Episodes
Tuesday Apr 28, 2020
LIVE EVENT — Make-Up and Hair Expert Marilyn Opitz
Tuesday Apr 28, 2020
Tuesday Apr 28, 2020
Make-Up and Hair Expert Marilyn Opitz gives us great make-up tips, talks about dying your own hair during the COVID-19 lockdown and answers listener questions.
Get more info about Marilyn.
Thursday Apr 23, 2020
LIVE EVENT — U First Founder Erica Wright
Thursday Apr 23, 2020
Thursday Apr 23, 2020
U First Founder Erica Wright talks about her work with the unhoused in Atlanta and how the community has been affected by COVID-19.
Listen to Erica's episode of The Passionistas Project Podcast here.
Tuesday Apr 21, 2020
Kate Anderson Changing the Crowdfunding Space for Women
Tuesday Apr 21, 2020
Tuesday Apr 21, 2020
Kate Anderson is a leader in generating change and gender equality within the private fundraising space. As Co-Founder and Operations Director of iFundWomen, she has driven millions of dollars into the hands of female founders. The flexible crowdfunding platform combines a pay-it-forward model, expert startup coaching, professional video production and a private community for its members, all with the goal of helping female entrepreneurs launch successful businesses.
Learn more about Kate Anderson and iFundWomen.
Learn more about The Passionistas Project.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Passionistas: Hi and welcome to the Passionistas Project Podcast. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington and today we're talking with Kate Anderson, a leader in generating change and gender equality within the private fundraising space. As co-founder and operations director of iFundWomen, she's driven millions of dollars into the hands of female founders. IFund Women's flexible crowdfunding platform, combines a pay it forward model, expert startup coaching, professional video production and a private community for its members. All with the goal of helping female entrepreneurs launch successful businesses. So please welcome to the show Kate Anderson.
Kate: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here.
Passionistas: What's the one thing you're most passionate about?
Kate: I have a lot of passions but I think one of the things I'm most passionate about is representation of women. I'm seeing women represented in boardrooms, seeing women represented in movies, seeing women represented in books. I think the more we can see ourselves in women in media and on television magazines too, the more we can imagine that we can be there. And that's really one thing I find women is working hard to do is promote more women's businesses, help women to elevate their businesses more so that we can see more women in boardrooms and more women as CEOs and more women on the cover of Forbes and fortune.
Passionistas: So talk about how iFundWomen came to be and your role in that.
Kate: Yeah, so um, iFundWomen was a pivot. My two co-founders, Karen Cahn and Sarah Summers. We worked together at another company, our CEO, Karen Cahn was the, uh, was the CEO. Then Sarah and I both worked there and it was a conversation platform for women. Karen had built it and did kind of a lot of the things that we now realize are mistakes, mistakes for start-ups. So we built it without talking to a lot of people about it, without getting a lot of feedback, being really precious about the idea. And we realized after making mistake and all good growth comes from making mistakes, that that's not the right way to start a business. The right way to start a business is to get a lot of people onboard to, to beta test to see if people are interested to build an MVP, which means minimally viable product. It's creating a product that is not perfect, but they get the job done.
And um, so anyways, we had this old company, um, and as a last ditch effort we did a Kickstarter campaign and it was through there that we realized that crowdfunding was a great way for women to raise capital for their businesses to not give away equity did to tap into their own, um, their own great networks and their own ability to be good storytellers. But there was no platform that was speaking specifically to the needs of women that was coaching women through the process of, it's giving them the tools they need to prepare. And that was creating a community. So we decided as a beta to see if people were interested in it. We sent out surveys to various communities that we're all a part of saying, is this something you'd be interested in and what would you look for in that? And we launched in November of 2016 with a beta of about 25 campaigns. We had hundreds apply, but we accepted 25 for the first beta to test it out. And that is a way better way to start a company.
Passionistas: So what were you doing before you started iFundWomen?
Kate: So we are working together on this, on our other startup and then prior to that I worked in commercial real estate development. So really like pivoted my career but, but um, I worked for a company called Heinz, which is a major uh, premier real estate development company. Worked there for about four years right out of college. And it was such a great place to come up because, um, it was really old school and I think that there's a benefit in starting your career at a place that's really old school and established and has a clear guidelines and clear protocols and uh, and it was not casual. I think that the, it really taught me a lot about how to be a great operator, how to be a great employee and less how to be a great manager. I'm learning how to do that now, but it taught me a lot of those things. And I think that there's a real benefit in starting at a place that's um, that's really corporate versus a place that's really good casual.
Passionistas: And what's the vibe at IFund Women? What's the culture like at that company?
Kate: We're a startup so it's way more casual. Um, it's at, uh, Heinz where I work. Nobody talked about personal lives at all. Like you kinda didn't, if you heard about someone's personal life, it almost felt like seeing your parents naked. Like it was so personal and intimate. Um, and, and IFund Women and I think this is true of many startups. Um, you know, everything about the people that you're working with. And I like that. I like that. Um, that is definitely more my nature. It, um, to be open with people, to tell people what's going on in my life. I don't like kind of feeling like that's not something to be able to talk about. But then you have this like fine line of, um, what to share and what not to share. And when Karen, Sarah and I started at the company, right, three people that are great friends, we can share everything. But then as you bring more people in that you can't share everything, just the three of us can.
Passionistas: So what's the mission of iFundWomen?
Kate: Our mission is to close the funding gap for female entrepreneurs. We really want to provide access to capital, coaching and community. That is our core mission. That's our North Star and that is what we work day in and day out to do.
Passionistas: How is iFund Women different beyond that from other crowdfunding websites?
Kate: Yes. So we're the only crowdfunding platform, first of all, speaking specifically to women, but beyond that, um, we are the only crowdfunding platform with expert business coaching tied into our business model, with a network of women business owners that work together to accelerate knowledge and ignite action. We have a pay it forward model that you were talking about that, um, at the end of every month, we, uh, invest 20% of our standard crowdfunding fees back into live campaigns on our platform. So we're actually paying for the revenue that we're making from campaigns. Um, and then we also are offering sponsored grants. So we broker grants on behalf of generous partners who really want to put their money where their mouth is by supporting women entrepreneurs raising capital on our platform.
Passionistas: Talk a little bit more about why that's so important. And the current state of funding for women owned businesses.
Kate: The current state of funding for women owned businesses is not where we want it to be. Um, and I think people are familiar with these stats, but women received 3% of venture capital financing and women have a harder time getting loans. That um, when they do get loans, they get smaller loan amounts and higher interest rates. We know women are starting 1500 net new businesses every single day in the US right, too. You're a woman in the US you have a great idea. You're starting a business. Well, what do you do? How do you get funding for your business? The first thing most people do is they bootstrap and bootstrap means spending your own money to grow your business. And that works r really well if you have money to spend. But if you don't, how do you get your business off the ground? And um, we are the place where women could do that.
We don't think that you should go into debt funding the earliest days of your startup. Um, and even if you do qualify for a loan, that's what you're doing is you're going into debt funding the early days of your startup. And the fact that the matter is most startups fail. And it's important that when you're growing it, you do it in a way that's smart and you're smart about the capital that you take on so that you don't have a failing startup. And then loans to pay back or debt to pay back, credit card debt, whatever it is.
Passionistas: So what makes a successful campaign on iFundWomen? Are there elements that you find that help people succeed?
Kate: Really, first and foremost, if I had to just say one word, it would be grit. And that's probably what makes any successful entrepreneur and business, right? Anybody can have the best idea for something, an amazing idea that's going to make everybody's lives better and everybody is going to be so happy about it. But if you never tell people about the idea, if you're not ready to like put it all on the line, if you are not constantly promoting what you're doing to people, no one's going to find out about it. The specific type of person that's successful on iFundWomen is a person with drive, with commitment and a person that really won't give up, that continues to promote their campaign, continues to get the word out there. And um, and won't stop at anything until their campaign gets funded or their business gets moved to the next phase, whatever that might be.
Passionistas: Let's take a little step back and just explain to a crowdfunding is for someone who's listening and doesn't really understand the concept.
Kate: So crowdfunding is when an entrepreneur raises small increments of money from lots of people that they know in their personal professional social networks. That adds up to just enough money to get their project off the ground. So crowdfunding formally as we know it has been around for about a decade, which is the idea of raising money online from lots of different people. But historically crowdfunding has been around for a long period of time. Um, the Statue of Liberty is a project that was crowd funded. Bringing the base of the Statue of Liberty over was crowdfunded by many people contributing pennies to see something happen. And I think that people really liked that story because it resonates with the idea that lots of people can give amounts of money that feel comfortable to them to create something that's awesome and spectacular and has lasting value, right?
Like I think we all wish that we could contribute to see the statue of Liberty or whatever that kind of iconic project is for us. But crowdfunding, there are two different types of crowdfunding. There's rewards-based crowd funding and equity crowdfunding. Equity crowd funding is a newer concept that came out of the jobs act where you can raise, um, you can have people contribute to your business in exchange for equity. So that's ownership in your business. IFundWomen as a rewards-based crowdfunding platform. Um, so, so people are funding your campaign in exchange for physical or digital reward that they're getting. And the reward is really can be your product, services, unique skills. It's really your opportunity to thank people for contributing to your campaign but also entice them to back your campaign and support your campaign. But because you have awesome rewards that you want to take part in,
Passionistas: What do you find, or do you find, there's a common reason that women hesitate to do this kind of thing? And how do you help them get past that?
Kate: We don't necessarily see that women hesitate to do this. I think in general, people feel uncomfortable asking other people for money. I think that that is kind of a, um, that can stall people, right? I don't want to go out and ask my network and, and what I always pushed back on that I'd say is, well, what happens if somebody else does this idea? How passionate are you about this idea that if somebody else did it, would you feel okay with that? And, and with scaling businesses, and this isn't true for all businesses, not all businesses need capital to grow. Some can be generating revenue from day one and be fine with the revenue that they generate. But many businesses do need capital and you will always have to ask people for money, right? So maybe that's a banker, maybe, um, a venture capital firm, maybe that's uh, an aunt, maybe that's a spouse.
Kate: Um, you don't have to ask a credit card company, but at some point they will ask you to pay the money back. Um, but, but what I think is so empowering, powerful about crowdfunding is it allows you to continue to hone your pitch and your messaging every time you ask people and continue to change it, right? So you might practice your pitch on lots of people and tell them and they say, you know what? I didn't totally get what it is you're raising money for. So then it allows you to say, Oh, you know what? Maybe I wasn't so clear. Let me try to rephrase this so it makes sense to a broader audience and being able to kind of alter and pivot and adapt your pitch in real time is really powerful.
Passionistas: What's been the highlight of iFund for you so far?
Kate: We have been around for over three years so it's been really exciting to see those initial beta campaigns to see what they've done now. We have been one of the premier crowdfunding platforms for co-working spaces, female-focused co-working spaces and it's so cool to see coworking spaces that raise money on iFundWomen open up. Like that to me is like, you know, you kind of feel like that's your baby taking their first steps that you facilitated them being able to do that. It has been a million little things. I wish I could say. There's like one great thing that's come out of it, but it's so many. It's getting handwritten thank you notes in the mail from entrepreneurs that we've helped on iFundWomen. It is getting feedback when I've coached entrepreneurs say you really helped me get on stock and it's seeing products launch I support a lot of the campaigns on iFundWomen and it's supporting and then getting a product in the mail that you supported maybe a year ago and saying, Oh my gosh, I love LOHO tights or Mini Lila or fem power, beauty. I love all of these brands and now I'm getting their products and, and now I'm a lifelong user of it.
Passionistas: Is there a story of like one woman in particular that you've helped or you personally have funded that stands out to you?
Kate: There are so many women on this list. Um, uh, one campaign I particularly love is Lauren Beasley who is an entrepreneur out of Nashville. She, uh, has a company called Move Inclusive Dance. She wants to create a dance studio for children with special needs or a dance camp for children with special needs in Nashville. She put up her campaign and within a week or less it was funded. And then about a year later, her audience said, okay, a dance camp is great in the summer, but what about a dance studio? What about year round dance classes for kids with special needs? So she came back to iFundWomen to raise $100,000 for a dance studio.
She raised about $45,000. And at that point she had gone through, I've been IFundWomen's coaching program and one of the things we tell entrepreneurs to do is list out everybody in your network or people that you know, you might have six degrees of separation. One of those people was Carrie Dorr, who's the founder of pure, uh, Pure Barre, which is a fitness studio. And Lauren reached out to her and said, I'm a Pure Barre instructor. I love your company. Would you check out my campaign? Uh, Carrie Dorr wrote back and said, yes, can you fly out to Denver? Long story medium, she flew out to Denver and Carrie Dorr contributed $50,000 to her campaign and funded her campaign. And why I love this story is Lauren's doing such good. She's creating lasting change, which is so awesome. She's creating something that not a lot of people maybe thought that there was a need for, but there was a huge need for, she made the ask, but she also had data to back it up.
Right? So she wasn't cold emailing this person and she had $0 million in her campaign and zero back. Or if she had $45,000 or $42,000 in her campaign and hundreds of backers and she emailed that person then to say, look at what I've done. She, and she told me she was expecting like $50 from her and got a magnitude more than that. But I love that. I love that that's like so forward facing. So public and obvious. I think that that's just like, and I love what she's doing to make the world a better place. Follow her on social media, Move Inclusive Dance. It is really, really inspiring.
Passionistas: So you mentioned this earlier and like to talk a little bit more about it. You mentioned that iFundWomen reinvests 20% of your fees into campaigns on the site. So talk about why you made that decision and what kind of campaigns you guys back.
Kate: When we started iFundWomen we knew that we wanted to have a give it back model. We knew we had this idea of lifting women up constantly. So if one campaign gets funded, we wanted that campaign to help another campaign get funded and create this virtuous cycle of funding and supporting female entrepreneurs. The way we manifest today was we take iFundWomen takes a 5% fee on any amount of money that you raise. And then at the end of the month, we take 20% of the revenue from those fees and directly reinvest them into live campaigns on the site that are actively raising money. We do not pick them algorithms, pick them, but um, but it's been awesome to see, and it varies every month from maybe one campaign that will be picked or five or six campaigns that will be picked. But those campaigns that are way more, um, way more likely to get funded and it's a great opportunity for them to say that their networks, like, my campaign is so good that the iFundWomen team believed that I should be the recipient at this. And then the money just gets them that much further to their, um, or that much closer to their mark. It's a, it's everybody's favorite day of the month.
Passionistas: How can a woman that's listening to this podcast take advantage of all the iFundWomen has to offer?
Kate: If you head over to, iFundWomen.com and you will see a big suite of resources that we have to offer to people. We have a lot of free resources. It is important to us to educate entrepreneurs before they launch a crowdfunding campaign. Until we don't ever want us to someone to launch a campaign and say, Oh, I thought it was this. Or I thought I would just put a campaign up and magical money elves would come and back my campaign. We wish there were magical money elves, but it doesn't seem like they've really exist. We want people to know that you have to put the work in, that you have to have a plan, that you have to have clear messaging and a direct ask. So we have bundled that all into a free crowdfunding eCourse. It takes about an hour and a half to watch that you could watch on iFundWomen. We have a free webinar every Thursday for an hour that really talks about what crowdfunding is. And then for people that want more hand holding and really are looking for personalized coaching, we have a coaching program. It's a monthly coaching model where you pick the topic of the calls that you want and can get help with anything from your crowdfunding campaign to marketing, to social media, to sales, so that you can really not only elevate your crowdfunding campaign, but at the same time elevate your business.
Passionistas: We're Amy and Nancy Harrington and you're listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Kate Anderson. To learn more about crowdfunding for female founders and get experts, startup coaching, visit ifundwomen.com now here's more of our interview with Kate.
Do you have a daily routine or is it always different?
Kate: No, it's always different. And you know what, honestly, I kinda like to operate that way. I have, I start off my day at work every day with the same thing. I have a checklist of things that I go through and then the day starts and um, I really have a lot of calls throughout the day. Then I block. So maybe I do, I block out time. Like at three o'clock I've have an education block and that is a time for me to read. Like those articles that people send me or um, things that I saw online that I haven't had a chance to read. I have a 30 minute block in my day to do that. I close out my day between 4:30 and 5:30. So I tried to do that as much as possible. But then I need to get better and having a daily routine cause I think in every other aspect of my life that helps to optimize and helps to just not have to make decisions.
Passionistas: That's such a good idea. That education block, I love that. I need to do that. I'm gonna work that into my schedule now.
Kate: And I think the best thing to do too is to copy the links of, okay this article I saw or this one someone sent me copy the links into the calendar invite. So you open it up and you say, go ahead. This is what I'm reading right now. It's 30 minutes and we all have that time in our day to do something like that. And if you're not, I am kind of maniacally focused on being curious, growing, acquiring new skills, reading. Interesting. And if you don't kind of block that time and then sometimes it gets lost.
Passionistas: Do you think you have a particular personality trait that has helped you succeed?
Kate: I am very skilled at putting myself in other people's shoes and, and that really comes from how I was raised. That was always the position that we were taught is, you know, you never know what someone has going on at home or in other aspects of their life. And that has really helped me in dealing with people, right? All jobs are dealing with people, it's dealing with customers, it's dealing with your team. Um, and if you don't have good skills with that, if you don't have the ability to, to put yourself in other people's shoes, you kind of can't grow. And then I think in addition to that is self awareness and it's a quality I really like in people is really being self aware about what you're good at, what you're not good at. And um, and being honest about that I think is really, really huge.
Passionistas: Is there one lesson that you've learned on your journey so far that really sticks with you?
Kate: Working at a startup is, is really challenging. There's no roadmap of what you're doing. You're constantly having to change. I think like a great lesson is really just being open to change and being curious and not being fixed in your thinking and knowing when to ask for help. And knowing when you can figure things out yourself. But working at a startup is really, there's just a constantly moving target. You constantly change, adapt, learn new things. And that is, I think can be hard for some people. But for me it's been, it's been exciting and I feel like I every damn like have a new skill set that I'm working on.
Passionistas: So what is the most rewarding part about working at a startup?
Kate: I think the really, the most rewarding part from coming from like a corporation is making, like having a suggestion that gets inputted in real time. Like saying, okay, I think we should do this. All right, let's do it. And now our website looks different because of someone's that guidance and advice that is so powerful. And I think if you never had that before, then you're, you're so surprised when you do have it and really appreciative of it. That's been really, really an awesome thing to, to do and see and be able to just see how your suggestions can, can really form, can improve people's lives, can streamline the process, can make things easier. I've been really grateful for to be able to be in a position to do that.
Passionistas: When you were a girl, what lessons did your mother teach you about women's roles in society and what do you want to teach your own children?
Kate: I grew up with a mom who stayed at home until I was in middle school and then she started working and now has her own company and works entirely too much. Um, but my parents were equal partners and, and even though my dad worked, it was very much both people were equal parents. And I think that it's sometimes hard to say what are specific things. I think sometimes you can comment on things that you didn't like. But like one thing I loved my parents did is we would occasionally just be kind of jerky kids and would say something like, that's dad's money. We're just such a jerk thing to say. Right. And it's so, I don't even know where we came up with that, but it was always clear in our household. Like my dad worked and my mom stayed at home and this was the family's money. Nobody was, there was no hierarchy between my parents at all. And that like largely impacted most of my thoughts about relationships.
I worked, both me and my husband work. So that was different than my experience was growing up. But it never felt like that was something I couldn't do because I didn't see that behavior modeled. I saw a relationship between my parents that was, um, that was largely, uh, based on respect and that has been what my relationship has been based on and it has made it easy to be easy enough to be a working, uh, team, raising kids and trying to grow our careers.
Passionistas: Did you have other influential female role models when you were growing up?
Kate: I have so many. I have so many aunts that are absolutely phenomenal. Um, that I'm very, very close with. All my grandmothers are still alive and they are so influential for me. I feel really lucky to always have had like strong women figures in my life. And the idea of like a meek female, that archetype would never existed. And any woman that I've ever had a relationship with but really like the people that had the biggest impact of light my life for my family. And I am so lucky to have three grandmothers that are strong, very funny, very witty, opinionated women who had cool lives. Um, and, and same with, I have amazing aunts and I still have amazing aunts and I'm really fortunate for all of them.
Passionistas: What about professional mentors? Have you had professional mentors and what do you admire about them?
Kate: Yeah, so I've had fewer professional mentors. That's definitely something I am like kind of seek out. I have a lot of people on the same level of careers, me or maybe a few stages ahead and being at a startup and not kind of having like a, um, you know, it's not a big corporation where you have a bit, a huge hierarchy. It's something I definitely seek out, but I have a lot of women that are at the same stage of my careers, like great friends and people who have become great friends who have helped to kind of sir like solve, uh, that mentorship role. And to me, mentorship is not like, Oh, will you be my mentor and guide me in the process. It's having somebody to gut check things.
Like really, as I said, I live in Boston, my best friend in Boston is, has been such an amazing asset for me. And gut checking, um, career questions and kid questions. But, but having kind of people serve in that role of, uh, being advisors to you. I think that can come from just having great friends and not just having one person in a mentorship role. It's surrounding yourself with amazing women and men that can provide guidance for you. That to me is kind of how I, um, how I fill that role.
Passionistas: What's your proudest career achievement?
Kate: There's an organization I love, uh, a media company called Rebel Girls and they write children's books called Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls. I love them. I've been such a fan of theirs and we had partnered with them on iFundWomen and I got two for international day of the girl, uh, speak publicly on a panel to, to young girls about representation of women. And my daughter got to see me speak and it was my first paid speaking engagement and that was like my proudest mom moment. My daughter thought I was crushing it. I felt like I was crushing it and she got to watch it. And that really just made me feel like so proud of, of being able to be in a position to do something like that.
Passionistas: What's your dream for women?
Kate: My dream for women is to not have to work so hard to get what we deserve. I kind of, you know, those signs from in the women's March that said like, I can't believe we're still marching about this stuff, is to not have to work so hard is to just be able to exist. And I'm not up to pipe for things that I think that we deserve to have and I think that we deserve to have like 60 years ago. And I think that's largely an inefficient use of time. I would love to see more women in positions of power.
I went to a speaking engagement the other day at Harvard, a male physicist was speaking and a woman introduced him and they said, she is the first tenured physics professor at Harvard. And I turned to my husband and I was like, it's 2020, like you've gotta be kidding me. And we kind of had like a discussion about it and I said like, I find that so problematic that it's 2020 and she's the first tenured physics professor at Harvard and it seemed like she was recently tenured. I would like that to not be the norm. Um, that I would like there to stop being the first woman. Right. Like just not the first woman president, not the first woman, you know, anything. I would just like it to be that's expected. Um, and I think that we're getting there and I think that progress is really slow and I wish that it wasn't so slow.
Passionistas: What's your secret to a rewarding life.
Kate: Balance. Having interests surrounding yourself with interesting people? Um, measuring success not by one metric. Right. So I think when people, their success is just tied to their job that it's not, that's not how I view success. Um, being outside to me solves most problems of life unless, unless there's um, fires happening and we're experiencing global warming. But I think that that can solve a lot of things. But to me it really is, is balance. And then choosing what that balance is for you. I think that work life balance is a term that's overused and misproperly used. But it is to me it's having different things that fill your tank. It's getting up every day and having different things that will get you jazzed to go. So that might be worked. It might be an exercise class, it might be coming home to your kids. It might be like for me it's like reading a really good book but having different things that get you excited and going. That to me is, is like the most important thing.
Passionistas: Thanks for listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Kate Anderson. To learn more about crowdfunding for female founders and get expert startup coaching, visit ifundwomen.com.
Please visit ThePassionistasProject.com to learn more about our podcast and our new subscription box filled with products made by women-owned businesses and female artisans to inspire you to follow your passions.
And sign up for our mailing list to get 10% off your first purchase, and be sure to subscribe to The Passionistas Project Podcast so you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests.
Tuesday Apr 21, 2020
LIVE EVENT — Hula Hoop Coach Geri McNiece
Tuesday Apr 21, 2020
Tuesday Apr 21, 2020
Hula Hoop Coach Geri McNiece talks about the positive physical and emotional affects of hooping, describes how she makes custom hoops and gives us a tour of her hooping studio.
Listen to Geri's episode of The Passionistas Project Podcast here.
Thursday Apr 16, 2020
LIVE EVENT — Empower Work Founder Jaime-Alexis Fowler
Thursday Apr 16, 2020
Thursday Apr 16, 2020
Jaime-Alexis Fowler, founder of Empower Work, talks about navigating employment issues during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Listen to Jaime-Alexis' episode of The Passionistas Project Podcast here.
Tuesday Apr 07, 2020
Jaime-Alexis Fowler Helps Workers Navigate Adversity
Tuesday Apr 07, 2020
Tuesday Apr 07, 2020
Jamie-Alexis Fowler is the founder and Executive Director of Empower Work, an organization that provides immediate, confidential support for challenging work situations. Jamie-Alexis is on a mission to create healthy environments where employees are valued, supported and empowered. Her company harnesses the knowledge of trained peer counselors who utilize their robust skills, not just on the Empower Work line, but in their workplaces.
Learn more about Jaime-Alexis.
Learn more about The Passionistas Project.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Passionistas: Hi and welcome to The Passionistsas Project Podcast where Amy and Nancy Harrington and today we're talking with Jamie-Alexis Fowler, the founder and executive director of Empower Work, an immediate, confidential support system for challenging business situations via text or web chat.
Jamie-Alexis is on a mission to create healthy environments where employees are valued, supported and empowered. Her company harnesses the knowledge of trained peer counselors who utilize their robust skills, not just on the Empower Work line, but in their workplaces.
And beyond offering one-on-one support, Jamie-Alexis’ goal is to use the aggregate anonymous data from the conversations to inform new approaches, tools, trainings, and policies for systematic workplace change.
So please welcome to the show Jamie-Alexis Fowler.
Jaime-Alexis: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat.
Passionistas: Yeah, we are too. So what are you most passionate about?
Jaime-Alexis: For me it's really about people growing up. My parents had a phrase, how you treat people is important. And I think that that has been a central theme in every facet of my life and has been particularly part of it at work where I spend most of my time.
Passionistas: Tell us about what you do for work and how your passion translates to that.
Jaime-Alexis: Empower Work is a national organization that provides essentially a crisis text line for work. And one of the reasons we started that was that a couple of years ago, as you know, many of these MeToo headlines were raging and of course still are. I was increasingly doing these sort of whisper network style conversations. And after one particularly tough conversation, I hung up the call and thought there has to be a better way than doing this.
And the person I had in particular just spoken to was, you know, first generation to go to college. She was working in this really small startup. Nobody in her family had worked in technology and she was struggling with a lot of different competing factors, the financial pressure of student loans. She was also supporting some of her family. And what had been the promise of, of technology that she could go and make this great salary and you know, lift her family out of the experiences that she'd had growing up was suddenly at risk. And there were these multiple competing factors. And I just left thinking like, there's gotta be a better way to do this. There was nothing in her company that she felt was trusted or safe. There were no resources either. There's no HR and no EAP or any other kind of resource. And so I turned to my husband and said, “You know, there's gotta be some kind of crisis text line for work.”
And we started Google searching that night. You know, I was like, oh yeah, let's just keep that in our back pocket. Let's just like be aware of what other resources exist. I was familiar with all of the traditional resources that are available through a company. So, Oh great, you've got your employee assistance program or you can access and have a conversation with your trusted HR business partner or whatever. Like you know, whatever the situation may be. And honestly, what floored me was that there were no third party resources that what existed with either you sell to the company or you sell to the individual. And so with that left were as I started looking into it as a 40 million Americans work in workplaces with fewer than a hundred people. And that leads to all kinds of disconnections when people face these really challenging situations. And of course when you think about that, that disproportionately impacts low income workers, those with less social capital.
And so at the heart of it for me was this fundamental inequity that we are meant to be this land of opportunity. And we're told that jobs are the means of doing that. But when you face an adverse situation and suddenly your job is on the line, where do you turn? And that threat becomes really real. How do you pay rent? How do you pay for childcare? And unfortunately that means that people are putting up with really toxic situations in order to get that paycheck. And that's leading to all kinds of negative emotional and financial outcomes for workers.
Passionistas: You Googled it, but then how did you actually put it into action?
Jaime-Alexis: I did not set out to start a company. I mean, I really was following my passion around how do we make sure that people are supported. And so the question was what do workers need? And just because we couldn't find it and just because my husband and I Googled around and couldn't find a resource didn't mean there needed to be one. And there certainly didn't mean there needed to be a company. So it really started with in-depth user research. So we started with a simple, I started with a simple survey. I, I say we because it quickly grew into a lot of other people. But you know, at the first it was just me, you know, setting up a Google survey.
But you know, a friend of mine had done polling before. I had other friends who did user research. And so they helped me think about how to set up the survey that started with this simple series of questions. Suddenly we had, you know, hundreds of responses from different folks all around the country, different economic situations, different education backgrounds, different working environments. And in that thread we saw some really key themes. And that was, you know, 90% of people had faced an adverse situation. Overwhelmingly people felt like they didn't have a trusted resource to turn to and that it had significantly impacted people's emotional and economic wellbeing. And there's also additional research that goes into us. We started doing market research and seeing, you know, what existed, what didn't exist, what research was in this space. And then I started doing really in depth interviews. So I did over 200 in depth conversations with labor organizers, HR professionals, labor rights attorneys, just this whole spectrum of folks who touch the workplace.
And they, those conversations reinforced a lot of the gap that we were seeing, which is that folks really felt like they didn't have somewhere to turn. And the impact of not having that support was really negative. And so from that we thought, okay, what would shift that trajectory? And so we started with really simple pilot, which was, you know, me getting a Twilio number, I call it like sort of like band-aiding it back together. And it was like we banded this thing together and I went to Office Depot and printed off these, what I think now are like really sketchy looking flyers, you know, it's like, alright, you know, do you have a tough work situation? And I walked the streets of San Francisco and hung up these flyers just to see like would people use this, you know, before we build out a whole service, let's just see if our theory is on track that like someone would text him on those flyers.
We didn't say whether to text or whether to call. We just showed a number and overwhelmingly people texted us and within six weeks we had folks from 10 different states, not from those sketchy flyers because it rained a couple of days later. I was like, Oh yeah, that's really, don't look, they look, you hit scratch here. But we started doing small digital tests so we would share in a Facebook group or things like that. And people would reach out and say like, I can't believe I've never heard of this before. This is amazing. Like this is exactly what I needed. And at that point we had, you know, more people involved who helped build out the pilot and we really knew we were onto something.
Passionistas: And what's your professional background? What did you do before this and what skills did you learn on other jobs that you brought to this to make it happen?
Jaime-Alexis: I have done a lot of different things. I jokingly refer to myself as a recovering academic. And so I started my career thinking that I was, that my mission in life was to educate, to become a professor and do research and to teach. And that is not the trajectory that I pursued. But I think a lot of the skills that that were part of that and my love of people, my interest in really like connecting with others and, and supporting people to success in various ways has translated across my whole career. And so predominantly I've worked in the social change sector and predominantly in areas that use those skills around connecting with people and writing. So it's marketing communications. But in almost all of those situations, I've been part of the senior leadership team at a variety of organizations and through that have been really passionate internally about building healthy workplaces.
So how do we support a culture where people can thrive and how do we make sure that people feel really valued and heard? And not just with my individual team, but thinking about that as sort of the, the cultural level for the organization. So it's always been something that I've held really from the center for my career. And in part why I was getting a lot of these kind of whisper network conversations because people would be like, Oh, Jamie loves, this is a great manager. She's run into X, Y, or Z before. Like you should, you know, you should talk to her because it feels a little weird to say about myself. But that was a lot of what people would reach out to me and say like, Oh, so-and-so said you were a really great person to talk to.
And that's not scalable. Like people leveraging their LinkedIn network or their personal network to solve a work crisis is not a scalable solution. A theme in a lot of my work is how do you, whether it was code for America or Pathfinder, like how do you work with government to affect large scale change. And so although we're not doing that specifically at Empower Work at this point, one of the goals is how do we learn from the work that we're doing and inform government practices or policies. You know, why don't we have a 4-1-1 for folks to easily connect in. You know you have to go to six different places if you, you're trying to figure out like Oh is this a wage theft issue? Is it that people don't use the term wage theft? So if you Google like I'm not getting paid, you get a lot of different weird articles, you're not necessarily going to get connected to your wage and hour division to log a wage complaint.
So right now we just have a lot of aspects of the system that are inaccessible to people. Part of I think why folks feel like not only is what they're experiencing profoundly unfair, it's hard to understand why there aren't other protections in place. And that's really frustrating for folks.
Passionistas: When you started to put this whole plan into action and you realized you needed a team, how did you bring people in to build this?
Jaime-Alexis: Oh, that's a great question. At night immediately it was like, okay, I'm not a coach. I'm not, you know, I don't have a, an HR background, like who are the folks that we need involved? And so I started, before we even launched it, before I walked those sketchy flyers around, we pulled in folks from every kind of angle. So it was like folks who had an HR background, folks who had operations experience, folks who you know, had PhDs and organizational psychology.
So one of the folks who's now on our board, Jennifer Habig has a PhD in organizational psychology. She's a longtime trainer, executive coach, and she's built out all kinds of trainings. And so she was one of the first people I connected with. And I still remember our conversation. I was sitting in my car between meetings and I was still working another job and I kind of floated this idea to her and you know, she's done in person coaching her entire career and she was skeptical. She was like, well how do you, you know, how do you do this high level coaching over text? And also, you know, what do people really need and how do you incorporate rights-based information or resources? What would that look like? And now, you know, she's one of our biggest advocates and I think for her, I can't speak for her, but it from, you know, from what she shared, it's really meaningful to see the shift that happens in these conversations where someone comes in feeling like extraordinarily stuck, confused, overwhelmed, and in the course of a conversation says things like, you know, to the volunteer, like, are you a fairy God mother for work?
You know, like, this is amazing. We had someone who, I mean we've had multiple people, but just someone last week who said, I had to pause because I'm just in tears. Like this has been the most meaningful conversation I've had. And we had someone last week who said, this was really life altering for me. And it is, it's profound to see that shift happen in an SMS conversation, but there's, there's a level of impact that it has cognitively to type something out. It's an interesting space for reflection because people can write something, think about it. And then it's also a way for people to, you know, people come back and tell us like, Oh, that practice that I did with the volunteer around how to have that conversation with my manager. I then had in my SMS history and I could go back and read it and like get ready for that conversation.And so there's a lot of power to those pieces.
Passionistas: Talk about the actual process of using Empower Work.
Jaime-Alexis: It's pretty seamless so you can easily connect in over SMS or web chat. So we offer both. If folks want to text in, it's a (510) 674-1414 you text us and say hi, I want to talk to someone. You get a quick auto response that says, you know, we got your message, we connect people with a real person under two minutes. And so you're able to start that conversation really seamlessly. There's no barrier to entry, no intake form. You don't have to pay anything. And that's really important because overwhelmingly the folks that we support are isolated. About 40% of the folks that we connect with are lower, lower income. A lot of folks feel like their livelihood is online. So you know when your boss puts a meeting and asks you to come into a meeting in 15 minutes and you're worried you're going to get fired, you don't have time to like fill out a bunch of stuff and try to find someone in whatever you're just in that moment.
So it looks connected on average conversations are about 90 minutes, you know, that can be folks connect with us on their commute, like on the bus, on the way to work sometimes on their lunch break. You know, kind of the benefit of our structures that we meet people where they are. So you're able to say, you know, we have folks who are like, I just, sorry, I took a pause because my, my boss walked by, you know, they're texting us at work, so it's pretty seamless to connect. And then the course of the conversation, we really spend time that a volunteer spends time and understanding what's going on, what's at stake for the person, what do people value? Because it's different for everybody. Like if you're, you're worried you're going to get fired, sometimes that's actually fine for the person. They're like, that's great. This is toxic.
I want to leave. If I get fired, that's mine. I can file for unemployment, I can move on. For other people it's terrifying and they don't lose that job. And so we talked through what does someone want to see happen and then we'll provide space to practice a conversation if needed or an approach. We'll talk through pathways, we'll talk through pros and cons of particular decisions and we'll also provide resources if needed. So if someone's really unsure, like, hey, should I, you know, should I talk to an attorney about this? Is this something even that has legal protections around it, you know, we'll, we'll provide additional resources and information or things like someone's lost their job and they don't know how to access healthcare. We, you know, we provide that as well.
Passionistas: We’re Amy and Nancy Harrington and you're listening The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Jamie-Alexis Fowler. If you or someone you know is facing a challenge at work, text (510) 674-1414 or visit empowerwork.org. Now here's more of our interview with Jamie-Alexis.
What's the typical background of the volunteers that you have? How do they know all of the things they need to know?
Jaime-Alexis: The main skill or value that's important for volunteers is really empathy. What we train around and our approach is, is really around how to be a deep listener. How to really hear what's going on with someone, what's at stake, and to ask really powerful questions to help someone unpack and like think about what's going on. So that's first and foremost. People come from all different kinds of backgrounds. We do ask that everyone has experienced in the workplace just because it's part and parcel of understanding what people are going through. Those backgrounds can be anything from, you know, chefs to like HR professionals. We have a really a wide spectrum. We have a lot of folks who, for instance have an MSW and you know, have a background in social work, but maybe doing something totally different now and this type of giving back kind of reconnects them with aspects of, of their background that they really appreciate.
One of our volunteers who works in HR said being a volunteer helps her put the human back in HR, that it gives her a chance to really spend time on the people part of it, which is really important. But a lot of folks who volunteer interested in coaching, they're interested in management either because they are a manager and they want to become a better manager and we see that volunteering is really a win-win. It's a way to give back and build professional skills. So we have volunteers who come and say like, I just got a raise because of the skills that I built, volunteering or you know, I just found a new job. And like I talked about how I've built these other, these other skills through Empower Work. So it's, it's really wonderful to see the impact, not just for the folks who connect with us, but for the volunteers. It's not just a one sided, it's really a two sided interaction. And to your question about how do we, how do folks know all of the things, that's one of the benefits of technology. So no one, no one has to remember like, Oh what's the labor information for, you know, X city or like X state. Like they have access to resources around that. So there's, that's not in anyone's brain, it's just part of the platform.
Passionistas: Are the calls confidential or do you look at the calls to see if there are overarching themes that keep coming up so that you can build your resources in a particular area?
Jaime-Alexis: Absolutely. So all the conversations are confidential and one of the reasons we built Empower Work as a nonprofit was that in our initial research we saw, you know, as I mentioned, people work at places where their company wouldn't be willing or able to pay for something as well as the fact that people didn't trust what was provided by companies. This is a little bit of an extreme example, but we don't ask culturally someone who's being abused to go to the abuser for the source of solving that. And that's not to say that companies aren't responsible that companies shouldn't invest in resources. Absolutely. Should we see Empower Work as fitting into a landscape of resources? Companies should have a responsibility and cover resources and should people trust and be willing to go to those. Fantastic. Sometimes it's a yes and like connect with Empower Work, talk through something and then go talk to your HR partner, go to you know, or go use your reporting platform internally.
That's a lot of what we talked through with folks that like evaluating whether or not to do that. So all the conversations are confidential and we do look at those larger trends and themes and one of our goals in the next year is to actually surface a public facing visual of some of our data, and again, totally confidential, but just these higher level themes. So some of the top ones that we see, not surprisingly job decision, job decision tied to many different factors, but job decision is one of the top issues that people start with. Like I'm trying to figure out if I stay or leave this job and it can be tied to a sense of being treated fairly. It can be tried tied to a bad manager. There are a lot of different connections that are part of that. We also see trends and people emotions associated with the issues.
And so top emotions that we see are feeling stuck, feeling isolated. We hear the only a lot. So like I'm the only mom on my team, no one understands that I need to take this time and go to a doctor's appointment with my kid because I'm a single parent. And embarrassment around that for a sense of they shouldn't feel embarrassed but they're being made to feel embarrassed because people aren't supportive. And that's really hard. You know, we see a lot of the stress and anxiety that are tied to these issues and a sense of really being on like an edge I would say. Um, and how tie that is to work and that's really hard. And one of the things that I think as a, as a country we really need to talk about to say what's wrong with the way that things are structured that people feel like they are so on edge, even with a job that seems to pay. Okay. Like you shouldn't feel like you are constantly on a cusp of losing something.
Passionistas: What have you learned about your own personal management style in doing all of this?
Jaime-Alexis: One of the things I kind of knew early on with that, I'd had a lot of positive feedback on being a manager before early in my career, a mentor of mine said, you know, I think you would be a really great manager. And I said, well, I don't really know. Like what does that entail? Like what does that mean? And she actually laughed and she said, you know, I'm not sure, but I kinda just feel like you, you have that. And so I spent like a couple of years, he like, what is good management? Have to know all these like pros and cons and things like that. And I think at the heart of it, I believe one of the reasons that I'm still close with a lot of folks that I worked with him during his teams is that I've set a lot of intention around creating space, people on my team in a way that balances the business need with the individual need.
And that's been really important to me in terms of what I've learned. I mean, so much. And one of the things I often talk to people, it's like I'm someone who loves to jump to solutions. And even though I just talked about, you know, creating space, a lot of times I've now realized how often I would jump to like, well, have you tried, you know, blah, blah, blah. Um, and I have now very intentionally tried to remove, have you questions out of my vocabulary, like to friends, to my partner, like just at all. Because seeing how disempowering that can be to someone because it's like advice wrapped in a question or hidden in a question. And so really trying to take that out is hard, but I'm working on it.
Passionistas: What do you say instead?
Jaime-Alexis: Instead of saying like, Oh, have you talked to HR? I'll ask something like, what have you considered so far? And it creates a more of an openness to it as opposed to like, well, you should have talked to HR, you know, even if your intention is like, Oh, you're just trying to get more information.
Passionistas: What's your vision for the company?
Jaime-Alexis: We have a pretty ambitious goal to reach 3 million people in the next five years. And that's, it's a big, it's a big job. But what we saw when we started was a huge need. I mean, 90% of working Americans have faced something challenging. So the scope of that, you know, 3 million in relation to the overall need is actually pretty small. But we really started with impact. We wanted to understand does this text based intervention have an impact positively for both the people who reach out and for the volunteers. And so rather, you know, it's like yeah, we could probably go out and find millions of people who have adverse situations right now.
We really wanted to understand like what goes into a successful conversation, how do we improve the emotional outcomes, economic outcomes. And so across the first year that we started, every time we ran a training for volunteers, it changed because we were constantly taking feedback from conversations we were seeing from approaches and like re-crafting that into our training. We were building a training completely from scratch. There's no, I mean I say that there's no nothing that's existed in the last three years of doing research on this. I have not come across anything that combines the emotional and tactical support that we provide. And so although we searched high and low, because we did not want to reinvent the wheel, we had to invent the wheel. And so that took a lot of investment. And now we're at the point where we see the positive impact and you know, we have folks coming back to us saying like, Oh my gosh, I got the raise.
You know, like thank you so much for talking that through with me. Like I got it and I paid off more of my student loans and I like, you know, I'm looking for a better place to live that has windows. You know, like you hear these, you hear these stories, you're like, Oh my gosh, this is, this is really impactful. And so now we want to serve 3 million people in the next five years and then keep building this out so that we can build practices across networks, companies to really improve the way that people interact with one another at work. And then we also really want to contribute to structural conversations. Like what are the gaps in policies and approaches. There are some really innovative work happening. For instance, in California, there's a future of work commission in California. There's also a commission on mental health at work.
And so to have these initiatives that California is putting a stake in the ground and saying like we want to be a leader in looking at like what does healthy work environment look like in the future? And so we really want to contribute to those conversations with our data, with perspectives and you know, at the heart of it look at like we know that work is changing. What work used to be 10 ,15, 50 years ago is now totally different. Everything from you know, remote work to things like policies around gig work and how do we support workers in a different way. So we see a huge opportunity to be part of that through our data and through the worker voice that we see when folks are connecting with us and sharing these really powerful perspectives. Like a lot of what we hear from workers is like, I just want to feel valued. Being asked to come in last minute when I'm supposed to be off for two days is not a request where you feel respected and it might be okay, it might be lawful, but it's not. It doesn't feel good. And so how do we support workplaces where folks can thrive?
Passionistas: Thanks for listening to The Passionistsas Project Podcast and our interview with Jamie-Alexis Fowler, if you or someone you know is facing a challenge at work, text (510) 674-1414 a visit and empowerwork.org.
Please visit ThePassionistsasProject.com to learn more about our podcast and new subscription box filled with products made by women-owned businesses and female artisans to inspire you to follow your passions. Sign up for our mailing list to get 10% off your first purchase.
And be sure to subscribe to The Passionistsas Project Podcast so you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests.
Tuesday Apr 07, 2020
LIVE EVENT — Tea Drops Founder Sashee Chandran
Tuesday Apr 07, 2020
Tuesday Apr 07, 2020
Tea Drops Founder Sashee Chandran talks about starting her company Tea Drops and how she is pivoting because of COVID-19.
Listen to Sashee's episode of The Passionistas Project Podcast here.
Thursday Apr 02, 2020
LIVE EVENT — Happiness Coach Ramona Harvey
Thursday Apr 02, 2020
Thursday Apr 02, 2020
Happiness Coach Ramona Harvey talks about staying positive during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Listen to Ramona's episode of The Passionistas Project Podcast here.
Tuesday Mar 31, 2020
LIVE EVENT — Author Billie Best
Tuesday Mar 31, 2020
Tuesday Mar 31, 2020
Billie Best chats with us about her new book How I Made a Huge Mess of My Life (or Couples Therapy with a Dead Man.)
Listen to Billie's episode of The Passionistas Project Podcast here.