Hi everyone, welcome to the first customer podcast. My name is Jay Aigner today I'm lucky enough to be joined by Rene Vardouniotis. Did I get it? Right?
You did!
Oh, thank God for us CEO and co founder of cape movement we were chatting a few minutes ago. Not too far away. both pennsylvania folks. That's always fun where'd you grow up and did that have any inklings of your entrepreneurial journey later in life?
So I grew up in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and I lived there until I went to college and I went away to Penn State for college and I didn't move back after I stayed, I would come visit and I would stay with my parents, but I would, I. I had just visions of doing more and, really expanding my wings. I ended up moving to New York city and going to grad school at New York university and living in Manhattan for two years.
And, and my husband is also from Penn, we met at Penn State, but he's from New York. So we ended up staying on Long Island and I, got my first job there, and so on and so forth. But I'm back in Pennsylvania. the entrepreneurial journey began when I moved back here. So I guess in a way it inspired me, but I also think it was more so who you're connected with and who you surround yourself with. And, I was finding different avenues for entrepreneurship, through, direct sales and things like that.
And, I started working for a wine company that, was my first experience with, direct sales. We did wine tastings and donated to various charities, which was just so cool. And I thought that was my path, right? I thought that was my path. I'm a speech therapist by trade. So yes.
that. That's very, I always, Our little guy, my five year old, had, speech, therapy when he was little, but I, we were pretty convinced it's because my daughter, who was only a year older than him, 18 months older than him, would never let him talk. once he finally, started, to get out of her shadow, he was fine, but, I always, there's a, soft spot in my heart for speech therapists. let's rewind a little bit. Penn State, New York, University, Where'd you go after college?
Where'd you go right after, was it right to the wine tasting after
So after college, I got my first job as a speech therapist in a school district on Long Island. And I, that's where I planted my roots for the time being. and I stayed there, throughout my marriage and I had two children. and then I just was, again, feeling restless, I guess you would call it. is this what I want to be doing? Is this where I want to live?
And, and it turns out that just the stars aligned and there was an opening for a speech therapist at a school in Pennsylvania, right near where I live now. And my sister works in the district, my friend works, is the principal of the school, and it was just like a perfect time for me to say, okay, this opportunity didn't fall on my lap for no reason. I need to pursue this.
So I only had New York licensure, so I had to go through the whole process of getting licensed in Pennsylvania, which, If any of you out there have ever done is it's an undertaking. It really is. And when I was doing my, my initial paperwork, when I first got my job, when I was in my early twenties, you take a test and they didn't even have them electronically recorded. go through the state and find out where my score was for this test and that test. nothing was documented, electronically.
So it was, it just took a lot longer than I wanted. I think I did a month and a half of work to try and get my licensure in Pennsylvania. So I was on a mission. I was on a mission, it was very dedicated to this move. So got my job in Pennsylvania, moved myself and my two children, who my daughter was barely two and my son was almost five. to Pennsylvania, left my husband in Long Island to, work and sell the house and figure out where he was going to work down here.
And then we just, we made it work and we've been here for eight years now.
Wow. Do you feel like, and this is probably wrong, but as a speech, do you, do you feel like you grabbed any of the Long Island accent when you were up there? I feel like I feel like I hear just like a slight little bit of it. Is there a little bit of it, do you think? think, I want to make sure I wasn't making it up.
no. I lived there for 15 years. So
Oh, okay, alright,
I did pick up a little bit of it. And what's ironic is when I went to college, I didn't know I had a Pennsylvania accent and my friends who were from New York were like, what are you saying? something so simple as to say the word notes, I would say Nate's or fame twang. And I had no, I was not aware that I had that accent until I went to school.
So I've been hyper aware of it since, so when I move back here, now my kids are growing up here and I'm trying to like, neutralize their accents, I don't want them to have that strong twang, because I don't like how it sounds, and it just doesn't sound good to me, no offense to anybody, but it's just now that I've been out of it, to come back in, I hear myself saying a couple things, with the twang, but I've tried to keep it pretty neutral. Yes.
I'm from Virginia originally, and it's taken me a long time to lose a lot of my, not that I wanted to, it just naturally happens when you're somewhere, and I think I've been here like 15, 20 years, but, same thing, lost it over time, but I, it still comes back when I go home, my wife's who are you? she doesn't recognize me for a few minutes when we get, especially when I'm ordering food, I'll call people Darling and stuff, she's who the hell are you? Tell me how you got to the Cape Movement.
we bounced around a little bit. You went up to New York, you came back. what was the catalyst to start the Cape Movement, project?
Sure. So this project was born out of a moment in time of my life where I was feeling my, like I needed to pour into myself. I wasn't, really, I was feeling stagnant and that energy of just feeling like, is this it, like I felt when I, right before I left New York. is this it, is this where I want to be? Is this what I want to do? I was working with, really special needs children who I'm love and will always love, but I, my fire was going out.
my, my flame was dimming and I, and it wasn't nothing to do with where I was working or who I was working with or any, anything like that, it was just a moment of feeling that I needed to feel fulfilled and in a different way. and my desire to make an impact far and wide was really sitting with me. And it was during COVID that all of this happened that I, I ended up, investing in a mindset program. No, I D I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was just seeking, Jay, like
yep,
I was willing to do anything to try and, really pour into myself and build myself up and, just to make me a better mom, a better wife, a better. and I just knew that a mentor is the only way, like really the best way to do that. So I invested in a program and from there I met my business partner, Angie, who's also an educator. she's just since left the district too. So she and I kept saying to ourselves, we're learning really cool stuff. Like we're learning about the mind.
We're learning about the subconscious. And we're learning about goal setting and our, how to process emotion and paradigms, which is a word that I had never heard of. And I, and if I didn't know what it was. So all this to say that the, what we were learning in this program was it was life changing for me. And if you've ever read the book, think and grow rich, that's where my mentor, he was, he's been a pioneer in this.
industry since this began, And, in that book, thinking group and also our two of our mentors would always say, this isn't taught in schools. This wasn't taught in schools. If you're, your teachers couldn't give that to you because they weren't taught it in school. So there's a whole lineage of folks who are teaching the same things over and over again, but not really getting down to how we learn, how our mind works, who we want to be, where we want to go, what we want to do.
And it results in a lot of confusion for our children, for even adults. There's a reason why the mental health stats are through the roof, with depression, anxiety, suicide, attempted suicide. It's just wrong. It's just, it just shouldn't be this way. Our children should not be feeling this way. And so our desire sparked a flame into what we've created is, loosely based on the mindset program that we were, involved with called Thinking Into Results.
And we took a lot of the concepts we were learning plus added more and, developed programming that's bite size and, digestible, easily digestible by a range of children. And, the way that it's different from other, I guess you would call it a social emotional learning program that, your kids probably had an SEL program implemented in their school is that we target the programming.
So we all have programs that come down from our ancestors, like through and through years, right through, through generations. And some of those programs really are beneficial to us. And they, it works for us and our family, but some of them aren't. And that's okay. But the reason why it's okay is because we have every opportunity to change that.
yep.
And so that is our goal is to really allow our children to feel happy. Within themselves, have that self confidence and understanding about themselves that I think is lacking in, our formal education.
Is it a course that you're selling to Individuals or like parents or is it? Schools like what are you who are your customers?
So all of the above,
Okay.
We've been told by several people that we work, have hired to help us build this, that, we have to niche down . And, we struggled with that for a while because we have something for everyone, So if you sell to everyone, you're selling to no one. So we put, we poured our hearts into educators in a school district in Ohio and put them through the mindset program, but just for them, not the children, it was like really to fill their cup.
we just finished that, but our main focus right now is to really get our children involved and present it to as many folks as possible to really help families. with the process of the kids really understanding who they are and not feeling terrible sometimes, but if they do, to know how to adjust and to pull tools out to get through hard times, we're all going to go through them.
right,
it's how armored are we with tools to, to deal with stuff that comes our way?
yeah, I there's a book I read recently called the happiness trap and it talks about The big thing, there's a bunch of really, that's a great book, I really recommend it, a lot of it's talking about it equates your emotions and the things you go through as a storm and you're a boat at sea, like you're never going to be able to make the storm go away when you want it to, but if you anchor yourself and you can get through it and weather the storm, then the other
side, eventually you'll be fine, right? So it's, I think it's a great, it's a great, Mindset for kids. I didn't learn it. I'm 37 and I just found the book like a few months ago. So I think it's a great thing. I think I do want to key in on one thing you said though. The school district in Ohio sounds like some version of your first customer, what, how did you get connected with them? Was the point to get feedback? Was the point to get some social proof from them?
What was the kind of thoughts behind working with them? Is it to get some kind of initial feedback from somebody?
Yes, that and also the Director of Curriculum had expressed interest in our program. we knew him through a girl kind of thing. And, my business partner Angie lives in Ohio and she is friends with a staff member there. So it spread that way. We had several meetings with them. They're wonderful. and the Director of Curriculum said, I just want to help my staff. I don't know how to help them. Do I give them yoga lessons? Do I... have them meditate at school. what do I do?
And, we said, we really feel strongly that we can help with that. the idea is to have children go through this, but adults need it just the same, if not more. so we had worked on and off with them, then they got a new superintendent. So we had to start the process all over again. And that September, this was last year. I, Angie and I talked about it. I said, why don't we gift them our program because of they've expressed the interest. And we had all these meetings with them.
And clearly there's a need.
Right.
we ended up having a survey sent out and teachers, they had the choice to go through the program. And we had about 20 educators that agreed to, go through this program. And it's about four months. it's 13 lessons and you'd go through one lesson a week and then there's activities that follow up that are really, they make the lessons like apply to your life. So they're really useful, functional activities to culminate what they learn in a lesson. And we meet with them every week.
so yes, that was our, I would say our first run through like official run through of our course. And now we do have an action. We do our first that joined and enrolled our program and we work with her now with a few others. And she's our first customer.
Very cool. Now, is that, like, how did that come about? Was it somebody you knew? Was it somebody from the website? Like, how did you, who's your, how'd you get your first customer?
So we went and trained with, Dave Vanhoose. he's a motivational public speaker. He's, and we did a training with him on how to speak publicly. And he pretty much helped us develop our presentation and. Was learning about our, what we had to offer. And he said, I really think my daughter would benefit from this. And we said, let's set up a call.
So it was a connection that was divine really, for, Dave, who's been in the industry for a long time of personal development and hypnosis and things like that. And his daughter, is our girl that we work with and she's. We just love her, and we're seeing and hearing a lot of, cool things from her about what she's learning. And that's really our why.
All right. Wow. Yeah, I love that. So many first customers are that, I always call it the friends and family plan. they're always somebody that you know from somebody, but like those, and, as I'm sure you know from your, first experiment or run through in Ohio, like those, the feedback you get number one is, immeasurably important, but also the ability to go to the next group of people and say, Hey, this is what it did for somebody else.
Now you have that in your back pocket, when you're trying to sell it and make this thing grow, that's a really cool, that's something that I think people can key on, is like finding someone to trial your product or your service or your plan or your whatever it is, can be really beneficial, especially to you as a business owner, right? I'm sure that helped you guys hone in and try to tweak your process when you're building this thing.
Absolutely. And we always say, we don't have toes, you can't step on them. If you let us know, we want to improve, we want to get better. We want this to, we want the information that we're presenting to land. We want you to pick up what we're putting down, and if you're not we want to understand You know how to make it better.
So yeah, it was very valuable to have those educators go through it and we've gotten really great feedback from them and it helps us even with testimonials to we come from small beginnings we don't have big names yet. So It's until that happens, this is the process that we're going through.
Yeah. No, that's dead on. what, What, you mentioned it before, and it sounds like you are going after a couple different, you call 'em verticals, you can call 'em niches, you can call 'em whatever you want. teenage girls, I would have to imagine there's, in the magnitude of tens of millions of those in America, just in America alone, what. What subset of that group are you guys trying to focus on first? who are you going after if you would just go out tomorrow and find, the next customer?
The next customer is, we're actually having a call tomorrow with, a whole family is going to be enrolling in our program. So they have, a mother, a stepfather, and then three children that are the mothers. and then they also have a, a father, they're a real father, they're a birth father who's, he's not going to be involved, but he's also in the picture. and they have a 13 year old, 14 year old, an almost 13 year old, and 11 year old.
and they want to go through this program all together as a family, which is ideal really because if you're not speaking the same language as your children, then there's no communication. or it's a struggle and no parent wants that. I think who we really, feel is the best. group of folks to chat to about this is mindset for people who are big into personal development because they'll understand the value of the presentation, how we present, just the how the course runs.
There won't be a lot of confusion as to what the why of that, of why we're targeting You know, very important foundational skills in the way that we do. And that's through spaced repetition. And that spaced repetition is how we learn our language. It's how we learn our ABCs. It's how your baby right now is learning everything. Your baby's subconscious mind is wide open and everything gets accepted in there. So everything that they can't say no to things, right?
So it's, the language is filtering in the ability to move hands and legs is all, it's all programming that's happening. And, it's important for us to realize that we can change their trajectory, of lives. you, we don't have to accept everything that comes in. and if we do, make sure it's worth your acceptance, right? Like thoughts, we're always going to get negative thoughts, but.
You just let them in and let them out right in one ear out the other and don't let that Continuously impress on your subconscious mind
I'll say the only thing... my daughter Amelia, will say no to so far is diaper changes. She does the alligator death
Yeah
tries, and she was not, she wants no part of having her diaper change, but yes, the point well taken. do you guys plan on.
This is a problem that I encountered when I first started running my business, because I ran my business through Upwork originally, which is just like a freelancing website, so people were coming to me, and then when I stepped outside of that to grow the business naturally, I had to do the opposite and filter the entire world down to find the subset of people that were going to attracted to an offer like mine and we do, software testing.
So it's a very narrow band of people, but how are you guys narrowing down your, so it sounds like, you got your forward thinking, mindset open people. How are you trying to find those people? How are you trying to segment down the world to find your people who'd be attracted to your program?
I'm involved with a lot of Facebook groups of similar minded folks I'm in two different masterminds and on Thursdays, we host a where we talk about, our program. And if they want to talk about it further, they can hop on a call. So it's really like attraction. What we're doing is attracting. we put it out there and we're attracting those who have interest and it's been a process though. I'll tell you that.
When your business is an infancy , there's so many things you have to do to run a business. this portion of it is the exciting portion of it is the sharing. and really getting in, people's emails and in their DMs . Just, to raise awareness as that what we have to offer people. And so our webinar is on Thursdays, from 12 to 1230 Eastern. So we just started that weekly about a month ago and we've had. We got this one family from that webinar.
So it's, it is, it's starting to really flourish and it's very exciting and we will hop on a call with anybody. I want to talk to everyone about it and give them the information and have them take with it what they want, but, it, it could really change people's lives and that's the plan.
Yeah, I love that and I think a lot of people don't, You seem like you figured that part of it out, which is great. I think people struggle with that part a lot. If you had to start back over tomorrow, with everything that you've learned so far, and start a program like this, and, go after a subset of people that you know are gonna be, or you want to be your customers, or you think are gonna be your customers, what would be step one for you?
What would you, what would be step one to start, the Cape, movement again tomorrow if you had to?
I think I would have, so we would have gone back to our why, our reason why was to reach children and in that we developed an adult program thinking that children should be going through this with the adult and then we gifted it to some adults, and just to get that feedback, like I said, with the educators, but we did it with families first, But no one followed through. So we're like, all right, let's move on next onto the educators. But we've really gone back to our root of our why.
And that's the children. children, teens, we had a gentleman who was interested in us developing a program for his three year old. and so we're now developing Cape Tots. So we have Cape Tots, Cape Kids, Cape Teens, Cape Adults, and Cape Educators.
Wow, some, lots of capes.
Yes. and, we have two facets. So we have children and parents empowered cape we have captivating and powerful education cape,
Okay.
but it's all really down to, really understanding that you are the superhero of your life and you should always be wearing your cape.
I love that. I do. I love that a lot. alright, let's switch gears a little bit. as an entrepreneur, as things are stressful, things are busy, you don't have time for stuff. What are three... things health wise, you're doing for yourself to make sure you stay tuned up and your longevity, is as high as it can be.
I, I'm a yogi. I love yoga. I do yoga. I started three years ago. So I started really delving into that practice. So that's something I do several times a week. But besides like exercise, which is, I do all forms every day, it really being present, being mindful and living in the moment, like being where my feet are, is, that's a practice as well,
Sure.
especially as a parent, it's, sometimes we forget to take care of ourselves when that's doing our kids no good, if we pour out to them everything, then we have nothing left for us. And, it depletes over time and then it becomes an illness or a depression or, our bodies react to that. So really being present and mindful, is where it has been a practice. My mind races a lot. So it's been very good for me to, sit and carve out that time to just put in my ear pods and listen to a meditation.
Or, even during my yoga practice this morning, I got there 10 minutes early and I meditated for the whole 10 minutes. finding those pockets of time in the car, I do it all the time, put radio off and just sit and take in my surroundings, what do I see? What do I hear? What do I, what am I tasting in my mouth? What am I touching? What, and just feeling those. It seems odd, to do that, but when you start doing it, you start realizing, that you are grounding yourself
Yep.
and all the noise disappears.
Yeah, I like, I, I love meditation because, you're always practicing, right? you're never gonna master, master it. It's always every second of every day is, trying to practice, and boy, is it a practice with five kids. I can tell you it's very hard
probably have to leave the house and go to a friend's house.
Oh, I do, I get up, I'm a early riser now. I do the 5 a. m. I have to, if I don't get up early, then, I got no shot, there's no chance, so I gotta get up, I say I get up before the gremlins wake up.
Yeah.
that, if I do that, I'm good to go. alright, so mystery question time. So this is, so I've been kinda doing this one lately, non business related because the easy answer to this is just I'll make my business the number one business in the world. What would you do, anything on earth, if you knew you couldn't fail?
I would spread impact far and wide. Every country we would have our, our hands in and help. Those who, are struggling, that's really, to be able to travel all over the world and help people is a dream for
Okay, I like that's a good one. Alright, let's end it there. This was great. I think people got some great stuff out of this. very relatable, which I think is key to these podcasts is the whole reason I do it is so that people can listen to these and maybe hear something they go, Oh, Renee did that. Then I can maybe, go chase this thing that I think would be really, a cool product or a cool service or a cool business to run. where can people find you and the Kate movement?
So we have a website, katemovement. com. It's a little, I keep saying this because It's true. We have to facelift it a little bit, but a lot has changed since we implemented that website. It was over a year ago, and it's exciting that things have changed. we get to change that. But that's where you can find a little bit about, what we do. we have a private Facebook group that is, for folks who are interested in learning more. it's Cape Movement, I think it is.
our Facebook is, we are Cape Movement. That's our Facebook, but then we have a group within there, of, it's a private group. Then, for my ins for Instagram, we're Cape Movement at Cape Movement. For myself, I'm at Renee to, what do they call the low slashes, , what do they call underscore two? Underscore, V E E. and, if anybody is listening that wants to chat more about this or just hop on a call with myself or Angie, we are, we'll talk all day about it.
So it's really something that's in our hearts and, we are on the phone all the time with people asking questions. We love that. it's no, it's, it's something that we really feel strongly about is just getting the information in people's hands. And then they. can make choices about what they want to do with it. And if they want to pursue, really developing themselves.
And, yeah, so I think that's probably the best way is, to check out the website or to find us on Facebook or Instagram right now, we're on other things too, but we haven't developed them as much,
Alright, I'll, I'll put the links in the show notes and people will be able to find you, but, you're great, Renee.
no, thanks. How are
some awesome stuff, and, I hope people reach out and find you, but, I know your time is valuable, so thank you for being on today,
Thank
we'll talk again soon, alright?
Yeah, sure.
Thank you so much. I'll talk to you. See ya. Bye.