The Billion Dollar Community Propelling Women To The Top - Carolyn Childers of Chief.com

i have a friend who's part it and he's he runs an agency and i'm pretty sure it's sixty thousand a year so quite expensive i think it's only two events a year that they do so it's almost it's basically an events business and they sold for hundreds of millions of dollars recently to pee just like i think a pe company and then another one is a ave ver of ave i haven't heard of ave okay so it's e a and ta ave was sold to ga for like two hundred and fifty million dollars and it was almost like the same thing but it was worse because it was advertising driven the reason why we asked you to come on is because chief is awesome and we love community based businesses and most community based businesses have horrible business models and from the outside it appears though you have from the press and whatever i can just read out the internet it seems like you've got a really good business model and that's what i wanted to talk to you about today was that business model because we've talked a lot about tiger twenty one and why pos is kind of interesting but you guys are like the next kinda person attempting this and it seems like it's working really well and that's what i wanna to ask about yeah awesome well congratulations on on the podcast and thank you and was excited to come on and chat because there's been a lot happening for us at the beginning of this year so yeah and before this where were you casper now that was my cofounder so we both have been in kind of the new york city ecosystem for a while i actually i started the startup up scene at handy a launch i launched in rant soap dot com under mark lo quincy got acquired by amazon then went over to south korea and worked on coupon which is the amazon of south korea and then most recently right before chief i was at handy running operations for them and my c founder was at casper so yeah and when did you decide when you go all in full time on chief i probably went full in two thousand eighteen is when officially left other positions and dedicated myself full time to this and it was one of those things that i felt like i had to do the full commit and actually like put everything behind it or else also would just like keep that slow crawl of kind of an idea because without pulling putting everything in it it just you know wasn't making the same progress that it really needed to make i do the same thing and that's what i tell people what what's i think the phrase i used to say it was burning your bridges but it's not it's burning the ship so like there is this like kinda que the door i forget who his name was but like where he like landed in america or somewhere like that and they're like look we have to succeed now because i just burned the boat so like we're ain't going home and i guess that's a story i don't know if that's real or not but that i i totally believe that that's the that's the the the way to go about this and what chief what what what how would you describe chief as it is now yeah so chief is really focused on senior executive women it's you know under the phrase that we hear so often of it gets very lonely at the top but it gets lonely at the top for women a lot more and our mission is really to drive more women into positions of leadership and keep them there and and by focusing on that kinda senior executive woman you know our belief is just getting more of them in true positions of influence the ripple effect that that could have across all different companies and organizations is is really where we wanted to go and kind of tackle this first and i kinda call it like a y po above her vps which is basically like and this is all from the outside obviously i'm not a member but this is you basically it looks like what you get you pay like some sum of like five to eight thousand dollars a year ish and you get in the company pays for it and you get to meet up with like a core group of like five or ten different women or it's the same women and then you have like a coach and then you have the ability to like chat with the entire group whenever you want online and then i imagine you have some type of like programming throughout the month that you can join as well right is that is that basically the model it's it's very very close so i would live definitely was a inspiration for us for sure where they only focus on ceos and presidents that is their entire focus and as a result not surprisingly it's largely men that are a part of y ipo since that is what the makeup of a ceo and i think of white po i think like old white dudes it's it's not far off and it was just an inspiration for us to say it wouldn't be great to have an organization like this focus on women so we're vp level and above we we also have a lot of ceos and presidents who are women that are a part of the organization but we focus on vp and above and as you mentioned probably the heart of what we do is what we call our core groups it is this group of ten individuals we go through a very curated process of finding the right group of ten to come together they every month there's an executive coach in the room and that's called core for a reason it is the heart of of the service that we provide but around that we have all sorts of different services and and and resources that you can tap into so we have our own programming that you can attend as much or as little as you would want to you can tap into the whole network through our community product we even have club houses in three cities across the us that you can that you can use so lots of things that are kind of around the around the core experience but that truly is the heart of what we do what was the original idea how was it different than how it evolved into into what it this today what was the original premise i as we did this last fund it was funny we pulled out our seed deck of you know what we were showing when we were raising and it didn't change that much which is kind of phenomenal you always hear so many stories of you know we tried this we needed to pivot because this wasn't working or that wasn't working and the heart of what we wanted to do was always very much what it is today i think the biggest change that we've undergone is most of our services were all happening in person when we launched that's the reason why we had kind of these physical spaces we had the club houses we were doing core in person but with the pandemic everything moved over to virtual which has you know in some ways been a small silver lining for us and that we've been able to you know extend to more cities faster because we don't have to do big build outs and it's actually even more powerful and engaging for our members because this truly is like the movie trope of the busy woman and now instead of having to you know trek across a city to get to a club house to get the benefit of chief it's now in your pocket wherever you go and at this point did i see fifteen thousand members is that right it's close to fifteen thousand members yes wow or maybe it's a there i forget what the the you you guys you whatever you what it's at thirteen or twelve whatever it said recently because you raised a hundred million in funding at a one point one billion dollar valuation so it's like the pretty huge business and you only launched what three years ago like launched lie publicly three years ago three years ago yes that's crazy right it is it is i can remember back when we were launching and we're like we're gonna have just a hundred great members as we launched and we're really excited and even from the very beginning and the launch that we had we had thousands of people sign up for a waitlist for chief and now yes we're close to fifteen thousand members but we have a weight list of close to sixty thousand which is kind of incredible and i think it just really shows how much a community like this is truly needed and the value that it's that it's really creating for our members so let's say you're at fifteen thousand let's just say the average price is six thousand that's ninety million in revenue i imagine the truth is like give or take twenty percent maybe and i don't know if you say that or not what it is but regardless if it's in that ballpark it's a pretty substantial business in a and such a that's let's say sixty to a hundred million in recurring revenue in three years that's why yeah right it is it is and i think what's really what i feel so much privilege of on in any given day when people hear about cheap because it's such a mission oriented business that's what they think of they're like oh it seems like such a a good business but great mission and i don't think that people realize that it's both like a great mission and a great business and i think you know we live in a capitalist society and being able to have both of those things come together i would say that or you just you just do the math like it it makes sense like this like if you scale to like fifty million i'm recurring revenue in three years that's a great company you're probably a lot higher than that i mean what that do they not how to do math do they can they use a calculator i don't know i've i've talked to a lot of feces so there's still need to be a lot of insane so when i started the hustle so the hustle was my company we sold it to hubspot when i started the hustle it was just a it was basically just a daily email and it it was relatively easy compared to what you have started because the person receiving the email had no idea if there was a million people or one people getting it like it didn't impact their experience and then we started trends which is like our subscription business and that had a paid community and that sucked because i had to make it cool before i thought it was gonna be cool so like i had like convince my friends so like join and post in it and like make it seem like a you know it's like a restaurant that already asked customers before you actually know like if it that good when you so i know these businesses can be tough for that reason how were you able to get your first let's say ten or even a hundred people because it's like you're selling them something that isn't real but it only becomes real when they're sold and bought in and like commit to it yeah i mean i think that they're was a lot of small tactics that all bubble up to you know a a meaningful investment in the brand that allowed for people to understand what we were trying to build and who we were trying to build it for and i think we were really fortunate in having just some really amazing early members that kind of kept that ball rolling but it was everything from you know one of the things that we did was have a physical space at the onset and the physical space in some ways was like marketing for us to kind of show a brand that we were trying to develop and and and really bring that to life we that was a conscious decision and investment into the brand things like we didn't have a social media presence at all because we felt like what were gonna say how would it be meaningful in an helped to create like this really interesting tightness of people that were in the community versus trying to you know shout it out into all of the different social media areas so there were a lot of things that i think we did and ultimately like word math was by far our entire acquisition strategy which was pretty amazing you're just like taking the math play you just emailed like your ten or twenty closest friends and they probably told a handful of people and you just said like hey we're launching this in like sixty days apply and we'll let you know if is if this is a good fit yeah i mean it was not just our closest friends we definitely sent some cold emails out to people that we had never met before and i remember even some early vc conversations where were showing you know here's our first members and they were like oh so are these just all your friends and lindsay friends my c cofounder founder were like actually no that's not the case it was it was amazing a cold email to cc suite executives at fortune five hundred companies and people were excited to join i think being able to also reference the y ipo model which a lot of people understood helped to create some of that traction and even the companies themselves so our model is one where we you know sell directly to her she then goes and gets it sponsored within within her company and we didn't know how well or how easily that sponsorship would go and company signed up really quickly i think for them they look at you know one on one executive coaching can be thirty thousand dollars for a six month engagement so relative to that this was a great way for them to invest in some of their top talent and you got to like i i was like reading i think so you launched i'm looking at my notes you launched like around december two thousand eighteen within like a month or two your you passed seven figures in recurring or like a run rate right but you had that cash in and then by the end of the year you're nearing ten million in revenue i mean that's pretty wild yeah we started to sell at the end of two thousand eighteen we didn't officially launch services until two thousand nineteen in february of two thousand nineteen and we were just in new york city so we were continuing to add members in new york city until around you know mid two thousand nineteen we went and raised our series a largely to expand into new cities which at the time was a a more capital intensive way of of expanding because we were in person we had to make investments into club houses and so we were in the midst of those build outs when the pandemic happened and that's when we made the full pivot over to virtual and as we did that engagement actually went up across every of every one of our services definitely it was a time or something like chief was needed more than ever and it allowed us to expand in a much different way how did you know what to tell the coaches like what what to tell them how to run their group or y po they've got facilitator i don't know what you call your folks but basically like it's i've i've done a couple of these things and they're pretty amazing it's basically like and some people get insulted noises this but it's basically group therapy and it's awesome and it's incredibly necessary but a good facilitator therapist like makes her break it a little bit they do they do and and we do a lot of vetting to make sure that we have the right coaches that are coming on that act as we call them guides on our platform and they're just fabulous we have close to four hundred executive coaches that act as guides for us now and for us i think there's you know a a little bit of a beginning introduction into core that is very similar for all core groups in the first few sessions there's you know a very prescribed way of bringing the group together making sure that everybody creates a a deep sense of of community even within that group and then from there a lot of it really is for the coach to decide the right path for that group because every group is different of what they need and what they're looking for so we have created a lot of content but it's to the coach in the group to really decide which direction they want to take a lot of those conversations and you know a a vast majority of those conversations are real time dependent on what's happening with the people in the room of you know somebody's about to go through a massive you know restructuring within their company they're gonna wanna have a little bit more airtime in that session of people helping them work through some of those things so it's it's heavily structured and guided but with a lot of flexibility depending on what is needed for each group so i wanna kinda nerd out a little bit on this on these models on this business this community business model i think it's awesome and i actually think that like it's with the remote or whatever we are in now i think it's they're you're gonna see a lot more of these pop up and i think you're the first of this like new age ones but i wanna talk about some old school ones i wanna tell you about my research and you tell me if you've heard about at of these have you heard of world fifty i have yes what do you know about world fifty so i you're gonna know of all the ones that i know plus more i you're the only person that is able to nerd out with me on those stuff so that's why i like you yeah i mean they're all what i have what i have generally found is that most of the communities that existed before now we're all very focused on the the most senior people for ceos like the you know and a lot of what i'm guessing you're about to list or all that they're all that i think yeah there no there's no one isn't i have one that isn't okay what's the one that isn't on deck a lot of people know what on deck is i don't even think on deck knows what on deck is i think they're still trying to figure it out like their existence or like you know their identity but they are attempting to do something it it seems as though they've pi i have no inside information this is all just looking at their website it seems like they're they're they're pivoting into kind of what you're doing yeah i mean i think i have deep perspective for them as a company i think a lot of times what you often find is there's this what what leads does like community lead or does like curriculum and professional development lead and i think for that when it's education i think i think it's hard it's hard it is it is and for us community has always led and even you know you could extend that to many other paradigm of like just community lean lead or to space lead like what is the actual service that you were providing and for us we knew that community had to be the thing that always led and even if you think about some of the you know kind of analog that you could make like business school as a as an analogy like yes a lot of people think you're going back for curriculum i don't think you do i think you go back for the network and the people and so for us that has always been the the major thing that we knew we had to focus in on and i think you know for on deck i'm not sure that they lead with community as much as they do kind of the programming and that i think is kind of the the difference that i would see there so here's a few of businesses in the space that might like surprise the the listener so we talked about world fifty so as i know at world fifty it's basically for cmos i think just cmos right i thought it was broader than cmos i thought it was actually more of like ceo individuals it's i started as cmos but yeah i think it's expanded beyond that but basically i think they were sold so in the the cmo or whoever it is and there's like agency owners so i have a friend who's part of it and he's an he runs an agency and i'm pretty sure it's sixty thousand a year so quite expensive i think it's only two events a year that they do so it's almost it's basically an events business and they sold for hundreds of millions of dollars recently to p just like i think a pe e company and then another one is a ave v of ave i haven't heard of ave okay so it's e v a and t a ave was sold to ga for like two hundred and fifty million dollars and it was almost like the same thing but it was worse because it was advertising driven so the attendees would like log on like it'd be like this chief information officer which frankly i don't even companies that are i've never worked at a really big company like in order to have a chief information officer you you're gonna be a pretty huge company so i don't even entirely know what a chief information officer but they would host these like webinars pretty much where like a chief information officer like a bunch of would common and like you know do like the group therapy thing and explain pros and cons and like you know how are we supposed to work for remote and do all this you know whatever they just complain and improve it one another and all that type of thing and they would charge like bank of america or some big sponsor money to be there and they sold the company to ga for like three hundred million dollars it's pretty wild yeah yeah yeah i mean event businesses in general is a type of business model that i didn't really have much familiarity with until chief and i would never consider ourselves an event company but it's been pretty interesting to see the opportunities that exist for for people in that space for sure what are the i used to own an event business and we like did like seven figures and a year on it and it was a pain in the ass it was so hard it's so stressful it just like because like there's not many businesses where like if it rains you're screwed like if it rains one day out of three hundred sixty five days like you're you're you're poor yeah what yeah what what what opportunities you see with events well i mean i think that there's all sorts of different angles that people have created in in that world and you know i think a lot of the content businesses have even started to you know try to extend into that a little bit more but you know like summit series i think was just like a really interesting model of of what they were trying to create had a lot of community within it but you know again it was more events led than i think community led so it's been a an area that we definitely pay attention to because it feels related but not in our exact wheelhouse for sure have you heard of vista vista just is an interesting one too right yeah yeah vest is basically like y p they focus specifically again on that ceo and president profile i think they're close to like a two hundred million dollar business i heard that they're doing a hundred million in profit a year that's what i heard from a relatively trusted source but i i don't have proof of that would that would that surprise you i think that if if you look at some of those business models so let's take message or you take y po you know y po is a non nonprofit and yet might be one of the most profitable profits i would imagine because what we have is our biggest expenses you know we have these spaces we invest heavily into our coaches we do a lot of that stuff for y they actually don't have paid facilitator they train members to be the facilitator of a lot of those groups so it's an interesting model to to think about and what imagine that is a as a part of that they they do pretty well but i've never seen their financial so i cannot speak with authority on either of those businesses and wait y ipo you've never seen no no we've never seen it's public isn't it can't you just log in and because it's a nonprofit yeah they bucket things in ways that i think makes it pretty difficult to really discern what's underneath each thing so not fully able to break that down so right are you guys as chief were you able to run it mostly breakeven or were you lose it a lot in order to get big fast because it seems like it worked i would reframe the the the latter statement to say we were spending to make the experience as as strong as possible i wouldn't say that we were spending to grow faster like i said most of what we and how we have grown has been through word math so we haven't had to you know continue to just pour money into a marketing cycle but for us particularly over the pandemic and everything else we wanted to make sure that we were really investing in the member experience and and continuing to do that and we're continuing to do that and that's why we wanted to raise more capital to continue to do that and you know i i think about when brands are are made and you know and and it's in those tough times and for us being able to be there for our members through the pandemic when a lot of them at the very beginning of the pandemic there were fur there were all of those things like how do we invest in that experience over that period of time was really important to us if an employee if one of your members quits or leaves their job do you just have a team that will just like holler at their new employer and mean like hey you know ashley was a member of chief or you know ibm no longer pays for it and then you like you know somehow like get in with that company a little bit yeah i mean that i think that is actually one of the other reasons that we wanted to go in and raise this money is that right now it is a a to c to b business right like we developed the relationship with her she then goes and gets it sponsored and what we have found is that when she asks the sponsorship has actually been pretty easy to get yeah it's a no brainer but the barrier is her asking and so us going and actually building more of those relationships directly with the company it seems like a no brainer for them to proactively do more of this instead of reactive approve and so i think that's a an opportunity for us to explore to really take that burden off of her to to have to go and get that sponsorship but you know we we definitely you know twenty percent of the workforce changes jobs in any given year so there's definitely a lot of new relationships for us to help both the companies and the members navigate we're talking about tiger twenty one and it's cool so tiger twenty one is basically you know a community for people who have i think above ten million dollar liquid debt worth and that's cool that's pretty sexy you just hanging out rich folks all the time that's great but it's actually kind of a tough sell i would imagine because it's the person paying for it and when i heard about chief i was like oh my gosh this is like at you know when i our company when i sold we were only forty employees and so we were probably just crossing that threshold where we could afford just send only a couple of employees to like things like this and i was thinking about like my leadership team and like man if one of them come came to me and asking for this like this would just be like the easiest of like yeah yeah totally like i i would probably make them sign like i a deal like i like alright but if you quit within a year like you owe us like some re you have to reimburse us but i was like yeah this is this is just an easy sell for chief i understand why this company is gonna get so big yeah yeah i mean i think we've definitely heard stories where when there has been like the the there's some companies who i think are like well you're gonna go in and you're gonna meet new people and could actually open up new opportunities for you that you may not otherwise have and it's actually the exact opposite what we have found is when a company says no on the on the sponsorship it is a really clear signal to a lot of these people that okay you're not investing in me you're you're you're you don't value me and so that is actually the trigger of somebody thinking about going and leaving and and finding other opportunities and so they will self sponsor and go and find something versus be sponsored be happy in the job that they are and continue to grow as a leader for that company what other you know your focused on your thing but a lot of times when do here let's talk about ideas so things that we we may or may not do but it's interesting based off the intel that i know what other niches or opportunities do you like this business model for yeah i mean i think that this business model in particular is one that i think will have a really interesting next few years as people are still working from home and still in this hybrid world but wanting that community in those connections and so i think in those in any area where that feeling of loneliness is is still really present coming out of the pandemic i think there's some really interesting opportunities i think the hard part is the the nice the really nice aspect of chief is that ultimately it's the company that can sponsor it and so how do you find those areas and those demographics and those people who need that community who will crave that community but have somebody like the company that's willing to make that investment in those people and that's the one two punch that i think makes chief really interesting and harder to find outside of like the professional sphere our software is the worst have you heard of hubspot can see most crm are a cobb together mess but hubspot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous i think i love our new crm our software is the best hubspot grow better yeah well i was thinking about this model and i was like it makes perfect sense for this group because i was like you know we have a problem with women not the there's the you know it's not equal in terms of like the representation so like of course i would invest in this in order to help my folks and in doing so like whenever you have a group that feels like they're like disrespect or like they're they don't like how they're being treated they bond together in a great way it's like us versus the world like you know like mobilize them and that type of every great community is based on that and i was thinking like you just did this for like just anyone like let's say like i think this there's a company called v wise have you heard wise yeah yeah it and i i think it's basically just what you're doing but for everyone and i'm like well that's why is that succeeding and why is chiefs succeeding in that v wise and those or they are probably succeeding but they're probably no nowhere as big and impactful flows of you guys it's because that like this idea of like it's us versus the world that type of you need that in any type of community i think to in order to mobilize one another and to feel bonded yeah i wise i think focuses is in on senior executives probably like c suite executives and high growth startups ups that's like their their focus so and i think a lot of what they do really focuses in on that peer group model solely and doesn't have a lot of the community the broader community around it it doesn't have that shared mission and i i would potentially reframe what you said just a tad to say like i don't know that it's as us versus them as much as like a gal mission that brings you together that just makes you feel really bonded and it doesn't have to be at somebody else's expense but it is a a feeling of together ness that is created and i think that is what you know the the mission of chief really does allow for is that that broader con connect connectedness within the community yeah that's what i i didn't mean like a i said us versus the world but it was it's definitely it's not like we're trying to kick anyone's ass it's like you know not everyone can identify with how we feel finally i'm amongst my tribe and others don't exactly understand yeah you know vest could be cool i think vista is i think i i vest i think their whole like s is well it's kinda like blue collar so like someone who owns like a i'm moving or plumbing company that does like ten or twenty million in revenue and and that person to themselves probably says like i feel alone like you i don't i i don't hang out with people like me i i need to find like my people and so like there it's like that finding your your tribe maybe a little bit better than us versus the world yes exactly it it is that feeling of you know i don't have a group of people that understand my context easily and finding that being able to be able to tap into that and to be able to have the confidentiality that goes with some of that too because a lot of what happens in these peer groups is you know pretty raw honest authentic conversations that it's is hard to have with just anyone how are you as a founder able to get intel and insight into your customers and your product because i bet you're you don't go to some of these groups i mean you you don't go that would that wouldn't be great to have you you know like the big boss and in a bunch of these groups so like how are you able to learn quickly and figure out what's working and what's not yeah i mean i i we do not it's a it's a confidential space for them to have their conversation so we're not able to you know watch what is happening in each of these sessions but i think you know even going back to what we were just talking about of there being a gal feeling around this mission our members are just so passionate about this mission that they are not shy to give us feedback on anything and everything so we it has truly been kind of a an amazing experience to be able to get all of that feedback and be able to create some of this in partnership and we have some amazing members who have stepped forward and you know we have one member who's like i'm gonna just run a sub board services community group within chief and bring in speakers and help each other find opportunities and so you've just seen such a up uprising of both feedback but also really big interest in in stepping forward and helping to create stuff together so for one of our communities we have like fifteen thousand ish paying members sorta like you have but like not even close to the the the amount of revenue but a lot of people but we and like the hardest part in terms of like tactics for starting a community is that i found is getting people to participate online and it's like literally like just the friction and so a lot of the things that i've done i've built like so many things so many i've built a bunch of different communities on facebook groups because i have never seen a platform get or a community platform get as much engagement in terms of people it people in the group the ratio people in the group tells that the ratio of people in the group to people who participate in the group but then a lot of people i've seen like i've got a couple friends that i have huge blogs and they just go you know let's just say like one of these blogs is financial sam financial sam dot com personal finance blog it's awesome here he was like oh i'm gonna create a form on my website financial sam dot com slash form and he's even though he's got the huge audience the form is crickets and it's because like literally going to that website and posting on a forum is in like it's like a point zero one percent like ratio of people in the community and readers to participate participating whereas facebook i've found it to be like if you have a hundred people in the group like ten or twenty people will actually participate which is pretty astounding have you been able to crack that code with getting people to log in and go to your website and making it all happen and participating yeah yeah absolutely so we we started early days in a pretty similar tactic candidly of where are they already and how do we you know not create that additional friction of needing to go to our proprietary you know app website etcetera and so we actually started early days on slack and it was amazing to see the amount of interaction that was happening there and and how much people were you know stepping forward to help each other to connect to all do all sorts of different things the problem is that like slack is definitely not built for a community of oh man flex sucks i hate it like you can't it you don't even know who you're talking to unless they properly filled out their pro like it's just not the the the form and so we switched over to ours our own in in twenty twenty and it has sustained and i think for us a lot of it is around you know there's like these known touch points that are going to come up you're going to on every month they're going to have a core meeting that's going to pull you into the product in order for you to go and and get what you need to get to go and have that conversation and there's many of those types of things that you know there's there's many utilities that exist within the platform that pull you in and then once you're in draw you into a lot of the community aspects so it's been really great to see and it's everything from you know i it i'm looking to hire somebody get to them i need an employment lawyer like there's just so much need and for you to have a vetted network to be able to tap to do that you can't really do that on a linkedin at this point because if your linkedin is like mine i think know like i know like twenty percent of the people that i'm connected to at this point and so it's a really valuable utility and resource that we've been really excited about how much people have engaged in it and it's not just to go on in doom scroll and you know look at our content it's actual utility for them what i'm about to say kinda sounds like a backhand handed compliment but it's not it's it's very much a compliment but basically you guys have created this brand the reason it sounds bad is because i was gonna use the word like elitist but that's not fair i don't mean like elitist in the bad away maybe elite like just like bad asses you know like it's it's like harvard or something where it's like it's hard to get into there's not much on the internet about it you guys because i don't think you have a twitter or facebook or on instagram you only have linkedin and so like there's this thing where it's like i don't know if you like to admit it but it's like fo where it's like oh man like the cool peep the people who i wanna be are part of this thing i wanna be part of it but i can't you know i gotta get accepted how do you how do you go about creating a brand like that on purpose is this just something that came natural to you like how how do you make this where it's like so i don't mean you just executed that strategy well yeah yeah i mean we we like to think of ourselves as vetted we are a vetted community we're not an exclusive community we're not an elite community but we are vetted because so many of the people that our members d facto fall into the mentor position or you know the manager and so really for it to be a beneficial community for her it has to be vetted for people that are more for peers and you know i think that there is a level of aspirational branding that we wanted to to create with chief because candidly if you think about even like three years ago as we were building this if you heard the term a women's professional network you would not think of something aspirational it would be like warm white wine name tags and pants suits like that is what would be like in your mind of what a women's professional network was and so it was really important for us to create something that felt like we were celebrating our members instead of what so often a women's professional network gets created into and that was why you know we talked about that at the beginning of this that was why we wanted to have a space that felt that that brought that brand to life that helped to showcase what we meant by that and and the space really allowed that brand to come through it's why we didn't want to be on a lot of those social networks i think my my founder and i were talking about like a social media strategy we're like what are we gonna do just put inspirational quotes out there like every week like we've seen that like how do we make this feel different and so it was very important for us to really create a brand that we thought our members deserved how do you think this story is gonna earn end in terms of like you're gonna is someone gonna buy you do you think that like a linkedin would buy you do you think you wanna go public what do you what's gonna happen five or ten years down the line you think i think that we are excited to keep any and all option open but at the end of the day the entire value of this organization is our members and so and it's our members are here because they are they need the value that we create but they also care deeply about our mission and so anything that we do any partner that we you know want to talk to any strategy that we go in and enact has to be very much in line with that mission and i've been very fortunate in going the vc route that we've been able to find the right partners who can come on as those vcs that understand that that leads everything and anything for us would you wanna be ceo of a public company it has never been on my bucket list of things that i feel like crazy to do but i want chief to be as successful as it ever could possibly be and i want there to be a great outcome for our members our team etcetera and that leads more than anything well this is awesome this is this is really intriguing you've you haven't done a ton of podcasts i think right now we have we have our own the new rules of business by chief but i've not been on many podcasts as a as a guest do you think good and i i noticed that and that's why i wanted to talk to you do you think that you're just so under the radar for i think help the the the there are so many other businesses in the are our little circle jerk startup world it's kinda full of stupid hype and there's so many of them that are we talk about so much but they're like kinda bullshit like not good companies and they're gonna go nowhere but then you folks are the exact opposite where you're like seem like you actually have a pretty substantial business i think it's gonna be actually incredibly big very few people are talking about you you know what i mean and i i find that i i kinda think that's actually cool and i wanna to know how do how does that make you feel i'm right where i wanna be i i i i think that there's actually something really amazing about being under you know hyped i i really like kind of making sure that we are focused on the most important thing which is like building a great business and not like and even for lindsay and i you know as c cofounder part of the reason why we don't do a lot of you know publicity and other things is because we are actually trying to showcase our members more than ourselves like they're actually a hell a lot more impressive than either of us are and so it feels it feels right for what we are creating to be had down and focus on building a great business versus you know building hype yeah well it's awesome where where are you from or are you raised you grew up in if in new york area okay so you so and and where is your c cofounder from also upstate new york but like new city upstate new york like an hour not my true upstate new york well that's badass i'm i'm i'm happy we got to talk i think it's amazing what you guys have accomplished you're you're under the radar i think and the reason i wanted to talk to you was i noticed not a lot of people had talked to you and it i don't know i feel like maybe i could like i take a little bit of pride and like we spotted this winner not quite early on raise money at a billion dollar valuation but like maybe maybe maybe a billion will be considered quite early for how the story ends though so i'm really appreciative that you guys that you decide to come on and give me a give me a shot yeah no i was excited to come on and and have the conversation and like i said i think a lot of people i i remember very early days of even just trying to get a lawyer to like help us establish the company and like yeah i was talking about wanting to be vc funded and i literally could not get a lawyer to work with me because they were like this should not be a vc funded business this is a very nice you know lifestyle business like i can't even get a lawyer i'm gonna hey do this so it's it is nice to be able to you know celebrate some of these wins and and for people to know that we have a deep mission but it is a a great business too lawyers wouldn't talk to you and and you're happy that you're able to like celebrate this win yeah so yeah we i couldn't even pay lawyers to to represent us so it's nice to have these wins and be able to you know not only show that we're a really mission oriented business but we're a great business too and i think that's first of all i hate when people say it let's say oh this is a nice flight this is a nice lifestyle business i hate that for a they're they're trying to insult it's be insulting a little bit and b they're wrong because lifestyle businesses are like what what does that mean it's a lifestyle business oh like it's just a company that can make like twenty or thirty million dollars a year in profit and i just own it all yeah then it is the life like yeah like a lifestyle it what's that mean like like like i don't i don't know like mars candy like a family owned business that's like the largest company in the world they ass sick lifestyle so i i i cannot stand when they say that i think that's really stupid but with your with your business i do think i'm like man i would wanna be greedy who'd own the whole thing i wouldn't wanna raise money and so is there any do you think do you think you'll have regret about raising money or at least about raising as much money as you have because the business model is pretty freaking perfect like it's like a pretty efficient amazing model i think yeah i mean i think that there is a a a definite strategy that businesses like ours could have of going very slowly and using proceeds from the the business to feedback into the services that you want to create that's definitely one way that the strategy could go i think i i do not think that i would have any regret with the the way in which we are going because i think we're impatient of trying to build a really meaningful powerful network for badass ass women that that that need this and you know at the heart of the mission is like to drive more women into positions of leadership and keep them there it's over two hundred years before we get to gender parity in senior executive positions and if a little bit of dilution means that we can go and execute on that mission faster i'm game i understand why people invested you're very good at your pitch you've have honed in you you seem like a a force to be reckon with congratulations on everything i'm happy i got to speak with you thank you for coming on do you do use social you is there any is there any thing that you wanna plug like you're your your i don't even think i saw you using social today yeah i'm not i'm not as much of a social media person as my founder i'm on linkedin but yeah i think the thing i would plug is is our podcast as well the new rules of business by chief which we just launched last year and so people wanna check that out they they can see us there how's it going podcast or pain in the ass to grow aren't they it's fun though i actually like i every single podcast episode i'm kind of like this is like a nice little learning experience for me too you're just talking with like experts in their fields and learning a ton through it that i'm really enjoying it i think it's fun to do so at the hustle when we so we we are acquired by hubspot so we don't have advertising anymore but before we are advertising bird to make money and when that was the case it was very tough it was very hard and because it was like alright how do we get downloads up how do we get downloads up for you folks like maybe because you're not making money directly from it it's so important to get big or whatever but it's not like you know you're not gonna go hungry and so yeah if i was in your position i would think it's awesome as well yeah that is true that we were not a advertising led podcast business i appreciate it thank you yeah thank you this is fun