Episode 82: A Mission to Simplify Lending & Grow Businesses | Keren Moynihan | Founder Boss Insights
Keren Moynihan is the co-founder of Boss Insights, a financial tech service company that provides back office systems that bridge the gap between banks and small businesses. Essentially making it easier to bank and get loans as a small business. Yes, please! In this episode we discuss why finances and banking can be so frustrating for a small business, how it can be improved and why it’s actually in the best interest of the banks to do so. Plus why relationships are the most important part of any business.
“Take the thing your suffering with and turn it into gold.”
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“Are you part of the problem or are you a part of the solution, what’s your contribution to life?” - JURASSIC 5
Incorrectly quoted for the above in this episode is the Pharcyde - also a GREAT group.
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Follow along by reading the Transcript
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Relationships in Acting
00:22 Welcome to The Powerful Ladies Podcast
00:49 Meet Keren Moynihan: Co-Founder of Boss Insights
01:06 Challenges in Banking for Small Businesses
02:57 The Impact of COVID-19 on Banking
05:14 The Importance of Personal Approach in Finance
11:07 The Role of FinTech in Modern Banking
15:01 The Need for Digitization in Financial Services
19:58 The Future of Banking and Financial Services
26:45 The Intersection of Technology and Human Experience
40:47 Introduction to Amy Mullins
41:04 The Importance of Dazzling
41:55 Turning Pain into Gold
43:17 The Power of Support and Teamwork
45:48 Finding Meaning and Passion
47:57 Discovering Your Joy Zone
51:20 Navigating the COVID-19 Impact
59:05 The Need for Life Skills Education
01:01:49 The Power of Knowledge Sharing
01:09:08 Balancing Capitalism and Contribution
01:13:11 Final Thoughts and Encouragement
For anyone out there who's ever tried to be an actor, the first thing you learn about is relationships. And then somehow we get into this world and things are compartmentalized and you create these masks of yourselves through these personas. It's really simple. Let's figure it out. We have in front of us so many people who can do so many specialized things.
That's Keren Moynihan and this is The Powerful Ladies Podcast.
Hey guys, I'm your host, Kara Duffy, and this is The Powerful Ladies Podcast where I invite my favorite humans, the awesome, the up to something, and the extraordinary to come and share their story. I hope that you'll be left, entertained, inspired, and moved to take action towards living your most powerful life.
Keren Moynihan is the co-founder of Boss Insights, a financial tech service company that provides back office systems that bridge the gap between banks and small businesses, essentially making it easier to bank and get loans as a small business. Yes, please. In this episode, we discuss why finances and banking can be so frustrating for small businesses, how it can be improved, and why it's actually in the best interest of the banks to do so, plus why relationships are the most important part of any business.
All that, and so much more coming up. But first, if you're interested in discovering what possibilities and businesses are available for you to create and to live your most fulfilling life, please visit the powerful ladies.com/coaching and sign up for a free coaching consultation with me. There is no reason to wait another day to not be living your best life when you instead could be running at full speed towards your wildest dreams today.
Well, welcome to the Powerful Ladies podcast. Hello. So amazing to be here. Um, I would love to begin led by introducing yourself and what you're up to.
Sure. I'm Keren Moynihan. I am running a startup company. It's a toddler at this point in time, two and a half years old. Um, and it's going through those, that type of phase nine people, right?
Snap dive in the middle of COVID. Um, yeah, that's, that's me. Oh, the company is called Boss Insights. Uh, boss Insights stands for Back Office Software Systems. It is the story of, uh, a tech, uh, tech founder and a financial person meeting in the middle and trying to make it so that banks are in a better position to partner with their business clients.
And what, um, when they are in a better position, what does that allow for the banks as well as their customers? Oh, well now I'm gonna get into it.
I mean, we're sitting here in a time where everybody is doing without doing, without toilet paper, doing without social interaction. I, uh, up until now, businesses in general, were doing without the capital they needed.
Mm-hmm. 28% of businesses would go to a bank and get approved. And if they went to a credit union, it'd be in the 30% range. If they went to an alternative lender, it would be in the 50 50 range. All not great, all painful, takes a long time. It's opaque. And that's just the lending that has nothing to do with the rest of it.
Do you want the best deposit rates? Do you want the best, uh, foreign exchange rates because it is all transactional. And what we did was we created a data platform. It is the least sexy sounding thing in the world, but it really lets the bank do something very exciting, which is partner with their business.
Client proactively tell them, Hey, I see you need this and I can give this to you. So that is what we've been working on. And in the middle of co COVID, we've been really responsible for updating our platform so it would serve PPP. Now, we serve lenders and there's some amazing stories I could tell about what banks have done that they did not do before, COVID, and we've even had calls from borrowers.
Because in the, when, when you and my, I met Kara, we were talking with how even PPPA lending product that looks at how much are you spending, not how much are you making and how much can you afford to borrow, how much are you spending to keep the economy moving? Didn't serve everyone.
Mm-hmm.
But certainly served a lot, you know, 4 million borrowers, $659 billion Yeah.
In two months. Staggering. It's huge.
Yeah. Yeah. I was watching a program with the, um, the Fed chairman of the US the other day and to see his like calm confidence and like, yeah, everything kind of sucks right now and here's some more things we can do and I really think we're gonna get through. This was not what I was expecting to see.
'cause usually it's very like numbers, this, that interest rates, things that most people are just goes right over their head. Mm-hmm. And I was surprised to see such a personal approach. Um. You know, what, how does being more personal impact banking and financing for most of these companies? And, and does it matter?
With things like finance, it's kind of like computers or cooking for people that don't cook, there's a fear factor. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. And so you kind of push it away and you keep one step removed. I didn't start running this company. I started working as a banker, and you're, you're meant to be representing the bank, but I felt the borrowers, each business is a person and mm-hmm.
Each person has a family and people they care about. So if you talk about numbers, and you can say, $659 billion given to over 4 million businesses with over 5,400 banks, it means it just doesn't, it doesn't resonate, right? Mm-hmm. If you say, we're gonna help you so you can stay alive and then you can help the economy, we recognize you and the value you bring, it's not just, are you.
Running a coffee shop, it's, you're a part, you know, this is a community. All of us. Then it resonates, and we're probably gonna look back on this time as a history point, because things are just so radically different than they've ever been before. Uh, and there are heroes at work. Mm-hmm. And then there are people who are, you know, like us in the financial services industry, who are just really killing themselves, working to make sure that the economy stays forward while all the heroes are working on the health crisis.
Mm-hmm.
So that's why it's important to tell it as a story rather than as a numerical point or a footnote. Are there problems? Yes. But I've seen a lot of people really trying their absolute best to meet the challenges of the day. Yeah. And
you guys are based in Canada, correct?
Yes, we are. Uh, we have offices in Canada and we have offices in Boston for mm-hmm.
Anyone who's listening out there, Boston is an amazing place to start a company. There's so much industry support there, and I might have suggested that to some politicians here in Canada and in Toronto and in Ontario. I might have screamed it from the rooftops and it just got listed in an, in an article that I didn't even realize that was gonna be part of the story, um, because Boston is doing some really incredible things.
But, but yes, we're in Canada.
Mm-hmm.
So there's, there's a lot of support we got in Canada during COVID, and it's, it's quite amazing to see things happen in weeks, not years when it needs to, you wonder sometimes how will things go in an emergency, and now we have a sense of it, which makes you more comfortable.
Yeah. Canadian startups would be nowhere without the American market. So I will say that the, there is some incredible things happening in the States and the corridor between the two. You can get the best of both worlds.
Mm-hmm. Well, I, I think, you know, COVID obviously shows how interconnected the whole world is today, and I think we forget when we talk about the economy sometimes, even though we know it's global.
You don't realize how far, um, your dollar goes around the world to make all these other different economies work and people to succeed and thrive. Um, you know, we talk about how you can't run a business by yourself and you shouldn't, like, there's no need to. Um, and I think we sometimes get caught between thinking about how can I do this for me or our country or our state?
And we forget about how we have to be responsible for the fact that everything today is interconnected. Like nothing. Nothing is, um, truly, uh, isolated or independently sustainable the way that we think it is. How are you, oh, go ahead.
Oh, I was just gonna say, we're watching this the day after a rocket launched.
Mm-hmm. And
we landed and I think within, what was it? Eight minutes went from zero kilometers. I heard it in kilometers, but kilometers per hour to, what was it, like 12,000? I don't know if I'm right about the 12,000, but it, it was an insane, it was an insane thing to be watching. Mm-hmm. And the reason I was watching it is because of my co-founder.
We were all connected. I on my own. I'm not watching a spaceship launch into the world, but at night when I'm educating my kids to the best of my ability, and believe me, thank God, you know, thank goodness for the teachers. Right. I keep in my mind. Do you know the Carl Sagan quote about the thin blue dot?
Yes. That picture with the dot and everything that's happened. Isn't captured in one.in the middle of a sunbeam, we are all connected. Mm-hmm. You can see it with perspective. Einstein said everything is relative and I think that's a, so we're all connected and it is so easy to criticize and it is so easy to sit and wallow in what's wrong.
And I'm not gonna say things aren't wrong. There is a lot that's wrong.
Mm-hmm.
What's harder is to pick up the thing, pick up whatever tool you have, and what can you do to make things better. Yep. Sometimes that's just listening. I did a lot of listening on the other podcast we were on, and I learned a lot.
And sometimes that's, here's what I can do. I, I got this. So it's just, I, I keep holding onto that thinking that this could be a pivotal moment and we could have a wake up call here a little
bit. Mm-hmm. In addition to seeing how, um. There are changes happening rapidly to support, and that there we can fix things even in a crisis when we, when we really put the effort in.
Yeah. What other positives are you seeing from your perspective in the financial world? The,
well, first I'll explain the problem. Mm-hmm. Because that's what I've been trained to do as a, as a tech founder. The problem is that regardless of what tool you're solving, when you run a FinTech company to the banks, to the credit unions, what they're experiencing is.
FinTech Tinder, they're not in a small town and there's a couple fintechs and they're gonna get married when they're 21. No, they're in New York City.
Mm-hmm. There's
another FinTech coming around in the next five minutes. You don't just have to present your solution. You need to present your solution in a way that makes them wanna take it through their company and go through vendor services.
And there are so many systemic barriers to getting that through, that if you actually wanna bring your company off the ground, you have to do some serious growth hacking. Mm-hmm. Um, growth hacking is a tech term. The best growth hack is the diamond ring. It actually does not have any intrinsic value. We all buy it.
Amazing growth hack. So if you're a FinTech, you need to figure out what, how are you going to get the attention of people who are very busy, have a very murky idea of what they wanna do, and then convince them enough that they wanna take it through their vendor services. So that is the challenge. That was before us.
And then recently we wrote something called social collaboration, a play on the word social distancing. Because right now we are in the ultimate synchronicity in the market.
Mm-hmm.
In the US there's 15,000 financial institution lensing in 15,000 different ways. Not now. Now you have 5,400. So a third of the ecosystem lending in one way, I compared it to a flash mob.
A financial flash mob. We are all dancing the same dance so that borrowers can live to fight another day. They're the economic engine. We need to support them.
Mm-hmm.
It's in 2008. It was too big to fail here. It's too many to fail. Right? We need to keep them off the ground. So suddenly those lenders, those banks, and credit unions were all trying to solve one problem.
You weren't saying, Hey, digitization is a really good idea. And they'd say, well, is it. We we're kind of on the way. Yeah. They were saying, yes, we hear you. What do you have and why should I choose you? Mm-hmm. So that's, that's been amazing social collaboration,
right? Yeah. Yeah. There's, I there's so many things in the financial space that you're like, how is this not like the leading edge of what we're doing?
Right. Like, some banks ha seem to be like getting it and moving fast, like Zelle or Zelle, I'm not quite sure the right way to say it. Like that's changing things. Venmo's changing things. Yeah. Um, just, you know, there's so much space between the traditional bank from 50 years ago to Bitcoin. Like there's so much room in between of how do we modernize the economy so that it matches with everything else we're doing as humanity.
And I always laugh, like the last time I bought a car, which, you know, different purchasing power, but I had to fill out so much paperwork and I'm like, how is it possible that I need this much paperwork? And like, why do I have to go into a bank to submit like a second DBA for my business? Like what? Like I can't do this all online or electronically.
Like I don't, this is crazy to me. So, Kara, you're so right
and I, I don't even know where to start. Do you really need to fill in your first name, last name, email address ever again? No. You don't. No. There are so many ways you can go around that and the technology that Boss Insights offers. Mm-hmm. What we're doing is people are using cloud-based systems in their business all the time.
An accounting system, a marketing system, we grab it all, we call it an API hub and we give it to the bank. So when you're opening a deposit account, when you're. Processing a loan, you can do it in minutes, not months. That information can then tell the bank, Hey, you deserve a discount here. But people have to be willing and there is so much inertia, and we, up until March, we would say to people, we can accelerate your small and medium business, your commercial lending from months to minutes.
And they'd say, yeah, yeah, I hear you. Um, we're digitizing, which is, I I liken it, you know, in the Bachelor everybody says we're we're falling in love. Yeah. I we're in the process of falling in love. So we're in the process of digitizing. Well, the second COVID happened. Everyone was in the process of going to Costco to get laptops for their teams.
So it was it, it's really hard to convince such a large engine, and this is not me. I'm not trying to throw shade on. Mm-hmm. What banks and credit unions are doing, they are regulatory experts. They are following guidelines that are very stringent, and fintechs are nowhere without them. Right? Mm-hmm. I'm not talking about fintechs that are doing alternative lending.
I'm talking about the fintechs that are accelerating the banks and the credit unions, nowhere without the experts in regulation.
Mm-hmm.
What we need is the collaboration between the ones who can figure out how to make you never have to fill in your name and email address ever again. To the people who are able to access the capital for you.
And that's what we've been working on for a couple years. Mm-hmm. Giving banks the clearest picture of their customers so that they create true partnership. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on how we convince them. 'cause we, this is something that we're working on every day.
Mm-hmm. We really
do change it.
Mm-hmm. All the time.
Well, I would imagine that your system would also take away some of the human error or human biases as well. Right. If it's a, if it's a system that's tracking everything instead and saying, here's the one that could use something. Right. Like, it makes me think of how a lot of the auto insurance has pivoted mm-hmm.
Where, you know, you, you can get points for all the things you're doing. Right. And they can, like, it's so much more gamified. Yeah. Yeah. It's so much more, um, specific to the individual versus, um. Not like, and that's where I see opportunities. So does, does, um, digitizing more of the financial processes, does it take away some of the human error or biases, or could it, well, let's take PPP as an example.
Mm-hmm. Right.
We have so many people fighting to solve this problem for the banks and the, and the credit unions. They're spoiled for choice. And two weeks ago, there were three seminars given by three different accelerator groups or industry associations. And everybody was on there saying, we're gonna automate this all for you.
Same marketing word. We're gonna automate it all. The borrower just has to do 20 different steps. No big deal. Oh my goodness. And this is the easy, this is the easy one. This isn't the SBA forms, which by the way, no shade to the SBA. There are people at the SBA who have been on the phone with us at eight o'clock on and in a weeknight or on a Saturday helping us get up and running.
But. You have the regular forms or you have these 20 steps, or you have this API hub with boss insights and it can be two steps for the borrower, or five steps maximum for the borrower. Mm-hmm. Now we're then convincing the lender, they should be offering this to all of the borrowers, and here's why. If they make that faster, when the audits come, all the information is there, but also their forms get filled out and they get compensated by the SBA.
So here we have collaboration.
Mm-hmm.
That's what automation does. If you know somebody's, if you give them a username and password and pull data and give them the control over what information they can share with you, which is what we're doing for all the borrowers. Mm-hmm. There is no more manual filling out of forms for the borrowers.
There is no manual assessment from the lenders. This already happened with checks. At first, everyone said no one's gonna, everyone's gonna wanna bank with their teller. These are personal. These people come to your wedding. Right. I can't even imagine that as a con idea. I was a little kid with my mother. I was the one for some reason always going with my mother to the bank.
And that is unfathomable. Now we don't talk about that our, I mean, I'm holding up my phone again with my Zoom background that you can't see it. So it looks like a green screen. But we haven't done that in lending. Mm-hmm. And I don't understand why. 'cause again, our platform was available in 2017. I, but I don't sit in judgment of that.
Hmm. If I haven't figured out how to communicate that, that's on me. And we, you know, we are in market, but with 15,000 financial institutions, the US shows stats of 30% being willing to partner with fintechs. Even though McKinsey just released a report saying that borrowers businesses, 61% of them support giving their information if it's gonna make their lives easier.
Yeah. I mean, to, to me it's like the easy, um, the ui, ux, uh, conversation, right? Like in every business we're trying to eliminate every click possible because every click is a reason not to proceed. So it seems like what you're providing just takes away all, all the barriers to entry. And I think the reason that it, it's not moving as fast as it should be or could be because the, the bo, the lenders aren't realizing that they, they're not realizing where the power sits, like, right.
It sounds like they think the power still sits with them as the lender and the institutions where I think a lot of the, the pivoting has been towards how like. If you need to be the only or the best choice for your customer, the borrower, what would you put in place? Like how do you become the best? So if only 30% are getting through with the traditional methods or less, I can understand why they're like, it's no big deal.
We don't need to switch yet. 'cause they don't feel the rub, like all the pressure points on the borrower and it's not something a
FinTech can explain either. Mm-hmm. You, Carrie, you made a point earlier on saying that we're in a globalized market, right? Mm-hmm. So I think traditionally banks were thinking of themselves as a geographic entity.
There's no such thing anymore. Nope. Right. So when I was in the UK last December, I couldn't pay with cash. Mm-hmm. There's no such thing. That was, that was really interesting actually. And, and a lot of those players. Are coming into the US market. In fact, a lot of the American banks that we know are actually owned by entities outside of the us.
Yeah. So really what you're talking about is a incongruency with the reality of the market.
Yes, and And I think I'm thinking about how many apps and different platforms like technology, I'm recommending all the time to clients and people within powerful ladies. And they're all based on how do I make your job as CEO faster?
Like we always wanna be reducing people's CEO time so they can actually do the thing their business is providing, like being the value of their business versus the operations of it. And all the platforms that are winning are the ones that simplify what you have to do. They multitask, they like basically become your digital assistants and yeah.
You know, I look at even how some of the, um, like there are banks that you can't even visit. They're only online. Yeah. And that doesn't scare, like it might scare my mother who like was resistant to automating her bill pay until about, like three years ago. But everyone else, like, I don't know the last time a millennial has walked into a bank.
Like it's Yeah, no, it doesn't really happen. Mm-hmm. It
maybe when they start their business, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um, it's, it's actually where we go to look for the problems that a bank has. But I know banks that have taglines, like getting you back to business, right? Mm-hmm. That's CC Bank. Bank in Utah. They, they very much get it.
The, you asked what was unusual about this time aside from everything. Yeah. What's unusual about this time is that the stars of the show are the community banks.
Mm-hmm. When do
they get their spot in the, in the limelight? When do they actually, and here we do, we have them serving the borrowers better than some of the largest names around.
So it's, it's really interesting to see that every type of financial institution is there for a reason in the US and they'll serve a different type of customer. The, I was surprised to see how many community banks came to the table and really wanted to make things efficient and. When I was in sales discussions with them, they wouldn't ask me just about solving PPP.
They want this kind of functionality beyond it. Yes, they have the focus. Now the everybody in the institution wants it. So let's take this and digitize it. Now. That will be the pilot for the ongoing digitization for SMB and commercial going forward. So there's some really good news stories.
Yes. You know, it, it has to happen, right?
Like I think about, um. Most people who are starting a business, um, only take the leap because they have done something financially smart where they have enough put aside to have a runway. Right. Whether, even if it's three months, there's enough of a runway, they're like, okay, I can take this risk. I can leave my day job, I can go do this thing or turn my side hustle into full-time.
Yeah. And it makes me crazy that it is so hard for people who pay their bills on time, pay rent on time, like the entire, um, FICO score system that we have doesn't honor what most people are doing every day that shows they're a responsible citizen.
Oh, I can't even, I was on the phone with a credit card company a couple years ago and they said, we, I'm sorry, we can't approve your credit card increase.
I said, have you looked? They said, no, we just did our auto approval. Mm-hmm. And I said, what's the problem? Well, you don't have enough credit. I said, do you hear what you're saying? I'm a responsible person, and if you could just do it manually. And finally, after 45 minutes, I convinced the person on the other end of the phone by sheer desperation to look at my score and they said, oh my God, we can triple your.
I said, no, double will be enough. Thanks. Right. But then I learned from, uh, Bowell, from Eva Wong's company mm-hmm. That you can keep a credit card open longer and it improves your credit score. So there are so many things that this is the thing systems in place, there are limitations to them. And that's why iteration is always important.
Mm-hmm. It's only by accessing the real-time information of a business that you can establish what their merit is. Yeah. We're looking at financial statements that are six months old. It doesn't make any kind of sense. And when was the last time you, me, anyone, you know, running a business was in, was encompassed by their financial statement.
Anyway, it shows. Yeah. The bare minimum, it doesn't show the maximum. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'm not here to try and get banks to change their credit models. I'm here to say, let's first automate what is incredibly manual and tedious. I was not happy when I was working as a commercial banker to say any different would be very, would be a complete lie.
And it's because I, I love this. Life is about relationships. This was 10% of my job. The rest was gathering financials and running numbers that a calculator could run that, that honestly my, my child who's in grade one could do. Mm-hmm. And what we needed to be doing more of is getting a computer or a machine to do that and getting us to understand how do we move this needle forward.
Yeah. I, and recently I was at Money 2020 and I asked everyone, there's this one, uh, metric. It's the main metric on whether you get money during normal times in applications. Do you have enough money to cover the cost of the loan and the principal and interest, and then 25% on top, it's called debt service coverage.
Mm-hmm.
And no one knew why. It's 1.25 times, like why if you borrow a thousand dollars, you need 1,250. Do you know why? Nobody knew why. The numbers should tell us why we should be able to see in real time what do businesses need? As a whole. Mm-hmm. So that we can lend to them individually as one. And that's, you know, with just a little bit of data science, a little bit of machine learning and ai, we are there, but there has to be a willingness of the industry to come and join us.
Um, I think we're finding people who are very enthusiastic 'cause they want some control back to the banks have given their SMB lending outside mm-hmm. And they're given their tech outside and they want to now work with different types of partners so that they can maintain some autonomy. So Yeah. And
there's, there's so much opportunity.
Like I think about, um, some of the clients that I've taken from Zero to like, through the startup process and even converting them into having their first business bank account. Right. Like. The secrets of how many businesses, small businesses don't have a business bank like always horrifies me when I'm talking to them.
I'm like, Hey, we have to get you a separate bank account, right? But I don't blame them.
Nobody wants to pay those fees.
No, nobody wants to pay the fees or go through the headache. And even people who have had a business bank account, they're like, I know I need that. So I set that up. Well, they did it before they formed their company.
So before they had their LLC or before they were a corporation, so they had to go and redo it all over again. And I've had quite a few, 'cause I work with a lot of women entrepreneurs and. They're right in their most. I have a big group of women who are between like 25 and 40 who I work with. And in that timeframe, these women are not just launching businesses and starting to hire a team, but they're getting married or they're having kids and the hoops they've had to jump through and aligning their documentation because their name changed or because they added a new DBA or because they did something else.
I'm like, this is so crazy. Like I, I coach people to be playing offense, not defense. And banking is usually defense. 'cause it's yesterday's work that you're trying to, to fix. Yeah. And to spend days trying to find, like get documentation because your marriage license and Yeah. Or like you signed it, your, in your middle initial, not your full name, it doesn't match.
Now you have to come and show like 20 forms of proof of documentation and you're like to deposit money. Like, no, I'm not trying to steal it. Like, just let it go in.
Yeah. And, and we're. Honestly, in North America, things are easier than they were in the UK because there were East Meets West and the money laundering issues there.
Look, there we have been talking about partnering with companies who do KYB, which is know your business or KYC. Mm-hmm. And the world is fraught with, I I, when you're talking I hear, I feel like I have two children, and one is, is the lenders who are dealing with the regulation and the fraud. Mm-hmm. And then the other are the, the business owners who are just saying, could I just get some functionality Please.
And. It's just a brutal, antiquated system. One thing we're working on right now is automating how to open a deposits account.
Mm-hmm. Because
if you have cloud-based systems, let's say cloud-based accounting systems, and you often have a lot of what you're talking about already done, so that if you sign into that system, the bank can see it already.
So they're not asking you every single piece of information. They're asking you the differential. Right. Yeah. And that will help people out a lot. Look, equality is an amazing thing. I love equality. I think sometimes people think equality means the same. Mm-hmm. And it's been shown that diversity leads to the best results.
Right. When Microsoft created those glasses, that you hit the button and then someone who's vision impaired can see a skateboarder in front of them that was done with someone who was vision impaired on the team. Diversity really helps things out. Mm-hmm. When you're speaking about women. And three young women that I'm raising, for example, right?
They go to high school, but then undergrad is basically a repeat of high school for all intensive purposes and doesn't, it really needs to be looked at in my opinion. Mm-hmm. And then you have a master's and that's when you're employable. That doesn't make any kind of sense. The peak years where you're at, your most physically fit, where you're at, your most biologically fit, so to speak.
You're sitting there in school and partying. I'm not, look, I partied, partying, rocks, but life is also above balance and you shouldn't be 30 before you get out there ready to go. Um, and again, I know people are getting married later and later and I only met my significant other when I was 32, which meant that I was at that party for over a fricking decade.
That is a long time sitting at that party. I, you know, so I just. I think that there's a little bit of a societal, it was only when I had a child and I was trying to breastfeed my child and I said to the person who was helping me, wait, I can't shortcut this my whole life. Mm-hmm. MBA law school, everything.
I was like, okay, what's the fastest way to get there? What's, and they're like, no, 'cause this is biology, right? Mm-hmm. So, and, and I realized in that moment, biology trumps capitalism not the other way around.
Mm-hmm.
So I do think we need to look at that a little bit. As a society, it is really hard to get your career up and running when you're in school for so long.
Society makes dating more sport than for its original purpose. And I'm not, this is, you know, nobody's saying it doesn't matter who you're picking, how many people you're picking, you do what you wanna do that makes you happy. Yeah. It's just that there are, at the end of the day, there are certain biological realities.
And let's say you even managed to get pregnant a lot later with help. Mm-hmm. You still have to raise, you know, I am, I had three kids in three years. They're still like a, it's, this is, you know, there's a certain reality to things that you actually cannot go beyond and pushing people to explain Yeah. Why they're taking, they, there should be, and I think actually in Canada, within a certain amount of days, there's a very easy, okay, you got married within this many days, provide your marriage license.
Mm-hmm.
There should be a very systematic way to just process that data.
Right.
Secured. I know it, but there isn't,
well, you would think that if you, it, it's, it's in the same space as like why we need so much, um, technologically technological revolution even in the healthcare system and medical and doctors like, yeah.
If you filed the paperwork at the city for your marriage license, like how is that not syncing to the rest of who you are? Like, people can know Facebook knows so much about me and their data collecting, you know, backend or Amazon does. Amazon would know I'm married before the bant. Well, Walmart knew someone was pregnant before she did.
Yes. Um, it gets a little scary. They, they say it's because of privacy. I, it's also, they said they'll, they'll point to procurement rules because, you know, there's mm-hmm. Regulations and whatnot. The bottom line is there is a systematic problem with using FinTech services for large governmental organizations.
Yep. We, I sit in frustration a lot with the, I could solve this, I could solve this. The government GR funding was in Canada, the US, and the uk, and I followed all three. And we were, and the US opened the doors and said, you know what? We love your functionality. And there's, and that's just one, you know, healthcare, I think everyone could agree it's very expensive.
Anything we could do to make it cheaper and more efficient would be great. Mm-hmm. Be a nonpartisan issue, but I don't know. I won't. Yeah, I think so. I, you know, um, and it's just about collaboration. Mm-hmm. The phone calls that I was on in the thick of PPP, forgiveness, all right, here's what I need. That never happens from a bank.
And then I say, here's what we have. Mm-hmm. And, and then they say, within 20 minutes, what is your price? That's usually six months, what I just described. Yeah. And, and then I say, what are other people telling you? What do you like and what do you like about what we're telling you? And can you do me a favor?
Can you tell it to me as if you're not talking to me, but talking about me?
Mm-hmm.
That's very smart to do that when
you have
them on the phone.
Mm-hmm.
But well, some do, some don't. Yeah. And I, and the people who do, we solve the world for them in that moment, right? Mm-hmm. Because we're literally there truly trying to do that.
I want to, there isn't someone trying to pull, there's no pulling the wool over. There's no scorpion and frog. I need to show my value, our goals are aligned for them to continue to adopt me. I'm a SaaS platform. Yeah. So the more open they are, the better I can do that. But they have to trust that they're, they have to trust really quickly.
Mm-hmm. And I think, again, if we look at this, I'm not a sociologist, I'm not a biologist, but we'll understand that in this moment our hearing got more fine tuned than our eyesight. Yeah. Because people are making some pretty quick judgements on who to trust enough to go into due diligence with.
Mm-hmm.
And,
uh, yeah, so it's very fun. It's amazing. Were you, Kara, when you were in school, when you were a kid, did you have the sense that, oh God, everything's already decided? I
did. No.
Oh, okay. So I did. I was like, oh, it's all decided. This is so boring. I don't feel like anything's decided right now. Feels a little nothing is.
No, no. I mean, um. There's so much opportunity right now, and it makes me crazy to see so much of the conversation through the news anyway, being very much about what's not possible anymore. And I'm like, there's so much that is possible right now. Like, you know, all of the, the small businesses that I work with, I keeping being like, guys, like people have money to spend, people are taking new risks now.
Um, and I think this applies to your clients as well, like they're, if you want to exist in a post COVID or with CO world, um, every, all the rules have changed. Mm-hmm. So what are you doing now to be, as you said earlier, like how do we do this faster? How do we do it smarter? And my favorite word is like, how are we dazzling?
The customers that we want to be working with. And there's this element of dazzle that, um, if you're not thinking, how can you dazzle your people? I don't, I really don't know if you're gonna exist. Right? The, the shops that are unfortunately closing, or the businesses that are consolidating, I think that they're the ones who haven't been thinking about what you are begging people to think about, right?
Which is, how do we do this faster? How do we make it simpler? How do we stop doing things in our business that has nothing to do with the value that we wanna provide? And I like, that's, that's the opportunity I see. For Can you please go and consult for all of the FIS in the United States, please? I would
love to just confirm.
We'll set it up. I, yeah. It's so true. I, mm-hmm. I mean, it's so simple. For anyone out there who's ever tried to be an actor, the first thing you learn about is relationships. And then somehow we get into this world and things are compartmentalized and you create these masks of yourselves or these personas.
It's really simple. Yeah. Businesses need banks. Yes. Banks need businesses. So why don't we both try? Let's try, let's try it. Shake hands in the words of Russell Peters, let's hug it out and let's get back to business. Mm-hmm. Let's figure it out. We have in front of us so many people who can do so many specialized things, and all of those things are required actually now.
Mm-hmm.
I,
when I was preparing for this talk that you and I were having, I read your questions. Yeah. Who's inspired you? And I get inspired by a lot of Ted Talks, and there's one where someone said he, he challenged the thesis of, we are so smart that if we went into a population back in time, we could help them out.
And he challenged it by trying to create a toaster. Do you know if someone goes to make plastic? Now, there's no textbook that tells you how to do that. He had to get textbooks from the 17th century. I'm, I'm really mispronouncing this. I'm gonna have to look up his name so we can reference him. Yeah. In three months, he showed up with a toaster that looked like it had been melted itself in a microwave.
That's the best we can do now. That's the downside of our society right now. But here's the mm-hmm. Upside of our society. I don't. I feel like all the references I'm saying, you know, so we are, we are loving the same people, which I love, but do you know the woman on her name's Amy? Oh, this is killing me now.
I'm Amy Mullen. Porterfield. No, I'm going, I'm gonna get it. Hold on. Yeah, yeah, go
ahead. We Google all the time on this show.
Amy Mullins. Okay. Okay. Amy Mullins is a woman who does not have legs, and she created legs that look like the hind leg of a cheetah. Then she was invited into all these fashion magazines.
That's the, that is the what of what she's doing. But as a FinTech founder, you, you never talk about your 800 APIs. Nobody cares. Nobody gives a shit about. Mm-hmm. Excuse me. Mm-hmm. No one gives a shoot about your tech. What they wanna know is, what, how does it dazzle? Dazzle me, please? Mm-hmm. And what she dazzled with is not her tech and her legs, although yes, that she did.
But it's that she took the word disability and made it mean imagination. And so here's a woman who would be five foot eight, let's say. She shows up to an event with legs that are carved out of wood, and she's six one, and her girlfriend says, Amy, that's not fair. That is what I want everyone to say about everybody creating anything.
Mm-hmm. What you are disabled, you, everybody has their own story of what's working for them and what hasn't worked for them. Yes. And everyone is suffering in some way, and then there are people who are trying to turn that pain and suffering into good. I mean, Elon Musk has written about his. Crippling loneliness, right?
Mm-hmm. And he's, mm-hmm. He first, you know, launched a payment system and then, you know, an aluminum car, no biggie. And then, you know, like, again, no biggie. Like you take these things and you turn it into, you crush it, and you turn it into gold. Indigo girls in the nineties think about what they were suffering, you know, and love them.
Mm-hmm. I, I mean, and then you sit and the things that they wrote, you know, if I have a care in the world, I have a gift to give. Yes. So, yeah. Like, I could go on and on. I mean, Ani DiFranco a 19-year-old who comes out like some kind of philosopher, like Rumi reincarnated Yeah. With buildings and bridges are made to bend in the wind.
I'm like, ah, I can't. So if they can do that, we can do this. You can help the business owners. 'cause I, I'll tell you, I need your help. I'm sure so many do. And I am trying to figure out. How to communicate and dazzle the banks so that they're empowered to dazzle the people you're helping. But do you see how that, where
it's a yes, it's all synergistic.
Like that's, that's the, um, you know, so as a coach, I believe in having a coach. And so I have my coaching call every other week and with my coach, and we are, the conversations that we have regularly are about taking the leap into, um, believing in what you're creating so much that if you are like, I don't know how I'm gonna find this extra, whatever amount of money you might need to hire the social media agency or to, um, redo your website so it has better funnel systems or whatever it is that you need to upgrade to like move to the next level.
It's the people who aren't willing to take the risk to go to the next level that like can't get there. And there's a stat that I'm obsessed with in the US right now, which is that. The average small business, um, revenue in the US is like around $43,000. That's it. The average small business. And that's ca 'cause small businesses is such a huge range.
It's someone doing nails to painters and plumbers to um, you know, like even multimillion dollar things are still a small business, right? Yeah. So it usually has to do about how many people you have or what kind of, then it does always, sometimes the money you're bringing in. But so the average is about 43,000.
That's for one small business, one person. So you don't have a team. The second you have between one to four people on your team, you can jump to $400,000 as your new average. And I love this 'cause it says like, no, like the only way to grow is by having more people and more support and more like having the coach, having the vendor, having someone else do the things.
Just like you're trying to provide where people can be in their zone of genius supporting you. Yeah. Instead of you trying to do, like, the tasks are endless as an entrepreneur, endless, you know, like you, if I didn't have a, I have a cutoff time when I have to stop working every day. And it has nothing to do with the to-do list because the to-do list doesn't end.
It just doesn't end. And, um, oh, I admire that. You have
a time.
It doesn't, not that I'm, I don't honor it every day. 'cause sometimes you're like, in the zone, you get so excited, you're like, no, no, no. It has to happen. But I try, like that's the goal that I'm sitting. Mm-hmm. I,
I, I need that. Actually. I don't, and I don't even know what's pushing me because it's certainly not the money.
If you talk to most entrepreneurs, it's not the money. It isn't.
No. No. 'cause we're, we're working in our love language. Like that's, if you work in your love language, it's, it's okay.
Yeah. Like I feel like I'm in Viktor Frankland, I'm in meaning territory. Yeah. And I remember what life was like without meaning.
And I'm haunted by it. And it's actually one of the things I'm afraid of. I, I don't even know sometimes what's pushing me. And then I see that energy with other people, and I don't think I could ever go back.
Mm-hmm.
I wouldn't be able to just work on something ever again. Yeah. And I spent years, like over a decade writing press releases for public companies or analyzing financial statements.
I'm still analyzing financial statements, but it has meaning I, and I think that's what pushes us. I don't know. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. To me, this isn't hardship though. And that's not to say it's not hard. It is. It is really hard. Um, and there are moments where I have weakness. There's moments where I get embarrassed, I shoot.
So I tend to overshoot. Right. Let you know. Shoot for the moon, you'll get to the stars. Right? Yeah. And, and then sometimes I, I wonder, is it too much? But then I think. You, me, most people I know have devoted their lives to the fifth rung of, of the hierarchy of needs. So we all won the lottery, didn't we?
Yes.
Uh, uh Yes. There's, there's a different, I, I'm working harder now than I've ever worked and it's fun. Yeah. And I'm enjoying it. And I'm, and I'm getting energy back from it. It's completely different when you're working in your business love language and like working in the gifts that you cannot, like, not share with the world.
Um, it's different. There's not, there's a pressure you feel when you are not being maximized or you are not doing something that lights you up that's heavy. Like, that's the heavy feeling that you have when you're doing a job that you don't love. Yeah. And it's. Much. I want people to know that it's much easier to, to figure out what it is that you should be doing.
Um, sometimes we find it on accident, sometimes we find it 'cause we intentionally are like, please help me find it. Um, but how did you find yours? Um, well I, I took a, I've always been really big in, in personal development and I love learning. And so through just like looking at people who are, are living lifestyles like I wanted or being leaders like I wanted to be, like what were they doing?
What worked? And then, um, just realizing it was a combination of what was missing. In my life in different moments, what my, what I really saw myself doing. Like we, we do an exercise in powerful ladies where I tell people, look at the things people come to you for. Look at the things that you do without, you would do without getting paid.
Like, what are the things that you fall into, like internet, black holes, like chasing what else is in there or learning more. Um, what are the things you can't help yourself from doing? What are the things that you've overcome or your victories or the things that frustrate you? If you can, like, make those lists and see where there are overlaps or red reds or, um, how you can connect them.
Like that's, that's where you find that joy zone for a business. And, you know, the, the example I use, which people make fun of me for is like, there are people who, all they do is they are event planners for dog birthdays. That's their business. They're like, I love dogs more than people. I love doing parties.
I love doing events. I'm super organized. I love working with creative people. The balloons and all, like, I like putting it all together. So they realized that they loved animals. They were a producer, they loved events, they love parties and like you all right, what does it look like when you mash it all up?
Mm-hmm. And it can look, look ridiculous. And as adults we get really scared about ridiculous. And so I'm like, no. Like go, go ask an 8-year-old. Does that sound fun when 8-year-old you have enjoyed doing that. That's what Amy did. She took a bunch of eight year
olds, or no, like six year olds. She asked the adults for permission.
She said, if you could make legs any way you wanted, what would you do? Yes. Yeah. And yeah, it's all I remember not knowing what I wanted to do and having those examples. I learned really quickly that personally I'm a mosaic. Yes. Did I see myself running a FinTech company? No. I was pushed to go to take a law m ba class, very lucky as mm-hmm.
You know, very supported, very pushed. None of it resonated with me. But the, but now, decades later, decades after that happened. Yes. I see that my first degree in psychology and like care I have for making people succeed in business, needed the law, and b, a degree in a, with wisdom that I had no access to when I was 20.
And also apparently, I, I surrounded myself with tech people myself. I surrendered myself with tech people my entire life. Mm-hmm. Not understanding why, and, and now suddenly the merging of tech and fin. Is a thing. So it really, sometimes the answer, and there isn't a hard and fast rule for this, right? No.
Sometimes it's inside you. Sometimes it's sort of outside. You have to pull it all together and I don't know what's going to happen. I know what I understand. Q3 and Q4 of this year is supposed to be big for fintechs, who through COVID. Yep. I'm not seeing any, I'm scouring, but I'm not seeing any actual relent from the actual risk of COVID.
Mm-hmm. We, I
see people coming up with, okay, here's what we can do and here's how we can digitize. But I don't see any fix for the solution, the real solution that's going to, and that's a problem. But what I
thought was really interesting is that in the Spanish flu, they never shut down the economy. And I was like, huh.
Could they have, I don't know. I like, could they have, should they have, like, what would've happened? So we, this is truly a, I've never thought about it, a completely new territory because we've never done both at the same time. We've never had all this overlap. And one of the things that, um, has getting talked about more in the US now is the impact of people who were declared non-essential.
What does that do to your psychology? What does that do to your mental state? Like the, I can't even talk about it.
Yeah. Before this, let's take it outside of the trigger point of this moment. Okay?
Mm-hmm.
I was, my mother when I was growing up told me stories about how when her parents were growing up, children were meant to be, you know, they were in a corner, right?
Yeah. And then you waited your right, and then when you were an elder, you had wisdom to give. Mm-hmm. And over her generation, her father told her that it didn't seem to be fair.
Mm-hmm.
Now, I'm not gonna talk about it in this, in the context of this moment in time, but it seems to me that by having children later, we stay selfish longer.
And by not considering the wisdom of our elders, we stay children forever. Mm-hmm. I am not really understanding. It beyond that. Yeah. I, I don't, I think it's a real opportunity to take a look at the reality. Putting, putting people, separating them from our society. I don't even just mean elderly now. When I have conference calls and kids run in, it is a more authentic way of dealing.
This is me. It's real life. Yeah. Mm-hmm. This isn't a persona in an office. I'm not sure why we did that. Why we compartmentalized in that way. It doesn't read authentic and there is no reason it has to be that way. And that's what I mean when I was sitting on the bed trying to feed a kid and it hurt and I had to make it hurt until I figured it out, and there was no shortcut, right?
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And, and no judgment. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not pushing breastfeeding over non breastfeeding. I'm simply saying that there is, there are laws to nature that perhaps we have let go of, that we could use this moment in time to reconsider Yeah. Gain wisdom from our elders. Yes. Gain a societal view when we have children.
Mm-hmm.
We think beyond
ourselves. Yeah. And, and just like we're so interconnected, um, from health perspective and from financial perspective, we're also interconnected and, and not just connected, but need each other. Like we need all of, you know, part of the mission behind Powerful Ladies is like getting as many people as possible to be doing what they love.
'cause if like you can shine your light outward, you can spotlight somebody else who can, who can then do it and then do it. And like now more than ever, like, like we are clear that like you can't be on the sidelines. Not, not, you can't be politically, you can't be. Uh, economically, you can't be there. Is there the option of like floating on your, you know, um, in your raft and having your pina colada and just like, chilling through life?
Like, it doesn't, it doesn't work that way. And we really need everyone to be doing whatever their thing is. Whatever you're called to do otherwise to, I, like, it's when shit hits the fan. So how do we avoid that? Like, let's all just do like, be taking action for ourselves and for whoever's around us. Like, it, it just, it changes everything.
Um, like how, when, when you think of being a powerful lady, what, what does that mean to you?
Well, I'll tell you what it meant for me. For March until now, there was a moment in time that we didn't know there was gonna be government funding.
Mm-hmm.
And the first thing I did was I took a look at what I needed for myself and my husband and my three children, and I cut our salaries to zero so that I didn't lay off a single person.
That was the decision I made before I knew what support was coming. Now, I did know that there was going to be work sharing opportunities and I had to make use of that. But I told everyone that for the next six months they did not have, we had set up this company so that they would be, okay, you're running a ship, you're a captain of a ship, you have responsibility.
Mm-hmm.
And I didn't need the short term salary. What I needed to know is that when people looked at how I ran the company, they would feel safe. Yep. That was important. Um, the next thing is I tried desperately to communicate to everyone that a need for capital was coming. Did people listen to the owner of a two and a half year old FinTech company?
No, but a lot of people spoke to me about it. Mm-hmm. So there were people quoting us about it. We offered free technology. Um, Forbes wrote a piece around that. There was someone named Ron Chevlin who quoted us. And every accelerator I was part of tried to help me. So you see the, the, the network effect that happens.
And then very quickly there was government support and then we could figure out a way to make it even better. And it's like you put your hand out, you know, when, when children come out of the, the womb, if their love, then they know they can give love back. Right? So I put my hand out and very often you get it slapped away.
But actually in this case, yes, there was a lot of slapping away, don't get me wrong, but there was also people putting a hand, right. That there mm-hmm. Oracle put a handout and said, Hey, join us Oracle. Like that. Yeah. That, that blew my mind. Mm-hmm. And they're still collaborating with us on how to serve banks after.
So, so you can choose to focus on what's wrong and what's not working and that is really easy. Or you can say, here's a mountain I can climb and I'm just gonna climb this mountain and then I'm gonna look for other people climbing mountains and see what we can do together. That's what I've been doing. It does not always work.
And sometimes people are, there are people out there who are trying to tear you down. I mean, crabs in a Bucket was a song that was written for a reason. Yeah. But in general, what I'm seeing is people are really trying to do good. Mm-hmm. Most people, especially on the day-to-day in the small business world, they're just actually trying to provide a service.
Yeah. They're not, there's not really a hidden agenda. No. So I, I mean, you're, to me, it seems like you're dedicating your life to making sure that people can realize their power. Mm-hmm. I, I mean, that's, that's inspiring. I thank you. I can't even imagine what you've seen and what you've learned. Mm-hmm. And how you can teach because of it.
And, and I, I just, there's, there's a lot to that. I, I think a lot about it because the world is changing incredibly quickly. And I'm trying to wonder how I do that for, for a couple powerful ladies in the making. So yeah. It's, it should be part of our educational system. Mm-hmm. Just as important as calculus.
Yeah. I mean, you spoke to it earlier, right? About how so many of our educational institutions really fall short in the things that we need and when we need them. You know? Um, I have a huge racket against the fact that neither emotional intelligence nor personal banking budgeting is talked about. And, and while it might seem antiquated, like there, there's a value behind when schools used to have home economics or when they used to have an auto shop, or when they used to have, and some schools still do, and, and those are really privileged schools.
Um, but like. When did we decide that life skills weren't like the first priority of like what people needed? Like you need to know how to read and write and do math, at least basic math, and then you need to know how to survive in this world that we've created. And that's where I think we fall short with so many.
I agree. Uh, people is that we forget to teach them like what it's really like out there. It's not, it's as much as I love, you know, I can't make a fire. Right, right,
right. I watched Tom Hanks making a fire and the first thing I thought was, I, gosh, look, I can't make a fire. And he bought me a survival course two years ago.
Yeah. Now I, I do think it is a big problem that we don't have any access to our senses that we should, you know, that there's a complete lack of balance. Mm-hmm. We can do things to get some of that back. Schools are about adaptive thinking at the moment, which I think is very important when. When my kids were three, they said, mommy, I need the credit card to buy money.
Yeah. So they had a concept of something. But when I spoke to, I once had a conversation with the CEO of a bank when he was six years old. He went, his father gave him $50 for a week's worth of lunch money or two weeks worth of lunch money. This was in the seventies. Mm-hmm. And, and said, if you bring me any money back, I'm gonna put it into a savings account and double it.
He's six. He snuck outta school and he bought Jujubes, and he had the Jujubes person at the counter bagged them individually, of course, for him. And then he sold them at school. He's six years old. Oh, yeah. His father had to shut that plan down in, over, in an, under a week. He couldn't afford it. Now he, this is, it's important that we understand resourcefulness, and it's important that we have access to our senses.
And all of this is important. And I think there's a way to get there. Mm-hmm. And I think it's possible to have balance, but we need to make these things a priority.
Mm-hmm.
And our life at the moment, systemically is not engineered to do that.
Yep. So, you know, it's, it's why the, the knowledge sharing business is the fastest growing industry in the world right now.
Like, it's the fastest growing industry. It's, I mean, it's the business that I'm in. It's like a lot of my peers are in like, sharing what, you know, there's so much d um. Everybody wants to know how to, like you said, go faster to hack it. How do I skip ahead? How do I skip these 25 steps and just get to where somebody else is in this subject?
It's why you bought a survival course or or gifted one, right? So and now people want still one day my teacher. Yeah, yeah. I'm teaching. I never
thought about it that way.
Yeah, I'm teaching a launch camp right now. Share what you know. Course. And there's a, you know, woman in the group and we're going through, what could you teach people?
Because everyone can teach people, there's like 25 things is the list you should be able to make in like 15 minutes. And she's like, well, I never thought about it, but like I know how to start a fire. And so the two, you and her definitely have some symbiotic trade to make, I'm sure. Right. So what does that look like when you start teaching people these things that are easy to you?
Like it doesn't even need to be stuff that you studied or like sweated over. It's really just what, what makes sense to you? What do you see that other people can't? Like what is, what is the superpower that you have? And that, I mean, there's so much power in that too. 'cause that's where like business, all businesses really could come from, right?
Like your superpower is, I understand tech, I understand this financial space, and I really understand how to make things easy. Like that's what I hear when you're sharing. So if your superpower is like, I wanna help you make it easier, great. Like, I want that. Yeah. There's so much in that it's so
unnecessarily over complicated, and I mm-hmm.
It's very complex, but that's very different than over complicated, right? Yes. Yes. Is it easy to process a payment on an iPhone? No. But is it a simple process for the people doing it? Yes, and that's the part I, I just think I get a serotonin release from efficiency, and I always have. Yeah. When I was
mm-hmm.
You know, when people go, you know, famous actors, Meryl Streep talks about her daughter walking down the stairs and saying something very clear. She was going to always be an actress. Um, I, I thought of Zoom tunnels when I was a kid. I didn't know why I thought of Zoom tunnels. It's not like I was a trek. I just thought it made no sense to me that you had to get into a car and drive at the regular speed.
I have always been thinking, how can you, but, but in equal measure, I've been thinking in imagination terms. And I, I do see a place where we can judge people on the merit of their character. I do see a, mm-hmm. I see in front of us a place, and, and that's people and that's businesses. I, I see a place where it doesn't matter if you're an immigrant, it doesn't matter what you look like.
Mm-hmm. What it matters is what are you bringing for the table? We are all a community, we're all growing together. What are you bringing to share, uh, let's call it the new, uh, the new form of collaboration or Yeah. Um, instead of capital, the new barter system, what are you bringing to the table past the fact that I'm actually buying something from you?
From money? What we proved between 2010 and now is that money is an artificial construct anyway, given that Bitcoin, the first money in Boss Insights is Litecoin. We mine it in the basement. When Luke was working at Amazon, that was the first money in our business. So. Mm-hmm. So let's talk about what we're actually doing to make our, our entire situation better for the people coming after us.
Yep. That's what I'm
focusing on. Right. No,
I love it. I love it there. It made me think of one of my favorite lines. Um, are you part of the problem or you pro part of the solution? What's your contribution to life? Who said that? Um, I, I think it was the far side. I have to double check. Uh, I'll put it in the show notes I'm forgetting right now.
Um, oh my God. No, it's, I feel like we have, we, what we need to do is compare notes on quotes. Like Yes. I actually read, you know, the one that aerodynamically, the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly. Yeah. But they don't follow. I'm, I'm bastardizing the quote right now, but it doesn't follow human rules, so flies.
Anyway. Yeah. And, and I think that's what we're saying. Mm-hmm. Everyone is held down by something. Yeah. And, and they don't need to be. No. Mm-hmm. No. But for me, all of this started because I hopped on a plane to go on a g adventure tour, and I met somebody on a personal level that, you know, he's like, what do you want?
Do you want a cottage? Do you want a ring? I'm like, just build me a company. No, that's not how,
I didn't have that way, that's very romantic in my opinion. I'm like, Ooh, I want that. Yeah.
I, he, it just, we clicked. Mm-hmm. And then living together wasn't enough seven years into us living together after we'd had our kids.
And if I'm honest about it, when I had my first kid is when he first pitched this to me and I was like, are you kidding me? I just had a baby. But in seven years it wasn't enough. Like we mm-hmm. We were like, I can contribute. And I said, so can I. Wasn't enough for us to go and separate our lives, are engineered to build families together and then separate them in every facet, and I am violently opposed to it.
If you want the separation fine. But otherwise, why do we separate siblings throughout their entire childhood, not just in school where it makes sense, but also in their out extracurricular activities. That makes no sense to me. Mm-hmm. And then why do we separate people, spouses. So you go to work here, you go to work here, so great.
We're spending 16 hours, uh, sorry if we're awake 16, 32 hours a week together and that's it. Mm-hmm. It doesn't make any kind of sense. So I engineered, I said, what can I do to make my life better? Yeah. And this is my way. It doesn't mean it's the right way. In fact, most people say, are you insane working with your husband?
Are you absolutely insane? I said, look, we don't always agree, but we're always rowing in the same direction.
Mm-hmm.
And, and then they say, yeah, I still am never gonna work with my
No. Yeah. I mean, I hear so much of. Your commitment to family, right? And your commitment to like, why don't, like, why would we work in different places like you guys?
Everyone works so hard, so why not work hard together and like double or quadruple where you're going, right? All goes back to that. How do we do this faster? How do we multiply this? How do we get more of what we want? Right. I really hear how you've crafted your whole life to be like, how do I get more of what I want and how do I get to give more of what I wanna give to other people?
And that's so powerful. So powerful. The ultimate in selfishness. That's what I stand for. I mean, powerful ladies was started as a selfish thing as well. I wanted more time with people that inspired me and my girlfriends that I, that I had moved away from. And
so there needs, needs to be another word for selfishness that gives back to communities or self, you know, something that you're doing that makes you powerful enough.
Mm-hmm. That you have a hand
for others. I, I, I think that's what this whole game is, right? Yeah. It then it really is that symbiotic loop where it's like just, it's all giving. Yeah. Give equal giving and gaining right as you keep going. Um, like you look at somebody like Tony Robbins and you're not mad that he's making all the money he is.
'cause you see how much he's giving away all the time and. Like that's, that's where capitalism I think works. It's like when capitalism gets the bad rap, when. People aren't, aren't giving more or as much as they're getting. Right. That's where the, the rub happens.
I want a new word. Balanced capitalism, like some things are sacred.
You can't touch 'cause money on its own. Mm-hmm. It's not, it's pretty empty. Yeah. It's study after study, after study, make a certain amount and then it means nothing. Do I want a jet ski? I've been dreaming of being on a jet ski for the past week for some reason. Yes. I would like a jet ski. Me the person who's like, I'd like to live in a house underground so I don't have to heat it.
Me, I want a jet ski. Okay. But basically after a certain point, money doesn't mean anything. But capitalism is the system that we've seen work the best so far. Yeah. So why don't we take what's worked the best so far and then add in some of the pieces that are missing. Mm-hmm. The documentaries that show that corporations can behave like psychopaths.
Were not wrong. Right. When there is no balance, but mm-hmm. We can bring balance in. When people talk to me about AI and. I always say humans are
biased,
right? It's,
it's, it's only biased because it was made by humans,
right? Mm-hmm. So what we do is we iterate and it's scary. It's really scary to be in this time of change.
I, I keep, I keep watching Stephen Pinker because he keeps saying it's okay. It's okay guys. I know that it's a time of change, but actually if you look at it over the long term, things are getting better.
Mm-hmm.
And it's going to get better if you, me, everyone who's involved. Brings their A game. Yes. Right.
So I, people always, I get, I find myself going in loops. So I'll be selling bank software and I'll start talking, and then I feel the sweat that happens when you're passionate about something. And then they'll say, whoa. And I said, I know. I know that this is literally a lead qualification system. But imagine your day if you didn't have to put any effort into it.
And imagine the businesses that you would support. It isn't just lead qualification, it's people. And they laugh at me, but that's how I'm doing this on's the day to day.
It's true. Well, we ask everyone on the podcast where they rank themselves in the powerful lady scale, zero being average, everyday human, and 10 being most powerful lady possible.
Where would you rank yourself today, and where do you think you rank yourself on average? Okay,
I, I wanna answer this. Okay. If I have to give a number, it's probably seven. Doing some things, working some magic, have a lot of room for learning and the ways to go, right? Mm-hmm. But these scales, if I was more accurate about it, I am equally at 2 10, 6, 9 all the time.
I am so enthusiastic that you would wanna talk to me. That makes me feel like a million bucks that I have the chance to shout out to my team. When they got flagged in an article this week, it makes me feel like a million bucks. Also, my co-founder slash husband had to pick me up off the floor after a bank spoke to me this week and he said, it is really cute.
What you learned today is you lost a sale to a bigger brand. Get up, keep going. Mm-hmm. And it's just all true at the same time. And I feel gratitude for being in the game. I'm actually really in the game. Mm-hmm. This is me giving, you know, I'm really fighting, I'm really here. Yeah. It wasn't like that.
You're all in. Yeah. So that feels really great. Mm-hmm. Um, I'll listen to. A podcast, a better reality show, and PPP will come up and I'll be screaming, when in the world was finance coming up in a re You know, like, it's amazing to think about how interconnected everybody is. So mm-hmm. I'm all over the place, like most people.
I know. It's
the actual answer. Yes. Um, well as we're wrapping up today, I would, is there anything else that you would love to share with everyone listening? A quote, a book? Just the words of advice.
There's a big chunk of my life where I did not sound or speak in the way that I'm speaking now, and I just wanna say to everybody that good things are coming.
It didn't, like, I tried a lot of things. It's not like by willing it to come the way people say. Mm-hmm. It's by taking a step and then another step. It's all it is. Good things are coming. So I guess that's what I would leave everyone with and, you know, reach out to us if you have any thoughts on what we're doing, let us know what's right and what's wrong.
Like, I'm not a, I love it.
Thank you so much for being on the Power East podcast today. Thank you. Thank you for chatting with me and for what you're doing.
I'm always telling clients and members of the Power East community, two things, automate, delegate, and delete, or stop doing yesterday's work. I'm so happy that we as entrepreneurs and small business owners have a champion in those two areas in Keren. She and her company are trying to help us streamline, simplify, and accelerate banks working for us versus being more work for us.
And for that, I am so grateful. You can also see in her business how a frustration can become your next great idea. If you wanna use your frustration or other great idea to create your own knowledge sharing business, get our online course knowledge sharing products available now@thepowerfulladies.com.
Use code podcast to get 25% off to connect, support, and follow. Keren. You can find her on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, even LinkedIn at Boss Insights, or go to their website, boss insights.com to get all the links plus her email if you wanna email her directly. You can find all of that@thepowerfulladies.com slash podcast.
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of The Powerful Ladies Podcast. There are so many ways you can get involved and get supported with fellow powerful Ladies First, subscribe to this podcast anywhere you listen to podcast. Give us a five star rating and leave a review on Apple Podcast.
Follow us on Instagram at Powerful Ladies. Join the Powerful Ladies, thrive Collective. This is the place where powerful ladies connect, level up, and learn how to thrive in business and life. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube page, and of course, visit our website, the powerful ladies.com. I'd like to thank our producer, composer, and audio engineer Jordan Duffy.
Without her, this wouldn't be possible. You can follow her on Instagram at Jordan K. Duffy. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Until then, I hope you're taking on being powerful in your life. Go be awesome and up to something you love.
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Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
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