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