Inflection Point with Lauren Schiller; #7; Lauren Mosenthal/Eileen Carey & Sharon Miller--Can't A Girl Get a Break? Mentorship and the Glass Ceiling

three welcome to some player interviews with women changing the status quo and more insular after sixty shows of inflection point it seems like women in our lives and in charge and seventy one percent of fortune five hundred companies to provide mentors are programs that help women get ahead to happen forever and it really ok but there are more and more women owning their own business you know i think the biggest issue is that women are still facing challenges of confidence so what's going on here i learned cellar and we got inflation yet about it can't a girl get a break at and thrifts the piece

welcome back to inflection point i'm lauren shuler small businesses make up ninety nine point seven percent of us firms and sixty four percent of new private sector jobs that translates to almost twenty eight million small businesses in nearly eight million of them are owned by women with us today to discuss what makes the difference between success and failure for a small business if sharon miller ceo of renaissance entrepreneurship center an organization that helps people get their small businesses off the ground welcome to the program sharon miller thank you it's so nice to be here so we were talking about entrepreneurship it's taken on a life of its own especially here in the bay area and it seems to be associated almost always with technology it think entrepreneur you think tech startup so what possesses the people who come to you tend to want to start or restaurant is really working with people who are starting much smaller businesses than the big tech businesses that are getting so much publicity right now we work with old emily start

businesses that have one to three employees so we're looking at a catering company is when developers marketing company is jewelry designers is you know a range of businesses like that and how would you define an entrepreneur what makes an entrepreneur you know it's really someone who decides to take charge of her own life and say now i need to do this for myself i have a great idea and on that i work hard and i'm you know make it happen on my own so one example is as the man who has walked in the door wanting to start at a jewelry business and what perspective are they coming from what are they starting with women but there's really a range of where people start so you can start a renaissance at any point in our program some people come in and they really like their product or service and they really have not thought about making it into a business so they love what they do and then we'll take that person to a process to

see you my level you do but is this really feasible business so we start with looking at how much as it cost to make it where you're gonna sell it will you make a profit sometimes people realize at that point that starting businesses actually not for them but more often than not we can work with people and take that it into execution was also probably that realization at some point that doing what you love becomes work well i think it happens a lot at two different points the first point is you know catering is a great example people love to cook they love to feed people and everyone was there for and then once they start realizing like i have to do this every day and not everyone is going to love what i do because i mean to start charging them for it they might start to save working in the kitchen is not only about law and it's about money and they decide not to do it so that's that's one point the bear is often when people start to get more successful their businesses

grow they do need to hire people and then they're further and further away from the client interaction like that jewelry designer may no longer be creating new jewelry she may be out there making sales and will feel like some of that art that she brought into it maybe getting lost so we'll look talk about success rates for a minute am i read this study by the small business association that the survival rate of a small businesses typically about fifty percent after three years and a third may get past ten years what do you think is the difference between those that stay in business and those that don't renaissance has a really high rate for people to stay in business so we're seeing people off the charts compared to those numbers that are staying in business for three to five years and our rates are about ninety two percent and the reason i believe is that people who come to renaissance are self selecting the really decide i'm going on a vast sea of

from time in thinking about my business so many of those business failures are because people haven't thought through their whole business idea they may love their product they love me love marketing but they haven't thought about well what happens when everything doesn't go perfectly so we're working with people and saying okay we want you to think through all of this so what is really going to happen what is your distribution model how much will it cost you as opposed to driving in and then figuring out you know every delivery and they cost twenty dollars i forgot to include that in my price or the turnaround time i hope for is that realistic so my clients are getting upset whatever those variables maybe if people haven't really thought through it before and they're going to get stuck do you ever introduce new people coming into your program so ones who have been have done it before in and they could derail the worst or hippies i guess it is yes that's actually a huge part of our program unit renaissance

predominantly works with lower income people women people of color we we work with formerly incarcerated people there's there's a wide range of people we work with and having others who have succeeded come and speak before them is so helpful so one is seeing the role model and the other is just you know sharing the experiences reserved avenues i took that were really successful more often than not these are mistakes that i made i hope you don't make and our graduates are incredibly supportive of our current clients and really so many of them have an open door policy and say someone starting an ice cream business and the ice cream business call me that's reggaeton considered competitive no no we stay pretty clearly that when people come to renaissance you come with a business idea or you may already be in business and we can help you from that point it really is a place of sharing

and working in community so when someone comes to start a business how do you determine if they're ready then we we offer classes on a number of levels of the first classes really looking at the feasibility of a business idea so we have a class called start smart we use a business model campus so it's a way of looking at your whole business idea in one place and testing that idea out so we will work with a client and say let's go through this will will you be able to bring your product or service to the marketplace or they are people who want to buy your product or service tried out speak to them will you be able to make money from it so we our goal is to work with a client and hope that person to see whether or not their business is feasible so that's from a market perspective and business respectable enough from a personal perspective it finally figure out if they got the chops well don't you figure them that out for themselves however we create an

environment where they can figure it out there's a lot of discussion about what it really takes to be an aunt and are being your own boss isn't necessarily pretty you know it sounds really good you think you have all the freedom in the world you may find out you have the freedom to work twenty four hours a day you just may be able to do in your pajamas you find out that when you're starting have to work with all kinds of clients they may not be the ideal people you wanna work with but that's what it takes and you have to see that sometimes you have to kind of have those talks with yourself to say you actually need to do this right now so people start to see that it's very different to work for yourself and get a paycheck every day oh every week so do you have like a sail was only gets a flight simulator in a way you get in the cockpit display is really gonna fly and then can you land at it is that i didn't do they get to go through that

kind of trial and error process than fifty of them runs yes they do because of people who are in business to come into renaissance a little more than half of them start businesses dan and the others decide whether it's their idealism that feasible or they just don't want to take that on end and that's success to so have you found that more women are starting small businesses than men we work with about seventy five percent women so yes ma'am i also find that women are more eager to get involved in training and support services so that puts our numbers in that direction to the women are starting businesses at a very significant rate what are some ways she's that are unique to women starting a business you know i'm i think the biggest issue is that women are still facing challenges of confidence we hear a lot about it in different areas but i'm working with women often see that women look at a

failure or a business failure and that i failed as opposed to man with a bull that fail them and move on and do the next thing and it's still really true when in doubt themselves a lot the iran is an assumption that women don't like to take chris i think women like to have all the information so that they're not taking a foolish risk they want to make sure that this is right and i can move ahead and feel very personally connected to everything they do says some of our work is helping women to feel confident as entrepreneurs so how do you address that is that you know made all the information there at how do you help them reality builder confidence i in a way that is comfortable for them but also you know it seems like in some ways that that approach of gathering all the information and so someone down something that's a personality type some people just keep gathering get information and information and get into this state recall analysis paralysis and not move on that happens but in terms of working with women to build their confidence

we we do it by hearing them out giving real feedback not just oh that's gray or you got to be kidding you should do that but by taking their ideas very seriously helping them to speak about what they're doing we'd make them to a lot of public speaking so they get up and say this is my business to really feel that there's ownership and to be able to receive feedback on their ideas is really important and bring in the role models and mentors who can really help them to talk about their fears and support them through it can you give an example of a woman that a man in and had a great idea and you're able to writer of all the tools but maybe still had this confidence yeah so i'm a white one of our what we do have this a lot with women and one of the big issues is not charging enough for their services so we're working with one woman who's a graphic

designer in kuwait really really talented graphic designer and i think part of her strengths was her incredible attention to detail and her commitment to really serving her client well what started to happen was she would praise her work at a certain level and then apply with soul that's a lot of money and she would immediately reduce her praises so she wins they something on twenty hours to work at a hundred dollars an hour that climate say will you know we weren't planning on spending that much money ok i can do it for five hundred dollars so she kept getting into this situation where she was under selling herself and then she wasn't making enough money to survive so she wasn't feeling like she can charge what her products really where we're we eventually workers and said you need new clients you need to say de firm your products are excellent hear your output is excellent and unique to work with people who can pay you what you asked and

just to say your price and don't say anything else and he and haddad i go well she eventually took some time because it is a process to change you know one is to really feel comfortable talking about money and making a sale and then seeing yourself in this new way so eventually she really shifted and has wonderful clients or able to pay her what she's worth what about the stat that manhattan businesses are burned women and businesses buy four times i'm wondering if this attack has anything to do with that but i i read that the average revenue is about a hundred and thirty thousand a year for women owned businesses and five hundred and seventy thousand a year from air which is just the sunscreen any i don't understand so if i have a cafe on a woman across the street there's a man who has a cafe and we got the same business why would there be such a discrepancy is what's going on

there are there are a number of things going on and one is that for some lemon and some lemon or not interested in growing their businesses for whatever reasons they are their businesses they're bb and they like to keep it small they like the intimacy and they don't necessarily want to have five or ten employees some of these women have worked in different environments where they have a lot of employees and just feel like it don't wanna be supervising so many people i want that direct contact with my custom that some of the others are women are just carrying out here and i'm not taking that next step we are they would hire more people that they need or any other kind of businesses hire a sales force they just are fearful of making that investment and our are not doing it sounds like there's a number of factors though what you charge how big your business grows how many employees you have because those numbers don't reflect your profit necessarily that those numbers are really just their income to the business those

numbers are the income to the business but i do think they translate into how much money that the businesswoman would be making it seemed like access is a huge barrier generally i'm for entrepreneurs access to funding to space to not working hard is renaissance help with all that when the sun focuses our work on providing access to people who don't have access to traditional forms of education now work capital and other resources so we're working with people who don't have and the a's some have finished college some have not and many don't have mentors are role models around them that are the people who opened the doors and are unable to get capital from traditional forms of banks or are other places so well we do is then provide that business education on a level that is accessible to those who i wanna start businesses that it's really a combination of a so providing the right kind of information that people need

we kind of stay out of syria and go right into practice cassettes of people are coming to us for a real someone offered a level that is comparable to adult learners we provide access to now work by having long term classes and a whole lot of events that bring people back into a renaissance of that they can keep building connections with other people and we also provide access to capital by working with nonprofit loan funds and other sources of capital that are easier for klein's to access than traditional banks and what can you tell us a story of someone that has come in and and they've had they've had an idea they won a lot of this is off the ground they have no resources to speak of honor around so one very special client is alon hinds she has a bakery in the bayview on third street and she came to renaissance is actually working as a meter maid and we learned she was pregnant and thought i gotta do something else because i am not going to be able

to keep this going and start a family she started baking cookies she was so so he's a special family recipe and something she was very good at and then started selling them out of her car and her church was very supportive she was selling them at different events she was ready to move on and came to renaissance because she was making money selling cookies out of her car but it just wasn't enough you how do you turn this into a business and we worked with them on every step of the way we helped her to write a business plan to really work out the numbers and see if she could turn this into a business we also worked with her to see where she could locate the business she was able to find a storefront on third street in the bayview she and has continued to succeed we worked with her for over ten years we just helped her to get along because she was able to buy a new kind of stalled that allows her debate inside her bakery

her daughter is now ten years old she's the assistant manager and she's very very good at her job and yvonne is working full time and she's really an anchor in the bayview community would sound like you stick with your clients for a longtime and we can do so what would cause a business you to just simply not make it they're there are a number of factors behind this you know under cowboys asian is one factor that people can clearly see they may have sales but they don't have enough to keep going other times it could be that the product is not right for the marketplace know one of the very little secret says if you're making food it has to taste good people want it and so do you have a kind of product that that is really welcome in the marketplace sometimes the demands of the business to become overwhelming and how that may impact the business owner does say i really want to back away from the us and this isn't for me right now and

you mention before their importance of the developing a business plan what kid could you just help us understand what are the head key elements of a good business plan if i were if i once said we'll stay thank you for coming and i mean the remedies than right now what would i need to make sure that i include well you need to be really clear what your product or service is how you were going to produce it how you're going to distribute it how you're going to get it to your customers do you actually have customers who want this and how this is going to be profitable for you we're talking with sharon miller the ceo of renaissance entrepreneurship center we'll be back after this oh

yeah you're listening to inflection point i'm lauren shuler my guest is sharon miller the ceo of renaissance entrepreneurship center her organization helps small businesses get started so we've just heard all these great examples of people have come to your program did you yourself go through renaissance training a renaissance like training i did not know i get to sit in a lot of classes and learn a lot however i was a business owner and i did not have training like renaissance it was i made every colossal mistake possible to make when we ran a money i went to the bank and publishing give us a loan i had no idea that i didn't know i was they didn't know anything about the business and so we were making any money it's just just a huge mistake we yeah we didn't necessarily have the right products and services at the right time so we had not enough customers and then finally i had of ferry lousy partnership agreement that couldn't withstand

any of these struggles in the business so it close quickly what was the design it was an international travel wholesaler you know now you can do everything on the internet but at that time you couldn't you needed no people to handle some of the operations so well as your path between there and jenny renaissance is the ceo actually most of my work has been in the nonprofit sector and i've just always loved to travel and i sort of took the side routes is we're gonna travel industry and i just had an opportunity to start my own business and took that route so most of my work has been in the non profit sector i previously worked for an organization american jewish world service that was doing grassroots development work including economic development in the developing world so that's how i really got into it and was very excited to see the power of ottoman or entrepreneurship training and the power bringing resources to people who didn't have them and to see what a magnificent things they could accomplish

so your foray into owning your own business you did did you just ask yourself are going to get a real job now it actually like ok i'm so as they're working for american jews will serve as i am with what happened after that i worked there for several years i was really interested in moving to san francisco ob i had a board member of american jewish world service he told me about renaissance i would come out here and meet with him and i was so excited about renaissance because the program is so local and one of the very exciting things about renaissance is that were working with people who have access to agree with our resource they have access to the very successful economy around us so that i could really engage with the business owners track their businesses and they can be successful because they have access to such a thriving economy around them and where are the renaissance center is

located we have five locations throughout the bay area so we do serve the whole bay area region we have two in san francisco one itself a market in one and they view hundreds point we also have a location in east palo alto on the peninsula where week provide offset programs in redwood city in daly city we have a center and center fell serving marin county and one in richmond serving contra costa county and do you consider yourself an entrepreneur restaurant is run on to morally so i do see it many of our operations but we're non profit so that the non profit model is actually the opposite of a successful business model we're in a position where that more clients research and the more products we provide we actually need to raise more money so that we can accomplish more would you say that the mechanics between running up for profit business in a nonprofit business are the same or are they completely different kinds of operations i think the operations are quite

similar you still we still want to get our products out of the marketplace we need to deliver quality products we have employees we have hr we have no operational needs or that is very similar with really different is in the finance model that the more products we sell in our case the more money we need to race and when people come to you good at to put out any cash in order to benefit from the services only four classes and services are operated on a sliding scale so people do pay for some of our services there are some that eric frey and the majority of our services are low cost they're offered on a sliding scale so people can pay what they can afford to pay we have a whole process for that but no one is turned away because they don't have enough money to pay for the services and when they have their cookie business ten years down the road they're making scads of money it's a hundred percent they get a paper hold the holiday if you have a really robust community of our graduates who support renaissance a number of them had been

super successful they really well known in the bay area and they're constantly giving back to making financial donations their speakers they're consultants they work with us in a number of ways that we really appreciate their support can you name names i'm happy to name names and so some are big successes are and the american girl cheesecake and the three twins ice cream environment that i know i am i see jane run the women's sports year we just had a program a few days ago judy henderson for mannequin madness was one of our speakers she's rents mannequins and i'm and then we have a number of restaurants that are pretty well known whether we help people with training or loans red hill station inn in bernal heights brenda soul food in the tenderloin area i'm i've heard all that is except for the restaurant when i'm

curious when when anyone of those rioters first walked in your doors was there any thing any signal any bad any preparedness that they were getting off that might have indicated from the very beginning that they were going to be so successful for most of the people i mentioned and those are superstars nine beasts poke earlier the majority renaissance businesses have one to three employees that's really our sweet spot so then they are some people have these businesses that are off the charts and for them they came with a really clear idea and they have a lot of experience behind them i'm heidi gibson the owner of the american grilled cheese have been involved in grilled cheese making contests for years she won awards making grilled cheese she also had a background in the tech industry she got laid off and said this is the time i'm gonna take action so some people come with more resources behind them more ideas and more education or more experience in the field sharon you inspire a lot of people to do amazing things what inspires

you i'm so inspired by what people do how people come with ideas and really wanna make them into reality i am inspired by the support that people gave to each other we had an event on wednesday night where we had a panel of speakers and so a wide audience of women at the event and the speakers am spoke so honestly about their experience and jam wall was there she was our celebrity speaker lynn leahey who has run a number of businesses judy henderson american man as i mentioned leslie goldberg of the hazel skaff ad based were so comfortable sharing their successes and their failures and giving advice we broke up into networking groups and within moments women were sharing their stories and providing advice and support to each other and it was just so inspiring to see how people were connecting and so deeply

interested in helping each other succeed and you write in an object of inspiration you and talk about it it's it's a wooden statue of a woman in it it really speaks to the idea of of how when women are working together they just work together and they're and they're just becomes a space where they kind of get right to the heart of the issue and say let's let's talk about what you need and how i can support you and it happens it becomes sort of magical how there is of all of one on one supporting each other to move ahead sam miller thank you so much for joining us on the program today i think you know i'm lauren cellar and you're listening to inflection point ming up in the second half of the show we'll find out how women can help each other get ahead only talk with lauren rosenthal and eileen carry co founders of glass breakers

stay tuned it fits it's both thank you

i'm lauren shuler and you're listening to inflection point according to research from catalyst when he found mentors through formal programs received more promotions that women who had found mentors on their own they're ratio of almost three detail my guests are the co founders of a startup called glass breakers eileen kerry is the ceo and murmurs and doll is the chief technology officer eileen kerry and murmurs of all welcome to the program i am a simple explanation of what you're doing with asperger's why it is so glass breakers is he pure mentorship platform for women we built a software that uses each machine learning algorithm that can connect women in the workforce they can help each other and so did this simple explanation i'm if you were to like in it is in the us is already out there what we're out to discredit glass breakers is a lot like online dating but for women in the workforce hey so in preparing to meet with the birth i was surprised to learn from the association for talent development that seventy one percent

of fortune five hundred companies already offer mentoring programs and what does leslie christie that's not already being done so it mentoring programs from the companies that we've spoken to you know kind of being run at heart so they may have a mentorship program but it's being run by volunteers and the matching is really awkward it is morally they have to have a mentoring program but it's not really done well what we've built as a software and it's a software as a service that can be used at the company to intelligently connect women and who can mentor each other so traditional mentorship is usually between someone very junior and someone very senior that doesn't work for women there we two main entities that are entering the workforce for mentors available with glass breakers are connecting women around the same place in her career so it's mentorship as more of a support system for women that are already inside a company so what did he have the the rationing of mormon to use the mentors do you mean there are not enough women mentors in

a senior position to match up with more junior female majority mean just in general absolutely in terms of it as the statistics at you know how many women in their forties are in the workforce and senior management roles that as opposed to how many millennials are entering the workforce in the next decade there is gonna be a billion women entering the workforce a college degree is so and there's just a pipeline issue so instead of putting pressure i don't believe mentors to you know look after all of these women that are coming up and we think it's going to be more advantageous to connect women around the same place in her career as they rise to the top how does this work inside a company let's say there's a woman who is going through and she just got pregnant and she wants to learn more about the different policies that the company has and she can connect with other pregnant women that've already had children in the company and learn more about it ok so i'm in play have the same interests and i am and i'm in

a middle manager position and it gets and i sit down at my desk one day and i'm like i have a question and i need someone to turn to you where does the speaker's fit into answering that question are helping me answer whatever questions i have are finding someone that can help me answer questions like what's legal that would literally will happen sure so a glass break there is a woman and her son say who's an engineer can sign in and be matched with other women do links early albums and that again today sits within your profile we're looking for glass figures will make those connections with women who have a lot of similarities between the state brought in new zealand maybe your manager and you're about to become a director you can sign into class breakers and you can connect with other women who made that transition for management to director of the company and so as you set up your own profile you are providing this kind of information that you are well the rhythm which you could explain what about the rhythm is resler and keep your other them well i'm identifies similar people

and ring an and suggest to them as you are cured her mentor exactly episode to tell us how an algorithm works for him say cell ballot this honor them retaking linked in ep idea as so any of that information you have put on to in your linkedin profile and then we have some user in time when you for science lab asking what interests you professionally out what his years' experience eye and then we have a felon quick bio as liars our description of like i'm on glass makers because and we take all that information and then began connecting with other women and then it gets smarter over time so decisions that different users are making if you're like another user and there's been a successful national band start connecting you to somewhere users because it's already been presented that i'll be successful so let's hope to the city of it being shared appear ending appeared you're mentoring service and one question i have is just can

it really be called mentor eyeing if it's pure pure mean i mean you mentioned earlier that the model is a senior person to junior person and they've got this experience they've got maybe there even in a position to help advocate for a promotion you have this ad is it about being you breaking the glass ceiling helping women break through the glass ceiling if you're eliminating that senior person from the equation and it's just people who are at the same level as you isn't so mentoring that with a lion i or a lake percy as cto were an early twenties and we mentor each other all the time i have learned so much about product and that software engineering from warren and i know like you know with our relationship to be with a share a lot of the business side of things of starting a company around and thundery seeing and yell for me shanna the company grade now were mentoring each other like that's the word for really teaching each other hand so maybe mentoring you know isn't exactly the word for it but it's a

taut all type of mentorship that's ongoing supportive relationship what about this idea of creating advocates with an organization or you know you need to earn a special position you had the chops to go and start your own company and you were able i lean to be the ceo or more in to be the chief technology officer if you're inside a company and you're you know you're tryin oh you know it's there's thousands of people there in your china you know injure way upward in the organization and i mean how can a pure pure about mentoring relationship op ed that while your day succeed in a company because of your performance because of your confidence and because of your body razor and he said i want a promotion so someone super senior might be able to advocate for you but it's up to you to really am be that strong candidate so pure mentorship where you're building your skill sets we are becoming more confident we're getting that support that you needed days say i wanna raise i think that's going to really find a company to so when you went into pits companies to take on the product as a beet out did you run into a similar

kind of roadblock absolutely not and why's that they're women their leaders of other companies so the egg as edie in essence landscape is ninety six percent now that's i can say i'm buying companies that many and there are women in charge him and charge it's about the bottom line so when the company's approach as we have not passed a single farm is all been announced and analysts because companies understand the value of our product because if they have glass makers at their company women are more likely to stay the er at a higher r y m n e e jars basically it's a retention tool so that spending so much money and recruitment and the more women that are in leadership roles the higher the returns are in the company and i said you know well known statistic during the test ahead you've had you know that having plastic resins at the company is actually has all these benefits in terms of retention in an evidence that you mentioned i mean we don't know it at this is there's a lot of problems that are out there about women's

leadership only five percent of the fortune five hundred ceo's are women so than ever needs a change and we have an actual solution we're within how many years dc and las vegas making a difference in terms of the number of women in leadership do you get any guesses on our goal in the next three years is to have glass preparers software as a service product within at least fifty companies so hopefully there will be some leaps and bounds happening with the leadership teams there but at least now with our pilot programs with parks in contrast those that with the senior women in engineering their team so we are very excited to see at the end of the program at the end of the pilot how many women are only nine are still there how many of those women have now gotten promotions because of the scales incompetence the political aspects we're talking to lauren rosenthal and eileen carry co founders of glass breakers i'm more insular this is inflection point billy back right after this ha ha ha ha ha ha

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha you're listening to inflection point i'm lauren shuler my guests are lauren rosenthal and eileen carry co founders of glass breakers appear to peer mentor a website for women lorin that you mentioned that you've learned a lot along the way in terms of developing the algorithm and what kinds of things women are responding to and what kinds of things women are willing to share as they said their preferred can you share some examples of what you've learned what we've done really extensive the user experience testing we actually refers to that the first questions we asked is how what you wanna learn professionally and then what can you teach professionally as you're trying to set up these

mutually beneficial relationships in true that users reassessing we found that women put lots of things are interested in but sadly only poll why not worry me ask an ipod zero for those for things that they could teach and so we had to make some really changes night in on brain to just say a wonder years' experience which was a bit more direct number they could speak to you and i think that really helped sap lake show that women can have all this experience that they can really teach one another and not doubt themselves so you're fighting the day that they are in the ratio of things that when one to learn to the ratio ten to the number of things that they thought they could teach was much there was always get your man you know i mean in iowa tata motors and we just like you know even in project management for five years you could teach some wine you know maybe a year andrea so much or you know even learn from people like a year to head of

the yale unlike out of the back confidence in the foreign somehow less because addressed those kinds of that kind of imbalance do you think with like the fix every day by asking him like how many years experience which women can speak to directly and then also even seeing a lot of conversations between different users they might hi i'm on that says this is what i can offer yale and this is what i wanna wear and so that's why my glass makers and by using the question that tape the way a lot of women in my connecting right away and not even going into long conversations about oh like this is my background i just say i totally won him you know here's my number let's get coffee at this coffee shop so let's move on to more about youtube and your backgrounds and selling terry hugh told me before we recorded that you always knew you would start a company is just a question of what it would be and how did you do this about yourself

so i was well i was the type of girl that i'd be president i was really confidants and when i went to business loans are an mba i realized that that was exactly what i want to do is i want to see you know a great job at citigroup and i had these wonderful women who are in charge of that means either really good job of women's leadership farrell ejected and there's really passionate technology so differences though because as we go and there's so much technology hearing there's always start out a stir to start a blog let me all the ceo's and the thing that anchors knew i didn't exactly what they were doing he has led his nurse i think he can do it do so before you ever join the workforce they lead what were some moments growing up that helped you build this confidence in yourself yeah so i was raised by a lot of strong women and my mother worked on wall street for twenty years was the leader of the newark radical feminist movement on islands like my work first women's liberation protesters or i was i was really really passionate

and gender in the workforce and talking about being a feminist or as like the six gray when the susan b anthony award is really really into more than most people so this is a game we are starting a feminist technology company as they like a dream come true you know so as the cutting half of the partners should learn their heart and has the skills that thats primarily it's really demand and how did you get into coaching and what do you cher i so i went to graduate school program i in boulder colorado called beady debbie oh that's perfect the university of boulder smile is there a way is a mix of learning user experience at design as well as cutting in the program was flexible enough that once you start to really love something you could run but i so i took a really cost they're in some kind of pass as unjust foam rather that i fell like solving problems and every day i'd never really interesting to me and actually say

just falling in love with the community so going to lakewood a new code meaning of their developers hubbard really intelligence smart and kind so i just the mixture of awe that i just started running with that and what was the specific name of the classes that you started taking i'll share as so front end development ii which is huge here now see ss and jake weary eyes of the business is the engine busily the runs websites have an asset of engineering scenes that makes the web they ran yeah actually no amateur said that's their friend and suffer engineering and then there's the backend as safir engineering i and there is a language called ruby i n said that's an omen engineering i'm ok and as you build your team at glass makers and what are you finding in terms of the talent pool for developers it has an acting career at that you know a lot of people feel really passionate about what we're building and the problem with china's also suffer

engineers are constantly reaching out to us and we're in a position now where we're starting to hire which is great because i am and basically just looking for applicants and we're just setting up meetings of people live are you reach out to us so i see are you finding that mix as men vs women are happening on where the other woody finding we in eagle mountain both men and women reaching out to us to be a part of the team and will again the other day where software engineering team it doesn't need to just be element i mean it and after we were accent pair programming which means once a tax return their work on the same columned together which actually leads to more efficient and clean cut in my opinion then how things women running is the clean coder to explain what that means ok well i guess that's a little bit more of an informal term for it so when you have two people working on a project to you or it so

your pair programming i wish i just explained you have two minds on it so someone can say well we can re factor this little bit here like after after you that the code working you can slowly be injury factor and having two minds on it can make the clean more i guess cream would be a fish and i found that actually a really good program for software engineers to practice less and then a community is called exorcism that i wish i or my dear friend suffer engineering smart exercises like small puzzles to figure out through cutting and what you can do is you cement like here's how i saw the problem and then every factory be hey you think i need that co down by five lines by maybe using this small methane instead of rain these five lines of code so that would be very fact they're so it now a math fade or are kind of a quick

solve that a language it has in its capabilities that may be the presumed didn't know before that can help someone started to cut down their code and then make it run faster more efficient and i cleaned and so that's a sleazy or puritanical crosses is actually reflective of what you're doing with the company that you're certainly creating a mentor men see maybe he goes back and forth is the mentor has meant it when your character came together a yeah yeah i have paraguay of people there that's how i basically banning declining to write in an apprenticeship and ackman set and for an entire summer i sat next to a very senior engineer and i weighed and watched them go through the problems in how they were selling them and then i would work on smaller projects on them they met how he re factor those and that's i think the problems get bigger and more complex

so you also have a blog about inspiring people in creative spaces here have you uncovered any you know russell secrets about creativity i think there are probably at the debt has to be and in my mind they now are the first days i mean as a visiting an older than a lot of babies it doesn't matter if you're an artist or an engineer or a manager i wanted people are very inspired by nature i'm so i think when the word and stack of sighs like a great idea to just get our stories on until its own in a second line is an office is changing now by people said that their eyes the most efficient on airplanes because you were before a us now they have like more life i work because we were completely disconnected it was like this one place where they were by themselves and that their thoughts or they would do like the most rating lynch those things are right now

so what i am so i mean when they say would you give for a budding entrepreneur you have made yet iran that feedback if it's a good ad and people get excited about it and i'll tell you on the line telling me beyond cherries and these they want me to sign an mba before they tell me about their edm and that's an innovative l and then realize that you need to rely in that you now know is there again and you're going to build your inability bell that if you have a tear and you are a non technical person and you're working on a technology product you need to have a business partner that knows how to build and lauren and i work really well together because she's very good builder and a very good do or you know i like a hustler and she the hacker and the combination it works and it's a pretend you know it in the valley you see editor for new and it worked really really well for us and it works really well for a lot of her friends are also co founders and so it's highly recommend people who aren't

nice or technical going out more technical people because you will learn so much about tax heal and so much an engineering and just a learning more about the community lerner's and gone i mean carrie thank you so much for coming on the program where can people find out more about her asperger's sheriff's elisa go to daddy day at class breakers that's how i see our and sign up and join our community think hero think campaigns that's our inflection point for today we invite you to tell us your story suggesting guess you'd like to hear from more at our website inflection point radio dial or inflection point is produced at the studios of kalw radio in our engineer producer is eric wayne thanks for listening