Explicit

Arlan Hamilton

Published May 5, 2020, 10:00 AM

Backstage Capital's Arlan Hamilton is the only black, queer woman to have built a venture capital from scratch. She joins Sophia on "Work In Progress" to discuss her path to success, her amazing mother, how she's changing entrepreneurship, and her new book, "It's About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated Into Your Greatest Advantage."

Executive Producers: Sophia Bush & Sim Sarna

Supervising Producer: Allison Bresnick

Associate Producer: Caitlin Lee

Editors: Josh Windisch and Matt Sasaki

Music written by Jack Garratt and produced by Mark Foster

Artwork by Kimi Selfridge.

This show is brought to you by Brilliant Anatomy.


Hi, everyone, Sophia Bush here. Welcome to Work in Progress, where I talked to people who inspire me about how they got to where they are and where they think they're still going. Hey whip, smarties. Today's guest is the incredibly inspiring Arlen Hamilton's. She is the only black queer woman to have built a venture capital firm from scratch. Her company is called Backstage Capital, which invests in the best founders who identify as women, people of color or l g B t Q. She joins me today to talk about her path to success, her curiosity as a young girl when she would wear six different watches at one time so she could be in touch with many time zones, her amazing mother who truly let her be herself both held and free, how she's changing entrepreneurship, and of course, her new book, which is out today. It's called It's About Damn Time. How to turn being underestimated into your greatest advantage? I know, don't you just want to clap and scream? I do? You are going to love this conversation, Arln. Thanks for coming back on, Thank you for having me back on. Yeah, So let's let's dig in for everybody listening at home. This is an especially fun episode because you also have an incredible podcast, and we just I just how do we even say that? You just interviewed me for your podcast and now I'm interviewing you for mine. And so we've just been together all morning and I love this day, hanging out, hanging out, hanging out, communicating in the time of the Rhona. Where um, where are you this morning? I'm in my home office in Los Angeles, in the Hollywood area, same and I've been here for weeks and weeks and weeks self isolated. Well, I'm isolating with my wife, but I haven't even I've been outside once in forty plus days. Wow. Wow, I I think it's been since they sent us all home when they when they pushed the pause button, obviously on production for my pilot. We they flew us back to l A from Toronto and the plane was almost empty. It was like totally apocalyptic and creepy and weird. And I think that was I'd have to look at the calendar, but I think that was twenty seven days ago. Yeah, it's incredible. And all the only places I've been are to the grocery store and then I've gotten up at sunrise a couple of mornings to take my dogs on some walks because I have this new dog and she is like, Hello, why aren't we going outside to play anymore? I don't understand. He's going crazy. So those have really been my only outings. And it's surreal. Yeah, it's it's no joke, but I mean it's it's sometimes hilarious. Um. What I like about it, if I had to find one thing I like about it is the Rhona hair. Like everybody, well not yours actually because I can see you, but most people like my hair is like I just gave up. I gave up. I'm just like, what you're gonna you just aren't gonna get But so many people are doing that. Yeah, No, I feel that same. Also like the Rohona pedicure. What's left of the what's left of the last bit of nail polish that was on my toes from six weeks ago is sad, yes, yeah, but I feel like I mean, on the subject of hair, we both have ties to Detroit, and you know hair, the business my best friend and I have in Detroit all revolves around hair and how women take care of it. And I do feel like mine is getting healthier just because I'm not messing with it. Yeah, you have a very fresh look. I have to say. I didn't want to talk about your appearance. Who I don't think that's very appropriate, but we're talking about it right now, so I mean, yeah, it's very fresh, just like, Okay, I exfoliated last night. Yeah, your hair is shiny or your skin is clad, you know, unless you have crazy filter on. Yeah, no, but you have great I mean we're looking at each other through a zoom. Who knows, but you also appear to have ext red skin. I have all kinds of filters. I mean, yeah, I don't know how we're going to get too far into skincare, but yes I have. Um, I never went through like the acne phase, and most of my friends and family hate me for it. Wow, you're a lucky human. I I got hit by that bat hard mm hmm. But you know, the things, the things we go through. I think sometimes about like just the teenage years. I'm like, man, God or whatever whatever it is, like, there's a sense of humor there. We just get tortured. Yeah, I was definitely tortured, So I'm kind of grateful that I didn't have the acnate to pile onto it. But yeah, it's rough. Whoever, anyone listening, who's who's a teenager, shout out to you. You're gonna make it. It's gonna be. You're gonna You're gonna be. Okay. I'm so excited to get into your work and talk about backstage capital and and everything that you're doing in the world. But it's perfect that we're talking about our teen years because I always like to go back with people. First. I think about how many impressive people that I get to talk to on this and and I always want to know how you became the person that you are. So if we go back to childhood, were you were you this kind of inquisitive and into systems as as a kid, like who who were you at ten? Oh? Yeah I was? I was. I was odd child. I think I think a lot of us probably think that thing that way about ourselves. But at ten, at nine or ten, I was wearing six watches at the time one wrist are two too risks, and they were very cheap. They were a kind of bubble gum machine type of watches. I have one vel Crow always, which I still want a vel crow watch. Yeah, because and the reason I wore six watches is because I found out through we had a we had an Encyclopedia set, and you know they kind of they sell door to door, and we did get it. And I found out that other people in other places where had a different time than I did, Like there was nighttime in some places and it was a different time, and that blew my mind as a nine year it was the third grade, so I don't remember exactly how old I was, but it was. It blew my mind. And so I wanted to have I wanted to be able to look at my arms and say, okay, right now, in this country, it's this time. And so like, for instance, in Hawaii, which is not a country, I do know that in Hawaii, I had in Hawaii, I had one that had like a palm tree and it was set to Hawaii time, so when I looked at it, I could always be sort of connected. So I don't know if I was always into systems, but I was always It was always about being connected to other people, even if I didn't know them. That's definitely prevalent in my entire life, and it's been what has driven every major event or major thing that I've done, even in career. I love that. I feel a version of that also, and you saying that, it's like, obviously I wasn't hanging with you when we were kids, unfortunately, but that makes me feel familiar in nostalgic in a way. Yeah, and you you were born in Mississippi. How how long did you live there? Just a few weeks. I was immediate really taken taken to Dallas. My mom had moved already moved to Texas, and I moved to Dallas. Although I don't know if this is what everybody goes through, but my mom reveals something major to me every year by accident that really thought I either thought I already knew or doesn't think it's a big deal. Like she'll tell me some crazy stuff just very casually. So I only found out in my late thirties, like within the last eighteen months that I spent the first couple of years of my life in Houston, Texas. I thought I lived in Dallas right after Mississippi. My mom just casually lays this out to me during a conversation, conversation as if I should have known and I had no idea. So, yeah, I went from Jackson, Mississippi, where most of my family lives on my mom's side and my dad's before he passed, and then moved to Houston, I guess, and then moved to Dallas. But I think of Dallas as my hometown. So you that's what you remember, absolutely, yeah, and remember of Houston. Well the yeah, she's probably lying. I don't know what's going on. So I was about to ask what your mom was like. So obviously she is. She likes to tell stories. My mom is an author. Yeah, so she wrote her first Check this out. I think you'll like this. She wrote her first novel in her fifties, back several years ago when we were all broke as she self published it, just a few copies of it, and it was beautiful. I was like, this is incredible. Fifteen years go by, she doesn't do anything with it because it doesn't really take off or do anything, but she has these copies she can show to people. Fifteen years go by, I have my whole thing happened. I now have a book and a publisher. It inspires her to go back to her book and open it again, and from November the holidays all the way to now, she's been revamping the book and she's working with and like a co co writer, and this book is so amazing and so to me, that's the first thing I think of her right now is that she in her seventies, is writing her true first book. So she's Yeah, that's the kind of person she is. She's just forever curious. She doesn't get set in her ways, although I mean some things she's very stubborn about, of course, and we argue about her health and things like that, but she is very, very open. It has some amazing stories about her early twenties and thirties that she doesn't quite understand how impactful they are. For instance, she used to be the boss of the supervisor for a person who was going through one of the very first sex changes that was paid for by the by a company, by any corporation, and that person was tortured at work. You know, emotionally, I don't want to be around them, I don't certainly don't want to use in my bathroom because, etcetera. My mother saw this and in the South, growing up in the South, not having much to to look at, you know, to to to base it on. What she saw was person needing to use the restroom and not be you know, harassed. She gave them a key to her house, which was very her apartment which was very close by, and said, you can use my apartment anytime during the day you need to. She could be in peace. She tells me this story, and you know, years and I'm just like, do you understand how incredible and amazing that is decades ago to do that, even to do that today would be amazing. So she's that kind of person and I'm very very much to look up to her. But it's so cool talking about who she is, what she did at fifty, what she's now doing in her seventies. Do you think that she helped sort of set that tone for you that you were going to go after the thing you were most inspired by in the moment, do it to the kind of ultimate level, and and then feel free to repeat that pattern in a new kind of vertical Because when I think about your career in music and now your career in in finance, it's like you've gone after these different things because they've inspired you. Yeah, I think she definitely from an early age, made me understand that I could do, do and be what I wanted to be you know that that freedom was there. I don't know if I knew back then or even more recently that she would go on to do these things later in life to set that as an example. But her example was in be. She would say this, you know, be better than I than I am, do more than I ever did. And I was around people where their parents had a lot more money than we did, because they had any at all, but they had a lot more money than we did. But they seemed so trapped and they're the expectations for them to be a certain thing or to have a certain path were so laid out for them that I never envied them. I'd always look at my mom and say, wow, she she is just again, she is a mother, and she was strict, and she was all these things. But there's a certain freedom that she gave me being me and and never making me feel bad about being me, always defending my being off kilter, having a different worldview. I mean I was I was highly she was highly religious. I'm an atheist. As a teenager, you tell your mom this at thirteen, that you don't believe in God, and this highly religious Southern Black woman doesn't go off on you. It's very deep. You know. Then at sixteen or fifteen, we go through the whole coming out situation. Uh, she comes out, she tells me that I'm gay, and doesn't you know, instead of um, I thought she would have to disown me because of her religion and because of her beliefs, And instead of doing that, she in fact, we'll get into a fisticuffs with someone if they talk bad about me. To this day, they talk about about gay peck. So she's it's just like having that freedom to I said that she gave she gave me. She gave me a jet pack. She didn't just give me wings. She made a jet pack and said, go God, your mom sounds so cool. How it's very cool? How I mean, I just think about what's what's hitting me in this moment is the delineation between real, unconditional love and love that's rooted in fear. I've seen so many parents put their fear of their children's risk taking or or you know, threatened success or difference or you know, if it's queerness or artistry or whatever you know makes them not the like you'll be a doctor or a lawyer, or a lawyer or a doctor, you know, and and the fear that something could happen to the her child actually makes them put doubt into their child. It makes them make their child's life harder. And I think about what a just I'm bowled over by what a gift it must have been to be so unconditionally loved for exactly who you are. And when someone defends you in that unconditional way like that, does that feels like jet fuel? Yeah? I think I think she. I don't know if something happened or if she observed it somewhere else, but I think she figured out pretty early that she needed to. She could have her fears and she could protect as much as possible, but it would She didn't want to be her child, her children's bully, you know. She didn't want to be the They had enough for We had enough to deal without in the world. And I think something I'd love to talk to her about it, because I think something must have influenced that for her to say, it really doesn't matter what they come home and tell me about themselves, like my my brother had a child and children at a very young age, etcetera, etcetera. She again just enveloped him with love and didn't shock him into a point where they can't have a speaking relationship. They love each other, they speak every day, and so I think I think there was a point where she didn't want to be the person who didn't have a relationship with her children because she was putting these fears in place, and and she she coapsed with a lot of anxiety as a person. So I'm not sure exactly how that happened. I would imagine it would have been a different thing. I would imagine her anxieties would have translated to her being anxious about us. But it has been different. It really has been. Wow, what was it? I've never heard And you know, I've heard a lot of my friends coming out stories, and we were talking on your podcast about you know, I think of it as such a privilege that I grew up in a community that was so largely queer and full of artists and diverse in l A. But I don't think I've ever heard anyone say to me, oh, my parents told me I was gay? What what is that? What is that experience? What happens at fifteen? How did that go? Yeah, Well, we're in Dallas, I'm in my room, my bedroom on a o L Chat as you were, as you would have been at the sound of that dial up mode of purpose. I got to the to the post officer of the Kinko's and got your little disk. I had my three hours, and I was on a old chat and of course it was new and whatever to me. And fifteen, I think I was fifteen going on. I don't remember what I was. I don't want to start singing, but I was in that age and I had started talking to this girl who would go on to be my girlfriend, girlfriend, like my first girlfriend ever, and she lived. It's so weird because she she was German, and my wife is German, and and this is you know, years later, it's something about the Germans. I don't know. So this is a German girl, and we had been talking online and figuring out that we liked each other. But it wasn't like a friendship, but it was like we liked each other, you know. So we're talking. I don't I'm trying to figure out what this is. I'm also just coming out of being in a very religious situation and getting out of that. And my mom comes into the room, and she comes to the room, and I cover the screen really quickly because I'm I don't I'm not saying I mean, I've I've always been pretty tame, so I've never i will never be. It wouldn't be you know, charged or anything. But it was probably like, Oh, you're cute, No, you're cute, right, So I cover the screen because I'm not gonna have my religious mom see this sitting going on on a well chat. And she comes in and we've always had this kind of funny back and forth banter that we've been able to do just because it's just the way we are. And she said, you don't have to cover that screen. I know everything. There is no about you. And I think, I'm thinking she's just it's like very surface level and I said, I was like, you don't know that I'm pregnant because I'm just being you know, funny and silly. And she said, without a beat, she goes, what I know about you, you won't be getting pregnant anytime soon. And I said, I said what. My heart sank and she said it in a funny way, but it was also in a matter of fact way. And then she starts looking around my room very dramatically. She's a very dramatic person, probably an actress. Never knew it right, it's very dramatic. She's looking around. I'm like, what are you looking for? And she said, I'm looking for your Ellen Degenerous poster. And with that, and this was the year she came out. Within weeks or months that she came out on television, this is top of mind. So with that, I knew my mom knew I was gay. So she says that she walks out, and she's again she's not angry when she says it, but she's also what I know about my mom for the past fifteen years is that you can't be gay. It's not okay be gay. So she leaves. So I then don't go to school that day. I stay in my room. I tell my girlfriend I'm gonna be kicked out of the house today and I gotta figure something out, so I don't go to school. I kind of I can still see it. I'm like sitting on my bed and I'm just like, okay, well, how can I Hm, maybe I can go live with my aunt. And because she has a gay sor a bisexual son, so maybe she'll understand whatever. And this is a Mississippi, you know, a different state. So my mom comes home from work hours later and I'm prepared to be kicked out of this house. And we sit and talk and I'm like, okay, so how did you know? And she's like, mothers no, mothers no, And I'm known for a long time. I'm like okay. I'm like I'm sorry, and so where do you want me to like go? When do you want me to leave? And she's like, what are you talking? She's like, you're not going anywhere? And I'm like, what do you but you like you literally, it's not allowed in your religion for me to be gay, Like how are you going to do that? Um? Because it's there's like a cult. And I will stop at that because I've been told that I can't say that about this religion without getting some such of legal repercussions. But they're called um And she says, no, you she said, I've known for a while, changes nothing, and I love you and it is what it is, you know, and we'll we'll figure it out together. And there were some hiccups. There are some things where she could not call my girlfriends. She always called them my friend. She couldn't bring yourself to call them girl friends for a long time because it was just wasn't what she was used to and it wasn't mean or anything, but she just couldn't do it. And then finally we did. And then a few years later, I have these t shirts that I'm selling and they're customized and they say things like I'd go gay four and you could put a name at the end, and I started with I'd go gay for Angelina and they were a big hit. So I called my mom to tell her, because even though she's cool, I don't want her to find out from someone else. And I say, Mama, who had these shirts? They're called I'd go gay four and you can put the word and people are gonna be wearing them, and I'm I'm selling them, so I just wanted She said, what is I'd go gay for me? And I explained, it just means that you think somebody's cute even though you're straight. Blah blah blah blah. She said, hm. She just waited, and I was just like, oh God, this is when she's going to turn into that person. She goes make one for me that says I'd go gay for Oprah, I said, okay, already, so oh my god, I love your mom. So I was like, Okay, I know what this life is going to be like. I just love that. I love that. What a cool lady, Mrs Arlene Sam's that's her name. M hmmm, So god, I just I feel like all of warm and fuzzy thinking about just that experience. And you're right, you know the idea. I love that idea that you set a tone of. And I'm observing this because you know, I'm not a parent at this point in my life, but the idea that my house will be so safe for my kids because there's bullies and things outside of these four walls that you know they'll go through. You're the beauty of that space in your home life. I can't be overstated. What what was the outside like? What was school like? What were you into? Did you have like a job in high school? Were you getting into tech or music or like what what was taking up space for you as a teenager because of your curiosity. Definitely had a job. I started working when I was fifteen because we had to help pay the bills. You know, it was it was very there. We we moved a lot because we couldn't afford rent. After a few months and we'd have to move out, get kicked out, whatever and then, but we always stayed within the same school district, which I think is just a miracle. And I'm so grateful to my mom for that because it meant that I didn't have to uproot my friendships over and over again, even though it was uprooting my life, my my home. So we were So I did work. I worked at a pizza joint that didn't have an air condition system, so it was and I worked there summer through winter, so it was bloody hot. But I I learned a lot in that environment. I actually remember you and I were talking about this earlier in a different way, but I just remember in that job, there was a guy Randy or something like that, probably he was a teenager. He went to my school. Blonde kid had like a jeep at sixteen, which you know, with blew my mind, and he was doing this just for kicks. He'd already admitted to me privately that he stole from his last job and and made that job, you know, go go under because he stole so much from the movie theater that was an independent. Yeah, he told me all this stuff very proudly and he was the delivery guy, and I was taking the calls and making the pizzas okay, and this little joint, and I remember every night with the manager, the three of us, we would have to count out Randy's like tips and kind of do the thing and see like, okay, Randy did forty dollars and tips tonight and this and this, and then you're gonna get this per order amount or whatever from the boss. And I would be there because I was helping them with the cash register. And I remember this dude was making so much more money than I was, and I was like doing everything that needed to be done to make it possible for him to make the deliveries. And he was such a jerk. So I remember in that moment at fifteen, thinking, I am going to I know, I'm gonna have to work for other people, but I am going to study people as I work every single day. That's what it's That's what's going to be the true job that I'm doing. I may be here working, but my true job will be to study the owners, the boss, and my peers so that I can use that later when I have my own company. And that's when it started. So I said, Okay, I know how to treat people, and I know how not to treat them. I know about like if I have an employee, like how much twelve dollars really means to them, you know, like that hourly rate wage or eight dollars. And it was really a training ground for me. So that was that school I was. I had a lot of depression issues, but I also was in every group. Like I was, I could get along with every group. So like the cheerleaders loved me. This was before I knew I was gay, by the way, cheerleaders loved me. The football team, you know, the football guys love the theater department, the nerds, this and that. But I never I don't know if I had a group, you know. I I definitely had bullies, and I definitely felt like I felt like an outsider to everyone. So I can sit at any table in the lunch room. I felt like I could sit at any table and have some sort of friend there. But I never felt like I fit into a group. Just a side note. St. Vincent went to my school. It's just a couple of years younger than me. In high school. Annie, Yeah but I remember her. Yeah, she's cool. I bet she was cool and she was young too, she was I remember her. I remember she was very introverted and she was I remember she was gorgeous. I do remember that she was very pretty and but very introverted and didn't wear a lot of makeup and didn't do a lot of things to get attention. She was just sort of like mysterious. Well her music is pretty mysterious, so that makes it. Yeah, I wonder. I'm just thinking about that, like even your observation about her and the way that you're talking about how you felt, and I realized that even now, to be honest, I feel that way a lot. Like there's so many people who I love and feel close to, and there's so many spaces that I can just plug into and hang. But I think being a sensitive person, or or being a person who maybe has some introverted tendencies, I don't know which it is, it can feel hard to feel like you're all the way clicked in, you know, like to be welcomed in a lot of spaces is so nice, But where do you really feel like you you settle all the way in? Do you feel like that's the thing that you started learning to do or do you feel like that's a a check in or or a lesson you have to revisit over and over again in life. I don't think i've fit in today. So I literally broke into I literally made me figuratively, broke into venture capital and broke into Silicon Valley in that home world. And now I have a tribe, and I feel like very close to the people that I interact with, my founders, my teammates, and the ecosystem at large. Who's paying attention, But I don't. It's it's kind of like high school. I don't. I feel like there are people. I think. What it is that I've learned recently is that I'm something that I didn't realize. I'm polarizing. I didn't know that. So I used to say the way I used to describe it was people either love me or hate me. And I would say that to people who I cared about, and they would be like, okay, whatever. But it's because I was getting such drastic feedback from people. Either they would cry around me and say I love you and you're so amazing, thank you so much. Or I would find out that they were talking that this other person was talking crap about me, or someone said that I was so terrible, or they call me a name or something like. It was very drastic all the way through different careers and different things and inter venture, and it happens to this day. Now I'm learning more. I spent a lot of time listening to Bernie Brown, and I'm learning more and I'm understanding. Oh, I'm I'm a polarizing person, you know, I I evoke are you see? And that's probably why we relate to that if you think that that's how you feel, because because you're the type of person, for instance, who will go into a place and say, I don't feel comfortable here, I don't feel safe here. I'm going to leave this environment when most people would want for you or think that you would tow the line and just play play along. You we probably observing you wouldn't just imagine you would do that. But that's the kind of person you are, because you have and that's why there's a kinship, because I feel like there's conviction. You know, I have certain things that I am willing to to live with and not there's a conviction there. I'm okay with the consequences either way, and not everybody is like that. So when you're like that, it is hard to It's hard. It's hard to feel comfortable completely and clicked in. As you say, you do feel that way when someone's like kicking ass and like not taking any guff, You're like, that's my people like that. Yep, that makes sense for me. I don't know. You know, it's funny. Do you have a lot of people in your life who are very non alpha like? Do you have a lot of people who kind of or like do you have a mixture? I'd say I have a mixture. I have a lot of people in my life who are very tender and heart forward. Those are the people have cultivated. But I look at all of them like they're fucking rock stars. Like I'm so. I love my friends. I love my community so much that I I I just think the world of everybody and I I've had to learn that and it has nothing to do with them. It's my stuff that I always have a little bit of a voice that says, but maybe you're the one person they don't want to be in the room. And I know that to not be true because these people are my closest friend. But there there is a thing for me there's a little bit of like introvert anxiety, where if I'm not taking care of myself, then I feel out of alignment in a lot of spaces. And similarly to you, you know, for my own set of reasons, I can be a very polarizing person. You know, I have a lot of big concerns for the world. I'm constantly analyzing data and politics and looking at the health care system, and those aren't necessarily the most fun things for people to talk about. But I'm really lucky that I have friends who love that about me, and who also loved me enough to be like, hey, maybe let's not be so serious for the next hour, and I'm like, cool, Google, Okay, great, we can do something else, you know. Like that that to me signifies love. But it also is a way in which when I'm really showing up for myself, I know how to be clear, be like, oh yeah, sometimes I feel a little on the outside because I'm like, okay, but what are we supposed to be doing now? And that's just my thing, and that's okay. But I've had to learn that, Yeah, it's a process, and I've had to learn to your point, Like I always feel a little bit like an outsider, and rather than letting that make me feel crazy, I've started to look at it kind of as a superpower because I'm like, oh, maybe i feel a little outside of this situation because I'm doing a really good job observing it and observing the people in it. Mm hmm, you know, and you're an observer, and it's like, maybe that just means we're badass. Maybe, so I like that version of it. I'll take it. Yeah, No, I think it's definitely it's definitely about observation. That's definitely being on this side of it, and it's not a higher it's just an outer like, Okay, this is what is going on. And I've been that way since literally since I was and and kindergar and this time I'm using literally correct correctly because I would instead of on the playground, instead of playing, I would just watch and observe kids and wonder how their life was at home. I talked about this in my book I'm a Little I was a little weird. It was a little weird. So six years old, I'm sitting there leaning against the you know, a little thing and saying, Okay, I wonder what Katie is like at home, like I wonder if she's okay, I wonder if she's happy. I hope you guys are enjoying today's conversation. I just want to give a big round of thanks to all of our sponsors. 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You learning to observe everyone in your working environment, at the at the gig, at the pizza joint. How do we get to you at one reaching out to it's like a Swedish pop band or something Norwegians, well know, I know, it's like Canada, and you know that there's a Norwegian pop punk band called Golden Boy. And I'm working at a night well nine to five, and then I did night shifts at doing data entry for a bank and their lock box. Everything about those words just makes me want to go go to sleep. That it was my numbing, my numbing work. But I was actually really happy to get it because there's a paycheck. But I was doing data entry for eight hours at a time, and I mean like data tin key by touch data entry, so there's one hand you just kind of on a calculator like this for hours and and at what I would in code checks. I know it's too much information about this, but I was encoding checks that were like million dollar checks and getting aid minimum wage and then trying to figure out how do I, like, how do I do this day after day without going crazy? I started listening to music on my mini disc player, thank you, thank you, and it's yeah, so so somehow the song made it onto my mini disc player by this band. It was a song about an artist that I love, so I used, I mean not used to. I still do love Janet Jackson and I love Pink. These are two people that I just adore music wise, and this song was about Pink. It was a cute song from these guys in Norway about how much they adored Pink. So I thought that's super cute. I love them. And then they saw they had a little, you know, little videos. I thought they were so cute. So I got in touch with them and said, hey, I want to see you play live. They're like, no, uh, we live in Norway, so that's not gonna work. I said, Okay, if I can book you a tour in the United States, will you come here and play? And I didn't know how to book I had no idea what I even was saying. But they said sure, yeah, okay, if you can book a tour, sure will come out there. And their teachers and like then there are there's one of the guy who was in their army. Two of them were teachers. You know. It was just whatever, and uh, I learned. I taught myself how to book a tour so I could see them play a live as a much longer story than that, But that's that's the gist of it. That is so cool and and so from there you have this whole career in the music industry. How what happens? Where do you wind up music? Super super behind the scenes like not not a not a linear path either, spent a lot of time without with the housing and security, a lot of time broke. I published a music magazine in between, which was one of the best parts of my of my career. But I just I just m decided I wanted to be on the road because I had seen Jenny Jackson performed at thirteen years old and I was in the I was thirteen, and I was in the front row through a wonderful turn of events that happened that's also laid out, and I said, when I was thirteen, I want to I want to do this, whatever this is, I want to be around this energy as much as possible. So I had always secretly wanted to be on the road and working for tours, big tours. So I started with these pop punkers and they were just lovely and we're still friends twenty years later. But I a few years went by and I said, I actually want to give this a try as a career. So I reached out to a hundred production managers and tour managers that I researched for two months online and individually wrote to them, uh in a way that let them know that I knew about them individually and asked for work. And uh, I had done a lot of Um, I had done a lot of indie touring singer songwriters. That's when I met Tyler Hilton, and UH met a bunch of people that I worked with. I never worked with Tyler, but we we knew different people. UH, so we became friends. And UM that's where I met Amy Cooney. Yeah, we have a lot of friends in common. So fast forward a few years. I make these introductions. I get out of the hundred emails that I said, I get twenty responses, and I get three meetings in person, and I get one gig that comes from it. And that gig took me on a path that then had me working for arena level artists over time. So it took a long time to be an overnight success in the production field. But and I was. I was actually still just getting my feet wet, just on my way because what I wanted I wanted to be one of the first and only at the time black women to to tour manage an arena level artist. So I was working my way up from auction assistant all the way up, and I was halfway two thirds of the way up, and then the venture bug came a colin. Wow, So what what was it about venture that got in your ear? Because you know, the music industry and the financial world are pretty far apart in terms of what they look like, and I think what draws people to them? So so how did that happen? Well, I was actually still working in the live music world, and I had done things like work with Jason Derulo and Tony Braxton and Celo for a long time and worked at Coachella and um wrangled Usher and for Real and all these different people as a talent wrangler. And yeah, I don't know if you know this or not, but being being in that industry doesn't really have any stability, because you can you can be on these amazing tours, are these amazing gigs for two months or a year, however, but it takes a long time to get in the position where you're constantly working, and even people I know who have been in it for decades, they still have to find their way and get get a gig. So you're you're you're doing the gig, and half of your gig is finding the next gig so that you're not there's no holes in the trust me, I know how that feels are Our industry is very similar, yes, and then there's no insurance. There's nothing really stable there. So I was this was I was off the road and I had already wasn't making yearly enough money to kind of survive, and I I had been off and on the roadside. I got to meet all these cool people and interesting people behind the scenes, and I started noticing that just noticing from Afar, observing from Afar, people like Ellen, who who I had been to her show to work on twice with an artist, but I had never sat down and had a conversation with her, which I would love to do to this day. But people like Ellen, Troy Carter, etcetera. Were making investments and Ashton Kutcher and all that we're making investments and startups and the place called Silicon Valley, And this was two thousand and ten two eleven, and I'm like, what is that? What? What? What is that? So I started learning about it, which led me to learn about startups, which led me to understand that what I had been doing for ten years previous was I'd always always been an entrepreneur, and I had been starting startups, but I just didn't know anything about unit economics, and I didn't know anything about co founders and all the things that I needed to know to be successful or to have a chance of being successful. I had just done a really great job of being a connector being someone who drew a lot of attention. So, for instance, I had a blog called Your Your Daily Lesbian Moment in my twenties, fifty thousand unique views per month, hung on every word, but couldn't make the mechanic the money work right. I was always poor. Today, I know exactly what I would have done to trying to make that work, but I didn't know it back then. So once I understood, wow, I'm an entrepreneur, this is what I am, I said, I want to start a new company. If I'm going to start a new company, I want to learn everything I possibly can about all of the players, all of the roles everything I need to know so that when I go out looking for funding or looking for a team or etcetera, etcetera, I know the rules and they can't kind of throw me off. So I started studying venture capital because of that, and that's when I learned that more than all venture capital funding goes to straight white men. It did in two thousand and twelve and it does today, which is crazy. But back when I heard that, I said, wait a minute. It was almost like I was Aaron Brockovich. I was looking up something else and stumbled across this other thing that was bigger than that, And I said, Okay, if I don't if I don't do something that to change this bigger underlying issue, whether or not I have a successful company won't mean much. So I wanted to make it like, let me set up the foundation and and the fundamentals of who gets funding or have some influence on that, and then I can go out and talk about starting a company. So that led me on this path of four years of exploration, knocking on doors, getting nose every single day of my life, but studying continuing to talk to founders. So when you talk about studying the system of finance of investing VC culture. When you're knocking on doors, what are you asking for? What are they what? What are people saying no too? It started with me saying I wanted to start a fund. I wanted to raise a fund. I wanted you to the investor, to treat me like a startup founder. But my product as capital and my customers were founders. And I had a thesis that underrepresented founders were doing already doing so much with so little, so if they had a little bit more, imagine what they could do, and that it was going the tide was going to turn eventually on its own, but if we can get ahead of it, we would have an upside to that. If we can get ahead of that. Knowing the deal flow that I had, the companies I was able to see, and that they weren't going to meet these companies necessarily, they weren't going to be able to if they even if they could meet them to understand how to how to underwrite sort of speak, how to to value them. But I could because I knew what to compare them to. So I was saying, give me capital into this entity. I will invest that the way that I see fit. And I my job will be to make you more money. And just like any fund manager that I was learning about, and a lot of fund managers, we're going out with a thesis. You don't know if a fund manager is any good at their job for ten years because it's a long process. But they were getting funding based on a thesis, and I wanted to do that too. I was like, let me take the that those few million dollars that you would have put into this other thing. Let's see how it works when we give these we we we give different people a chance at bad And so while they appreciated what I was doing and thought that it was a worthy cause, they thought it was just that that it was a philanthropic charity situation. A few pats on the head of you, you're a great person. I'll see you on the other side, and then crickets if they were respond at all. And so I, you know, crafted it a little bit better. I got better at understanding how to reach out to people. I used to write these emails that were just so long and ridiculous. I started understanding that, and then and then I started just saying, you know what, this is an opportunity for them. I'm not going to beg anybody. I'm going to continue to like develop my arsenal of information, which I think is the most important thing that I did the whole time that I didn't have any money. I'm going to continue talking to these companies and knowing and understanding what they need so that I'm always with the finger on the pulse of what's going on with my customer. And I will continue and I would continue, and I did that for four years without getting any kind of good, good feedback, and then September I got my first yes from an investor who said that they would invest in me. And that was Susan Kimberland, a woman angel investor in Silicon Valley who had been you know, product manager at Salesforce and PayPal and didn't know didn't We gotten to know each other for about three months. You didn't know much about me, but she she thought that I could do something and she wanted to see so she gave me my first fifty and um yeah, and then that that turned into more and I haven't looked back. It's so amazing, and I think it's really important, you know, to your point when you talk about music. When we talked on your podcast earlier about what the hustle was like for me and entertainment. Everybody sees you when you get your first success, that you book your first TV show, you're running your first tour, you get your first investment from Susan, and they're like, wow, look at that you did a thing. So many people don't see the thousands of you know, auditions, or the multitude of PA jobs, or the four years that you spent researching, hustling, learning the system before you got a yes. I I love that you're open about that. I love that you talked to people and you're like, hey, when I was out learning this, like there there was a time where you were homeless doing this work. Oh yeah, oh yeah, what how did you How are you going? I read an article that I loved, you know, and you were saying that so many people take meetings at their offices and and you were out on the on the trail in the valley, like walking into meetings. It was you and your backpack because you were, you know, sleeping at the airport or crashing on a couch. Like, how how do you when you are not in the place you want to be success wise? How do you still walk into that room and make that meeting go your way. Well, it wasn't always easy. I'm never going to say that. It was like I was just uh, you know, killing it every time. But what I would do is I would take people with me. In my mind, I would take the founders who would benefit from me being successful into the room with me, because if it could be about them and not about me internally, I can do anything. I can go for anything. Teres Tucker, who was a woman who started a company in her fifties and it's now she bootstrapped to a billion dollar company. She told me after I got my first million, you know, after I got my first investments. She told me in an interview, pride is not an asset. And she said that to me while she was answering how did she go with her tail between her legs and ask for money for payroll for her team when she was struggling at the first few years. As she said, pride is not an asset. Doesn't do me any good, doesn't do anybody else any good. To be prideful, you do what you gotta do. That's how I felt back then. It was again, I'm not going to beg I even wrote, we don't beg on many things that I would look at throughout the years to remind myself but don't beg. But I would take them with me and say this is for them, so I can do anything. Also even beyond that, And now when I tell people about negotiating, the best thing I can tell you, the biggest hack I can tell you when it comes to negotiating, and you probably know this straight straight from your own life, is if you don't need it, Like if you tell yourself it's okay, if I don't get this, and it's okay, truly okay. If you don't win the negotiation, you have so much more power and leverage when you walk into the room. M hmm, Like I will go. I just had this yesterday. I was on the phone with someone and we were talking about a good amount of money that I was saying they should invest in a certain thing. But before I got in the call, I said, let me go. Let me walk through what happens if they say no, okay, I'm fine with that. Cool. Let's go get on the phone, have the conversation, able to have a very clear conversation and not have any desperation or any fault lines, I guess where I could be steady, and so I did a lot of that kind of play in my in my mind, and I also just put the circumstances out of mind. I would not go into a meeting and think about where I had to sleep that night. I can't do both at the same time, can't be effective by doing both. So I would just say to compartmentalize that that's what I had to deal with later, Let's go and do this thing. Because I look at the long term value of what I'm about to do. I love that. I'm just thinking because you know, we're getting into these high level concepts of fundraising and venture capital for anyone who's listening who may not know how how is traditional venture capital working? Why was or is it working in that way? You know, you mentioned that it's crazy that of venture money goes to one group of people, you know, white guys, and obviously one group of people is not going to be the most innovative. Drive and intelligence are dispersed across the real world, and if we've seen anything, um, a lot of a lot of women in particular are creating these big life hack companies. You know, you mentioned one a minute ago, So can can you kind of break down the environment for people who don't know as much about it as you do? So ven, I didn't know much about Ventry Capital. I don't know anything about it actually ten years ago. It's just heard about it like you hear about Wall Street or whatever. I didn't know much about it. But it's a it's a tiny sliver and I said, you know, relatively tiny sliver of private equity. It's about two percent of private equity. And but it's a hundred and thirty billion dollar a year, uh, tiny liver. And the money is it's been it's been around for about seventy seventy five years as an industry in the form that it is now. And the money is supposed to go towards the earliest stages and then the growth stages before you become a public company or before you are acquired. So it's supposed to be this innovative fuel for massive growth and and and quick growth. That's the that's the key to it. It's supposed to explode your company in a good way. So anything that um that you you use, uh, a few things that you use, like you know Airbnb, you know Apple, you know Salesforce, maybe you know Slack, maybe Twitter, certainly Instagram. All of these companies Facebook, they all had venture capital at some point and in the past. All of those companies I just listened to you, with the exception of uh, maybe one, all lad all started and run by white, young white men as a group of two or four in a garage or in an apartment or a college dorm. And usually there between nineteen and twenty five when they start, these big companies or these companies that don't go on to become those massive hits, and they're handed fifty thousand, a hundred thousand, a million, five hundred thousand two to take the traction that they get, or to take the potential that they have they may have and turned it into something everyone's sort of chasing. We want you to be the next Facebook, we want you to be Tesla, we want you to do this and that. So there are these examples of it um and so there's a lot of money that flows there because they want you to be the hit. It's almost like saying, you know, they want to scout for the next big movie star, the next big sports star, and they want to do that in tech, and they use this type of funding to do it. The problem though, is that imagine what the world was like in basketball and football before it was integrated. Before basketball was integrated, for instance, it's a very homogeneous world, and so the same types of people are being funded and are the funders. It's this perpetual thing. And there's a There are a lot of immigrants who have been successful Silicon Valley. So it's not what I said, it's not all straight white men, but it's a lot of immigrants. So you have the PayPal mafia, which was a combination of that and they but it's like what eight guys all men who made a ton of money and then they go off and they become stewards of other people's capital and their own capital and they make even more money. So like, uh, Peter till Peter till Um. Ellen Musk is a better example. He's in the PayPal mafia. He was part of the PayPal group. He's a very intelligent guy. He made a lot of money. He goes on to make Tesla and that's awesome, nothing bad about that in my opinion. The problem is he's going to share, like only a few people sharing that equity and that wealth and that generational wealth and that is just only a few. So imagine you are now a you hear the statistics to straight white man. You are a gay black woman from Texas with no network in Silicon Valley, but you feel like you're on par with these guys. You feel like if if if I were given any kind of footing like they were given, I could probably do that. You know, for some people that's enough to drive you. So now, I mean across the country, they're the last ten years, especially um and the last five the last ten years and last five years especially across the country. There are these explosions of tech hubs, startup hubs almost in every city you can think of. So if you're interested at all and being part of that, you're actually they might people might try to make you feel like you've missed you've missed your chance. But we're really only just beginning, and there's so much potential for people to come in, not just to start companies, but to invest in companies and be that or to be employees of fast growing companies. You have to have a lot of risk tolerance as both. But um that's where some innovative things happen, and you know, the people like to point out that during the last recession some really interesting companies and I think including Twitter, we're not only born but like skyrocketed during those times. So this is a this this next year or so, there's gonna be a lot of innovation that comes from it, and and venture capital will fund a lot of that. I love that, all right, all you listeners who've been with me from the beginning, No that I love. Our next sponsor, Third Love does bras differently. They believe that every woman deserves to feel comfortable and confident every day, and with the right kind of support, they help us feel just that. 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If you go to article dot com slash w i P, the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's article dot com slash w i P to get fifty dollars off your first purchase of a hundred dollars or more. And it's interesting when you talk about how kind of homogenized some of these spaces are. There's I've certainly heard people say, well, what does it matter, aren't the good ideas getting funded? And the reality is no, there are so many ideas. There are so many people who are being missed because they aren't part of as you mentioned, like the PayPal mafia. They don't have access to all of this liquidity. And one of the things that I think is a great highlight you can watch this incredible Ted talk which I'm sure you've seen. Uh, This woman Joy Bulowani, who I'm lucky enough to know now is a incredible scientist at M I T. And she went to sign into these you know, crazy M I T computers that they're coding on and Joy is a very dark skinned black woman, and the computer couldn't scan her face because the only people who had been using this for this facial recognition software at this m I T Lab, we're like a bunch of white computer nerds, these dudes, and and Joy gives this incredible TED talk about it and talks about the the misses in computer technology. And that's something that a lot of people when I when I looked at the you know, comments on her ted talk, people were like, I never even knew this was a thing I never even knew. And she said, it's not like these white dudes designed this computer to not see me, but because it was only designed by them, it only could see them. And so when we think about ways to open access to all people, to take care of all people, this is why diversity of perspective and participation matters. This is why we need to have more seats at every table, because that shouldn't be a thing that a scientist runs into at a computer. A woman like Joy shouldn't go to put her hands under an electric han dryer and realize that it can't see her. That just shouldn't be a thing that happens. But it happens when only one group of people is represented in a room. They don't even know where their blind spots are. They don't even know what they're not solving for. Think about how that even translates for safety wise, so that yep, there are autonomous vehicles who can't see black bodies. There are a lot of techno technologists who work at AI and autonomous who could work on autonomous vehicles, but there haven't been invited to that. So I don't want to live in a world where a drone or a car can't see me walking across the street. But terrifys just incredible. It's incredible. And when we think about the numbers again, when when you combine you know, I've I've looked at some of your reporting, and when you combine women, people of color, and l g B t Q founders, we're looking at groups receiving less than ten percent of all the venture deals. Less than two percent of startup financing goes to female founders, only one percent goes to black and Latin X founders less than one less than less than one. So we we need to consider what the ramifications of that erasure due to our tech oologies like self driving cars, like computer tech, all of this stuff requires the participation of people so that people are then included in the way that these technologies move forward. Why do you think, because we've been talking about this now for a couple of years, we have the stats. You know, some of these statistics I'm looking at were reported on UM by the Ewing Marian Kaufman Foundation in it's and everybody thinks that because we're talking about it, and everybody, you know, I think about even my industry people are like, well, Franklin Leonards started the Blacklist, and Lena waves Haw's a company, and it's like, for some reason, people see a little bit of representation or acknowledgement of the disparity and they think that it's poofed been solved. But if we look at the data, there hasn't been much progress. All these companies have pledged millions of dollars to addressing these problems and resources and and started, you know, boards, but the data is not changing yet. Why do you think that is? Why do you think the reform is so slow in in venture? At least I think it's going to start to ratchet up because of some lagging indicators that I've seen which are certain groups. I mean, I've been saying it for years, but it's starting to happen where certain certain founders are now starting to raise very individually one offs, real numbers, raise real amounts of money, right, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. And now women as a group are starting to have these exits where they're selling their company, are going public in major ways, and it's making a difference. And so that's happening now. It's a lagging indicator because it'll take the limited partners who invest in funds a while to see at It'll take them a while too. Then tell their the fund managers, I want more of that in my portfolio. How can you go found? Why are where are they? I'm already hearing it. And then those fund managers will put the money, the capital to the right place. So it's a little bit of a but I think it's gonna retch it up because for so long you didn't have those examples to show. Think about black panther people were and crazy rich Asians people were actually surprised like white men who make millions of dollars a year at their jobs. Their job is to understand this. We're actually surprised that these these movies did well, and then they said, make me tend more of them. So that's what's going to happen. And for better or for worse, whether it's a good, the right thing or not, they're going these white men who kind of hold the purse strings right now, are going to see those successes and want to replicate them. So they're going to own money where they think it should be thrown. Now that question becomes is it thrown to other white men who start diversity fund diversity funds, or is it thrown to people like myself who have been doing this for nine years, who have a hundred and thirty investments, who've seen six thousand companies go through, who are all underrepresented founders, and who do this work every day, and and we're not. I'm not I'm not sitting around waiting for them to make their decision. I'm just doing I'm executing on it. But I think it's it's the representation. And then there are a lot of founders who are just going to bypass venture altogether and already are They're going to go into crowd equity funding, so they're gonna go to the crowd, their customers and their friends and family. They're gonna say, you can now have ownership in my company because of New Jobs Jobs Act rules that the government makes it possible for you to invest a hundred dollars in my company at at scale. And they're gonna bootstrap, which is what I love doing, which is you just you. You, you save money, you save on expenses, and you raise money through Revenue's gonna bypass these things because they're not gonna want to share in the upside. So I think investors have a small window right now of they either get on this train or not because they're not We're not going to sit around and wait for them. I also think, and this is people have argued with me, but this is true. I've just seen it. White women kind of control a lot. You control a lot because you control white men. Now you're oppressed by white men, but you certainly have influence over them. So the fact that white women are getting more funding, they look at them as a subset of underrepresented. Because white women as a group are getting more funding year after year, that will be followed by other subsets, which will be you know, women of color and then people of color and etcetera, etcetera, because you all kind of drive that for better or worse, and you all are considered the easiest minority to or not not even a minority, but the easiest underrepresented group two to go to first. If you're a white man, Okay, I'm gonna do something for underrepresented people. That means white women, because they're the next group that I understand the best other than white men. It's like it moves in degrees from proximal power. You know, I see, I see what you're saying. Yeah, and so that's wonderful because we know that. So people like you who do this with your with your work, you can you can help drive that and make that happen even faster. And you make sure that once you get the upside, you don't stop there. You make sure it flows elsewhere. M hmm. What do you look for are in terms of companies you invest in? Is it? Is it about the mission? It's obviously about the founders, because you're talking specifically about supporting people who have been underrepresented and funding. Yeah, and I mean this is this is a for profit, capitalistic entity. So I'm looking for companies that I feel are going to give me a rate of rate of return on investment that is that beats market, you know. I also but a lot of people come to me and say, well, I'm very passionate about this. I love passion, but you've gotta have passion coupled with focus, because if you have one or the other, you have too much passion. It's just unwildy. If you have too much focus without passion, you're not going to be in it for the long haul. And so I think I look for people and companies that remind me of myself and what what we're doing. So you don't have to be a mission driven company. You don't have to be a company that also you also don't have to be a company that serves other underrepresented founders. I'm a shark. I'm a sharky. You know, I could easily be on the Shark Tank. I think you should be on it, by the way, if you have and already, that'd be really cool. Um, I think it would be a guest. Uh. And And so I'm looking for companies. The way I look at it really is because I get asked that question, it's like so hard to to say. It's almost like being Simon cal You're just like you're looking for that X factor. You're looking for it. I look for people to people who remind me of myself. I also look for companies that are doing things that it would take me ten years or more to be able to do myself. So like the further each year it gets a little bit more sophisticated and what I'm looking for because I learned more, I understand more. So I'm looking for people. I'm looking for things that are like life changing or life the quality of life is changed. So it doesn't have to be you know, a healthcare product or a health product or anything like that, but it does have to be meaningful. And we have a company in our in our accelerator that went through our accelerator last year that is able to die detect certain lung viruses and diseases with the smartphone, and of course you can imagine how how thrilled we are that they exist today because of what's going on in the world. Uh, companies like that all the way to companies that are beauty supply companies but are are thinking about things and thinking about the supply chains in different ways, or or are focused on a different group that's overlooked some way. I'm just looking for something that I don't feel I could do myself that excites me. I'm more and more looking for companies that have to do with the aging popular. I mean, we're all the aging population, but the people sixty plus and not just things that are about their health, but about giving giving them twenty thirty years of a very thriving life, because I think we forget about them. We just discount them. They we even have commercials and TV shows we're making fun of them being so inept in tech. I can tell you, going back to the beginning of this conversation, my mom has an Apple Watch. She can tell the Apple Watch to book her and Airbnb, get an uber to center there. I mean, you know, and I can't. I can't do anything. I don't My Apple Watch has been sitting on my desk for a year because I can't get it charged. So so I just think that there's this a whole there's a wealth, uh that's to be mined in the sixty seventy plus. Yeah, God, that's so cool. It makes me feel so inspired. And also I'm thinking about like four people I want to introduce you to or doing cool things. Also, I'm like, do you mentor people? Will you be my mentor? Like I want to learn everything from you. You're so smart and badass and just so inspired. I wrote my book It's about Damn Time, so that I can question who I can mentor people at scale, and an online course where I'm mentoring people. So it's all that, it's about damn Time dot Com, all of it. And I really, I mean, that's like really flattering to say, and I love the full title. So the book is called It's about Damn Time. How to turn being underestimated into your greatest advantage. I feel like everyone listening is just going to be slow clapping that it's so because we all have felt that and to be underestimated it is still frustrating and and you have more than once taken being underestimated and turned it into a superpower. And I think it's so badass. So that the website is It's about Damn Time dot Com. And would you say that that's also a place where people can can kind of jump into learn about investing because one of the things that strikes me is I think I think about how different my life might be today if when I started working at twenty one, anybody had been talking to me about investing rather than it, you know, twenty nine or however old I was when I started. Yeah, we don't. We don't teach kids in school about this. So so where do you recommend people go to learn? Yeah, I'm definitely in the lane of angel investing, in that kind of group like venture but angel investing. So I wouldn't be the person to come to tell you how to invest in a public company, stocks and bonds and all that. I wouldn't be able to do that. But when it comes to what's going to happen the next ten years, absolutely, it's about damn time. Is where you can find everything because I've had podcasts for several years that go into it. The book is is a primer for anybody who wants to be an investor. If you're someone who makes two thousand dollars a year or more, or you have a million dollars or more in assets uh in your family that doesn't include your home, you can you are considered an accredited investor in the United States, and so you can make you can make five thousand, ten thousand, etcetera dollar investments in two startups and in part your wisdom on those startups who need you as much as you may need them. And if you're not that, if you don't make that, you're an undercredited investor. But they're many crowd funding crowd equity funding sites you can go to and become an investor today, like doing a kind of like a Kickstarter, but for for ownership and companies rather than for like an exchange of goods. So I talked about all kinds of stuff like that um on the site and anyway, there's so much free stuff, Like I do my podcasts free. Obviously my book is not free, but it's almost free because it's like a book, which I think is great. It's really accessible. That's how I learned. I just read books like constantly. Also YouTube is really helpful, but yeah, I try to. I try to give as much information as I can online. I love that. When's the book out May five? May five, We're so close, We're so close. I can't win. Yeah, I can't either. Um not Not only did it did I start writing it a year and a half ago, but I started promoting it my birthday, which was into October. So it feels like it's just been this slow. Uh and then and then I had a six month book tour lined up that went away in seventy two hours. And so it's just like everything has changed. But the funny thing is, or the interesting thing to me is the book. The whole book is about the last eight or so years and even before that, of how I did exactly turned being underestimated into an advantage. And it was about bootstrapping. It was about doing things, making the impossible happen under crazy odds. And now I have a better I have a different kind of vibe, you know, I have like assistance, and I would have all these things booked for me and this and that, and then Coronavirus said, uh no, you're going back to your entrepreneur spirit today. And so the way that I'm rolling out this book, I I get to like flex those muscles in a in a way that I haven't been able to in several years. Now. Don't get me wrong, I have three different companies, so I definitely flex that muscle all day long. But this is like so in to me. This takes me back to when I used to like package T shirts from my living room and send them out as I sold them and you know, right hand right and and take it to the post office. This is how I feel about this book, because every single person who talks to me about the book means something. Every single person who gets something from the book means something, and I just I just can't wait for it to be out. I'm so excited. I'm so excited to it. Um it feels like a such a fitting time to ask this question, which is my favorite thing to ask everyone who comes on the show. Everything is new now and the podcast is called work in progress, and I'm curious what in this moment, be it this shift or or something personal. What what feels like a work in progress to you right now? Mm hmm made me. I'm sure everybody says that, but um, I I truly feel like I'm in a place right now where I don't know exactly what's going to happen next. And for the last five years or so or four years or so, I knew what I was, I knew what I could, I knew I'm a venture capitalist, I have these funds, I do this thing. I feel like there's a next play for me that perhaps means that I reach more people and can be an example to more people. Something is bubbling, and what's in progress is not only the thing that happens next, but how I react to it and how I behave within it and the impact that it might have. And it feels very much like I'm on the brink of something and and um, I'm I'm excited too. It reminds me this period of my life, the last few weeks remind me with the book coming out and with all of the success of a lot of the companies in our portfolio bubbling onto the surface. It reminds me of September fifteen, when Susan Kimberland gave me a yes to starting the fund. It feels like, Wow, what's the next step gonna look like? That bubbling of potential? That feels nice. Yeah, there's an optimism there even in these in these incredibly strange times. Yeah, I feel it for myself and I feel it for others. I feel it for other people. Well, I love that. That's a good thing to hold onto. Thank you, Yeah, thank you so fun. I've loved spending my day with you. Yeah. I feel like I think we lived together now. I feel like you're just in the other room. I love it be like hey from the kitchen. Yes, yes, well thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it and I love the work that you're doing. Thank you. This show is ecutive produced by me, Sophia Bush, and sim Sarna. Our supervising producer is Alison Bresnik. Our associate producer is Kate Linley. This episode was edited by Matt Sasaki and our music was written by Jack Garrett and produced by Mark Foster. This show is brought to you by Cloud ten and Brilliant Anatomy powered by simple Cast m

Work in Progress with Sophia Bush

Work in Progress with Sophia Bush features frank, funny, personal, professional, and sometimes even  
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