Speaker 1: Hey, Hey, hey va fam, It's Vandy back with another
Speaker 1: episode of Brown Ambition. Thank you all so much for
Speaker 1: joining me this week. I wish I could say that
Speaker 1: I'm not okay, y'all. I want to be okay. I
Speaker 1: feel like I should be okay, but still here, I
Speaker 1: am sitting here in disbelief that I had the opportunity
Speaker 1: to sit across the virtual table from one of my heroes,
Speaker 1: one of a living American hero. Oh my god, Stacy Abrams.
Speaker 1: I oh, it's been over a week and I am
Speaker 1: still not okay. I'm still not okay, you guys. But
Speaker 1: do y'all remember and we're gonna get to the interview
Speaker 1: I promised. But do you remember when I had Chris
Speaker 1: Browning from Popcorn Finance on the show a few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and I was telling Chris. We were just sort of
Speaker 1: both talking about how a lot of the opportunities that
Speaker 1: we were receiving once we launched our businesses coming to us,
Speaker 1: and people had already been talking about us in rooms
Speaker 1: that we were not in, and people were saying, you know,
Speaker 1: we want to reach out to Chris, we want to
Speaker 1: reach out to Mandy. And then those opportunities came to us,
Speaker 1: and we didn't have to do anything to get those
Speaker 1: opportunities other than keep doing the work that we're doing,
Speaker 1: because we know that our names, our businesses would be
Speaker 1: on the tips of the tongues of people in those rooms,
Speaker 1: you know, who are making decisions and you know, have
Speaker 1: the power at the table, and just kind of the
Speaker 1: magic and releasing and just like accepting that if we
Speaker 1: keep continuing to do the work, those conversations will be
Speaker 1: happening in rooms that we're not even sitting in. I
Speaker 1: remember having that moment on the show where you know,
Speaker 1: we were sitting there and I was like, that's happening
Speaker 1: right now, Chris. You know there's a room somewhere and
Speaker 1: there's an amazing opportunity. And because of the work that
Speaker 1: we're doing right now and the work that we've been
Speaker 1: doing for the past year or even years in our cases,
Speaker 1: those opportunities are going to come to us. All we
Speaker 1: got to keep doing is doing the good work that
Speaker 1: we set out to do when we launched our businesses,
Speaker 1: right and then lo and beyond, One of those conversations
Speaker 1: happened in a room that I was not sitting in,
Speaker 1: and someone at this publishing house called Portfolio said, you
Speaker 1: know where we think would be a great place for
Speaker 1: Stacy Abrams to promote her new business book, Level Up.
Speaker 1: I think we should reach out to those fabulous women
Speaker 1: at Brown Ambition Podcast and see if they'll have Stacy on.
Speaker 1: And I kid you not through the contact form on
Speaker 1: our website. Hi Nina, I'm just gonna go ahead and
Speaker 1: shout you out. The wonderful Nina who's in publicity at Portfolio.
Speaker 1: The publisher reached out to me so casually, did not
Speaker 1: even put Stacy's name in the subject line. Like my
Speaker 1: assistant forwarded me this email and it was so nondescript.
Speaker 1: The subject line was something very general like new guest
Speaker 1: for your show, which is every single email that we
Speaker 1: get at Brown Ambition, right, it's someone wanting to be
Speaker 1: on the show, you know, and anyway, And then you
Speaker 1: open the email to find out it's the delightful Nina
Speaker 1: from this publicity firm, and she's wondering, you know, love
Speaker 1: your show, wondering if you'd be interested in having Stacy
Speaker 1: Abrams come on sometime to talk about this new business
Speaker 1: book that she's got coming out in February. When I
Speaker 1: tell you, my jaw dropped like, is this a real question?
Speaker 1: Would we would brown? And would Brown Ambition want to
Speaker 1: have the queen of Brown Ambition? If you looked up
Speaker 1: Brown Ambition, if we ever get included in Webster's dictionary,
Speaker 1: literally put a picture of Stacy Abrams there and that
Speaker 1: would be all we needed to get our point across,
Speaker 1: that is Brown Ambition, Would we would I want to
Speaker 1: talk to Stacy Abrams?
Speaker 2: Are you kid?
Speaker 3: Oh? My god?
Speaker 1: And that is basically my reaction.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I kept it together because Nina didn't know me yet, right.
Speaker 1: I wanted to just, you know, make sure that she,
Speaker 1: you know, thought that I was like a reasonable human
Speaker 1: being who had all of her marbles together, right, So
Speaker 1: kept my cool took about a month, but we actually
Speaker 1: got it. On the calendar Stacy Abrams was going to
Speaker 1: be joining Brown Ambition, and I guess I just told myself, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Stacy's very busy. She's recently announced she's going
Speaker 1: to be running for governor of my home state, Georgia
Speaker 1: again in twenty twenty two. Like she's probably gonna like
Speaker 1: Oprah's probably gonna call her up on this Monday afternoon
Speaker 1: and she's probably gonna reschedule or it'll get moved, and
Speaker 1: this happens with extremely famous, influential people. But when I
Speaker 1: tell you on the dot one o'clock PM arrived on
Speaker 1: this afternoon last week and on my computer screen across
Speaker 1: from me sat the gorgeous, the amazing, the intelligent, the
Speaker 1: incomparable Stacy Abrams, and we had with her business partner
Speaker 1: Lara Hodgson, a really wonderful conversation that I immediately felt like
Speaker 1: I blacked out and remembered nothing of it. But my
Speaker 1: producer on the show tell me that it did indeed happen,
Speaker 1: and we have a record of it. Stacy Abrams joined
Speaker 1: Brown Ambition with her business partner Lara Hodgson. And what
Speaker 1: I love about this conversation is it made so much
Speaker 1: sense and what made it actually possible for me to
Speaker 1: keep myself together And I think, talk to Stacy, who
Speaker 1: I just admire so much, and I can't even I
Speaker 1: could just go on forever. But what made it possible
Speaker 1: for me was because their book is genuinely meant to
Speaker 1: help business owners, and especially business owners who are women,
Speaker 1: who are people from marginalized communities, who don't always have
Speaker 1: all the resources and knowledge to actually launch a business.
Speaker 1: And I read their book and I loved it and
Speaker 1: we connected on that level. You know, Stacy Abrams. If
Speaker 1: y'all don't know, this woman is a serial entrepreneur. And
Speaker 1: I'm actually embarrassed as a fan of hers, of a
Speaker 1: fan of her work and politics. Obviously, I didn't know
Speaker 1: that much about Stacy's past as an entrepreneur, her past, present,
Speaker 1: and future as an entrepren newer. But in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands, Stacy and her business partner Lara, they launched
Speaker 1: a baby water company called Nourish Okay, And prior to that,
Speaker 1: they owned a consulting firm together called Insomnia Consulting. And Stacy,
Speaker 1: she writes about this in the book, actually started those
Speaker 1: businesses because she realized going into public office. You know,
Speaker 1: she didn't start out being this obviously, this national figure
Speaker 1: with you know, on the cover of magazines and all
Speaker 1: of that. She was earning peanuts as a state representative, okay,
Speaker 1: and the House Minority leader. They don't pay you very much, Okay.
Speaker 1: For those of y'all who think the politics is all
Speaker 1: glitz and glamour, it's really not. And so Stacy genuinely
Speaker 1: was like, I need to make money. So she and
Speaker 1: her business partner Laura, They launched a consulting firm together,
Speaker 1: and then together they realized, you know, we want to
Speaker 1: actually create a business that could make money for us passively.
Speaker 1: That isn't just you know, behold, isn't just a business
Speaker 1: that we have to show up and physically be present
Speaker 1: for and have you spend all this time devoting our
Speaker 1: energy to. So they came up with this idea, this
Speaker 1: brilliant idea for a baby water company. Now, parents, if
Speaker 1: you know, you know baby water makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to take a lot of time to
Speaker 1: explain it here. But they launched his business in the
Speaker 1: early two thousands, and they actually grew out of business.
Speaker 1: And this was a concept that I hadn't heard before,
Speaker 1: but they actually got too big and too successful and
Speaker 1: they couldn't afford They weren't able to actually scale in
Speaker 1: time financially to get to the point where they could
Speaker 1: fulfill these big, huge orders they were getting because they
Speaker 1: were so successful. This crazy crossroads for them where they
Speaker 1: had to basically fold their business. They left the business.
Speaker 1: The business went under because they grew out of business.
Speaker 1: They were just too big, too soon, and they weren't
Speaker 1: financially prepared to handle that, and it's a fascinating story
Speaker 1: that they go through in their book. The book is
Speaker 1: called Level up Rise Above the Hidden Forces Holding Your
Speaker 1: Business Back, and they dissect and basically do a post
Speaker 1: mortem on their baby water company, Nourish, and it has
Speaker 1: so many amazing, juicy anecdotes and actually helpful I had
Speaker 1: a couple of Aha moments myself, as a new business
Speaker 1: owner an entrepreneur from reading this book and thinking about, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know the business that I have is structured in
Speaker 1: this way, and what is my big pie in the
Speaker 1: sky goal for mandy money? What do I actually want
Speaker 1: it to be? Is this going to be a business
Speaker 1: that lives and dies with me? Or is it going
Speaker 1: to be a business that I could pass on to
Speaker 1: my family one day or that could actually employ dozens
Speaker 1: of people one day. So I really encourage you guys
Speaker 1: to check out this book again. It's called Level up
Speaker 1: Rise Above the Hidden Forces Holding Your Business Back. Without
Speaker 1: further ado, I'm going to get out of my own
Speaker 1: way again and invite you guys to sit back and
Speaker 1: enjoy this conversation with Stacy Abrams. I cannot believe those
Speaker 1: words are leaving my mouth right now. But yes, here's
Speaker 1: my conversation with Stacy and Lara. I had to say
Speaker 1: thank you again so much to me and all the
Speaker 1: team over at Portfolio for making this interview happen. Here
Speaker 1: we go, let's level up with Stacy Abrams and Lara Hodgson.
Speaker 1: So basically, I just want to jump in and chat
Speaker 1: with you guys. I have to say first and foremost,
Speaker 1: I wasn't expecting this reaction from reading the book, but
Speaker 1: it made me miss my podcast business partner Tiffany so much.
Speaker 1: She's been on hiatus. She unfortunately lost her husband in
Speaker 1: late fall, so she's been on hiatus and I've been
Speaker 1: flying solo and it's been weird, and you know, I
Speaker 1: feel great in doing that for her, but also your book.
Speaker 1: The fact that you guys met in a very similar
Speaker 1: fashion to how Tiffany and I met seven years ago.
Speaker 1: We met at a professional event. But the difference between
Speaker 1: you two and us two is that she and I
Speaker 1: bonded over both being wild introverts and needing to just
Speaker 1: go plug ourselves in somewhere together. And you guys bonded
Speaker 1: because you both wanted to be the leader of the
Speaker 1: free world right.
Speaker 2: But I wanted to do it secretly as an it
Speaker 2: That's right, So.
Speaker 1: That was your stacy. You said that as an introvert. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I feel like you have made introverted people feel really cool, Stacy,
Speaker 1: So I have to thank you for that. First and
Speaker 1: foremost and all serious is now in the book. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you guys are business partners but incredibly different in so
Speaker 1: many ways, and you talk about how in the book
Speaker 1: those differences are what made you such good business partners.
Speaker 1: And as a newbie business owner myself, I just launched
Speaker 1: my business in the past, I'm just like every other
Speaker 1: a lot of pandemic, you know, related business entrepreneurs, launching
Speaker 1: your business as a means of pivoting and finding a
Speaker 1: new path. But you guys are so different. Talk to
Speaker 1: me about how those differences have helped you and how
Speaker 1: business owners can maybe hinder themselves by maybe surrounding themselves
Speaker 1: with too many people who are just like them.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I think you know, most people would say
Speaker 4: that common knowledge is that having diverse sets of views
Speaker 4: ads for a richer conversation, richer discovery. And certainly when
Speaker 4: you're thinking about as an entrepreneur and you're trying to
Speaker 4: drive innovation or do things differently. Having different perspectives always
Speaker 4: adds to the possibilities. I think what a lot of
Speaker 4: people realize is when they start to be surrounded by differences,
Speaker 4: there's some discomfort. Right. Things don't necessarily go on the
Speaker 4: surface as easily and as smoothly as you would think,
Speaker 4: and so they sort of stop. It's kind of like
Speaker 4: you face that initial friction and you say, oh wait,
Speaker 4: it's way more comfortable to be surrounded by people that
Speaker 4: don't question me.
Speaker 3: But I think Stacy.
Speaker 4: And I both have an innate curiosity and we love learning,
Speaker 4: and so getting yourself to a point where you can
Speaker 4: be comfortable with some of that friction, because the friction
Speaker 4: is the friction's what allows you to unveil the wow.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Without that friction, you don't get the awesomeness that comes
Speaker 4: after it. So I think Stacy and I were lucky
Speaker 4: to meet in an environment where we were able to
Speaker 4: appreciate our differences but also appreciate that what we are
Speaker 4: aligned on is character traits and what sort of the
Speaker 4: important things to us were that we would never give on.
Speaker 5: I would add that part of the mission is to
Speaker 5: always be adding to what you do. You want to
Speaker 5: add to your bottom line. You want to add to
Speaker 5: your product line, you want to add to your deliverables. Well,
Speaker 5: in a partnership, you want to add to your store
Speaker 5: of knowledge. And Lara reference the curiosity and the fact
Speaker 5: that we like to keep learning. But what is so
Speaker 5: important about our partnership is that we know completely different things.
Speaker 5: We come to these projects with vastly different knowledge bases,
Speaker 5: and we learned from each other, but we also add
Speaker 5: to one another's understanding of what we think we already know.
Speaker 5: One of our sort of core beliefs is I'd rather
Speaker 5: have fifty percent of something than one hundred percent of nothing,
Speaker 5: And the same is true about having a partner that's different.
Speaker 5: I'd rather add to my hundred by getting something else,
Speaker 5: as opposed to just doubling what I've already got, Because
Speaker 5: doubling what I've got, the actual increase is nominal. But
Speaker 5: if I bring in someone who has different skills, a
Speaker 5: different background, a different mindset, it helps me build my
Speaker 5: skills too. But it also gives me someone to rely on.
Speaker 2: It.
Speaker 5: It's a great backup plan. Like that's the other part.
Speaker 5: I am really happy to have a backup brain. That
Speaker 5: means I don't have to be the one thinking about
Speaker 5: things all the time. And when you have a partner,
Speaker 5: especially a partner who you trust to think differently but
Speaker 5: has your same core values, you can let your brain rest.
Speaker 5: I mean you referenced earlier your business partner, Tiffany, I
Speaker 5: know that if something happened. In fact, in our lives,
Speaker 5: things always happen. I can feel a little bit of
Speaker 5: guilt for not being present, but I don't feel worry
Speaker 5: for not being the one there. And that's an incredible difference,
Speaker 5: because I may want to be there, but I know
Speaker 5: it's going to get done, and I know it's going
Speaker 5: to get done not the way I would have done it,
Speaker 5: but in a way I will respect and trust and
Speaker 5: in a way that's going to reveal new things we
Speaker 5: may not have imagined.
Speaker 1: That trust is so crucial. I love how you guys
Speaker 1: also say that maybe one of your strengths was not
Speaker 1: being besties, and tiff and I have talked about that.
Speaker 1: You know, we are extremely closed in a business sense
Speaker 1: and on a personal level too, but it was always
Speaker 1: that the fact that we weren't best friends, that we
Speaker 1: show up weekly for seven years, and we were making
Speaker 1: no money for a very long time. Okay, when you
Speaker 1: show up weekly and you have a standing appointment with someone,
Speaker 1: I feel like, if they're your best friend, you're maybe
Speaker 1: gonna show up late. You know, let's just not do
Speaker 1: it today. But we both had that level of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know them that well, I can't just flake
Speaker 1: on them. And I think that that has helped as well.
Speaker 1: I love the anecdote in your story if we can
Speaker 1: talk about it for a little bit, Stacy, especially when
Speaker 1: you were early so we're going to talk about Nourish,
Speaker 1: which was your baby water company, but before even that,
Speaker 1: you guys had a consultancy together, Insomnia Consulting, and I
Speaker 1: think in those early I don't know if it was
Speaker 1: early months, but Stacy, when you and Laura would go
Speaker 1: into boardrooms together, you would find what you perceived and
Speaker 1: you felt that racial bias against you, you know, people
Speaker 1: in the room turning toward Lara or acknowledging Lara before
Speaker 1: you and y'all had to have a frank discussion. And
Speaker 1: I wondered if you could chat a little bit about that,
Speaker 1: because that is a test of I think what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here, that trust in one another. And I
Speaker 1: kind of enjoy I loved reading that because I thought
Speaker 1: it was a great example of how to have those
Speaker 1: difficult conversations as partners.
Speaker 5: I spend my life in spaces where I am the
Speaker 5: only one who looks like me, unless I'm in a
Speaker 5: space where the person bringing the coffee, taking the notes,
Speaker 5: or cleaning the office looks like me, and so I
Speaker 5: do not have from that this heightened sense of racial awareness.
Speaker 5: I have a very real sense of my space, in
Speaker 5: part because I don't ever want to miss the opportunity
Speaker 5: to grow, because I think it's something that they see
Speaker 5: versus something that I've done. And I think that's an
Speaker 5: important caveat, because it's easy to dismiss concerns about racial
Speaker 5: or gender bias by assuming people are just being overly sensitive.
Speaker 5: I'm a black woman from the Deep South. My sensitivity
Speaker 5: has been both honed and dulled, so you know, you
Speaker 5: can you can tell the difference usually. But what happened
Speaker 5: in this instance was that we were in the antique
Speaker 5: used in the book, and were we went to meet
Speaker 5: with clients and they were excited about the work we
Speaker 5: could do. We go into the room and then there
Speaker 5: are two pieces. One is that Laura is much more
Speaker 5: extroverted than I am, as we discussed, and she's the CEO,
Speaker 5: and so my natural deference is that she's our principle.
Speaker 5: When we go into a space, she's the principle, but
Speaker 5: I know what I bring with me, and so my
Speaker 5: first reaction when we were in the room was simply,
Speaker 5: they were talking to the principle until they were talking
Speaker 5: about things that I was the expert on, and when
Speaker 5: I would answer, they would look to her to essentially
Speaker 5: validate that I had the right to be speaking. And
Speaker 5: it was a very It was a dynamic that wasn't unfamiliar,
Speaker 5: and I tried not to chafe at it, but as
Speaker 5: it persisted, I realized there was nothing into Amanda, You've
Speaker 5: probably done this. There are these in Laura too. When
Speaker 5: you're in the space where you know there's something going on,
Speaker 5: you'll kind of test it to say maybe I'm overreacting,
Speaker 5: maybe this isn't true. All they failed every test, and
Speaker 5: I tried multiple ones. I did like multivector analysis here,
Speaker 5: and so by the time we were done, when we
Speaker 5: were in the car going back to the airport. For
Speaker 5: most of us, especially in a partnership where you're not
Speaker 5: best friends or in a partnership where money's the bottom line.
Speaker 5: You're going to suck it up, you're going to see,
Speaker 5: you're going to build resentment, or you're going to be
Speaker 5: passive aggressive, and then you're going to get mad for
Speaker 5: someone not seeing what you saw. But part of being
Speaker 5: different is that you can't expect people to have the
Speaker 5: same experiences, and the responsibility is on the person who
Speaker 5: sees something to say something. And what is so terrific
Speaker 5: about being partners with Laura was that when she asked
Speaker 5: me the first time, I did the stoicism, No, everything's fine.
Speaker 5: When she asked me the second time, I did the well,
Speaker 5: why didn't you see it?
Speaker 2: In my head? But I just kind of glossed over.
Speaker 5: And then I looked at her and I thought, why,
Speaker 5: we have all kinds of skills between us, but neither
Speaker 5: of us has telepathy. The absence of telepathy is a problem,
Speaker 5: and so she can't know unless I tell her. And
Speaker 5: so I said, this is what happened. This was the experience,
Speaker 5: And to Lara's great credit, there wasn't this instant rejection
Speaker 5: of it. There was an inquiry. Okay, so tell me
Speaker 5: what happened, tell me how you saw it, and we
Speaker 5: walked through it, and I didn't have to justify my
Speaker 5: experience to her. And when she heard me describe it,
Speaker 5: she immediately validated. She's like, oh, now I see it,
Speaker 5: because she was in there to sell and she did
Speaker 5: a great job at it, and she is so used
Speaker 5: to seeing things she understands the gender side of it.
Speaker 5: There was enough commonality between us because of our gendered
Speaker 5: experience that she could understand what I was seeing. All
Speaker 5: of which was to say that we had a new
Speaker 5: protocol and one of the protocols, And this is true
Speaker 5: for women and politics, women in business. We have to
Speaker 5: be credentialed. People have to know why we're there, and
Speaker 5: the same thing is true for people of color. And
Speaker 5: if you're a woman of color, the credentials have to
Speaker 5: usually be tattooed on your forehead and so and then
Speaker 5: they're going to be like, there's something on your head.
Speaker 1: And then validated by a white person who's read them
Speaker 1: and says, yes, I endorse exactly.
Speaker 5: But because of the grounding that Lara and I have
Speaker 5: and the honesty we share, but also just the sheer
Speaker 5: acknowledgment of the society we're in, we didn't have to
Speaker 5: navigate all of that, Lara said, Okay, here's what we're
Speaker 5: going to do. I said, if we can do it
Speaker 5: this way, and we walked through what we were going
Speaker 5: to do going forward, and it worked. There were always
Speaker 5: going to be moments where it happened again, but we
Speaker 5: knew how.
Speaker 2: To prepare for it.
Speaker 5: But more importantly, I wasn't trying to navigate my partnership
Speaker 5: at the same time when I was navigating this other space.
Speaker 2: La. I don't know if you want to add anything
Speaker 2: to that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I think you know Stacy said it earlier.
Speaker 4: We we all come to the to the world into
Speaker 4: every situation with a lens that's only informed by our
Speaker 4: own experiences, and so I think sometimes when another person
Speaker 4: doesn't see what we see, like Stacy said, your internal
Speaker 4: monologue is immediately to sort of judge, why didn't they
Speaker 4: see that?
Speaker 1: They?
Speaker 4: You know, they and you make all sorts of assumptions
Speaker 4: and conclusions. When Stacy first shared with me what she
Speaker 4: had experienced in the room, you know, my first thought was,
Speaker 4: my gosh, we were in the same room, right, Why
Speaker 4: did I not see that? And like Stacy said, I was,
Speaker 4: I was talking right. So when you're talking, it's hard
Speaker 4: to listen, sometimes you were killing them, but but it
Speaker 4: was so it reinforced why a partnership is so important,
Speaker 4: because we discussed how we can look out for each other. Right,
Speaker 4: there's things that she's going to see that I'm not
Speaker 4: going to see. And if I trust that she's going
Speaker 4: to let me know that, then I can be more
Speaker 4: sensitive to it the next time and I can start
Speaker 4: looking for it. Then we have four eyes, right, Or
Speaker 4: if I hear something or see something that she doesn't see,
Speaker 4: we would bring it up and just say did you
Speaker 4: see that or did you sense that? And so do
Speaker 4: Stacy's point earlier. That's where we become additive and then
Speaker 4: we both become better at what we do. And you know,
Speaker 4: as we talked about it, one of the things we
Speaker 4: realized is next time we go into a meeting, we're
Speaker 4: going to be very clear about some of the credentials
Speaker 4: that we might not have led with before. We're going
Speaker 4: to lead with them, so that people are very clear
Speaker 4: about the skill sets that we bring. So I think, again,
Speaker 4: if if you're willing to, you know, it makes both
Speaker 4: of us vulnerable. I'm sure Stacy probably sat there and
Speaker 4: thought about whether she was going to say it for
Speaker 4: a while and she wouldn't know how I was going
Speaker 4: to react, and then when she shared it with me,
Speaker 4: like I had to stop and kind of think through
Speaker 4: it because I started kind of criticizing myself initially, like
Speaker 4: why did I miss it? But I think just getting
Speaker 4: it out there and then being able to look at
Speaker 4: the issue from multiple perspectives is what allowed us to
Speaker 4: come up with some possible solutions that we could test.
Speaker 1: I love that. I mean, I was raised by a
Speaker 1: white mother. It's been many times when I've had to
Speaker 1: have similar conversations and you know what, they didn't go
Speaker 1: as well. Twenty twenty helped a lot, I think, for
Speaker 1: these instances to help coach and you know, helped form
Speaker 1: true allyships. So I give you, you know a lot
Speaker 1: of kudos for the way that you handle that, And
Speaker 1: I hope this inspires as well women of color who
Speaker 1: maybe have seen things and have been holding them and
Speaker 1: it festers, like Stacy was saying, to speak up, because
Speaker 1: I think you don't speak up because you also fear
Speaker 1: that invalidation and you fear people saying you didn't see
Speaker 1: what you said and kind of dismissing it. I think
Speaker 1: we've all been there before, so I love that part
Speaker 1: of the book. Let's take a quick break. I still
Speaker 1: can't believe I'm talking to Stacy Abrams right now, So
Speaker 1: let me just take a quick break, gather my marbles again,
Speaker 1: and we'll be right back with more from Stacy Abrams
Speaker 1: and Lara Hodgson, the authors of Level Up Hey, ba, fam,
Speaker 1: all right, we are back. I still can't believe it,
Speaker 1: but it's really happening. I am sitting across from Stacy
Speaker 1: Abrams right now, and we are here talking with her
Speaker 1: co author and business partner Lara Hodgson about their new
Speaker 1: book Level Up Rise Above the Hidden Forces Holding your
Speaker 1: Business Back. I do want to talk about because we
Speaker 1: are called Brown Ambition. Okay, we talk about money here.
Speaker 1: It is a safe space for us to talk about money.
Speaker 1: When y'all launched your business together, two of them, right, so,
Speaker 1: you had the consulting firm to start with, and then
Speaker 1: you went into your the baby water, the nourish business.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about how you guys financed it, because
Speaker 1: one of the key tenants of your book is how
Speaker 1: difficult it can be for small business owners entrepreneurs to
Speaker 1: find financing to get their business off the ground and
Speaker 1: I want to talk to y'all about how you went
Speaker 1: about fundraising and any lessons you can share for our
Speaker 1: audience on you know, good and bad things about fundraising
Speaker 1: the way that you guys did initially, because it was
Speaker 1: friends and family to start with.
Speaker 4: Right of course, like many people, at first, you just
Speaker 4: figure out.
Speaker 3: You're like, how can I do it myself? Right?
Speaker 4: Stacy and I are used to being very self sufficient,
Speaker 4: So initially it was, well, if we don't pay ourselves this,
Speaker 4: and if this is going to cost X, can we
Speaker 4: can we you know, scramble and sort of pull it together.
Speaker 4: But I think as and and we were able to
Speaker 4: do that with insomnia. Insomnia was it was consulting, it
Speaker 4: was us, so really the cost was ourselves and so
Speaker 4: we were able to kind of self fund that. As
Speaker 4: we got into Nourish, that was the first time where
Speaker 4: money had to actually leave our pockets before money could
Speaker 4: come into our pockets, because we had to have molds
Speaker 4: made before we could make a single baby water. And
Speaker 4: you know, we we kind of sat down and we thought,
Speaker 4: can we do it ourselves? And then we started, you know,
Speaker 4: we did what most people would say you should do,
Speaker 4: is go find outside money and you know, we went
Speaker 4: to the banks. The banks were not lining up to
Speaker 4: make lines of credit to two ladies with an idea,
Speaker 4: and so as they listed all the things that were
Speaker 4: going to be required, including personal guarantees, we walked away
Speaker 4: because neither one of us were in a position to
Speaker 4: do things like personal guarantees when we have others that
Speaker 4: we care for. In my case, I had a new
Speaker 4: baby in the house. Stacy cares for her parents. So
Speaker 4: nor did we have the assets that you could just
Speaker 4: sort of put up for something like that.
Speaker 1: And just to be clear, when you say personal guarantee,
Speaker 1: you mean putting your home on the line basically right or.
Speaker 4: Right your home, your car, whatever else you might own,
Speaker 4: which many of us don't have at the time. And
Speaker 4: so you know, then we said, well, you know, everyone
Speaker 4: else on television goes to like Shark Tank and they
Speaker 4: just raise equity. And so we started out and we thought, well,
Speaker 4: you know, we we can reach out to some contacts
Speaker 4: and find some folks, and so we started talking to
Speaker 4: potential equity investors and quite frankly, you know, we were
Speaker 4: already a second class citizen, but we became a third
Speaker 4: and fourth class citizen when they realized that we were
Speaker 4: not a high tech startup. We were going to create
Speaker 4: this innovative bottled water for babies and children, and that
Speaker 4: was not the sort of in vogue thing to raise
Speaker 4: money for. So we quickly realized as we were talking
Speaker 4: to people that they just sort of discarded the business
Speaker 4: as not in you know, not high tech, not sexy enough,
Speaker 4: not something.
Speaker 3: We're interested in.
Speaker 4: And so Stacey and I were actually sitting at lunch
Speaker 4: one day with a couple of our girlfriends talking about
Speaker 4: the fact that here we sit in Atlanta, which is
Speaker 4: sort of the beverage capital of the world, We've got
Speaker 4: this innovative product, but we can't find, you know, anyone
Speaker 4: that can help us. And it took a couple of
Speaker 4: our girlfriends say well, what do you need and we said, well,
Speaker 4: this mold cost sex, and this mold costs why, and
Speaker 4: so this is what we need. And it was a
Speaker 4: couple of friends that said, well, you know, none of
Speaker 4: us can write big checks. We're not surrounded by people
Speaker 4: that can just sort of stroke big checks. But a
Speaker 4: handful of them together said, you know, could we cobble
Speaker 4: together the money to get you started? And that's really
Speaker 4: how we how we got started.
Speaker 3: With nourish.
Speaker 1: So that's how you do it before kickstarter and go
Speaker 1: fund me exactly.
Speaker 3: Well this is well before, this was before go fund me.
Speaker 2: Crowdfunding exactly. But I think there are a few lessons.
Speaker 5: One is that we tend to look to other solutions,
Speaker 5: to other people's solutions to solve our problems, because for
Speaker 5: a lot of us who have ambition but don't have experience,
Speaker 5: the only way you can figure it out is to
Speaker 5: look at what someone else has done. And to Lara's point,
Speaker 5: we were having lunch with friends who understood that they
Speaker 5: had not the solution, but they had pieces of an answer.
Speaker 5: And so it's it's the it's the impetus behind a
Speaker 5: crowdsourcing idea. We just crowdsourced before there was an efficient,
Speaker 5: you know, tech solution to the problem. Second, there is
Speaker 5: the internal hesitancy that comes with asking someone for money
Speaker 5: when you know you're all of a piece in the
Speaker 5: sort of economic space. Part of my hesitation was I'd
Speaker 5: raised a lot of money as a political candidate. But
Speaker 5: raising money for politics is different than raising money for
Speaker 5: a business because in politics, they know what they're investing in.
Speaker 5: They can see me as a politician, especially for women
Speaker 5: and for women of color. It's hard for people to
Speaker 5: see you as an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2: It's hard.
Speaker 5: They'll put money into politics because and they don't put
Speaker 5: that much in but they'll invest in that because that's
Speaker 5: where they understand you. They don't understand you as a
Speaker 5: business person. It can be difficult to raise money, and
Speaker 5: one thing I had to learn to navigate was to
Speaker 5: again resituate myself and recredential myself for them in that way,
Speaker 5: making sure that the people who I needed to invest
Speaker 5: could understand that they could trust me not only with
Speaker 5: their vote, but they could trust me with their dollar.
Speaker 5: The third lesson was to think about what were they
Speaker 5: buying and to let go of the guilt about your success,
Speaker 5: because that's the other thing that stops us from raising
Speaker 5: money from peers and from friends and family. It's one
Speaker 5: thing to take a bank's money. They might get mad
Speaker 5: at you, but the worst thing they'll do is take
Speaker 5: you know, they'll take your stuff and they'll make your
Speaker 5: credit bad. But you take your mama's money, you lose
Speaker 5: your cousins. You know, five thousand dollars your friend from
Speaker 5: high school pours their money in and you don't come
Speaker 5: back with a ten x return, the guilt is overwhelming,
Speaker 5: and so the other piece of this, if you're gonna
Speaker 5: be ambitious, you've also got to be honest. You've got
Speaker 5: a level set with the people you're raising from saying
Speaker 5: this is what I think we can do, here's what
Speaker 5: this is going to look like. And one thing that
Speaker 5: Lauren and I did was over communicate on the investment
Speaker 5: all the time. People don't mind you making a mistake,
Speaker 5: they mind you not telling them about it. It's, you know,
Speaker 5: good news fast, bad news faster, and so we were
Speaker 5: always in there saying, here's what where we are with
Speaker 5: your money, here's what we've purchased with it. There's a
Speaker 5: tendency to be insular when you're a business owner, to
Speaker 5: focus on not only the bottom line, but to focus
Speaker 5: on your internal narrative and your internal and you don't
Speaker 5: want people to know that you've made a mistake. You
Speaker 5: don't want to know that this didn't work the way
Speaker 5: it was supposed to. But you can't raise money out
Speaker 5: of fear, and you can't keep people's money because you're
Speaker 5: afraid to tell them what happened. And so part of
Speaker 5: the ambition is that you've got to meet that ambition
Speaker 5: with intention that yes, you're going to take their money in,
Speaker 5: but you're going to tell them what they're getting, even
Speaker 5: if what they're getting is not what they expected.
Speaker 4: I think the other thing we've definitely learned throughout all
Speaker 4: of these business ventures is, as Stacy said, you are
Speaker 4: going to make a mistake.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's just a given. There will be mistakes.
Speaker 4: That beautiful vision that you started with something will change,
Speaker 4: and on the back end of that, how you deal
Speaker 4: with it actually makes you a better investment for someone.
Speaker 4: And I've been surprised at how many times investors have
Speaker 4: said it's because of your failures and how you responded
Speaker 4: to them that I would want to invest because you
Speaker 4: now know some of the mistakes that you wouldn't want
Speaker 4: to make again, and that makes you a less risky
Speaker 4: investment than somebody who's starting out who's just sort of
Speaker 4: starry eyed with no real experience. So don't be afraid
Speaker 4: to build your own experience, and your own experience will
Speaker 4: not be all successes. There will be failures in there,
Speaker 4: and how you respond to those failures make you an
Speaker 4: even better investment for someone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think about So let's talk about
Speaker 1: Nourish spoiler alert, Can I do the spoiler? They know
Speaker 1: how to google. But if you have read the book,
Speaker 1: if you read the book, the book's amazing, especially for
Speaker 1: new the entrepreneurs. But Nourish, Nourish did not last as
Speaker 1: long as you guys would have liked. You grew yourself
Speaker 1: out of business, as you say in the book. And
Speaker 1: I want to speak about that. I don't even know
Speaker 1: if I can call it a I don't.
Speaker 2: I hate the word failure.
Speaker 1: It's just so ugly, you know, But basically Nourish did
Speaker 1: not go forever, right, You guys had to dissolve the business,
Speaker 1: but you pivoted in such a beautiful way into your now,
Speaker 1: your now account business, it's called now account. And it
Speaker 1: was really burst out of that failure, out of the
Speaker 1: fact that Nourish, you guys ran into a cash flow
Speaker 1: problem like so many business owners do, and you realize,
Speaker 1: you know, we can really solve for this. Can you can?
Speaker 1: I stop you right there and kind of have you
Speaker 1: even go into more detail with how you handled that
Speaker 1: setback When you knew Nourish was going to have to dissolve,
Speaker 1: when it wasn't gonna make it, you had to shut down.
Speaker 1: How much time was between that and when you had
Speaker 1: now off the ground and in that time, you know
Speaker 1: how much time? And then what was that experience like,
Speaker 1: I mean were you were you devastated or was it
Speaker 1: instantly like, Okay, this is done, We've got to pivot,
Speaker 1: we have another new idea. Because that in the book
Speaker 1: it sort of seems like you guys got the light
Speaker 1: bulb moment with now and we can solve for this
Speaker 1: and this is our next business. And it was incredible.
Speaker 1: And as a reader, I'm just like following the two
Speaker 1: of you, like wanting you to win. But as a human,
Speaker 1: I'm like, dang, that must have really sucked. And what
Speaker 1: was that time like when they had to when they
Speaker 1: realized it was going to be it'd have to close down.
Speaker 5: So one of the challenges was that it wasn't an
Speaker 5: instant death. This was more this was you got the
Speaker 5: diagnosis and you just had to wait for you had
Speaker 5: to wait for the end. And part of it was that,
Speaker 5: as we talk about in the book, the moment of
Speaker 5: our demise looked like our success. And so the first
Speaker 5: piece is that there was there was a moment of
Speaker 5: joy slash opportunity, but that opportunity came with a cost,
Speaker 5: and that cost is what really led to the demise.
Speaker 5: It took a while, the wind down took years because
Speaker 5: we could still do things, we were still selling product,
Speaker 5: but it was scale and for so many small businesses,
Speaker 5: and Laura Laurin can talk about this in the context
Speaker 5: of how now operates. You can't keep just selling a
Speaker 5: little bit because at a certain point the cost of
Speaker 5: a little bit exceeds the return on investment. And we
Speaker 5: were going to We could have kept selling a case
Speaker 5: of bottles a month if we wanted to, until you know,
Speaker 5: our suppliers decided they wanted a bigger customer. But what
Speaker 5: we could never do was scale up so that we
Speaker 5: could grow. And it's that growth that really was the
Speaker 5: death for us. It's painful person who was doing the numbers,
Speaker 5: who was calling the vendors and calling our customers saying,
Speaker 5: I'm so sorry, you know this is what's happening. And
Speaker 5: there's a humiliation factor that you start with where you
Speaker 5: feel like, why won't they give us what we're owed?
Speaker 5: But also I'm hat in hand to someone who I
Speaker 5: know is in the same position, and I'm asking you
Speaker 5: for largess when I can't tell you.
Speaker 2: When I can solve the problem.
Speaker 5: And Laura had a different set of dynamics because she's
Speaker 5: the person who's face is out there all the time,
Speaker 5: and between the two of us, I mean, there are
Speaker 5: a lot of relationships that she was cultivating for us.
Speaker 5: And then I'm calling like, yeah, I'm the other person
Speaker 5: in the business. We're not gonna be able to pay
Speaker 5: you this week, but Laura's gonna be calling you tomorrow
Speaker 5: asking you to give us one more week. And so
Speaker 5: it was there's a there's an emotional toll, but there's
Speaker 5: also the internal dynamic that makes you want to win,
Speaker 5: makes losing just excruciating. And it is a failure. I mean,
Speaker 5: I have a very public set of experiences with failure.
Speaker 5: I am an amazing loser.
Speaker 2: I really am.
Speaker 5: I have mastered failure, and that's the thing I don't
Speaker 5: And I appreciate the fact that you hesitated to use
Speaker 5: the word because part of our culture tells us, oh,
Speaker 5: you don't accept it. I believe that you not only
Speaker 5: accept it, you learn from it. And that's the other
Speaker 5: piece that Lauren and I have always shared. We have
Speaker 5: failed a lot in different ways, and it's hard and
Speaker 5: you don't want to, you know, send out the Christmas
Speaker 5: card to the person who put in the ten thousand
Speaker 5: dollars because you know they're never getting their money back.
Speaker 5: And there is nothing in this card but regret. And
Speaker 5: so you know there are there are ways that it
Speaker 5: is emotionally draining, but by accepting that there is another
Speaker 5: path you can take that not to ever satiate the pain,
Speaker 5: but it does fuel you for the next opportunity.
Speaker 1: There's not a period after failure. I think that's my
Speaker 1: hesitation is it just sounds so finite. You failed, but
Speaker 1: you guys, the story kept going, and I think that
Speaker 1: that's the piece and it's I mean, I do a
Speaker 1: lot of coaching with small business owners, just people in
Speaker 1: their career, and it's true. I mean, and you articulate
Speaker 1: it so well in this book and others, that that
Speaker 1: fear can hold you back. I mean, you talk about
Speaker 1: in this book one of my favorite quotes, I think
Speaker 1: is that self doubt is a sticky floor. Talk about
Speaker 1: that fear a little bit. I mean, both of you,
Speaker 1: and particularly on our show Brown Ambition we named it
Speaker 1: brand Ambition for a reason. We both are very you know,
Speaker 1: intimately aware of the special kind of ambition, that it
Speaker 1: takes the hustle and the grit that you can develop
Speaker 1: that you need because you often are in rooms where
Speaker 1: people have low expectations for you and where you don't
Speaker 1: want to adopt those low expectations you know, as as
Speaker 1: your own, and that can be one of the great challenges.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about self doubt. And you know, even
Speaker 1: it's just never something I feel like that is ever
Speaker 1: going to leave us entirely. I'm sure you know obviously, Stacy,
Speaker 1: you are an icon and I'm really trying to keep
Speaker 1: my cool. I'm extremely nervous about this interview. I just
Speaker 1: love you so much. Oh no, I said it. And Laura,
Speaker 1: you're a badass CEO of this incredible multimillion dollar company.
Speaker 1: But self doubt, how does that show up for you
Speaker 1: guys today? And what are some tools or helpful tips
Speaker 1: you may have for people listening on how to not
Speaker 1: necessarily cure it, but how to live with it and
Speaker 1: move past it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, it's it's it's one of those things.
Speaker 4: It's a bit like failure. I'm not sure you want
Speaker 4: to cure it, but I think you want to find
Speaker 4: the part of it.
Speaker 3: That motivates you.
Speaker 4: So you know, for me, every day, I have self
Speaker 4: doubt every day I'm doing something, and there's that literal
Speaker 4: inner monologue that says, am I good enough? Am I
Speaker 4: smart enough? Did I ask the right questions? Do I
Speaker 4: have enough information? And you certainly don't want it to
Speaker 4: paralyze you, but I think if you didn't have it
Speaker 4: at all, then you would just believe your own bs
Speaker 4: and be off like in La La Land. So it's
Speaker 4: a little bit of a governor that allows you to
Speaker 4: kind of step back, but at least what I've found,
Speaker 4: I mean, it's another example of where our partnership has
Speaker 4: helped me, because if you can surround yourself with people
Speaker 4: that you respect, are incredibly good at what they do,
Speaker 4: and what they do is different than what you do,
Speaker 4: then there's ways that you can use that partner as
Speaker 4: a mirror.
Speaker 3: So there are.
Speaker 4: Times when and Stacy knows, I'll call her in tears
Speaker 4: because I think I've either made a mistake or I'm
Speaker 4: not looking at it right, or I'm missing something, And
Speaker 4: you know, she's always like, okay, well take a step back,
Speaker 4: and she'll ask me a series of questions. Right, That
Speaker 4: sort of recalibrates my brain, and all of us can
Speaker 4: find someone or some folks in our life that can
Speaker 4: do that for us. So I would say the answer
Speaker 4: is not that we want to cure it and that
Speaker 4: it always goes away, because it's a.
Speaker 3: Little bit of our motivator.
Speaker 4: Like anytime I have self doubt, that one part of
Speaker 4: my brain says, am I good enough? And then the
Speaker 4: other side says, hell, yes, I'm good enough. Failure is
Speaker 4: not an option here. So I kind of if I
Speaker 4: didn't have both voices, then the one that is ready
Speaker 4: to go wouldn't have somebody to talk to. So I
Speaker 4: like having that because it sort of creates the friction
Speaker 4: that pushes me forward. But I do think finding someone
Speaker 4: in your life. In my case it's stacy. Sometimes my
Speaker 4: husband provides this role, but finding someone not that's just
Speaker 4: gonna pat you on the back and say it's okay,
Speaker 4: because my mother does that. Yeah, that's more coddling. But
Speaker 4: someone who's gonna truthfully say, you know, maybe you have
Speaker 4: missed this, but let's think about this. This is what
Speaker 4: you did uncover. So it's kind of like always showing
Speaker 4: you the ways that you are a superhero in context
Speaker 4: to the things. You may think, oh, I didn't do
Speaker 4: that as.
Speaker 5: Well, and I would only add that part of the
Speaker 5: dynamic though Lauren and I have that sometimes throws people off,
Speaker 5: is that in our business relationship, she's the CEO. She's
Speaker 5: the CEO of Nourish, she was CEO of Insomnia, she's
Speaker 5: CEO of now Account. And part of self doubt tells
Speaker 5: you that you should have the title, that if you
Speaker 5: don't have the titles because you don't think you can
Speaker 5: do the work. I've never measured my value by my title.
Speaker 5: I measure my value by my work, and I know
Speaker 5: my partner's value as well. She is an exceptional CEO,
Speaker 5: and for the work that we do together, she is
Speaker 5: in the right role. For the work that I contribute,
Speaker 5: the way I show up, I'm in the right role.
Speaker 5: And often our self doubt is tied to these externalities
Speaker 5: that we can't or shouldn't control, Meaning, what is someone
Speaker 5: going to think when they see my business card? What
Speaker 5: are they going to say when I don't say something
Speaker 5: in this meeting? What are they going to believe when
Speaker 5: she's the one on the cover. And my answer is
Speaker 5: that we succeeded, And so I think part of ambition
Speaker 5: is also calibrating your ambition, not to these moments of
Speaker 5: success or failure, calibrating your ambition to your long term goals. No,
Speaker 5: I didn't win this contest. Yes, I'm being ratioed on Twitter,
Speaker 5: which is my daily experience these says. But always it's
Speaker 5: am I doing the things I need to do to
Speaker 5: drive my ultimate goal.
Speaker 2: It's to fruition.
Speaker 5: And to Lara's point, self doubt is a way to
Speaker 5: remind you to think about what you're doing. I wouldn't
Speaker 5: use it as an anchor. I think you use it
Speaker 5: as fuel, and it's being intentional about making it that
Speaker 5: fuel that is so hard sometimes when you also aren't
Speaker 5: used to seeing anyone like you doing what you're doing.
Speaker 1: All right, I know that we have to wrap up here.
Speaker 1: I want to end with this question, particularly importance of
Speaker 1: sharing and speaking your vision and your business ideas out loud.
Speaker 1: I know in the book you got some advice Laura
Speaker 1: from a pretty famous friend. We're not all friends with
Speaker 1: Sarah Blakeley from Spanks, right, but what I love is
Speaker 1: that she told you, yes, share your idea, don't be
Speaker 1: afraid of someone stealing it intellectual property or even if
Speaker 1: you know in your case, it was a physical product
Speaker 1: that you were creating. So what advice do you have
Speaker 1: for people who are maybe just afraid to steal their
Speaker 1: idea and stacy? Of course, being our legal expert, what
Speaker 1: are some practical tips for people on how to protect
Speaker 1: their intellectual property while they are sharing it In the
Speaker 1: importance of that, Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think you know most of us, when we come
Speaker 4: up with an idea, it's very much like an infant,
Speaker 4: and our tendency is to protect it, particularly women, right,
Speaker 4: we nurture it. And so when you have that idea,
Speaker 4: you sort of keep it close to your vest. You
Speaker 4: might share it with one or two friends, but you know,
Speaker 4: in the back of your mind you've just heard these
Speaker 4: horror stories about oh, if I share it, somebody's going
Speaker 4: to swoop in and steal it, and they're going to
Speaker 4: go do it. But what that means is you never
Speaker 4: include others that can help you. And you know the
Speaker 4: comment Sarah made to me when we were I mean,
Speaker 4: we were just thinking of Nourish. We didn't have it
Speaker 4: firm in our mind yet, we hadn't designed it all yet,
Speaker 4: and her comment was, if you don't share it with someone,
Speaker 4: how are they supposed to help you with it, and
Speaker 4: so we didn't just rush right out. We were still nervous,
Speaker 4: but we shared a little bit with one person and
Speaker 4: surprisingly that person said, oh well, I can introduce.
Speaker 3: You to someone that can help you with that. And
Speaker 3: we were like, oh wow, that's a pleasant surprise.
Speaker 4: And so then we met the next person and shared
Speaker 4: a little bit with them and they said, oh, well,
Speaker 4: we can help you with that. And I think what
Speaker 4: we realized is that, you know, most people are very
Speaker 4: busy and they're not just sitting around looking for your
Speaker 4: idea to go do, because coming up with the idea.
Speaker 3: Is just the first step.
Speaker 4: The hard part is then marshaling the resources and actually executing.
Speaker 4: So don't assume that someone else can do that easier
Speaker 4: than you, even if it's even if it's a big organization.
Speaker 4: Like when we first started now Account, we were talking
Speaker 4: to some banks and everyone said, well, gosh, don't share it.
Speaker 3: They could.
Speaker 4: They have all the resources to do this. True, they
Speaker 4: had all the resources to do it, but but they weren't.
Speaker 3: They weren't.
Speaker 4: They were almost too big to take that idea and
Speaker 4: turn it into action. So I do think you can
Speaker 4: be smart about how you share it now. Stacy will
Speaker 4: tell you she protected us on the back end when
Speaker 4: we shared it, and everyone must sign an NDA, including
Speaker 4: my husband. But I think as long as you figure
Speaker 4: out how to do the things that you need to
Speaker 4: do to be prudent.
Speaker 3: And how you share it, sharing is.
Speaker 4: The only way to get people to help you get
Speaker 4: it to reality.
Speaker 5: So yes, I am a stickler for non disclosure agreements.
Speaker 5: I made her husband sign one and he looked at me,
Speaker 5: thinking I was joking. I'm like, no, no, I need
Speaker 5: you to sign it.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 5: So One, make sure that you protect yourself by ensuring
Speaker 5: that anyone who gets your information knows they're not supposed
Speaker 5: to share it. Number two, document any time you do
Speaker 5: share it, so emails, meetings that you have. Just make
Speaker 5: sure you keep a record because part of proving it
Speaker 5: was yours in the first place is proving how someone
Speaker 5: else could have gotten it from you. Three it is
Speaker 5: be really intentional about who you share it with. To
Speaker 5: Laura's point, you want to share it with people who
Speaker 5: can help, but don't brag. Bragging is I've got an idea,
Speaker 5: but I'm not ready to do something about it. When
Speaker 5: you are sharing it should always be because there's something
Speaker 5: you can gain from the conversation, from the the investigation,
Speaker 5: but never do it just to say look how cool
Speaker 5: I am, because you will be someone cool with nothing.
Speaker 5: And then I think the last thing, and this is
Speaker 5: just the corollary, and I think it brings us full circle.
Speaker 5: Lauren and I have contracts with each other. We have
Speaker 5: rules that we follow, but we also have agreements about
Speaker 5: how we trust each other. But we also know that
Speaker 5: things happen that you forget what you said and you
Speaker 5: don't remember why this was the way things got were done.
Speaker 5: And we're in a partnership, you're not always looking at
Speaker 5: the external possibility of conflict. You're also looking what could
Speaker 5: happen between you. I've never been married, but I hear
Speaker 5: tell there's this thing called divorce. I've never had to
Speaker 5: experience it in a business partner with my business partner.
Speaker 5: But one of the ways to protect against that and
Speaker 5: to protect against the argument where well, I thought you
Speaker 5: said this and I said that no, and Laura and
Speaker 5: I've had to do this before we go back to
Speaker 5: the paperwork. I'm a tax attorney by training. Paperwork is
Speaker 5: your friend. Have some protect yourself and succeed.
Speaker 1: As simple as that. Ladies, thank you so so much.
Speaker 1: It was truly an honor. Stacy, you are the reason
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about moving back to Georgia. I'm originally from Georgia,
Speaker 1: PGA grad. I grew up all over, but my dad
Speaker 1: now lives in Stockbridge. I have a baby brother in
Speaker 1: the city building a house. He's constantly He was on
Speaker 1: your campaign in twenty eighteen. I must have up. Yes,
Speaker 1: he was knocking on doors for you. Brought me a
Speaker 1: T shirt that I wear with pride, even though I
Speaker 1: didn't really earn it. And yeah, so I just want
Speaker 1: to say thank you so much for everything that you're
Speaker 1: doing for Atlanta, for women, for black women, for black
Speaker 1: girl nerds, and I just thank you so much. It
Speaker 1: was such an honor to have you on the show.
Speaker 1: And Laura, thank you for your time as well. Everybody
Speaker 1: go read Level Up. It is a wonder full book. Honestly,
Speaker 1: whether you're a newbie entrepreneur or you've had one or
Speaker 1: two lowercase failures f failures in your life, you can't
Speaker 1: recommend it enough. Thank y'all so much again for joining
Speaker 1: brand Ambition.
Speaker 2: Thank you Navy