Suneera Madhani: Why Most Founders Fail—7 Things You Must Do to Succeed

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everyone, it's Jay Sheddy and I'm thrilled to announce
my podcast tour. For the first time ever, you can
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near you for meaningful, insightful conversations with surprise guests. It
could be a celebrity, top wellness expert, or a CEO
or business leader. We'll dive into experiences designed to experience growth,

(00:25):
spark learning, and build real connections. I can't wait to
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Head to Jaysheddy, dop me Forward Slash Tour and get
yours today.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
I think it starts with don't just do know where
you want to go. So if you know where you
want to go, and this can be for your company,
this can be for your personal goals. This can be
for a hobby or an athletic goal you have, whatever
it is, you have to define what that ends goal
looks like so that you can work backwards. And I'm
a huge believer in the rule of three for everything.

(01:07):
I can't remember more than three things, Like everything is
about threes. For me, it's not just about getting everything done,
it's what are the three most important things that I'm
going to get done that are going to be towards
the goals that are going to get me there.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
The number one health and Wellness podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Jay Sheety Jay Sheddy See One Only j Shetty. Hey, everyone,
welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to listen,
learn and grow. You know that on Purpose is the
home of deep, profound, powerful conversations with humans who've lived
extraordinary lives, achieved phenomenal things, but at the heart of it,

(01:44):
have a deep purpose. They also have the ability to
open their hearts, open their minds to share the true
failures the lessons that they've had on their journey. Today's
guest is someone that I'm so excited to introduce to you.
She's had truly a breathtaking journey and it's one that's
going to inspire you and help you learn how you
too can build an amazing business, understand what it feels

(02:08):
like to manage and balance family life through it all,
and at the same time go and pursue more even
after success. I'm speaking about the one and only Sonira Madani,
a true trailblazer in business world. Snira is the CEO
and co founder of fintech startup worth Ai Sonira previously
founded Stax Payments, where she took an idea and built

(02:31):
it first into the private startup with one hundred and
forty million dollars in recurring revenue, and then into a
business valued at over a billion dollars. Scenira is also
the founder of the CEO School podcast and the founder
of the CEO School Company. If you haven't subscribed, make
sure you do, because both of them empower women to

(02:53):
scale their businesses and change the landscape of the traditional
business world. Snira is the daughter of Kistani immigrants and
the first person in our family to attend college as well.
Please welcome to the show, Snira Madani Sanira. It is
such a joy to have you here. Your journey is
truly remarkable, and I'm so glad that we get to

(03:15):
share it here with the on Purpose community.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Jay, thank you so much for having me. I'm so
grateful to be here.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
I'm so excited to just carry this amazing conversation that
we've already been having.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
We're like, turn the cameras on. It's time.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
I know I felt like, I was like, we're probably
gonna have to put some of that in, but I
want to start with this and it's probably nothing through
when I said, we were just about to talk about
but you are a self proclaimed highly caffeinated time hacker,
and I was like, my team and everyone's like, we
want to be that. Tell us what that means.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Oh, I've gotten so much more calm in the last
several years, but I'm definitely highly caffeinated, that's for sure.
I think productivity is something I've naturally just had to
get better at as a CEO and especially as a
working mother. I have an eight year old daughter and
a five year old daughter. I've been building companies since
I was twenty five years old and had kids along

(04:08):
the way, and so honestly, time is our most precious commodity,
and especially when you're a busy mom running business, you
have to be really mindful of that.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
And so I feel like I've found.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Every which way to time hack, and I do think
that I've I'm a productivity expert for sure.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Okay, so we're going to need all of those toos
today for sure. I think there's a lot of our
audience that really wants to know how to use their
time more wisely, understand how to be more productive and effective.
But I want to start off, but actually, let's just
dive into that. Let's talk about that, like, what did
you used to believe time management was, and now, having
been so effective for this many years, what have you

(04:47):
now come to the conclusion that what time management actually is.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Freedom of dollar is what we all start to chase, right,
And there's nothing wrong with that. There's absolutely nothing wrong
with wanting financial success for yourself or your family. And
so freedom of dollar is something that when I started
my journey, that was one component of building the business,
but really it became about freedom of time. Even if
you have that level of success with freedom of dollar,

(05:11):
we still all have the same amount of time. And
so it really is about that freedom of time and
being able to enjoy the journey along the way.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
I want to be able to do.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
What I call thee thousand dollars tasks, not the ten
dollars task. And for me, a thousand dollars task is
when I get home, I want to cope with my family.
Can I outsource that? Absolutely, But that to me is
not a thousand dollars task. That's a ten that's a
ten dollars task for some others, but for me, spending
time with my family is like the number one most
important place where I'm trying to keep my time freedom.

(05:42):
It's really really important that I think about tasks in
that way. It's something I really encourage. I mentor so
many women in business, and we have a lot of responsibility,
Like there is this extra layer of responsibility I'm not saying.
I mean, I have such an incredible partner, such an
incredible husband, and we coparent, we do all the things.
But as a working mom, there's just that extra layer

(06:04):
of a million things that have to get done. As
a CEO, everyone wants a piece of your time. How
you spend your time is it's everything, and so really
thinking about what are your one thousand dollars task and
just focusing on those and everything else finding a way
to either delegate it or delete it.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
Do you even like actually have to do it. I
have this process of like do delegate delete So every
couple of weeks, I'll do a time audit.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, I do a time audit because your seasons are changing,
like what you're doing right now, travels, insane, whatever else it.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
Does do a time audits.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
We do a time audit and I take a look
at how am I actually spending my time?

Speaker 1 (06:41):
Is it?

Speaker 2 (06:41):
And I'm intentional about my time? How do I want
to spend my time? And so if I see, you know,
certain habits and certain things and I'm like, okay, no,
this has to come off our plate. This can be
delegated off am I spending too much time in one area?
This can apply to anyone at any point. Is to
do a time audit and to take control back of it.
And it's also important, I think when you.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
Ask the question of like how do I view time now?

Speaker 2 (07:04):
I used to have this mantra that I used to
say every day because things are so crazy, busy and
running two companies, the podcast, the kids, all the stuff.
Every morning I'd wake up Jay and I'd say, I
have all the time in the world.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
I have all the time in the world. I have
all the time in the world.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
But I didn't and I didn't believe it inside because
I didn't have all the time in the world. And
now a lot has shifted where I actually do believe
I have all the time in the world. And that
just comes with presence that just means that wherever I'm
going to be, And I learned how to be really
present in everything that I was in, I was in
with such intention.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
That I did have all the time in the world.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
I think that those are some ways that have really
shifted my perspective about time. But I do think it's
the most important commodity that we have. It's the biggest
gift that you can give yourself to everyone around you.
And I think the world is changing so fast. We're
such an on demand everything.

Speaker 3 (07:59):
Everything is so speedy, everything coming at us.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
From social media to life to work. Everyone's life.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
It's not a CEO's life that's busy.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
Every single person that's probably listening feels exactly that feeling.
It's so busy, but is it Is it busy or
is it full?

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Right?

Speaker 3 (08:18):
And that's the shift.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
I was busy before, and I learned how to make
my life going from busy to intentionally full with purpose.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
When you're coming up with criteria for do delegate delete,
how do you decide? Because I find that often, especially
in the beginning, and I'm sure it's the same for you,
and we'll get to that in a second. But there's
a feeling like I have to do everything, and I
probably have to because I can't afford to delegate. You
may not have a team in the beginning, so when

(08:46):
you start growing or when you start building, how do
you find the ability to decide, Okay, this is what
I'm still going to do, this is what I delegate,
and this is what I delete. Because often founders and
start up owners or anyone will say to me, I
think everything's important. Yeah, how do I decide what's important
to do with my time?

Speaker 2 (09:03):
It's one understanding where you want to go. So I
think it starts with don't just do know where you
want to go. So if you know where you want
to go, and this can be for your company, this
can be for your personal goals. This can be for
a hobby or an athletic goal you have, whatever it is,
you have to define what that end goal looks like
so that you can work backwards. And I think that

(09:24):
is an important part of even in business, especially as startups.
You want to do all the things, but you just can't.
So it's really deciding what are the three things.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
And I'm a huge.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Believer in this, in the rule of three for everything.
I can't remember more than three things like everything is
about threes for me, and so it's three goals for
let's say it's for the quarter, for the year, how
do we work backwards that that's the goal?

Speaker 3 (09:47):
And then everything else is a delete, it's a no.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
And every day I look and I plan my needle
movers is like in business is you know, a very
common term, but it's not just about getting everything done.
It's what are the three most important things that I'm
going to get done that are going to be towards
the goals that are going to get me there. And
so you have to start getting really comfortable with saying no.
You have to start getting comfortable with you not being

(10:13):
the one to do it.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
And even if you don't have a team, even if
you don't have the resources, it starts with you.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Right, you are the core nucleus of your company, of
your life, of the things that DNA then breeds into
the next your first hire that you're going to do
and the next hire that you're going to do. And
the job of a CEO is helping everyone prioritize, like
that's my job every day.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
My job is not to do the rowing.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
So I think about you know, in rowing club or
like the coxin this at the front of the boat,
his or her job is not actually to row, it's
to give direction, to cheer everyone on, to make sure
that we're going in the right direction. He or she's
not actually the one rowing, and so your job is
just to keep everyone rowing in the same direction and prioritizing.
And that's probably the hardest job as well, is what

(11:00):
is prior toy what you asked. But if you don't
know it, and if you're not in line with it,
then your team's not going to be in line with it,
your life is not going to be in line with it.
And this is something that I've realized that falls into
like the CEO part and the life part, always both
it's the same.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
The thing that really hit me because I've been thinking
a lot about this is the needle moving part. Because
often what we think of delegation or roles as we
also think, oh, someone with else will take care of
all the little stuff out of the big stuff, and
actually you're then deprioritizing that person because you also want
them to be doing needle moving things and you may
be doing bigger, larger, more long term needle moving things,

(11:38):
but you don't want to be like, I'm going to
hand off all the little things to someone else to
deal with, because those little things may actually become a
distraction to you and that individual. So anyway, I want
to go back to when you start thinking about building
this billion dollar empire, and did you know the day
you started stacks that you wanted it to be a

(11:59):
billion dollar business.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
I didn't know I could go build a million dollar business,
let alone a billion dollar one.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
I love hearing that that's great.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
I had no idea.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
I was twenty six years old, no money in my
bank account. I was working for a financial services company.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
I was the first person in my family to graduate college.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
I grew up in the most incredible, incredible household. I
was getting my MBA without even knowing it. So my
parents were immigrants. They came from Karachi, Pakistan. I was
born in Chicago, so I was first generation here.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
We moved to Texas.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
I went to ten different schools in twelve years, which
is an insane part of my story, but it was
the pursuit of the American dream, and for my parents,
it was about allowing us an opportunity to be anything
we wanted to be, to get an education that is
one hundred percent every Indian, you know, Pakistani culture, Like
education is so important. So I was a really great student.

(12:51):
I'm the firstborn, eldest daughter, all the things. And I
loved my childhood like I loved you know. See, my
parents work really hard. Everything was perfect, but we had
the best family values. Like I was surrounded by so
much confidence around me. My dad would wake me and
my brother up every morning, and he was this like

(13:12):
loud energy, like four in the morning wake up kind
of guy. Every morning he'd wake us up and he'd say, Sonny,
that's my nickname. He'd say, you have it, Like that
is what I grew up around every single day, somebody
telling you that you have it, and it was the
most annoying thing. They're just our biggest champions, my brothers
and nice biggest champions, and so you carry that level

(13:34):
of like responsibility, you want to succeed, you want to
do well. And growing up in also a Muslim household,
like I didn't feel at all like my my gender,
Like I was just the eldest kid, and so that
meant that I got I got to do everything first.
Like I never felt my gender until I went into
the workforce wow, not even in college. In college, like

(13:56):
you know, I went to I went to University of Florida.
We had like three champions in my four years of college.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
I studied abroad, I did all of these amazing cool things.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
And then I get into the workforce and I saw
that there were no women in any of the companies
that I worked for. I worked for three different companies,
and the only women that I saw working in the
organizations were in either customer support or in admin roles.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
There was nobody in technology.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
There was nobody in anything else besides supporting roles. And
that was the first time that I was like, I'm different.
For the first time, I noticed my difference, and I
think it was that confidence. I never had that negative
self talk, and the self talk actually started to get
created at that point in my early twenties, but I

(14:41):
never had that going into it, and so I feel
super grateful, And I think that's how I try to
parent as well, is you can't overlove a kid like
That's where the confidence comes from, especially for young girls
because in a world like today, no one is telling them,
and then their negative self talk because of how the
world looks, because of the inequities that are plainly there.

(15:04):
We start to form those conversations in our own head.
And so I'm so grateful that I had super cheerleaders
and I didn't even know that I was rolling my
eyes at that really carried me through where I was like, no,
I am different and I do have it and I
can see things differently. So I was that bad employee.
I would challenge the status quo. And then I had

(15:25):
this really amazing idea to go start a subscription based
processing system. And I took it back to my mail
bosses and I was pretty much laughed out of the room,
like it was, you know, a little girl, great ideas,
but this is not going to work. And so I
came back home and I flew back from Houston to

(15:45):
with family dinners. That was always something we always were
around food and family. And my dad looks to me,
and you know, I was so disappointed in how the
conversation went, and he said, Sonny, he goes, why don't
you just go start the company?

Speaker 3 (15:58):
And I said, Dad, where do I go find visa?
How twenty five?

Speaker 4 (16:02):
Like?

Speaker 3 (16:03):
Where do I go build a fintech? I don't have
I don't know And he said, you'll figure it.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
Out, and so that's exactly what I did, and I
moved back into my parents' house and he was like,
and if you don't in six.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
Months, you'll get your MBA.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
Right.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
That was it. That was It was as easy as that.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
Amazing. I want to unpack so many things, so now
you've given me enough stuff to just grapple with. I
loved what you said about the idea that you can't
overlove someone like That's beautiful to hear. And I always
feel that my mom's love was like that for me.
I always grew up believing I was lovable. My mom's
love shielded me from so much of the other pain

(16:40):
and stress and everything else I saw happening around me.
And a lot of what you just said about women
I see to be so true today because I've seen
research and studies that show that if a man sees
a job specification and can do less than half of it,
he'll still apply. And if a woman sees some and
even if she can do eighty percent of it, she

(17:02):
won't apply because she can't do the twenty percent remaining.
And so even when I talk to my male friends
today and I know a lot of their wives and
partners and girlfriends and whatever else it may be. They
all find that so many women are scared to go
out there and start a company. They're scared to take
that risk. They're fearful that they can't, or they're waiting
till they have everything, like all their ducks in a row,

(17:24):
before they give themselves an opportunity. How did early on
in your life your dad saying this repetitive statement to you,
How did that not become a pressure and how did
it feel empowering? Because I feel that sometimes if you're
told you've got it, you can do this, a lot
of people see that as pressure and then they feel
they can't live up to it. What was different about

(17:46):
the parenting aspect of that, because I think a lot
of parents listening may take a lot from what your
dad did.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
Right.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
I was always brought in on all the conversations. I
think something that my parents did. We had struggles, and
we had challenges, and we had to move and we
had to various business, but we were always at the
dinner table having the hard conversations. You know, if there
were hard things that were you know, taking place about
money or about business or about family, we were solving

(18:11):
problems together so my parents would always ask our perspective.
That is something that I do feel is very interesting
just as a child. I try to do that with
my daughters at the dinner table now, is to ask them,
like what they think so thinking about solutions versus you know,
how they would think about solving it. So I feel
like I was really involved in hearing my voice felt heard,

(18:33):
and I think that's important because as women, I do
feel like we're you know, our voice isn't heard. And
so I grew up in a place where my voice
was not just heard, it was really valued and my
perspective was valued. And just like so many memories that
I can think of, I had such an amazing, amazing
childhood and I know a lot of people don't have that.
On my seventeenth birthday, this is really crazy. So we

(18:54):
went to Atlantic City for a Bollywood concert. It was
like a Charlotte Cohn concert then when they would come
out and do the shows. We went to Atlantic City
for this concert and you know, there was a casino.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
I'm not even of legal age to great gamble.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
And my dad takes me to the blackjack table, okay,
and he was an avid like he definitely had not
the best habits as well, and it's important to see,
like you can see both sides if your parents things
weren't perfect. I look back and I think about mostly
the positive. But sitting at this blackjack table, so I'm
all dressed up to go to this concert, I'm sitting
next to him.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
My parents were also really young.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
They had me when they were like twenty and so
people are probably assuming I'm like his girlfriend or something,
and you know, but I'm sitting at the blackjack table
next to him, and he hands me a pile of
chips and he's like that, and in my head, I'm like,
how much is this?

Speaker 4 (19:44):
Like?

Speaker 3 (19:44):
Am I going to lose the money? You know?

Speaker 2 (19:46):
What's the value? And his response he goes, just feel it.
He's like, if you feel like you're gonna win that more,
if you feel like you're not going to win, pull
back My ability to now take risks and listen to
my gut and not wor about you know, like scared
money doesn't make money as well, right, so my ability
to be able to say, Okay, I feel.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
Like I'm gonna win. I feel like.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
Look at looking at the hands or learning blackjack, and
I was great at math and I can get this
concept that was one of my like a core memory
that I can think of. But I was always involved
in the conversation. I feel like it was more tactical
with action, not just.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
Being told that you should go do this. I definitely
feel very blessed that I did have that. And now
my mom lives literally across the street from me.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
She's like one rock away, and we get to she
gets to raise my kids with me.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
So it's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
It's amazing when you when you go from pitching your
idea to all of your bosses and they kind of
look at you like, this is going to fail, this
isn't going to work, and then obviously your dad gives
you that encouraging statement. You said that you moved back home.
Then yeah, so I'm imagining that you were making a
decent amount of money working at a financial services firm,

(20:56):
and when you choose to start a company, I'm guessing
you took a massive pay here and I assume you
were living out and then you move back home. Now,
the reason why I'm pinpointing that moment is because I
think those golden handcuffs that so many of us tie
around ourselves with the safe corporate job. And when you've
got a great degree and you finally get that job

(21:16):
you've been waiting to get for like eighteen years of
your life and everyone respects you for it, it looks
good on your LinkedIn and your resume. I found so
many people struggle at that point to say, well, I'm
willing to take less money, I'm willing to downgrade my lifestyle.
I'm willing to postpone and delay the gratification of having
nice things because chances are if I live with my

(21:38):
parents and I'm not making the money anymore, life changes.
Walk me through deeply that decision, because I think for
so many of our community listening and so many people
that I mentor coach speak to, this seems to be
one of the most pivotal moments of their life. That
were you willing to go two steps backwards in order
to go five steps forward? And so many of us

(22:00):
are so scared to go two steps backwards because we've
got so used to a certain level of lifestyle. So
walk us through that key decision point.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
I actually ask myself would I do it again?

Speaker 2 (22:12):
And I think that it also depends on It's the
risk taking ability, right, It.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
Takes courage to take risk.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
One of my favorite, most favorite books that I've recently
read is Die with Zero.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
It is such an incredible book. It's this crazy concept
of just.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Taking risks and you have your golden years of your life,
like we should be spending our money doing our things
in our prime and.

Speaker 3 (22:35):
That makes complete sense.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
And the risk tolerance that you can take also changes
with your age. Would I take these risks if I
had two daughters at home and maybe if I was
a sole breadwinner or where I don't know, And so
I can look back and say I.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
Didn't have much to lose, and it was a level
of risk.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
I had a steady job, I was on a career
path I could have totally miserably failed. I think you
have to think about not what is the risk in
doing it? I think you have to think about what
is the risk in not doing it right? So what
is a risk if you don't do the thing? And
that's kind of how I try to make those the
risky decisions today. And I know we're going to talk

(23:14):
more and this journey is going to come full circle
in ten years. I left my company at the most
record high of the company, but the risk of me
staying was a detriment to my health and my burnout
and all the things that I had left to go accomplish.

Speaker 3 (23:32):
And so it's really about the risk of not doing
the action.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
But at that time I think it was I was
young and I could and you do have to take
a step back, and I would say, I think social
media does a horrible job of showing us success. There's
so much saturation of success. There's not enough failures that
are being shown.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
It's not enough.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
It is hard to build a business. You know, less
than two percent of female founders ever even break a
million in revenue.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
That is the most insane statistic.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
Men are eight times more likely to achieve that venture capital, Right,
I'm going to go build a fintech less than Currently
twenty twenty three, less than three percent of capital goes
to women founders, less than one percent, it's in the
decimals goes to minority founders.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
What was I even thinking trying to go.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Raise capital out of Orlando, Florida, not even Silicon Valley, Right,
And so I think there's a naivete when you're young,
and I think it's beautiful.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
I think that it's the most amazing thing.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
Like I even think about parenting, like, oh my god,
Now if I knew all the.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Things that I knew right when we were young and
doing the things.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
I think that having a little bit of not knowing
what's on the other side is actually really beautiful too,
Like embrace that now that I know I'm building second
time again and I'm building from experience, which means I
can catapult faster and do things differently, but.

Speaker 3 (24:54):
I also know what's ahead.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
I loved when I didn't know what was coming, so
I didn't know that I could go build that million
dollar business, and all I did was focus on putting
one step, one foot in front of the other.

Speaker 3 (25:04):
Every day I showed.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Up for a job, I always say this, that was
harder than the one I had yesterday. Every day I
had a job that was hard because the company was growing,
something else was happening. That's a pretty cool place to
be in from a young growth perspective. So if you
enjoy that, then entrepreneurship is for you, because it doesn't
get easier.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
You get better, but it doesn't get easier.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
I actually think what you said makes a lot of
sense that at that time there was a sense of
you didn't have the pressure of the success story that
social media puts around you, and so now it's like
everyone thinks to themselves, I have to build a million dollar,
billion dollar business, And as soon as you say that,

(25:49):
it's so hard because it's such a long journey to
get there, that it's such an overwhelming mountain and it's
almost like you're standing at the base of a mountain
and it looks so high and you're just like, how
am I ever going to get to the top. And
I remember the same like when we launched our podcast.
I didn't have a number of downloads I was trying
to reach, or I didn't have a number of followers

(26:09):
that I was like, oh, this would be success. It
was like, this is what I love, this is the
stories I want to tell, this is how we want
to serve our community, this is the experience we want
to build. And that's how we started. And then of
course everything got more strategic because we developed and we
learned more and everything. But I didn't have that pressure
on day one, and I think if I did, I
may never have put out a video and it would
never have put out a piece of content because it

(26:32):
was going to be years or months or days until
you actually reached this false goal you set yourself. So
when you're starting out, how do you set goals that
are empowering and not deabilitating Because I see a lot
of founders setting very deabilitating goals.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
I think the goals have to be in line with
why are you doing what you're doing. I think that
the numerical success will come from it. But if that's
what defining as your goals up front, you're not gonna
like that's that's where the mountain gets really high, versus
if you're really just showing up to go serve the
five audience members that you were like, Hey, I just

(27:11):
want to do this podcast, and I just whoever listens
listens like this is what I want to do. When
I first started the business, I knew that there was
a gap in what I was what we were doing.
I literally sold the first one hundred customers out of
the trunk of my car. This is when like payment
terminals were like a real thing, and I would carry
them in that my car. I'd go around shopping plazas.

(27:31):
It was just a completely different wry. I had to
go meet my customers where they were at and every day.
My goal was I just want one person to say.

Speaker 3 (27:38):
Yes, that was it.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
That's a great goal, that's it.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
And so if and I knew what I wanted to
serve small business, I had such a passion. I knew
what I could help them with. And so it's really
important to stay focused on that. And it's hard, Like
I really that empathy comes from a place because I
find myself in that now, because I think social media
makes it really really difficult. We see living in this
comparison culture living in it's hard not to when you
see and it's nice.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
It's also nice to see success because you're like, hey,
that's possible for me. There's an amazing truth in that.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
And you should have I have my I make my
vision board every year, right, and if I'm not gonna
have big visions and big goals, like I do believe
in the power of dreaming big, but you have to
stay rooted in showing up for that one person or
that one customer and building your product and solutions set
to really serve. I think that that's where most of

(28:31):
the most successful companies come from.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
And that's why I love women in business, like.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
I love love meeting and I get an opportunity with
everything that I do with a podcast and CEO school
to just.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
Meet and mentor so many women.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
I never meet a woman who's just started the business
or a business for the sake of it. Every woman
I meet is building a business because somebody wasn't solving
something for their kids' school, somebody wasn't solving something for
their industry. There is a technology that they see this
world in a different way that no one's solving for.
There's a greater purpose, and she's the last one. She's

(29:08):
so exhausted from nobody solving it. She's like, screw it,
I gotta do it.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
I got to do it.

Speaker 2 (29:14):
And that's literally how women are starting businesses. We're not
first to raise our hands to say, oh yeah, entrepreneurship.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
Is where we're at.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
We're solving real problems because we really care. And I
think that's the the empathetic.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
Part, the nurturing part, the problem solving part of.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Women, and women actually end up becoming the most successful
investments for a venture capitalists. Women actually end up becoming
the most incredible leaders in organizations. I do think that
the world would look very, very different in the environment
that we are in today.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
If we had more women at the top across the
world on a global standpoint.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
So it is important because women build with purpose, and
I think that that's what you have to You have
to stay grounded and it's nothing's going to take you there.
Because when you talk about those goals, Jay, as soon
as you start to reach, if it's just the goal,
before you even get to the goal, you're raising the
goal again. Before you get to the next goal, you're
raising that goal again. You have to check yourself in that.
And I fell into that trap. So once we started

(30:15):
to get the success and we started to grow the business.
Our first year we did five million in payments through
our ecosystem. Within year five we did five billion. It
was real, it was hard, it was fast. We were scaling,
we were growing. And then I just became a product
of living in this fintech boys club and defining success

(30:37):
on everyone else's terms, and I stopped checking in with
what I actually want. I stopped checking in with what
my customers really wanted. I stopped checking in. I was
just building because now there was this playbook, of this
tech playbook. This is how we have this is Series
A B C. Here's what's next. Here's how it's all
about value. It's all about this, It's about acquisitions, and

(30:57):
I definitely have a lot of lessons from building in
that way that I had to really check myself when
we reach the top.

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(32:32):
you mentioned a couple of moments ago about the number
of female founders funding going to female founders, those are
so alarming and they're not even close to being good now,
Like they're so far behind. What was some of the
blocks and the barriers you saw for women that you
had to learn to navigate and how would you encourage

(32:54):
women are in that space right now, because it can
get so easy to get discouraged, it's so easy to
become bitter, it's so easy to become completely disempowered. And
by the way, all of that would be extremely valid
based on the statistics you just shared. What did you
learn that if you were like, here are three lessons masterclasses,
moments of navigation that I learned that helped me play

(33:17):
the game and figure it out as opposed to give
up on the game and quit because it was too hard.
What would you say with the biggest three things that
you were Like, these three things taught me how to
play the game, and I had to learn to navigate
these in order to win in this world.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
I would say the first thing is to build your network.
Like that is the number one thing. I think what
has made the Boys Club so successful is they do
business on the golf courses and through relationships and through
this college. And they went to this school, and there
is a network. There is a Boys Club network. We
haven't had an opportunity to build a network. We've only

(33:51):
been in the workforce, you know since the nineteen forties, fifties,
since post World War, Like, the business world has not
been designed for women in mind, and so it is
important to to start building that network immediately.

Speaker 3 (34:03):
And so get out of the screen, get into the room.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
So that's like the number one first piece of advice
that I have for every woman building everywhere is build
your network. And the Boys Club isn't bad, right, and
so find the right supporters find the right allies. And
so I had the most incredibly two male co founders,
my brother and my other brother, and so we built alongside.

(34:27):
And I had the most amazing mentors, male mentors that
had been there, done that. And so I do think
that you have to find the right men around you
for support as well.

Speaker 3 (34:38):
So seek allies and ask for help, because the world
isn't one or the other. People do want to help.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
And I think as women, this goes back to, like
the number two is that we carry all of the burden.
We carry all of this extra mental pressure. We carry
all of this self talk, the doubt and again all valid.
But we never were the last to ask for help.
We're always pouring into everyone. I see this from my
own mother. I see this me as a mother. I
have to remind myself that I need to be poured

(35:07):
into as well.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
We're just That's how our DNA.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
Is, this is how we've been physically designed and built
from our privetive years.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
And days, you know, from the stone ages. That's what
our jobs.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
We're nurturer is we're part of But we were part
of the village, right, We didn't have to do it
alone in this world. Why do we feel like we
have to do it alone, and so get comfortable with
asking for help. So getting those allies super super important.
Third piece of advice that I have for female founders
is to do it anyway, Like go for it anyway.

(35:42):
And so there's going to be a lot of noise.
There's going to be a lot of people that are
going to doubt you. Every time you're going to step
into our room, there's going to be somebody. And I've
experienced this in every room that I've been and I
can name countless stories of the misogyny, of the sexism,
of the racism, and even the agism.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
Right like, even being young, you'er doubted.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
I can think of my first CEO conference when I
got investors with you know, venture backed, you know, and
it's not anyone's fault, it's just I was the first
portfolio company that was founded like that was a female
founded portfolio company.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
And I arrived to this conference.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
And every CEO walking in through the door stopped me
and was like, Hey, where's the event?

Speaker 3 (36:23):
Hey where do I get my name badge?

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Hey, where do I get They just assumed that I
was like the event manager until you know, one of.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
The LP's was like and welcoming our newest portfolio CEO.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
Sceneria and their faces, right, and so just ignore it
as best as you can, and you just have to
keep showing up in those rooms and be authentically you, Right.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
I think that's if I like, that's the third piece
of advice. Is it took me so.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Long to get comfortable with fully showing up as myself.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
And I mean, it's not my fault. I had to
put on a lot of armor.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
I was one of the only women in the boys club,
and there's so many stories of how I would show up.
I called myself a man and a skirt, so like
how I would dress. I could not eat another steak
at a steakhouse like it was like I was doing
all the things to fit in. And that's natural, that's
human tendency. You want to be part of the club.
So I'm not going to disrupt the norm. But you know,

(37:19):
I think that where the change really happened for me
was standing up to my board and to the team
and being comfortable and leading the way that as scenia.
That came later for me, and it came through confidence, right,
It came through like doing it and finding the like
the courage to be confidence in my own ability, but
I wish I found that sooner. So my third piece
of advice is to just to do it anyway. Show

(37:41):
up in the rooms and show up as you. You
don't have to be a man and a skirt, like,
be exactly how you are.

Speaker 3 (37:47):
And I think that the world is is. I think
it's changing, Jay, So I think it is. It's getting better.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
The statistics aren't there, and I've got thoughts on why
the stats aren't there, and it's because we're not holding
institutions accountable. There is an accountability component. Shit does not
change unless you hold somebody accountable to it. So venture capitalist,
you know, where is the funding going? Why aren't we
mandating that at least percentages of these funds go towards
women owned businesses, lending banking. That's exactly why we're building

(38:16):
worth Again, I did not want to go be a
serial entrepreneur.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
I am exhausted of building businesses.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
But there isn't an equitable landscape, and we have to
hold institutions accountable as well, and so I'm trying to
do that by standardizing the business credit score and holding
institutions accountable for equitable lending and for an equitable financial ecosystem.
But I think that those things have to change as
well as our consumer behaves as well as so many things.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
There's so many things that have to change.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
And I do believe that the dialogue is happening, which
is important. That's where it starts. But action comes from doing,
and so that's going to be the next big step
and I'm really curious to see how we're going to
do that in you know, in my generation, I want
my daughter's generations. I want my kids to have two daughters,
for them to grow up in a world that they

(39:07):
can be and do and right now, they have no concept,
just like I did.

Speaker 3 (39:11):
Right and so I'm raising them in the same way.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
And they're so strong and so independent and so cool
and so different and all the things. And I hope
that that continues, like they can always continue to be
themselves and have that positive dialogue not just from me
as a parent, but from their own from their own self,
because the world hopefully looks different for them.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
Yeah. No, great advice. And you reminded me of a
story I heard when I was in England. I heard
the speaker talking about and I may get the date wrong,
but I think she built a big tech company in
the eighties in England. She talked about how when she
started out, she used to call other CEOs and she'd

(39:53):
pretend to be her own assistant and she'd say, I'm
setting up a meeting for Steve Shirley. Her name was
stephan and she'd be like, Hey, I'm calling on behalf
of Steve Shirley. Steve Shirley would love to come and
meet you. The person would book in the appointment and
then she'd turn up as a woman and they'd be like, wait,
how's your name Steve. She's like, oh, they go, I
go by Steve because I'm Stephanie. And her name became

(40:14):
Steve Shirley because that's what she was known as. And
that's what it took. And now I'm hoping times are
changing and things are shifting, of course drastically since then,
but still that feeling of women feeling like I have
to go to a steakhouse, maybe I have to hang
out here. We're hoping culture is changing. But if we're
completely honest, if you didn't do those things, would you

(40:34):
be successful today?

Speaker 3 (40:36):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
And she's being honest, Yeah, no, it's and it's such
a valid point. This is a conversation we're having with
friends last night at dinner, you know, a friend asked,
what would I look back and do different? And so
many things is what I want to say, right hindsight
twenty twenty. But the truth is nothing right, because it
took me to the next step, and it took me
to the next room, and it took me to the
next table on the next conversation, and it made whatever

(41:00):
decisions I made allowed me to for me to get
that land that customer, to me to land that partnership
and that investor. And I do think that it is
important not to lose yourself though, And so although I
was showing up at the steakhouse and at the things,
like I would invite my counterparts to come, like to
see it from a different lens. And I'm always like
every one of like my investors' mentors, like they're all

(41:22):
probably rolling their eyes laughing at like this is the
like typical scenario conversation is like how they can be
better for us to like, okay next time instead, And
so the next year at that conference, my wonderful investor
and they're so incredible, so that was not their.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
Intention to make me feel left out. And it was
a golf tournament on the second day. Of course, it's
a golf tournament on the second day.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
And so they set me up at a SPA appointment,
which was so sweet of them.

Speaker 3 (41:46):
But I'm not here to go to the spot.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
I'm here to network with other CEOs and get business done, right,
And so I ended up just writing the golf carts, right,
And I ended up writing the golf carts and we
had such a great time, and like by the end
of it, you know, next year, they're like, what we
do different? And I'm like, nothing, Just invite me to
the golf course, right, And maybe I'm not going to
golf and maybe I may leave early from a dinner.
Maybe I won't stay overnight at a conference because I've

(42:09):
got my kids to go, like to get home to.
But I want to be invited to that, like I
want to just be.

Speaker 3 (42:14):
Part of the thing.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
I don't want to have this like curated extra experience.
And so I'd always invite them, like they would invite
me back into that conversation of what they could do better.
But I don't think if I voiced it, they wouldn't
have known if I just went to the SPA didn't
say anything right, And so I do.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
Think that that's where I was.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
You know, the early parts of having your voice heard
is important. You can't make change if you're not going
to express those ideas. So you have to get comfortable.
And it's hard. I know, it's so much easier said
it takes courage to do that.

Speaker 3 (42:45):
But I think if you do it in a.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
Way that's kind, and if you do it in a
way that's loving it, if you do it in a
way that's empathetic, and it's not belittling, and it's not oh,
you made me feel, it's not you language.

Speaker 3 (42:56):
It's I'm really excited for this. And I see a
lot of good in people.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
And even though I faced a lot of the things
that I faced, I knew that very very few times
where I felt that I was malicious or intentional, but
most of the time it wasn't.

Speaker 3 (43:13):
They just don't know. They just don't know. And so
I think if you invite people into.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
A proactive conversation, a co created conversation, that change can
happen that way. And that's how I was able to
navigate the Boys Club once doing it again.

Speaker 3 (43:29):
I mean, fine, it still hasn't.

Speaker 2 (43:30):
The fact the fintech space is it's different, but I
do think that we can co create a more beautiful
experience for all.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
Yeah. No, thank you for being so honest as well,
because I think it's like you said, it's been ten
years and it still hasn't changed drastically. It's changed a
little bit, but your ability to deal with it positively
and proactively has helped you move along. And one of
the things you did, and you said to me, like
you built your business with family. Yeah, and that's rare
I feel as well. In this day. I feel like

(44:00):
there were companies like a century ago which were family built,
family owned, they passed it down through generations. Family built
businesses are more rare now. And I've even had a
lot of friends and family members that I know that
have built things with their friends, investments, companies, and at
some point there's a breakof there's a breakdown in communication,
there's potentially distance that's created, and I think people can

(44:24):
sometimes be quite naive and trusting when they go into
family based or friend based businesses, and at some point
the friendship kind of changes because of money. The family
falls out over money. Generally, money seems to be this
force that has the power to break some of the
deepest bonds. As someone who's built a successful relationship with

(44:46):
their family and built a business at the same time,
what three warnings or cautions or clarifications would you put
into place for anyone listening right now thinking I'm starting
this with my friend, I'm super excited, we love each other,
need anything, contracts forget it, or someone with their families,
just like, of course I trust my family. What would
you be three things you'd lay out for them to say,

(45:07):
here's how to get it right, and here's what we did.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
It's definitely very rare so and I've seen it with
my own friends firsthand.

Speaker 3 (45:14):
Of what you're saying is.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
So treat because you go into it with that level
of trust, that excitement. With my brother when he came
into that, he came into the business a year after
almost a year after he was supporting me on a
back end, and then when things really started taking like
taking off, I needed help, I needed to grow, and
he was an expert in different things. And I think
advice number one is don't just partner up for the

(45:36):
sake of partnering.

Speaker 4 (45:37):
Up.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
We definitely had so much trust to me and we
have the same DNA, right, Like there's like same value
system every Like there's nobody in my life that has
gone through almost every life experience with me than my brother.
Like that's such a cool bond as siblings that you
get to have, right, They really understand all of the
craziness the families of the They're really your you know,

(46:00):
the other half of you in a different way in
your the primary part of your growing up. So we
had so much trust. Everything that made me great made
him great. Everything that you know, would be things that
maybe messed us up, messed him up. Right, So we
had this true bond. But he was different in his
skill set. I had really strong strength and people and

(46:21):
brand and marketing and just the ability to inspire and
get talent and drive. He was so great at sales
and operations and that was the skill set that I needed.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
And so I think advice number one is stay in
your lanes.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
So I think where what happens is like when you're
you know, in each other's lanes, that's where it becomes tough.
So having clear roles and responsibilities and then that's where
the trust component comes in because if you really trust
each other, then you have to let them run it
the way that they would run it, and they have
to trust to you in running that lane the way
that I would like that you're going to run it.

(46:57):
And so I think that that's Number one is to
divide in Conker.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
Number two, you brought up money. Money is it's tough.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
Right, and so in it that is truly what has
I've seen broken families and relationships. And one thing that
you know, when Seal came on board, I could have
maybe offered a different equity stake or when we were
like trying to figure out how we're going to do this,
and it.

Speaker 3 (47:22):
Was fifty to fifty, it wasn't even a question.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
And even though I was started, like started the company first,
whatever it was, but I knew that I never wanted
money to be our relationship is the most important thing,
and so I never wanted to build like what if
the business is going to fail, we're gonna have success,
We're going to fail, We're going to I didn't know
what was going to be the outcome, but family is forever,
Like I didn't want to ruin that. And so to

(47:45):
avoid not letting money come in the way. And I
know this isn't practical for many people, but that was
the reason why it was fifty to fifty. I got
two percent more because I'm two years older, so older
sister all like that.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
That was the deal.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
And actually this company now we're building again together and
this time he has two percent more to make life fair.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:07):
So, but we came from a place and with that allowed,
it wasn't about me feeling great or him feeling great.

Speaker 3 (48:14):
We both came from a sense of partnership.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
And so every decision that you make, and whether that's
with your friend or with your spouse or whoever you're
doing a business partner that you're doing business with, if
you guys are coming at it from this same equitable lens,
then you know that like there's that extra level of
trust because there isn't any other gain or benefit for
sal or for myself there we're always coming at it

(48:38):
for the same outcome. And I know that's not perfect
for all kinds of businesses, but it's all about value, right.
Where there's not that disconnect is when someone doesn't feel
their value and so really sitting down and understanding the
value component of it, it's super critical and then just
advice that it is important to talk about what happens
if it doesn't go well, right, So to have have

(49:00):
that conversation and to have things in place to say,
if it doesn't go well, here's how we're going to
solve through it.

Speaker 3 (49:07):
But I think it's it's not just having the end
in mind.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
We actually never signed a like a contract, so that's
actually I'm giving the advice. I never took the advice,
and I will say what did get us through it
is any business partnership. Business is personal like period. It's
a relationship. I mean, you were the guru of relationship advice,
like it is. You have to nurture this relationship. You

(49:31):
have to spend time in this relationship.

Speaker 3 (49:33):
It's a relation.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
You have to ensure that the other person is feeling seen, heard, valued,
and you've got to ensure that there's strong communication in
the relationship.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
So Sally and I we're siblings.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
We fight more than any like it is NonStop, Like
I disagree with him a one hundred times a day,
one hundred times a day, but we.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
Also make up very quickly.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
Because the way that I talk to my brother, there's
probably nobody in the world I could ever talk to
that is like, it's just how a siblings work. But
we have great level of communication and we got an
incredible coach to support us. We had almost like a therapist,
a business therapist, because that's what this is. It's a relationship.
And so I think it's never too early. So if
you do have a partnership to have a third party

(50:16):
that you can communicate, just like couple's therapy, right, that
you can go to and you're like, we're both committed
to making this work, but it's so annoying when she
does this, or it's so annoying when he does that,
And so it's not coming from a lens of me
against him, and that there is like a third party
there that's been super helpful and just building upon that communication.
So trust is super important and not in that communication.

(50:39):
It's where it goes wrong is when you start brushing
it under the rug, right when you're like, that's where
resentment forms, where relationships fail, business relationships, personal relationship, it's resentment.
We don't talk about it, we're not addressing it, we're
not co we're not finding a solution for it. And
then the next time it happens you're like, oh, remember
that last time that that happened. Remember so all of

(50:59):
this triangulation, that negative conversation.

Speaker 3 (51:02):
I'm a huge believer.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
I'm like always hard on my sleeve always, And so
that's what's worked, to just be honest and have those
conversations and if you need help, and get that third
person involved. But that's been what's worked really well for us.

Speaker 1 (51:16):
I think there's something to be said for relationships where
you already have a deep understanding of each other. When
Radi and I start a Jouni together, which is our
tea company, it was so much about leaning into each
other's strengths and trusting each other with what we knew.
So I know that Radi deeply understands flavor profile, she
really understands ingredients, she knows what's good for people's health.

(51:37):
She's that's her world, Like, that's that's what she's dedicated
her life to. She's a nutrition is, she's a dietitian.
She has a background in that, and so I can
trust her with that. And then I love storytelling, I
love symbolism, I love aesthetics like that that's my world.
And I love the idea of how something can become
a part of someone's routine, and you know, we have

(51:58):
a Jouny for the morning and a Junie the evening
and a Juni for midday pick me up. And I
understand how people need to use products in order to
feel better. And when there's that trust and that understanding,
now it's like, Okay, we don't need to tread on
each other's toes. But we've been together for probably like
nine ten years when we started something together, so there's
such a deep understanding, whereas if we started it in

(52:20):
year one, chances are been a lot more difficult. And
so I think if you are building something with someone,
you know, if you know them well enough, it's more
likely to be effective as opposed to like, oh, we
just hit it off and we kind of got some
chemistry and then you know you don't really know them
well enough. But I wanted to ask you something, something
that I want to pivot slightly because I think it's

(52:41):
something that I talk to a lot of people about
and I think you've nailed in and we kind of
touched on it in our previous conversation before we started recording.
You built a business in what is a background product
right in the sense of it's not consumer facing directly,
it's not something that everyone would come across sexy. Yeah,

(53:02):
it's I call it un sexy money, and it's and
I think it's the coolest type of money. There's a
lot of pressure these days where everyone thinks I have
to have a social media following, I have to build
a brand that's known online. I need a viral brand.
If it's going to make money, it has to be consumed,
like we put this weird pressure. And I always think
about like I used to work at Accentua, and I
used to think about the amount of things that Accentua required,

(53:24):
things that extensual works with. I was like, no one's
ever heard of these companies, and there are founders here
are winning massively, and I feel like this generation might
be missing out on the businesses that solve real problems
that affects millions of people behind the scenes, that the
opportunity to scale really really fast because we're too busy
trying to grow an online following. And so walk us

(53:45):
through that understanding of how you encourage founders to find
their niche and build their product and think about what
they're doing, because today it's been like, oh, well, if
my brand hasn't had a viral video yet, it probably
won't become big, So so walk us through that a
little bit.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
It's done so much good, but it's ruined us, right like,
it's ruined us in so so many ways. We have
to stop doing things for the gram it is. It
is our mentality of building companies, products, services that if
it's not this, then it's not that. And I also
think that it's important for us to have a social
presence and to utilize all these.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
Tools that we have.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
So there's so much good that can come from it,
but it doesn't have to be all of it, and
so I do think it's important. There's so much opportunity
out there. Most entrepreneurs that I know of personally that
have been really successful came from a corporate position that
like saw something and then they wanted to go tackle
this one unique problem. And these unsexy businesses are solving

(54:43):
the most complex problems for us. So we did forty
billion dollars in payments through this ecosystem that I almost
didn't start. If I didn't build it, we we solved
huge problems in this It was so unsexy. Card present
versus card not present so Stripe was focused on digital transactions,
where was focused on in person transactions.

Speaker 3 (55:02):
Guess what, there was nobody bridging the gap for.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
Like dentist offices that needed both in person and online transactions.

Speaker 3 (55:08):
Boom.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
There was the opportunity that nobody saw on building that tech.
And it's not about I didn't have the background. I
wasn't a coder, I wasn't an engineer, but I could
see where the world was going. And I think that's
what entrepreneurship is. It's the spirit of solving for problems.
It's not for show. Success will come if you just

(55:29):
let go of that. And you can also have a
social following and build a great band and have the
podcast and do the things to go reach more people.
But you can solve if you just focus on solving
the problem and seeing it uniquely. And if it's one
of you, you're really like it's resonating with you because
you're like, I am that person. I'm always finding Like
you're in the shower and you're like, this should be better,

(55:51):
this could be better. Right, You're you're always finding the
next thing. But ideas don't make you an entrepreneur.

Speaker 3 (55:58):
Execution does, right. Everybody has ideas. It's really about execution.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
And that's the thing I feel like, that's the thing
that I saw maybe in like Salini growing up, was.

Speaker 3 (56:08):
Like got to put in the work.

Speaker 2 (56:10):
Even after everything that I have, I show up every
single day and I work. I put my head down
at night and I ask myself, did I like give
my one hundred and tent? I work so hard still
and it's just part of and yes, I work smart too,
so it's not that I'm not just grinding my way.

Speaker 3 (56:25):
I'm being intentional, but.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
Hard work is a huge part of it. Because there's
no such thing as a billion dollar idea. It's a
billion dollar.

Speaker 3 (56:32):
Execution, and to execute it's every single day.

Speaker 2 (56:35):
You just got to keep showing up and like that mountain,
the mountain's going to be there, and then you're gonna
climb it, and guess what, You're gonna get to the top.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
And you're gonna.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Climb this thing the next the next day, there's another mountain,
and there's another mountain. So you've got to love that challenge.
That's what entrepreneurship is. It's not I didn't build a
billion dollar It took me twelve years to build that business.
Ten years to exit that business. It didn't happen overnight.
It happened because I just kept showing up. It wasn't
this magic formula. And people ask like, what was the

(57:03):
secret to the billion dollar success?

Speaker 3 (57:05):
I didn't give up, Like I just somehow kept showing up.
I can name every founders, like every journey where we
almost going to make prayer roll. I had to put
my mortgage on the line. We had to do.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
We didn't get the investors, we lost the customers. But
you just keep going, and so you have to find
out why to really power you through. And for me
it was I just love to solve really big problems.
And that's why even after exit, right, it's like here
I'm back again in building again. It's because I see
the problem and I know we can solve it.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
Yeah. I think you're the right person. And asked this
question to you because you talked about working hard and
working smart, But what was the mindset shift in building
a million dollar business one hundred million and then getting
to a billion? Like what changed? Because I think there
may be people listening who've like built the million and
they're like, I want to get to ten or one hundred.
I don't know what what do I need to do differently?

(57:55):
Because I think at every level there's a different mindset,
different type of work that's required, and often we don't
talk about that enough, and so you keep doing the
same thing again and again expecting a different result, as
Einstein said, is insanity. What was different? What did you
find that you at to up level to go from
one to one hundred hundred to a billion?

Speaker 2 (58:15):
You're brilliant because everything has to change. It's completely different
going from your zero to six figures, you know, getting
that validation of your it's a completely different journey from
zero to six, from six to seven, it's a completely
different journey. And everything breaks, and it's supposed to break.

Speaker 3 (58:32):
Going from seven to eight figures in revenue, it's going
to break again.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
Your systems are going to break. People are going to break.
It's going to break, because it's supposed to. Once you
get you know, you get things right, or you think
you get these things right. If you're doing what you've
set out to do, which is go get more customers,
go get more revenue, there's pressure on that system and
then you've got to recalibrate. You've got to recalibrate the
tools you've got to recalibrate the next level of scale,

(58:56):
and so it is supposed to break. But the one
thing that's not different if I look back, So we
had to change our mentality on growth. We had to
get new technology. It's scale is it's not simple. But
if I were to boil it down, it comes to
three things. It's people, process, and profit. You've got to
scale your people. You've got to scale your process, and
you've got to scale your profit. Most companies that go

(59:17):
beyond that market validation of million in revenue and you're
trying to get to the you know, or the one
hundred million in value, they have multiple lines of revenue
and so you're thinking outside of the box. So once
we were acquiring small businesses, we've shifted to an enterprise strategy.
Now I'm building again, we're selling directly to the banks.
We're going directly to enterprise first, because that was the
one to many that it took me seven years to

(59:38):
unlock that next and then I'm going to go.

Speaker 3 (59:40):
To small businesses.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
So you have to be able to tap into that
scale of people, process and profit. But the one thing
that I would say stayed exactly the same, and it
was so important for me. I wanted to be the
one to see the company through to exit. And I
worked so hard, oh being over prepared over all the
things so that.

Speaker 3 (59:58):
I could be the best CEO that I could be.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Like, I put so much intentionality behind working really hard
to be the best leader that I could. And the
thing that carried me through that was exactly the same
was our values in the company. I think we hired
the right people, we fired the right people, and those
decisions are hard. And our culture was really built on

(01:00:21):
the value system. I mean, I have one Team tattooed
here on my arm. It comes from that meets me,
my brother. We're one team, we wan team, one dream like.
That's that's how it's been since we grew up. That's
what I wanted our team environment.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
To be like.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
And so building that the culture, the DNA value system
and those core values, those don't change. Those evolve, but
that needs to say grounded and the same as you're scaling,
then you just shift into those are just like it's
just the next playbook. It's a different heart at the
next level, but you can solve it and you can

(01:00:56):
find people to solve it. And then at that next stage,
we had amazing leaders at the you know, one hundred
million dollar mark. And when I started the company, the
name of the company was Fat Merchant, by the way.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
Because I was twenty five, you know, it was it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
Was fun and we were disrupting the industry. But I
knew Fat Merchant was one hundred million dollar company. Stacks
was a billion dollar company. And I had to get comfortable,
even though it was to make those pivots, to make
those changes. And so you've got to see where it's going,
and you've got to be willing to just throw it
away and to start again at that, you know, to
bring in we had to bring in new leaders.

Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
That's hard.

Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
Change is hard for organizations, and so you've got to
go build and to be willing to willing to change.
It's supposed to break, So get comfortable with it breaking,
and you just get better.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
It doesn't get easier, but you get better.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
But as long as everybody that's coming in through that
door has that same that that value principle, and that's
something that I think it's the most important thing. I
was so tired of hearing my entire career scenario. You
take things too personally. Oh wow, And I do because
it is personal. It's the most personal thing I spent.
I had this company before I even had my children.

(01:02:03):
It's my first baby, right, Like I give that much
energy and love even for work. Right those that are
in the workforce, like you, spend more time at work
than you do anywhere else. It is personal. You don't
leave yourself at the door before you show up on Zoom.
You shouldn't be expected to. And I think that we
can create and I have this vision of a world

(01:02:24):
in you know, a working world where we do bring
the human first. And we had the most tremendous leadership
and people, and it's been so amazing to be able
to build again with that same value principle.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
And it's just come. It's the first component of it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
And who like, you are the company you keep, Literally,
you are the company you keep.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
And so that DNA is the most important, So don't change.
That has to be reflective of your value system. And
then the rest is just a pipe book.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
I really appreciate your highlighting of just how many challenges
there are to solve and how it's actually normal for
things to break every time you upgrade and up level.
And by the way, this includes the team that's working too,
Like I look at I couldn't do anything without my team,
It just wouldn't be possible. And the people process profit

(01:03:18):
point is so brilliantly laid out for anyone who's listening
right now, Like I think those three things are so
pivotal in an organization. And people being able to constantly
solve after a break. That resilience and grit that's required
by the whole team, not just by the leader, by
the whole team. That's so pivotal. And I was going

(01:03:40):
to ask you, because I'm listening to you now and
I'm thinking there's probably at least, like I reckon, you
have a minimum of one hundred stories a year of
things going wrong. And I was going to ask you,
what was your darkest day as an entrepreneur, Like what
was the toughest day that you remember where? And how
did it feel and how did you deal with it?

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
Surprisingly, my toughest days were actually after I achieved the
billion dollar value. I sold the company twice, which is
also a very interesting journey, and I did the things
that I wanted to do for my team, so I
carried that my team with me. We made record breaking
success for our investors, for our team, all the things,

(01:04:21):
and then the next year we like I got distracted,
as I mentioned, like I was chasing something that I
didn't know that I wanted, and so it was like.

Speaker 3 (01:04:28):
Boom, we did you know?

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
It was two hundred and twenty million, I think was
the twenty twenty valuation and exit where we cashed seventy
percent out of the company.

Speaker 3 (01:04:36):
So whoever owned shares, like everybody made money.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
It was and it wasn't just about the financial It
was meaningful in a sense of like when you get
to exit something, when you get to like take it
to completion, it feels so good, like it was just incredible.
And then got heads down because it was now what's next.
It's let's let's keep growing, let's get it to the billion,
let's IPO, let's go, you know, do what's next. And

(01:04:59):
I got heads down again in eighteen months, just building
and grinding and building and grinding. The only things in
my life were my company and my family, like that
was all all it was. My health was deteriorating. I
was at the worst worst health and I actually had
never gone to a doctor because I think women can
relate to this, Like my ob was my doctor for

(01:05:19):
like because I was having babies in between and Faisel
and I were you know, planning a family, and that
was it. So for five years, my only doctor was
my ob and I had to go to the doctor
because it's like not the most prideful thing I can say,
but we had to get like key Man life insurance
before our theories easy had to like do these insurance,
which which means that like I had to be tested

(01:05:39):
if I was healthy and what my insurance policy as
a CEO was. So I went to the doctor because
I was required to for work, and I got my
report card back, which was my health report, and I
was quite literally like a fifty seven year old man,
like I actually became the pale mail stale CEO, Like
I literally became him. And my health was my cholesterol,

(01:06:01):
my cortisol.

Speaker 3 (01:06:03):
Everything was like I didn't even know, like I had
no clue, and you know, I had lost my father
the year before, and it was just hard. It was
like what am I What am I doing this for?
And we had our Series.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
D coming up, and it's brutal, like going through some
of these fundraising like with big bankers and investment bankers.

Speaker 3 (01:06:22):
I was on the road.

Speaker 2 (01:06:23):
I had to do forty plus fireside chats with the
most incredible, you know, large private equities that like in finance,
you like you know you have your you're from essential,
like you dream of like being in front of like
the Black Rocks and the Kkrs and like it was
so fun and exhilarating in a different way, but.

Speaker 3 (01:06:39):
It was hard. I was on the road and we accomplished.

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
What we set out to do was to go, you know,
close the series D bring in other minority investors. We
were one hundred plus million in revenue, and so it
wasn't even a fictitious value. It wasn't a value based
on like, oh, here's this tech value multiple. We had
a hundred plus million in revenue and we closed around
one point one billion. Everything I'd ever dreamed of the
whole We're we're an Orlando based company, which is a

(01:07:06):
huge deal. Or the first unicorn out of Orlando, out
of Florida, like so many big moments.

Speaker 3 (01:07:12):
We had the community.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
It was a big milestone to celebrate. So we had
this huge the Mayor's like, everything's there, all this excitement
around this milestone, around this series, either around this valuation
and around this exit. And when the party was over,
it happened so fast, like it was like two weeks
of all of this and it was back to work
and I went to my next sport meeting and I
was like, here, here's the next Now it's two billion,

(01:07:35):
And it was the first time that I was like,
do I actually want to go do it again?

Speaker 4 (01:07:40):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
And I felt the most emptiest I had ever the
loneliest I had ever felt. And it's because what happens
when you aim for the moon but you actually land.
I have no goal, and I did everything that I
wanted to do, and so I did what most typical
tech founders do is I took a sabbatical, took my
family to Europe, and it was really just to spend

(01:08:01):
time with myself and to really ask myself the hard
questions of what is it that I want to do next?
And then you know, we had this big plan laid
out for the next transaction or maybe going to you know, IPO.

Speaker 3 (01:08:12):
We had three.

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):
Acquisitions at that time, and as like a student of learning,
like I get really excited about just learning, I'm like, oh,
I want to do something that I haven't done, and
going public with something that was just like on the
you know, on the checklist. But I came back and
decided that I was going to leave my job. I
was like, I have to, this is not for me anymore,
and that I was. And also the organization was quite large,

(01:08:35):
you know, as you can tell, I'm a people person.
My love language is quality time, and so it was
just time for me. They hand over to another team
that was going to take it from that billion to
two or to the next milestone and to the next level.
That was when the transition really began. And I've spent
my entire like adulthood to find like building this. My

(01:08:57):
work was my worth. It was my only identity and
it was so hard to shed, like what was next,
and so that was it. That was like the toughest moment.
It was the hardest decision. I had many people think
that that was like the craziest thing to leave at
that time. I left a lot of equity on the
tiam I'm still a huge I love this company. I'm
a big shareholder. It's always going to be part of

(01:09:19):
my story. I'm always going to be the founder of Stacks.
But I had more I wanted to do, and impact
was an important part of it and taking care of
myself and getting to know myself. And I lost a
decade and I wouldn't change it. Like we talked about,
I wouldn't go back and change it. It's like it's
literally given us the most incredible life. It's given me

(01:09:40):
all of these opportunities. I would do it over again
every single day. But now I just want to be
a lot more intentional and I get to come from
a place of where I get to build again. And
it's not about freedom of dollar anymore. It's about freedom
of impact. And I get to use my time and
my resources and my connections and the network and to

(01:10:00):
go build something incredible. And I thought maybe i'd retire
right after right so I was like, Okay, maybe I'm
gonna you know, come off, I've got the podcast. I
love meeting amazing women and supporting female founders.

Speaker 3 (01:10:12):
But if I turn that into work, it would lose
its magic.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
And so after a couple months, and this is where
serial entrepreneurship like kicks in and now I get it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):
You get the next idea and then you can't eat.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
Breathe, sleep, think about it in the shower, and that's
how it That's how it happened, and we got the
team back together, and we're gonna go We're gonna go
do it again because I'm thirty seven years old and like,
what else am I gonna do.

Speaker 3 (01:10:35):
With my life?

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
And so I'm gonna I'm gonna go build. But this time,
I think I get to build with more confidence. I
get to build with a different network. I get to
build without having the dollar in mind or having that pressure,
and I get to take a different kind of risk.
And I'm really excited about the scenario two point zero.

Speaker 1 (01:10:57):
Yeah, that's what I was gonna say, is that is
that scenario two point right now?

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
The I mean, it's been such an amazing journey of
just getting to know myself and finding time to really
think about what's important. And I was telling you that
mantra in the beginning of I have all the time
in the world, and I'm so busy.

Speaker 3 (01:11:13):
It's back again. I've got all the million things.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
But I really do believe I've all the time in
the world now because I get to choose it with
all the things.

Speaker 3 (01:11:19):
I get to fill it with all the things that
I love. I took on my health head on.

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):
I'm proud to report that my health is incredible, Like
I'm like everything is like I'm the healthiest I've literally
been since like before I had kids, and it feels
amazing and I feel so great inside.

Speaker 3 (01:11:36):
And I have this amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
Energy in a different way, and I you know, prioritize
myself and my workouts and it used to feel like
a chore.

Speaker 3 (01:11:44):
And now it's like I never.

Speaker 2 (01:11:46):
Thought I would be that that girl that like loves
to work out, I mean, and I have different like
I love to walk and I love being in nature.
I've found I've always been a spiritual person, but I
lost that part of me because it's hard to make
the time right, it's hard to add all the things.
And I've really given that like a big part, a
big bucket in my life.

Speaker 3 (01:12:06):
And I've really filled that bucket and.

Speaker 2 (01:12:09):
Found ways to just go deep and be in peace.

Speaker 3 (01:12:13):
And I'm so.

Speaker 2 (01:12:14):
Much more calmer now, Like if you ask any of
my friends, like my energy is just in a different energy.

Speaker 3 (01:12:21):
I'm so grateful, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:12:23):
I was talking to Fhasal on the way here, and
it's like we think that everything's happening.

Speaker 3 (01:12:27):
To us, right. It's so hard, it's so hard.

Speaker 2 (01:12:30):
But when hard things happen. You have to trust then
it's happening for us. And I really do understand that now.
I think a lot of spiritual teachers, will you know,
share that that you to trust, you have to trust
in that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:42):
There is a better plan. And I finally get it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:47):
And now when I pray or when I look deep
and I ask, and I'm like, I want this or
I want to think about that, or allow me these
opportunities or something better. So when things don't happen exactly
the way, it's because the timing isn't right, because there's
something better, and you just have to trust in the
power of the universe. And I really do, I really
do believe that when you're in that frequency and it

(01:13:07):
sounds like so woo, but I get it.

Speaker 3 (01:13:10):
And I feel really grateful that I was able to
take the time to put in the work. And you've
got to put in the work.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
And it's hard to look deep and check your ego,
check you know, how you're actually living your life in
action and is that really aligning? And I can look
back and I also we said so many mistakes, so
many things I want to do over on that I
don't I won't change, but I think growth is a
big part of the journey, and I don't know what.

Speaker 3 (01:13:36):
My destination is going to be. I think this time around,
I'm not going to just build a billion dollar business.

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
I'm probably going to build I don't know, something even greater.
But I'm not capping it, so just uncap it. And
I'm really excited about that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
That's so beautiful to hear. And it's so wonderful that
you were able to take lessons from the last ten
years and shift and make changes and use this transition
peer to have a more transformational journey now, because yeah,
you can get so lost and broken by something that
it's hard to do it again. And I think a

(01:14:09):
big part of that, from what I've learned from you
and private conversations, has been your relationship with fairs you've
been with them since you guys are twenty and your
children as well. And you know, I find like women
get asked this question more than anyone. It's like, how
do you do it all? Right? And it's one of
those unfair questions with the unfair pressure that falls on women.

(01:14:30):
And I wanted to ask you, though, for your relationship
and your relationship with your children, how you were telling
me this earlier, you were like, I think we're really
trying to do this right and raise great humans and
everything else. What have been the two most critical pieces
of being in love since you were twenty while you
build this thirty seven today and having two children five

(01:14:53):
and eight that's during all of this, right, like this
is all happening. We haven't even like that's all happening?
And was it perfectly balanced? What did balance look like?
And if you had to say here were two things
that were the two priorities that made sure that both
things stayed on track, what would they be.

Speaker 2 (01:15:12):
I'm so grateful for my husband and my partner, and
you know, we met so young and we build our
lives together, and so I'm like super he's also an entrepreneur.
We're both like different personality types, but also just he's
the most incredible, loving human. You know, we have a
joke in our family that it's like everybody meets Sal,
my brother, and like everybody loves Sal, and Sal always goes,

(01:15:34):
and then they meet my sister, and then everybody loves Scenaria,
and then they meet Fasal and then we're like chopliver,
like everybody loves it it's everybody loves Raymond, but our
house is everybody loves like Fasal. So we've got a
house that's just full and it's filled with so much love.
And I think it goes back to the same things
of communication. And you know, I think we in the

(01:15:54):
in the beginning, we talked about productivity, and we just
communicate really well.

Speaker 3 (01:15:58):
We're a team. The value system is of a team.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
And never in our like we've always had to you know,
one person's been in the driver's seat, or one person's been,
you know, in the back. We've always been side by side,
even if our careers are taking us in different paths.

Speaker 3 (01:16:11):
Like I do feel like I've had that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
Support system in my home life with him, and that
is something that I'm so grateful for to have a
partner that is not intimidated by the success or not
intimidated by like he's my biggest cheerleader, he's my biggest,
biggest fan, and it's that level of confidence.

Speaker 3 (01:16:31):
I do think that I've been very fortunate to have
strong men in my life.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35):
I've never had men that you know, I've had all
strong male models who treat women with like just the
most amazing things that we are, and I feel like
that has been a huge part of where I don't
see the world in that way, Like I feel empowered
because my home feels empowered. I know so many women
that they have to mask their success at home or

(01:16:57):
on a date. I have so many friends that are
struggling in dating life and they're so successful, they're so incredible,
and when they show up they have to it feels
emasculating because they have so much success or that they're
you know, maybe earning more money or have more accolades.
And I do think that, you know, it takes strong
men to be with strong women, and there are strong

(01:17:18):
men in this world.

Speaker 3 (01:17:20):
I've been fortunate for that.

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):
And the advice that I have on how we've been
able to co partner and co parent and do the
things is building a home with love and honesty and
trust and spending time together that productivity.

Speaker 3 (01:17:35):
Like every Sunday we have this meeting, so we have
like my whole life has been CEO life that.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
I like put into our systems at home, but we
have a Sunday meeting. We call it Sunday Zoom out.
And so my schedule is really busy. You have to
travel a lot for work. I'm speaking at conferences, he's
got his businesses. We're like two ships sometimes in the night.

Speaker 3 (01:17:53):
And then we've got our kids.

Speaker 2 (01:17:54):
We've got our girls their number one priority and each other,
like as a family unit, we're a priority. On Sundays,
we sit down and now Mila is old enough, she's
actually like she takes notes for us, and so the
kids are involved and it's like, here's the schedules for
the week, and here's what you know Mom's up to,
and here's what's what Dad's up to. And you know,
their schedules are crazy. They've got tennis and soccer and

(01:18:16):
piano and they're super overachievers with a full schedule as
well by their choosing, by the way, so by their choosing,
they get to.

Speaker 3 (01:18:23):
Pick their activities.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
And so every week we sit down and we just
were like, Okay, here's what's happening. And so that in
and of itself, that transparency. It's not like mom has.

Speaker 3 (01:18:34):
To go to work. We're so excited.

Speaker 2 (01:18:36):
Because mom is going to la to go do be
on this podcast. And then I'll show them a clip
of the podcast and they're like, oh, that's so cool.
Many times, like with if I have like so much travel.

Speaker 3 (01:18:47):
The kids go with me. They have been on you know,
every stage.

Speaker 2 (01:18:51):
They've gotten to meet the most incredible They got to
meet someone Biles at the Ernst and Young the Strategic
Girls from I was speaking at Strategic Growth.

Speaker 3 (01:18:58):
For them and you know, I knew she was gonna
be there.

Speaker 2 (01:19:00):
I brought the kids and I knew our path would coincide. Backstage,
the girls were with me, like, we just try to
incorporate the kids into everything as best as we can.
And it's not perfect parenting, right, they're gonna miss school,
they're going to do the things, but involve them and
so on Sundays we sit down as a family and
we're excited for each other. That takes the pressure off
of like it's not about the schedule, it's about what

(01:19:22):
are our wins for this week as a family, and
then we prioritize. Okay, so if this is what's happening,
and this is what's happening, then we go into like
the tacticality of it, right.

Speaker 3 (01:19:32):
Who's doing pickup, who's doing drop off?

Speaker 2 (01:19:33):
And I do want to make sure you know, the
women in the audience, especially here, I do have help
because that is it's impossible.

Speaker 3 (01:19:41):
It is impossible. The weight of the things that we
have to do. Ask for help.

Speaker 2 (01:19:46):
Whatever you can delegate off, even if it's the laundry,
even if it's And if you don't have the resources,
ask a friend, ask for help, trade share, do the things.
But help is a big part of how it all works.
And so I've got my mom and we've got support.
And just because I have support doesn't mean that Phasal
and I aren't the ones that are like the nucleus
of it, right, Like we fight over drop off, we

(01:20:08):
fight over it, and so we just divide and conquer,
and the kids are involved. And there really isn't perfect balance.
I think that's what It's a myth, you know, myth
balance is bullshit.

Speaker 3 (01:20:18):
There isn't.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
It's integration. And so we've just learned to integrate. We've
made our lives out of it. We travel so much,
we make it fun. That's how we do. And then
every week we prioritize time together for just him and
I and that's how we've been able to release say,
there's and it's not perfect. We've had our moments through
the years, like hard moments through the years, and every
time we have hard moments. It's because we've deprioritized ourselves.

(01:20:40):
We've deprioritized our relationship, and then when we don't have
date nights or or just even a walk right where
it's just one on one time and we're not connecting,
then we're annoyed at each other and we're bitter, and
then everything else falls in our place. So that Sunday
meeting is super super critical for our family. And you
can have all like you can. I was so tired

(01:21:01):
of hearing that you can't have it all. We often
hear that, and many successful people say you can't have
it all. I want to have it all, but I
want to define what all looks like. So for me,
it's that going back to the threes, I've got three buckets.

Speaker 3 (01:21:14):
That's it.

Speaker 2 (01:21:15):
So it's my family, it's my work, right and now
it's still building this company, and it's impact right. It's
it's the work that I get to do with women
in business. And I think that that's and that might change, right,
So your buckets might evolve, but those are the buckets
that I'm filling.

Speaker 3 (01:21:29):
And it's not perfect on a day to day. So
when I'm here and I'm here for work, I'm fully
present here and I know everything is taken care of.

Speaker 2 (01:21:37):
And when I'm home, I'm fully home. And that's why
I love going into the office. So I FaZe likes
to work from home. We can't work and like because
he's always cooking, he's always distracting me, like he's he
lives on Chronos time like he's he definitely has all
the time in the world and he's just so chill.
We're like so opposite, and so we work separate. Like
I go into the office because I like to go in.
I like to get my stuff done. But then when

(01:21:58):
I'm home home and everything is like it's all for them,
So I spend we spend quality time.

Speaker 3 (01:22:05):
And I think that's what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:22:06):
I think it's truly that, you know, living in the
now and living in the present and just enjoying We
can enjoy the journey today. We don't have to wait
for the milestone we have to wait for when we
have this house, or when we have this or when
we have that. People waste away their lives chasing waste
it all the way you have it in front of you.

Speaker 1 (01:22:24):
Scenario has been such a joy talking to you today
and hearing about the incredible journey you've been on, and
I'm so excited to be your friend now and watch
the next phase and get to know you more through
this part. And we end every on Purpose episode with
a final five. Oh my goodness, which are the fast five?
So you have to answer every question in one word
to one sentence maximum. Okay, so scenaria madonnay. These are

(01:22:48):
your fast five. Final five. So the first question is
what is the best advice you've ever heard or received?

Speaker 2 (01:22:54):
Everything isn't as good as it seems, and everything isn't
as bad as it seems.

Speaker 1 (01:22:58):
Oh, that's great advice, all right. What is the worst
advice you've ever had or received?

Speaker 2 (01:23:03):
I think the worst advice I've ever received is it's
honestly been the best advice in some way because it's
been the underestimating, like the underestimation of like that you
can't right.

Speaker 3 (01:23:13):
Or not now? And why not now? Why not me?

Speaker 1 (01:23:18):
Nice question number three? What's your freedom formula?

Speaker 2 (01:23:22):
You know, freedom of dollar is important. You've got to
be able to have financial freedom. It doesn't mean that
you've got to have all the money in the bank,
but financial freedom is important so you can feel secure.
But it's freedom of time like, that's what we're living for.
And if you can get that freedom of time, then
hopefully you can focus on impacts.

Speaker 3 (01:23:36):
It's freedom of impact.

Speaker 2 (01:23:37):
So it's freedom of dollar, freedom of time, and freedom
of impact.

Speaker 1 (01:23:40):
I love that question, numb before, how do you avoid
being lonely at.

Speaker 2 (01:23:44):
The top, you surround yourself with real friends. You surround
yourself with people who also feel just as lonely or
in their fields, and you don't have You have a
small circle, but you have a meaningful circle.

Speaker 1 (01:23:58):
And fifth and final question we asked every guest has
ever been on the show, if you could create one
law that everyone in the world had to follow, what
would it be?

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
The one law that I would like, The world needs
to be led with kindness. So before you say anything
shitty or nasty or something's about to come out of
your mouth like or even in your own for your
own self, just do it with love, like do it
with extra extra, extra, extra extra love. Because if we
just love on each other, if we love on ourselves,
I do think that the world would just it would

(01:24:28):
be perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
Sonia. I love your energy ever since the moment we met.
We met last year at the Baby to Baby Guard
and we just hit it off and started talking, and
I got to meet Faisal as well, and so us
three were hanging out. And every time I meet you
at four more in love with your energy and aura.
And I'm just so grateful for what you're doing for
entrepreneurs all over the world. And I hope everyone has
been listening and watching. Follow Sennor on social media, subscribe

(01:24:51):
to our podcast, watch out for what's next with their
journey with worth Ai and uh Sceneria. I'm truly grateful
to call you a friend, and I'm really really happy
that you came and trusted us to be on on purpose.
And I hope everyone's been listening and watching. Share your insights,
the things you're going to try, the nuggets of wisdom
that Sinnaria shared that resonated with you, share them on
stories on TikTok on Instagram. I'm always looking out to

(01:25:14):
see what really connected with your heart and your mind,
and I think there were so many amazing insights that
came out of today, Sinara. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:25:22):
Thank you Jay. The feeling is so mutual.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
You're incredible for those that of course your audience knows this,
but it's hard to meet your heroes because you don't
know what they're going to be like. And I've been
a true like I've always looked the amount of podcasts
that I've listened to, the amount of daily JS I've
heard in my you know, in my career. I was
almost afraid when I met you and I told you this,

(01:25:47):
I don't know, you know what it was going to
be like. But you were the same as what I
would have imagined, but if not better, you were just
so incredible and I wish you so much success. And
the world is rooting for you because we need more
people will like you rooting for us.

Speaker 1 (01:26:01):
Thank you, Thank you so much, thank you. If you
love this episode, you'll enjoy my conversation with Megan Trainer
on breaking generational trauma and how to be confident from
the inside out.

Speaker 4 (01:26:13):
My therapist told me stand in the mirror naked for
five minutes. It was already tough for me to love
my body, but after the C section scar with all
the stretch marks, now I'm looking at myself like I've
been hacked. But day three, when I did it, I
was like, you know what, her thighs are cute

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