.
Speaker 2:You know, some days it takes more energy than others and I think it's very different for women than it is for men. We have more cause and effect. I mean, back in 2000, I think nine, I was doing a big television show in Australia and you know, I, you know women have more synapses between the left and right hemisphere of our brain and I was explaining to the host I'm like, look, my new book, the have it All Women had come out at that time. And I'm like, listen, we, you know, we're thinking about so many things at one time. I mean, you know, what is so-and-so going to wear to school, what are we going to wear? What is for lunch? What is for dinner? Do we have enough groceries in the house? Do I need to go to the dry cleaner? The list goes on and on. And it's not to diminish how men's minds work, but the reality is and there's new research, even in terms of how different cultural groups marry, navigate menopause and perimenopause. There's something called weathering and what that is. It's years and years and years of stress, and it could be socioeconomic stress, it could be physical stress that literally begins to degrade ourselves. So by this time in our life there are days when you know you've had, maybe you're you know on HRT and you've had a decent night's sleep and you're feeling amazing and you can be motivated. And there's other days when it takes work.
Speaker 2:I was a professional athlete and a lot of my background in being able to self-motivate. Not every day that I went on that start line did I feel like, yes, I'm going to be a podium finisher today. So what motivates me right now? And I think the root of the question is what is my? In French we say the raison d'etre, or what is my why? My why right now is there are soon to be 1.1 billion women in menopause in the world and we know McKinsey is doing a lot of research and some studies show up to 41% of women in this age cohort want to quit their jobs due to lack of support. And these women are managers, directors, heads, vps, c-suite and so forth, and we're not being supported. And the number one period tracking app out there is actually created by two guys, and kudos to them. They have had a tremendous run.
Speaker 2:But who better to solve women's health than women? And? And so what keeps me up at night? What gets me up in the morning, is how are we going to solve this? How are we going to create precision recommendations? Because perimenopause and menopause is not a one size fits all, and we're seeing black women, asian women, mixed women like myself. So many different groups are having different symptoms. No one is addressing that, and so that's what keeps me going. But some days, you know candidly, it's easy and some days it's. I need a little more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was funny was funny because, like you said, I'm in that demographic. So it was. I was on some chat with some women friends of mine and they're all like are you going to watch the Oprah show tonight? You know, because it was talking about menopause. It was something that hadn't gone on prime time. So of course, we all tune in and compare, but what I loved about it, honestly, was just bringing the conversation to the masses. So talk to me about real-time AI I want to say real-time analytics, but real-time AI and then also about your business Paws AI and how they can use it pause AI and what women can, how they can use it.
Speaker 2:So there's a there's an Intel origin story, so I'll, I'll. I'll start with that, because it's going to frame in why do this right? So it's September of 2023, and there's a event that happens every year called Women in AI, and it's 32 women are invited and these are women who are from the top tech companies Intel and NVIDIA, hpe, amd and founders like myself and what happens is you spend the morning for a couple hours to talk about AI, have brunch, and then you go to a fashion show, so you drink mimosas and it's fantastic, and it's like if I'm in, I've been two years in a row, like if I'm invited, it's Mary, it's an instant, yeah. So I had been going through menopause and it was getting more and more severe, even to the point where I said I'm going to get my breast implants removed, which I did. I was like, desperate to do anything. I was on HRT, I was not feeling good and I'm co-CEO of a growing company and we have four offices, 100 employees globally, and my days are long and I loved what I was doing, but I kept thinking why am I suffering? I have a background in holistic health, I know what to do, I eat the right things, I do all of the right things. This is not right and I kept on thinking how do we solve for this? So we're at the event and we're on the party bus to go to the Badgley Mishka fashion show and one of the girls says Susan, you know, can you solve this with AI? Because we're not talking about AI, we're talking about how much sleep did you get and do you have hot flashes?
Speaker 2:And so a few months after that, I decided to walk away from my previous company and step out with no salary, just my savings, and start to build this company and start to bootstrap it and bring in investors. And that road is not easy and for everyone listening I would say you know, we have to start as women, which is the majority of this listening audience. We have to start as women supporting women-led companies. Like, as I said, the Leading Period app is started by two guys, not that you know great, but women need to support women. So I said how do we do this in such a way where we do something different? And because of my background, last year I was voted one of the top women in the world in real-time AI.
Speaker 2:Along with Mira Murthy from OpenAI and a group of us by an independent party, I said how do we take real time? So what that means is, mary, if you are not sleeping, how do you get supported to in the morning Not like I'm going to talk to my menopause coach the next day or I'm going to talk to someone. How do you if your heart rate is weird or something's going on and you're not feeling good? How do you get a recommendation in real time that says hey, this isn't a day to go for a run, this is a day, like you know, you need to maybe go for an easy walk here's a meditation, do a breathing exercise, because that platform is taking the input that you're giving it and making a recommendation based on that.
Speaker 2:To build it is insanely challenging and most people would look at it and go, oh, that's a fun problem to solve, but it's a very difficult one to solve. So that's how the company started and that's what we're aiming to build, and we also this is so critical Mary say you know, a woman has never had children and she ends up having a surgical menopause. As an example, she's 34 years old. Why is she getting the same recommendations as a 54 year old who's had four children and never had a hysterectomy. Like this is the stuff that's happening, and so, just like when my girls were little, they, the American girls, had the. Just like you, doll, this is how we're looking at perimenopause and menopause. It's just like you. There were some very consistent recommendations that are evidence-based, and those include things like sleep, alcohol, exercise and so forth, but then there are other things like nutrition that really and truly, we need to look at your culture of origin, right, we need to look at your activity level.
Speaker 2:So that's what we're building and the product is out there in flight in its initial version, and I'm going to tell every single woman. Of course, we'd love download the app. We want to be supported. It's not as pretty as it's going to be, but I have a friend who has an app-based company, mary, and they are four years in and they're just now bringing on customers. As a female-led founder, less than 2.5% of women-led pitches to VCs get funded. Women raise more money, but our companies are 68% more profitable. I said we're going to put the app out there at a discount $29 a year. We know it's going to be ugly, but we're going to get feedback, we're going to refine it and that's what we're doing.
Speaker 1:That's amazing find it, and that's what we're doing.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. So how does the data get input into the system? I love that question. So when a subscriber comes onto our platform, she is anonymized. We actually don't know who she is because Apple doesn't. Your email could be ABC123, hotmailmail, for example. We don't know who you are and you can't put a picture in that. We don't allow it. So you have like a carousel of um different avatars you can choose from. You choose a username, um. We always suggest you don't use your actual name, so just choose whatever you want, um. And so then we now are um.
Speaker 2:You have the ability to share how you're feeling. We have a symptom tracker, but again, we don't know who you are, which is the thing that was really important to me, really, and and that poses its challenges, because some of our competitors want to know your name, all of your medical information, your exact date of birth. We only ask for your month and year, and you know I'm not going to give my information to a platform, especially medical information, when they physically know who I am, right. So that's how we begin the journey. We are in the process of integrating with Oura, ring, fitbit, garmin, all of the wearables. Right now we have Apple Watch, and so if you do choose to connect a wearable, we also get what we call a resilience score, which is pulling from different biometric feedback.
Speaker 2:So I'll give you a real world example. So I've been going through a few things in my personal life. As I said, one of my girlfriends has three months to live, going through a move, I'm renovating a house, I'm building a company, I mean, the list goes on and on, and my resilience score was 76 yesterday and for me, normally I'm in the high 80s, but because of that score, I know that today I'm in the high eighties, but because of that score, I know that today I didn't go for an interval run, I got on the elliptical, I took it easy, I did weight training, I will go to bed early tonight, and that's just one of many examples of how were the. The data is there, but it's anonymized and you're still able to get precision recommendations.
Speaker 1:Okay, oh gosh, there's just so much I want to talk to you about. Let's back up, because you're in a room with these women who are some of the brightest minds around talking about AI. What words of encouragement or opportunities do you see for other women who want to step into the arena of AI and where they can build their careers from not having a ton of skills to being really skilled? And it seems like seamless integration, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ai is shifting so quickly and the first thing I'm going to say, step one is educate yourself. Ai is a buzzword that really, within AI, I liken it to let's use the pie analogy technology. So computer vision, where I came out of, is one form of ai, and someone I was at a like a tech meetup and someone's like explain computer vision, and so, for those of you don't know, computer vision is when you're taking security cameras and the ai essentially is looking through the security camera and doing what we call motion interpretation. So what is a human, a machine, whatever, an airplane doing, and 24-7. So those are big data payloads. It is a lot of complexity, a lot of elegance, a lot of use cases to keep humans safe even.
Speaker 2:However, that's just one form of AI. Then, a couple of years ago, chow Chibiti everyone starts talking about generative AI. So what that is is when you put you know type or your voice or something goes into the AI, mostly a machine learning algorithm, and then it has an output. It could be more text, it could be voice, like you know your Siri or Alexa. It could also be an image or it could be a video, like with Sora. That's another form.
Speaker 2:Now everyone's talking about agentic AI. So an AI agent to perform a simple task that is a repetitive task, but eventually you train that AI agent so it can have its own logic. And to give an example because I love when I do talks is to do a talk just like this on what are these different types of AI, when we think about autonomous vehicles so I'm based in Phoenix and Waymo is allowed to go to the airport and pick up people and it was so Mary startling the first time I pulled up next to a Waymo and I look over and there's no one in that passenger seat. So there's a lot of AI agents working in tandem to interpret what is going on for that vehicle. So there's an example of agentic AI.
Speaker 2:So we look at all these different forms of AI and there are others and first thing is first is that's knowing the difference. And number two is deciding how would you like to be involved. So there's the ethics component, if you come from any kind of policy. Then there's the sales and marketing side. Then there is the business development side, which is, you know, where you're looking at how do we implement AI and how do we scale it, where you're looking at how do we implement AI and how do we scale it? I'm one of the only women women who've actually scaled artificial intelligence in the United States, and so there's a there's a seat for everyone at the table, and I didn't pivot my career until I was 45.
Speaker 1:So someone who's listening and this isn't something I usually talk about on the podcast, but since you're here, I have to pick your brain For a woman out there who has an idea for an AI app or a product, you know, based on AI and what. What should she have as far as like a pitch and starting to get funding and like taking her plan from an idea in her you know room to actually and I know this is a loaded question but at a high level, like, what core advice do you have for someone like that? I?
Speaker 2:think it's a really good question because there's a lot of misinformation and confusion out there and I've had girlfriends who've gone down that path. One it is going to cost you more than you actually think it is. Number two, coming out of MIT, there's a concept there called MMP a minimum marketable product, which is a product that your minimum product that people will pay for. So, unlike a beta version or an MVP, this is something someone will pay you, whatever that number is, in exchange for what you built. The third thing is off-the-shelf tooling. So we now see AI platforms that can be customized to be part of the tech stack and even I would say, you know, three, four years ago people had to build their own AI. Now, even as an angel investor, I'm not deploying capital this year because I'm investing in my own company, but the you know, even Mary, seeing companies now that can get to market faster because of the great off-the-shelf tools, right, and so a lot of people will spend millions and millions of dollars to be able to get a product out to the market.
Speaker 2:We made a decision we were not going to do a free version. Every VC I've spoken to has said that is a genius idea because the churn is so high, especially in apps. So still, you know you're going to spend a lot of money. The other thing I would say is my you know two really big pieces of advice. One put together a group of advisors I am an advisor on two companies that have experience because what's going to happen?
Speaker 2:Let's say you're a nutritionist and you're like, oh, I want to do this. You're going to talk to different dev shops and they're going to quote you a price and you'll think, oh, you know, for $250,000, I'll get this thing out in the market. Then you do not have an architecture diagram, you don't know, there's broken code, there's all this tech debt. Then you go to another dev shop and then you spend another $250,000 and you're still not out in the market. And the list goes on and on and on. So surrounding yourself with people who've actually done it before and who can ask the questions, I think is key. Make them advisors. You may give away some equity to do that. And then the second thing is look at your partners. Whether it's Microsoft for startups, amazon for startups, google for startups, they all have startup programs and your cloud costs are going to soar very quickly even when you're building and you don't want to be in that place where you don't even have a product and you're down $3 million and that happens all the time.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's just so much gold in there. All right, let's talk about networking. And before I guess, before I talk about networking, I want to back up, because you've been in rooms that have been dominated by men, just for the sheer reality of you know women in the space that you're in. How have you gone in with such confidence and how, when the confidence seems to be dwindling, do you pump it back up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and we're living in a very interesting time. I don't know which if it was wired or I can't remember and it's suddenly permission to these guys who were portraying themselves as so sensitive are now like wakeboarding with no shirt on and like going hunting and doing all this crap that they never showed they were probably doing but they just never were flexing about it. So we're living in a very interesting time to be a woman and I have personally observed that the conversations are changing, and I'll just be very candid to the women listening You're going to have to prove yourself in a lot of the rooms. So for me, I was raised by a single dad, so I do have an advantage of that. I was raised more, like we would have said, when we were little, tomboy right. So it was football. On Sundays it was church, it was football, it was politics, it was, you know, growing up with Walter Cronkite. We watched the news every night, my dad and I, and he was an engineer. So for me, I'm very comfortable with men. You know, if I'm on a Zoom and I see you've got like the Eagles in the background or some, whatever it is we're going to have a conversation. I know what's going on and I can very much get to that point where there's some form of common ground, much like it would be with a couple of guys, and I don't care if anyone wants to criticize me I mean, everyone's got an opinion but it's just who I am. It's not who I'm trying to be. And I want to pause with this statement because girls listening, just be who you are right, it's just who I am. I was not raised with dolls and you know princess parties and things I wish God willing I was, but you know my mom was not part of my life, so that's how I was raised and so I'm very comfortable talking about a lot of those things that guys would normally talk about Going into a room where I remember once I was going into a room, it was myself, all guys and there were all these servers on a conference table and it's like, okay, you've got to know your stuff.
Speaker 2:I had completely memorized the NVIDIA GPU catalog for Edge. I started to get very clear on what Edge is a form for, as people don't know, it's when you process data at the source. So, like in a hospital example, there's a lot of Edge servers because they're processing all this data. It's cheaper than sending data to the cloud, processing it and bring it back down. So I knew the edge servers, edge architecture. I started to learn what were the questions I needed to ask, and I think for me that my advice would be to any woman if that is the case.
Speaker 2:I see a lot of women out there right now because of federal funding for women-led startups and women's initiatives. And women are, you know, on social media. They're, you know, they're complaining. And girls, you know what. You can complain about things if you feel you can make a change. But you know, just complaining on social media isn't going to do it. You know, reach out to your congressperson, your senator, whoever it is, but at the end of the day, you're going to have to prove yourself.
Speaker 2:And I think I was saying you know you had to be 30 percent better. I think in this current environment, you've got to be 90 percent better and that's what it's going to take. I know when I go to pitch a VC and that's what it's going to take. I know, when I go to pitch a VC especially when you've got a product that's for menopause most of the people they're men. They're never going to go through menopause, they're not going to get the problem statement. So I've had to become better pitching, like all of those things, and you can say, mary, it sucks and it does, but it is what it is, so we just have to adapt to that terrain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I'm kind of like that. You cannot spend time worrying about something you can't control. You just have to do what's in your control and if that's doing the extra work, you do the extra work. Let's talk about networking. How have you been able to surround yourself with support throughout your career and any tips for other women in building their supportive network?
Speaker 2:Networking is huge and you know this right. Like you know, it's all about that who you know. But how do you end up knowing who you know? What most people would be surprised to know, if you look at my LinkedIn or Instagram or any of the social media platforms, is I'm a natural introvert and it is a lot of effort for me to network. I find cocktail parties exhausting, but I go right. I to give you an example.
Speaker 2:I was this past week tuesday night I was invited by jp morgan and shouts out to them for this gathering they had in scottsdale to bring together like seven founders and ask our opinions and things like that, and it was a great event and it was lovely. Yesterday morning I was so tired, like it's a lot and and people say, susan, you know you can speak in front of 20 000 people, or you can have. You know you could speak in front of 20,000 people, or you can have a YouTube channel. You could do shows like this. Yes, but I know, as a natural introvert, that I have to be a situational extrovert in order to do it. So I love podcasts because I love to be able to have a conversation, like you and I could be having a cocktail, we could be having a coffee, we could be having lunch and sitting down. When I'm at an event and I'm physically networking, I'm like, oh, and I have the LEFO policy last in first up. That being said, the reason I shared that is even on my show.
Speaker 2:I have a lot of people that come on, even men who've, you know, had exits and successful you know rounds and so forth, who are natural introverts. And we talk about it a lot because most people make the incorrect assumption that someone is an extrovert. And here's the thing, mary, you know you're an extrovert when you leave that cocktail party and you're energized. You know you're an introvert when you leave that party and you're like, I just need to sit and watch friends for, like you know, two hours. So the networking piece know your strengths. And so one of my strengths is really I do genuinely care about people and I am very interested and curious about people. So I make myself go to networking events. I network on LinkedIn. Usually every week I have my Calendly. One of the events is a 15 minute and people will reach out to me on LinkedIn and, hey, you know, as long as they're not selling me something, you know, can we meet, and I I will do, you know one or two of those a week just to meet people. I go to a lot of those a week just to meet people.
Speaker 2:I go to a lot of networking events and I speak at events and when I speak at events, I always make sure that I attend at least one of the networking events to get to know people and, as part of that strategy, that's where investors have come from in my company. That's where some amazing opportunities and I would say to anyone listening is just be really clear Going into an event with what can I get? I'll tell a quick story. So I was asked to speak at an event called AI Salon, which was cool, and there are a lot of young founders there and they know I'm an angel investor. So they've looked at my LinkedIn and stuff and they come up to me, not like, oh, something I learned from your talk, or I have a question about this. It's like, oh, I have a startup and we're raising $2 million and I'm like that's not networking, that's vomiting all over someone. Networking is when you think about what can I offer this person in value without keeping score right, 100% agree.
Speaker 1:What I love about you is that you're the face of the company and you represent the company so well because you can speak to it as a person who would be using it. I think I'm trying to lead you down a path about talking about personal branding and how important it is for companies to realize that people don't want to connect so much with the title of the brand. They want to connect with leaders. So what have you done around building your personal brand? I know you talk about. You know some. I guess I assume you're being very intentional because you're very successful at it. What advice do you have for women and how important is personal brand building?
Speaker 2:Sure, let's, let's step back, because you know, you and I will remember life, life before social media, right? So I want to talk about the celebrity founder, and this is one of my favorite topics, because when people start to think about it, they're like, oh, okay. So let's think about Apple for a minute, right? So Steve jobs was that original and it doesn't matter. I'm going to name a few examples that it doesn't matter how people feel about them, we're just using them. If I was teaching a university class, these would be case studies.
Speaker 2:So Steve Jobs had his look right, his turtleneck, you know, and he had his quirks about him and he was known to have these fits and things, but this became legend. He was like the OG celebrity influencer in that tech space. Bill Gates was never the same kind of persona in terms of being influential and, again, this was all legend. This was all old school interviews on 60 Minutes and things like that, views on 60 minutes and things like that.
Speaker 2:So then we get into fast forward time to this group of people in you know technology who are celebrity founders, and the thing I want everyone to know, if you're taking notes, is that a celebrity founder can make or break a company and if it is done well, people will be very forgiving. So I'm going to use a very contentious name right now, because why not? The thing I love about your show is and whenever I'm on a show, what you see is what you get. This is the conversation I would have had with you at 350 in the morning when I woke up, mary so it's the same station and I know you do.
Speaker 2:I know you appreciate that. So let's look at Elon Musk. So Elon is this you know this persona and, prior to what's going on currently with the stuff with Tesla, he was this person that he was idolized, especially by all these young men, and they would go and buy a Tesla and they would. You know, everyone loved their Tesla and he was this you know, demagogue of a persona and a brand. So even when Tesla almost went bankrupt, he had so many orders for Teslas because it became this cult culture, right. And there's another example. Zuckerberg is another example, Bezos is another example.
Speaker 2:These people who are iconic around their brands and outside of technology. I'll use Sarah Blakely. Sarah was like one of us, right, she had her cellulite. She's pouring herself into her Spanx and I had her husband, jesse Itzler, on my show and like they're just real people. So Sarah was another one.
Speaker 2:So the question is, when you look at some of these big brands, can you have a successful brand without a brand icon, without that person who is the face of the brand? And I would say it gets you so far? But the biggest brands in the world, they have some kind of person at the helm? Who is that spokesperson? And it isn't easy, because you're also going to take the arrows. And so what I found for myself is I'm willing to be vulnerable. I've even spoken on Instagram about issues I've had with my husband, um I, you know it's. I don't want to be that person who's always trying to be perfect, but I'd rather, as Oprah said, I'd rather be respected than liked Um, and I would also, you know, just rather, just put everything out there and not care, at the risk of knowing that some investors, you know, might not, you know, think that's. That's great, but the number one value in our company is trust, and how are you going to trust someone who's being inauthentic? So guess what girls? Yes, you need to brand yourself, there's no question.
Speaker 1:What does to be bolder mean to you?
Speaker 2:I just think it's having the courage to speak your truth. And you know, we we went through a culture in a Sheryl Sandberg started with let's Lean In and then we went to this imposter syndrome Girls, it's enough, is enough is enough. Like, stop caring. You know, we're at 8 billion people in the world. You'll find your people. I just don't care anymore. Just don't care anymore, Like I'm. Just. I'm at 52 years old, I'm just going to be who I am and I'm on a path. I still do personal growth. I read four books a month, I listen to podcasts every morning. You know, as I said, I do all this stuff. I don't intend to be the same iteration of me a year from now, but I'm bold enough to just speak my truth and and really just not marry care what anyone thinks.
Speaker 1:That made me curious. What are your podcasts that you're listening to and some of your favorite books?
Speaker 2:Oh well, I listened to um a lot of Lewis house um, especially when he has founders on, because Lewis has um his personal coach, chris Lee. I know Chris um, he's an amazing human. Lewis ask questions that are different than the standard. Like you know, how did you get into entrepreneurship? And you know that kind of thing. And it's like more like let's talk and which is what I do on my show run real entrepreneurship, like let's get to the heart of it, the consciousness of it. Like did you ever feel like you want to quit? Did you ever get depressed? You know all of that stuff. So I really love his interview style and it's it's evolved Um, I, when I'm in, you know, sort of nerdy mode, I'll listen to acquired um is another one that I really enjoy. Um, because I want to listen to the business tactics for sure. Um books I am reading so many books at one time.
Speaker 2:So Gabby Bernstein self-help she and I have some people we know in common and her new book. Her last book was really vulnerable when she talks about being sexually abused and she's always been vulnerable about her journeys. So this one is is really a very focused type of therapy. So I love that I'm audio reading Lewis's new book Make Money Easy. I am also when I like depends on how much time I have it's. There's a book I'm audio reading about populating Mars and how, like the, you know what it's physically going to take from an engineering standpoint to do that, because Elon is working very aggressively on that and I actually know people who are working on title rights to land in Mars and things. I mean crazy stuff, and so those are kind of what I'm reading and I do read Mary is.
Speaker 1:As a founder, when you're hiring someone, do you look at where they went to school and what like boxes they've checked off, or is there something more intrinsic that you're looking at from them?
Speaker 2:Oh, this process has grown for me because I used to. You know, I my husband would always say my biggest strength is I believe in people. My greatest weakness is I believe in people, you know. And so we have a process now where everyone gets a 30 day contract and you have to go through three interviews. So the first interview is, if we're hiring engineers, it's going to be technical interview. Then you're going to go through a cultural interview. It's always three people interviewing and they the technical interview. You have two tech people, one non-technical, the cultural. You have two non-technical, one technical, and then there's a third final interview. Then you get a 30 day trial and you jump right in.
Speaker 2:I don't care if you went to Stanford, if you went to MIT or you have a certificate from Google. That doesn't tell me anything about your technical skills. It really doesn't. I've had all of those. I've had PhDs I've had, you know, it doesn't tell me anything because, at the end of the day, my philosophy is anyone can learn a skill, but I can't teach them integrity. And so we only have two core values trust and wow. And if you can't deliver trust and wow, in 30 days you're out.
Speaker 2:So you know people, some of the partners we have are like, where's Bob? I'm just making that name up and I'm like, oh no, bob's gone, didn't pass the 30 day. Like you know, love Bob. I'm like, oh no, bob's gone, didn't pass the 30 day, like you know, love Bob. But it's, you know, it did it candidly from a consciousness perspective, mary. It doesn't serve the person to be in an environment where they are not going to get to grow related to the consciousness of the CEO.
Speaker 2:So, even when I'm having 50 wall kicking moments and I'm like, oh my gosh, really, I show up in the dev standup, I show up in. You know, I'm like icebreaker, I've got a smile on my face, let's go. But I also, with our team that has come through those 30 days, I tell them everything. They know where we're at with fundraising. They know what's going on in my personal life. They know everything and I'm like, if you have equity in this company, you're now a co-owner of the company and we're in it together and I expect for you to be transparent. If you've got a whole bunch of crap happening in your life, tell me, we'll figure it out together. But that's how I operate the company, which is very different and unexpected, but that's what we do.
Speaker 1:That's really refreshing Cause I can tell you you get into some of these corporations and the leadership is so many ladders above you that you know people are terrified when they come in the room. Versus like sharing what problems are where they matter and where they're getting done, it's such a disconnect sometimes I see. As a leader, what advice do you have for women leaders out there to become better leaders?
Speaker 2:leaders. So I have a. The way I work on myself is I look at my life in chapters, because think about Mary, think about the last sort of epic book you read or the last epic movie you watched right. So think what. What's one that comes to mind for you? Brene Brown, dare to Lead Right, exactly. Or think about a fiction book right. Or a fiction movie Girl on a Train yeah, exactly. Or I'll use this one because it's just top of mind. I was telling my sister-in-law she hadn't seen the Book Club, right.
Speaker 1:With.
Speaker 2:Candice Berger. It's like so funny, right, just darling. And so if we think about a fiction book or a movie and how each chapter moves so quickly in something different, if I think about my life as a leader in chapters, then I do not get as stressed and concerned because I get to write the next chapter. So the chapter we're in it's like oh okay, this is the chapter, but what's going to come in the next chapter? Because, just like a fiction book, I'm setting up my next chapter, whatever that is. And, girls, some chapters are shorter, some are longer. So that's the first thing I do, number one. Number two is I believe I control my own destiny. And so when we look at I've studied I grew up in a Christian, buddhist, jewish household. I've also studied Kabbalah. So when we look at things and we're saying our goals, mary, like oh, I want to make more money or I want to attract my perfect partner or whatever it is, then we're essentially asking our creator to expand our vessel. If you've ever been pregnant and you've had pains from growing that child in your body, you stretched out your skin right Like every pregnancy. I gave 47 pounds, no matter how clean I ate, I was like what? But you stretched until it was so painful and you know, you produce this baby. And it's the same thing when we're saying to our creator hey, you know, I want my vessel to expand, which is what I did at the beginning of this year, and, oh my gosh, I've had a lot, a lot of wall kicking moments, but the expansiveness that comes from growth. So my piece around it is if we're going to say we want to lead, we have to be prepared for expansiveness, which ultimately our creator wants us to be happy, fulfilled, successful. But it means it can probably be painful and suddenly your relationship unravels and suddenly you you know this happened Mel Robbins, she had, like a cybersecurity scam hit and, you know, lost at least $100,000. Like Mary Ruth's organics they had something similar happen a million dollars. And it's like all of this expansiveness, it was like, oh, all the things I was holding on to so tight apparently don't matter, but I get to write my next chapter. The third thing I will say is it's really, really important to decide who you want to be as a leader and look for evidence in reality, because if you're trying to have something evidence-based that is, you have no, you know, reference point to marry, you're never going to get it and a little strategy. So let's say, someone says I'll use one of mine.
Speaker 2:So Whitney Wolf Hurd was a founder of Bumble. She left her previous startup. There was lawsuit, you know, toxic. Whatever.
Speaker 2:She goes and starts Bumble and her first year what she did is she went all around the country while they were trying to figure out the product and she would have cocktails and get conversations going, and so that's what I did last year before we launched the product was I had cocktails and conversations Atlanta, scottsdale, like you know, all over the place to get the feedback from women. That was you know one. And then she starts to build the product and just, you know, iterative software and it's like, okay, I'm going to push a feature, get feedback and so on and so forth. And the day she went public I believe it was Friday February 13th and I'm like who goes public on a Friday the 13th? But she did, and I think it was during a Mercury retrograde and you know all kinds of crazy like, as girls were like what, seven billion dollars in one day was the valuation she went to and she never, you know.
Speaker 2:She has been just incredibly thoughtful in how she re-envisioned that platform and it was a red ocean. There were other dating apps in that space, so I think about what you will have heard. For me as a leader, so having that reference point and really thinking how do I model after that person is key. But anyone who's listening? If you are ready for your vessel to be expanded, be prepared. You are probably going to have a challenging chapter.
Speaker 2:How important are systems to success, how important are systems to success Only as important as your ability to be flexible and not rigid. And I'm sure you have too, mary, with your background corporately had systems that were so rigid that innovation was impossible and people being expansive were not possible. You know, you and I both, I'm sure have colleagues at these large companies and they're going along rigidly with all these systems and the next thing, the whole division is laid off right and they're laid off because they weren't innovative enough, but the people are like we weren't allowed to innovate. So I think systems are lovely. You know, I'm grateful. I'm grateful there's a system in place that says if you drink too much alcohol, you shouldn't be driving. I think that's fantastic.
Speaker 2:In building a startup, you have to be nimble with your systems and you have to be willing to try new things. And, especially if you've come from a big company, at your first startup, some of the systems you had are not going to work in startup life. They just won't, and so you want to ask yourself if your systems are there because you're afraid to take risks, or are your systems actually there because you want to have some form of healthy guardrails?
Speaker 1:Okay, last question what would you tell your younger self?
Speaker 2:last question what would you tell your younger self? I don't swear, but if I did it would be like stop giving so many f's honestly.
Speaker 2:Um, mel Robbins again. You know her new book is called let them, and I think, mary, you know there. There are a lot of moments where I just really care too much about what people thought, and there is a saying that I've said for many years, which is on average, only four people cry at any funeral, and if you're not going to cry at my funeral, you don't earn an opinion about my life. And so I wish Mel had written the book earlier and I wish I had read it or it would be. Let them would be the first one. And and the second one is, you know, looking back, even as an investor, looking at trusting my gut, and you know to the point, where had I trusted my gut?
Speaker 2:I'll just tell a super quick story. I had a financial advisor once and I want to invest in the Facebook IPO and he talked me out of it and I could just see what it could be, and he's like it's never going to make any money because it's a free platform. Now you and I might not be having this conversation, so the creator, god, had a bigger plan for me. I wasn't supposed to make millions of dollars from the Facebook IPO, but you know it's. It's things like that not trusting myself and caring too much about what people thought, yeah.
Speaker 1:That is so amazing. Okay, so where can people get in touch with you, learn more about your company? And for the younger ones, what should they be helping their moms or other women in their lives? You know, go get this app.
Speaker 2:Sure. Thank you. New research shows that women as young as 30 are going into perimenopause 30.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And the symptoms start, mary, neurologically, and if you and I both looked back, so what I mean by that is things like anxiety, depression. That doesn't make sense. Um, worry, the you know, brain fatigue, that kind of thing. Now research is showing that those can actually be related to perimenopause. So initially we thought our app was more for women 40 plus, and now we're saying anyone 30 plus is definitely going to benefit, and so they can just go into the app store they can download it. And now we're saying anyone 30 plus is definitely going to benefit, and so they can just go into the app store they can download it.
Speaker 2:We'll be in the play store very shortly and we need more beta testers. And, yes, it is $3.99 a month or $29 for the year, but we need your help, girls, because this is a female founded, female funded company and we need more subscribers to help to shape the future of women's health. So you can go to wwwthepauseai and if you want to find out more about me, you can go to susanslycom. But, mary, I love what you're doing and I'm so grateful that you and women like us are out there in the world sharing our wisdom, sharing our network with other women and helping women grow and succeed.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. It's been awesome talking with you. I really enjoyed it. 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.