Stephanie Cartin - Co-Founder and CEO of Entreprenista: Building a Community, What Makes a Great Business Partner, What to Look for in Your First Hires, and How to Invest in Yourself

Stephanie Cartin  00:00

We always took the step to invest because it always paid off. And when you are running a business, like you have to take that leap, you have to make that investment and be willing to commit to take your business to the next level and move forward.

Callan Harrington  00:14

You're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth, and I couldn't be more excited that you're here Welcome back to another episode of that worked. We have a great episode this week. We're joined by Stephanie Cartin, and Stephanie is a force to be reckoned with. She is the co-founder and CEO of Entreprentista. Entreprentista  is a media company and membership community that impacts the success of women by celebrating and sharing the stories, lessons and business insights of female leaders, while creating a community that cultivates meaningful business connections and support. Stephanie is also the co-founder of Socialfly, co-founder of Market and co founder of Pearl Influential, she has won countless awards, including the Smart CEO Brava Award, which recognizes the top female CEOs in New York. In a Stevie Award for women run workplace of the year, we talked about what makes a great business partner, how Stephanie invested in herself as an entrepreneur. And one that was really interesting was how to maximize a networking event as an introvert. She has a really good take on this. I personally learned a ton in this episode. Building a media company and community is something I'm very interested in with my own business. And she gave us the blueprint for how to build one. Community-led growth is a hot topic and incredibly valuable for those that can pull it off. More than the business impact, you can personally impact many people's lives. And she has done just that with the Entreprentista League. With that I'm done talking. Let's hop into the show. Stephanie, welcome to the show.

Stephanie Cartin  02:24

Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Callan Harrington  02:26

I'm very excited. In prepping for this interview, as I mentioned, my biggest goal is to keep it focused because I can go 7000 different ways on the show. And then also we have Jen back for co-hosting. So Jen, I'm excited to have you back.

Jen Lyttle  02:44

Yeah, me too. And same as Callan, after listening to some of the podcasts, you've been on, Steph, I'm interested to dig into some details that I didn't get answered on some of the podcasts that I listened to. So thank you.

Stephanie Cartin  02:58

All right, I hope I can deliver for you both.

Callan Harrington  03:02

We know that you can, and we're gonna go for there's some spicy hot takes in there too. So I'm excited to dive into them. But the first place I would love to start out just in general is can you tell us the story of the inspiration to start Socialfly?

Stephanie Cartin  03:19

Of course. So I will take you back. I was originally going to take you back to college, but I will take you back to my childhood. I feel like I was this born entrepreneur or entreprentista, as we say now. I was always finding things that were trending as a child and creating a business and selling things. So from Girl Scout cookies, to friendship bracelets, to POGs, Beanie Babies, like I had a business doing all of those things. So fast forward to my college career. I went to school at Cornell University, and I was in the hospitality and business management program. And when I was a sophomore at Cornell is actually when Facebook first started. And when Facebook first started, they released the platform initially only to Ivy League college students. So I remember getting access to the platform, and it was called thefacebook.com back then. And we all thought we were like so cool because we got access to this platform and we were making these profiles. And back then you had to- you know, we would like take pictures out at night and then upload the photos onto- like you couldn't do on your phone back then it was like all on the on the desktop computer. And I remember thinking back then, that this was going to change the way of marketing in the future. I wasn't sure exactly how when everything first launched, but I always just wanted to stay on the forefront with everything that was happening with Facebook, and then of course other social platforms launched like Instagram and Twitter. Fast forward now. I'm living in New York City, working a full time job, and my business partner Courtney, we met through a mutual friend who also happens to be an entreprentista as well. And we decided to start taking on clients together on the side of our full time jobs. We started putting together these social media strategies for brands because we realized that so many businesses needed help with their social media strategies and who better than us to put them together because we were also figuring everything out as we went along. Everything was so new back then. So that's what we decided to do and put together these social media strategies; they were working and after ten months of working nights and weekends on client projects and accounts, so we said, "alright, if this is going to be a real business, we either have to go all in and do it or not do it at all." So we decided to quit our corporate jobs on the same day, which was May 4th of 2012. And we never looked back and grew and scaled that business organically.

Callan Harrington  05:56

So it's a great story. And I've got a bunch of follow up questions on this. So one, what was your favorite POG?

Jen Lyttle  06:05

Oh, my gosh, that was gonna be my question!

Stephanie Cartin  06:07

You know, that's a really good question. You know, I can't even remember. I just remember having certain like metal slammers, and these clear see through slammers, but I don't remember all the details of them. Ask me about Beanie Babies, and I remember a lot more about my Beanie Baby resale business.

Callan Harrington  06:24

If you would have named any pug I would have been impressed. The second it came out of my mouth, I was like, I couldn't name it. There's actually no way.

Stephanie Cartin  06:30

No, I cannot

Callan Harrington  06:30

What's the favorite Beanie Baby?

Stephanie Cartin  06:32

Well, I remember I always wanted to get this like Princess Diana Beanie Baby that was so hard to find, and I never got my hands on. But the one that was like, always trending, that you were trying to like, buy up as many as you could, because they would sell for a lot more was the Peace Bear?

Callan Harrington  06:47

Uh huh.

Stephanie Cartin  06:48

 Do you remember that?

Jen Lyttle  06:48

Yes.

Callan Harrington  06:49

I have it. I have it because Julianna's grandparents left her a ton of Beanie Babies. And I had to look up all of these Beanie Babies. And I gotta tell you, it's still really fun looking up these things and seeing what they're worth. Going on to eBay and see what's sold. Okay, right. What the Peace Bear...

Jen Lyttle  07:10

I was going to say, are you a secret millionaire that we don't know about?

Callan Harrington  07:13

Beanie Baby millionaire. Yeah, no, that's how I've made myself. That was what put me on the map. (laughs)

Stephanie Cartin  07:19

That was your seed funding for your business. (laughs)

Callan Harrington  07:22

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So tying it back to Socialfly, with your partner, Courtney, how did you meet? How did you know she was the right partner? What made her a really good partner?

Stephanie Cartin  07:36

I will tell you, I got very lucky. And we have the most incredible business partnership over the past eleven plus years, that we've worked on over the years. But we got very lucky in the sense that we were friends first. We literally met in a Miami hotel room through a mutual friend who also has her own business. And we became friends first. And I was already trying to start an agency business when Courtney and I first met. And after spending a lot of time together as friends first, we realized, you know, we had the same interests. But we didn't realize at the time, like how opposite our skill sets were and are. So we got very, very lucky that we have really been able to divide and conquer in our businesses since the beginning. But I will share with you, business partnerships are like a marriage. And the only way for a business partnership to be successful is to have the utmost trust and respect for your partner and the same vision and goals for the business. Because if you don't have that, and you don't build that foundation in the beginning, you're probably not going to have a long lasting business partnership. And Courtney and I really invested in our partnership and working together on like learning how to be great business partners. And, you know, we figured everything out as we went along. We're eleven plus years in business now. So when we first started, we were in our early and mid twenties. You know, we're now- I'm going to be thirty-nine in a couple of months. And you know, Courtney is in her mid thirties. And so much changes in life during that time that you really need to have this solid foundation when you first start.

Callan Harrington  09:21

So, if I'm hearing you correctly, you got really lucky in finding Courtney. You were friends first. So that brings up a question. This might be a spicy hot take. I've had a lot of challenges- when I start friends first, it can be tough for me. It's tough for me to even kind of hire friends within to the business as a whole. Did you find any of those challenges? Because you guys had a personal friendship going into that, as opposed to becoming friends after working together and then going to start something?

Stephanie Cartin  09:56

Great question. So Courtney and I weren't friends for a long time before we started the business. So, we were introduced by our friend Suzy, we became fast friends. I think it was probably only about a year that we were friends before we started the business together. So it wasn't like we were, you know, best friends since childhood, or you know, had our entire college experience together. But I really do think it is possible to go into business with friends. And we've actually on our podcast, Entreprenista, we've had other, you know, friends share their stories of starting businesses and what works and what doesn't, and it definitely is possible. But it really is all about setting up that foundation in the beginning and having those, you know, clear roles and responsibilities, and making sure that you genuinely trust each other. And having that same, like work ethic, and then vision for the business. If you have all of those things in place, I do think it is possible to be it's definitely possible to be in business with with a friend,

Callan Harrington  10:55

One of the things I'm so impressed by is you've done it with multiple businesses with the two of you. You mentioned that you invested a lot into building that trust within the friendship and partnership. Do you have any of the things that you did to work on that, whether that was exercises or whatever that may be? I'm really curious to some of the like the actionable things that people can do to strengthen their partnership?

Stephanie Cartin  11:24

Yeah, so we worked with a business coach, her name is Leslie, she is the best. And you know, in the early days of growing Socialfly, we didn't know what we didn't know, right? You're figuring everything out as you go along. You're building this business from nothing into a multi-million dollar business, there's so many challenges that come up along the way, your roles and responsibilities change based on things that are happening in the business. And we realized, like we needed that coach to really help us figure out the best way to be able to divide and conquer and have tough conversations together and really, you know, have this alignment. And she really worked with us on putting those those plans in place. So we could, you know, openly communicate about things. And I think you know, going back to, you know, being friends first or having a business partnership where with a friend, if it's hard for you to like give, you know, feedback on something because you don't want to hurt someone's feelings, because they're your friend, it makes it hard to have a successful partnership, because a lot of times like you do need to share that if your partner's doing something that you don't agree with, or it isn't maybe how you would do something and you're scared to communicate and share those things, because you feel bad because they're your friend. Like that's when there can be a lot of issues or resentment can happen. But if you learn the best ways to be able to openly communicate together, you can have a lot of success, and it can feel uncomfortable or strange first, but having like a third party, where you would call Leslie, like our our business coach, but like our, like our counselor, right?

Jen Lyttle  13:06

I was gonna say it's almost like a marriage counselor, in a way.

Stephanie Cartin  13:08

Basically, yeah. Therapist, seriously. Business therapist.

Callan Harrington  13:13

Which I just found out there are therapists specifically for entrepreneurs. I don't know who they are, how to find them, but I've heard about this. And I think it's a fantastic idea. I think getting a coach is excellent. That's such great advice in general. Were there any frameworks in particular, where- whether that's a conflict resolution framework, or an expectations framework that you use, or still do use that helped make that successful?

Stephanie Cartin  13:42

Something that we did do in the early days was like listing out all of our roles, responsibilities, what we were each responsible for, which was really helpful. So, because I think we found a lot of times in the early days, again, like we hadn't run a business before we were figuring it out as we went along. And a lot of times we would be doing like the same things together, where we could, you know, do a lot more if we divided and conquered. And we're very clear about okay, anything sales and marketing related falls on Stephanie, anything operations and finance related falls on Courtney. So at the end of the day, like all you have as a business owner is the number of- a certain number of hours in the day. And if you're overlapping and doing similar things, it's not necessarily going to help the business move forward.

Callan Harrington  14:27

So, something just dawned on me as you are talking about that. You were pretty young, when you would have made this decision to get a business coach. One. And then two, I knew you got off to a hot start, but that's not the easiest thing to say, hey, we're gonna invest in this coach because it's a non-revenue generating activity. What kind of led to that decision? And I'd ask what the ROI is, but I think it's fairly obvious. It's pretty significant. Seems like. Is that fair to say?

Stephanie Cartin  14:57

Well, I will tell you the whole backstory here, because I am all about empowering entrepreneurs to be investing in themselves, because it's investing in your business. And it's only going to- it's only going to help in the long run, if you want to build a sustainable business. So I'm going to take you back again to the early days now of starting Socialfly. So we quit our corporate jobs. And then we're like, okay, we need to get some interns to help do all the work. So, quit our jobs, and the next week, it's Monday, Courtney comes over to my apartment- at the time I'm living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in this small apartment- and Courtney comes over, and we're like, okay, where are we gonna find interns? We go on Craigslist, we start calling and interviewing interns, and we're like, wait a second, where are these interns gonna go? Like, this is before like remote work, or, you know, that's the norm now, but we're like, where are they going to go? What are we going to do? And she's like, "oh, I remember, I have this family friend, my mom used to sell art to this guy. His name is Frank, he has a printing company in New York City called Print Tech. Let me call him and see if he has any extra space." So we call Frank. And he says, "ladies, come on down, I want to hear about your business and see if there's anything that I can do to help you." So we go meet with Frank, like the first week after we quit our jobs. And we tell him all about our idea, or not even idea, we'd already started the business. But now we're doing this full time. And he's like, "how are you going to go get more clients?" We're like, you know, we're going to network and pound the pavement. He's like, "you need to come to my networking group. I'm in this amazing networking group. And I get most of my business from this group. You need to be part of this." The next week, I go to this group, they meet at 7:30 in the morning, every Tuesday, and my world just changed. I'm like, oh, my gosh, like this is it. Like this, it just felt like so me, like I'm a natural connector, I like to help people, I like to be able to, you know, talk about our business, I like to meet people. And that's what this group was about. So we, you know, say we want to join the group, and they tell us it's like a few thousand dollars to join this group. And we're like, okay, you know, how are we going to pay for this? We had like a few small clients. We were you're just starting out. And Frank said, just put it on your business credit card, you're investing in your business. He's like, I'm telling you, this is what's going to help you. And it's doing these things where you're investing in your business, and you're meeting the right people, and it will continue to take you to the next level. So from Frank's initial advice, we join that group. We didn't really have the funds to do it, but we put it on a business credit card. And off we went and got lots of our first clients from that group. And from there started to meet some of our closest friends and network and business to this day. And then from there, through that group, we met someone else who was involved in another organization. And that's how we ended up meeting our business coach, Leslie, and then ended up joining that organization to learn leadership training and leadership skills along with the coaching from Leslie. From there, we also had joined another group to be able to help get press for our business and learn all about you know, the PR world of you know, marketing your business. And we always took the step to invest because it always paid off. And when you are running a business, like you have to take that leap, you have to make that investment and be willing to commit to take your business to the next level and move forward. And because of doing all of this, this is how we were able to build Socialfly and build our business so quickly and so organically, because we did take these risks. And they all paid off because we invested in ourselves and we invested in our business. So then when we set out to create Entreprentista, which I'm sure we'll talk more about. We wanted to put together every single resource that we had in all of these different groups and communities under one roof. So founders didn't have to go to you know, five - ten different groups and organizations. They could have everything they needed, everything we needed, over the past ten plus years, since we started our business.

Callan Harrington  19:00

I love that story. And I tell people all the time, people ask me all the time, "I want to go into consulting, how do I get my first couple of clients?" The reality is your first couple of clients are going to come from your network. Get out there, network, meet people, face to face, digitally, honestly doesn't really matter. I still love face to face. But if you can meet people digitally, meet with people digitally. That's how your first clients will most likely come. Build content for the long run, build your personal brand, all of those things. But while you're doing that hit the networking trail hard. One of the things I'm super curious about, and I know you've got a ton of experience, and I'm very excited to talk about the Entreprentista community that you've that you've founded and lead. How does somebody, when they join a community, you know, one thing that I see there's two types of people that typically are in a community, there's probably more I'm oversimplifying. One person is super engaged. They're answering all the questions, they're at all the events, they're trying to get on the committees. Then the other side of that is the person that gets in, and maybe they are have some nerves, maybe they're a little- have some fear about putting themselves out there or asking questions, whatever that may be. How does that second person maximize the value that they can give and receive from joining a community?

Stephanie Cartin  20:22

Being part of a community and networking and putting yourself out there, if that isn't your, you know, natural being, can definitely be hard and challenging. And I totally understand and can relate. And some people don't believe this when I share this with them, but I am like an introverted extrovert. So I love meeting people like one on one and connecting like this and having this conversation. And actually, I can go speak in front of, you know, 500 people, and I'm great with that. But put me in a room with 100 people and you're having to go up to people and network and have these conversations to me, I actually get extremely like overwhelmed, because I prefer naturally to just want to connect like this one on one or with two people like in a small group, because I like to build real, genuine relationships. So what I like to do is really think about for with every event, whether it's in person, or if you're doing like a, you know, a Zoom networking event, think about your goals. What would success look like to you from that specific event or meeting? So maybe you're introverted, and you're going to this big event and you get a list ahead of time of who's going to be there. Who are those one, two or three people that you want to make it a point to find them and introduce yourself and start building that relationship? So you're not going to an event saying, "I need to go meet fifty people." Go there to meet one, two, or three people strategically. Are these people that can help you and your business, can help move your business forward? Can you give back to them as well? And build that genuine connection relationship. And then the most important thing is following up. You're not going to build a relationship by just having that, you know, five minute meeting with someone and then reaching out to them a year later and being like, oh, remember, when we met for five minutes at XYZ event? You have to build that relationship. And something that I learned early on in that first group that we joined, the whole philosophy of that group was Givers Gain. And one of the reasons why I felt just so at home and comfortable in that group is because that's just naturally how I am. I love to connect with people, learn about them, find out what would be helpful for them, so that I can authentically and organically make introductions as I meet other people. So if you get nervous, you know, talking about yourself in the beginning, when you start networking, ask people about themselves. I find most people do like to talk about themselves. So ask them about themselves, learn as much as you can about them, and then you can build that relationship initially by making introductions for them or helping them as well.

Callan Harrington  23:03

I love that advice. I think that's excellent. And one of- the one piece in particular that really stuck out to me was when you go to a networking event, you don't have to talk with every single person there. Even I consider myself an extrovert in every definition of the word. I get energy from being around people. And more people, I typically get more energy. That said, I can't rifle through a networking event talking to as many people as possible. I will burn out. And it will be a waste of my time. So narrowing in on two to three people that you really want to meet and and see if there's a way to help each other out, I think is some of the best advice that you can give. So, I personally love that.

Stephanie Cartin  23:48

And I would say being organized about it. So having a CRM, I wish when we started years ago that we had an organized CRM. I think about this all the time, like oh my gosh, imagine if I had- The CRM we use is called Copper, it integrates with the Google Suite. We do like everything on Google, so it makes it really easy. But like, I wish we had that when we first started. I think about it now, like imagine if I had every single contact, every conversation logged, everything there from when we first started. Like luckily, I have a lot of it in my head, and we use it now, going forward the past few years. But I wish we had that when we first started, because we've just met thousands of people over the years. So to be able to go back and say, oh, someone's looking for XYZ type of person, I could just look it up in the CRM and say, oh, I met this person at this event they do XYZ and make that introduction. So starting that now for anyone as you're networking and having all of your contacts organized so you can easily access them and remember, you know, your conversations or who helpful intros would be... Highly, highly recommend that. And then one other thing I'll add, in terms of tips and advice, because I love sharing about building relationships and networking. I'm just so passionate about, especially, you know, with service providers, and making it really easy for other people to make connections and introductions, and something I like to think about is, let's say you're on a Zoom networking call, whether it's like a group call or one on one. It doesn't have to be that the person you're sitting across from is a potential client for you. But who do they know? Like are they a center of influence, or who do they know that they can introduce you to? But what you have to be able to do on your end is make it really easy for them to introduce you. So having your business and like your tagline for your business and what you do. Being able to articulate that and being like, extremely easy and memorable. So then you're top of mind for other people as they're going about their day. And someone says, oh, like with social, like, oh, I'm looking for a social media agency. We would get introductions all the time, because everyone knew, you know, Stephanie and Courtney from Socialfly. You, you know, make introductions, if you meet someone looking for social media services. So you want to, you know, make it very easy for people to introduce you.

Callan Harrington  26:03

Couldn't agree more. The more friction that you can remove- And I think one of the easiest examples is, go to them. If they're across town, go to them. Make it easy. Send the calendar invite, if it's digital. Don't wait on them to do it, just send it and be done with it. The easier that you can make that process, the more someone's going to agree and be excited about it. If they feel like they've got to do all the work on it, and you're reaching out to them, it's already gonna be, "oh, why am I- why am I dealing with this? Why am I? This is another meeting on my calendar, and I don't feel like dealing with this." Not to sound Scrooge. The- one of the things I want to go to real quick is where was it with Socialfly where you really had that turning point, where it came from okay, we're doing pretty well, here, we're getting consistent clients, to this is a real high growth business. What was that point? What happened to get to that point?

Stephanie Cartin  27:02

One of the things that we did, we joined this accelerator program. And this is when we were doing under a million dollars in revenue. And so in the early days of starting the business, and we joined this accelerator program, to learn all the tech. Again, investing in the business, learning all the tactics and strategies that we would need to take the business from, you know, a half a million dollar to a million dollar plus business. So we were in this accelerator program, we had a group that we met with once a month, and then there were these quarterly sessions on finance, and, you know, sales and marketing and operations. And that really helped us learn all of these different strategies and things that we would need to take the business to the next level. And we were in that group for a year and then got to the million dollar plus mark in our business, and from there, just, you know, really accelerated from there.

Callan Harrington  27:55

What was probably the biggest challenge that you had, when you're in that high growth stage?

Stephanie Cartin  28:00

I think the biggest challenge in any business is hiring talent. Your business is only as great as the team that you have, especially in our type of business, which is a service based business, you need really great people, and you need to operate the business, you know, extremely efficiently. So, you can't be paying people more than the clients are spending with you. So that, so learning how to like find the best talent, but then also making sure that you're charging the right prices to your clients. It's it's really hard, but I would say it's all hard, managing people, and learning how to manage people. And I think that was, you know, a big challenge for us, especially in the early days. Courtney and I again, were in our you know, mid and late twenties. And, you know, a lot of the talent that we were hiring, they were close to our age, and we hadn't managed a big team before. So again, you know, learning everything as you go and making a lot of mistakes along the way. And always, we're always open and still are like always learning new things. We're always learning at every new stage of business, and we're always seeking answers and finding the resources that we need to figure out how to take the business to that next step.

Jen Lyttle  29:17

You said something in a previous podcast, where one of the questions you ask on an interview is, "what is the nicest thing you've done for somebody lately?" Which instantly I said that is happening for me now every time and every interview. But what is the key skill that you look for in a professional standpoint when you're hiring somebody?

Stephanie Cartin  29:37

I will say the first thing is definitely making sure someone is nice, a good human. That is like the the most important thing, because we just only want to work with really nice, kind, good people, who you can trust. So that is like the number one most important thing, and then most things can be trained. So if you find someone with the ability to to problem solve, and someone who is extremely resilient, and especially like with Entreprenista, we're, you know, starting this business over. We're a startup now. It's like, how when we started Socialfly. So you need people who are willing to just figure things out. And again, I think a lot of the skills can actually be trained, but you can't necessarily train the mindset of, you know, resiliency and doing what it takes, and figuring things out, and being okay if you make a mistake, and not falling apart, and being able to keep moving forward. So that's actually really what what we look for.

Jen Lyttle  30:36

Yeah, those soft people skills you can't teach. I think Callan maybe told me a few years ago, or at one point, you can have the best sales performer on your team, but if they're not a culture fit, and they're bringing the team down, it's just not a fit overall. So that's a really, really strong point that you brought up.

Callan Harrington  30:54

I've got a follow up question on this. And this might be the second hot take of the episode here. But my question is, and I totally aligned with the, you know, someone that's generally nice, good person. How do you balance that with being walked over from clients? Where someone's very nice, and it's to the point where a client will say something or push the boundaries? How do they enforce their boundaries? Maybe that's the question. But I'm curious and how you strike that balance?

Stephanie Cartin  31:24

So again, it depends on the role, right. So that role would be someone who's an account supervisor or account director. So you can still have someone who's a very nice person and nice human, but they know they have account management skills and know how to manage the client and manage that relationship. So being nice is really important. Because you want to be able to like finesse those emails, or have those conversations where you are extremely likeable to the client. And even if you're pushing back on them, or sharing things, like you're able to do it, you'd like nicely with a smile, and share what you need to share with a client. But you do need someone who is like nicely assertive and direct. I got you. So if I'm hearing you, it's nice, but also assertive, in that particular role. In certain roles it's just not necessary. Yeah. And when I say nice, I mean, like a good human, a good person. Like we only want to hire really nice humans, because when you spend time working with people, there's a lot of people out there who are not necessarily kind or are, you know, don't necessarily think about others before they think about themselves. And in a business, and especially in a business, if you're building an agency business or community based business like Entreprenista, it's about service and about being there and supporting other people. And if you're always thinking about yourself first, and you're not kind to others, like just not good fit.

Callan Harrington  32:53

I love that as a differentiation, because you can still have a little, just call it an edge to you. But if you're generally looking out for the other person, yes, you might have a bit of an edge, but people know that your heart's in the right place in what you're doing. Is that- am I hearing you correctly on that?

Stephanie Cartin  33:10

Definitely. And you genuinely have to like people. Like in a people business, you have to be sure that the people you hire actually like other humans and care about them.

Callan Harrington  33:21

It makes complete sense. So we're at the main course, Entreprenista. Tell us a little bit about Entreprenista. And what I'm really interested to hear, in particular, is what started this? What's the origin story?

Stephanie Cartin  33:33

Yes. So, what started to happen was because of the quick growth and success of Socialfly, so many women founders started reaching out to myself and Courtney, literally every single week, wanting to go out to coffee and pick our brain and really just wanting to hear how we were able to do what we did. And Courtney and I are both the type of people that like to help absolutely everyone. But we realized quickly, it was physically impossible to go out to coffee with everyone who was reaching out to us and still run our agency business. So, we started thinking, you know, how can we help as many women founders as possible, but really do it at scale? So, that was our initial aha moment. We're like, oh, why don't we start a podcast and we can share all of these incredible stories of other women who are building these businesses, and they have so much insight and advice to share. So that's how Entreprenista initially started. It started as our podcast, on the side of our agency business really is this great content to you know, share and help others. And the first year of Entreprenista, that's really all it was. So we launched the podcast at the end of 2018. And the podcast really just took off there from that first episode. We were early in that women's entrepreneurship podcasting space. Now there's a lot of other podcasts as well, which is so amazing to see. But back at the end of 2018, there were not a lot of other podcasts like ours. And so all of 2019 we've released a new episode every week we are organically growing our social community and our email list. Then the beginning of 2020 happens, and obviously we all know what happens in 2020, and the world changes and the pandemic, and now we're getting so many messages from our listeners and followers. We're hearing things like, I lost my job during the pandemic, I want to start a business, can you help us? Or I need help pivoting my business. Can you help us? And Courtney and I were like, we need to help everyone. And we always knew we wanted to do more with Entreprenista, but we were focused on running our agency business. But here we are now in the middle of this pandemic. And this was the time to do it, we needed to go all in and build Entreprenista to be what we knew it could be and what we were seeing everyone really needed during that time. So, all roads lead back to our business coach, we worked with our business coach, Leslie. And we worked out this whole plan where Courtney and I could really divide and conquer again, as we've always done. Where Courtney would stay focused on running and growing our agency business. And then I would focus on building everything out with Entreprenista. So we, you know, pivoted Entreprenista, moved it to be a separate business from Socialfly, because it wasn't a business, it was a podcast. Not that podcasts aren't businesses, there are podcasts that are businesses, and now our podcast is part of our business. But that's just not what it was. When we first started, it was just a side project for us. So now over the past almost three years, we have now built Entreprenista into into a full media company and membership community called the Entreprenista League. And when we set out to create our membership community, we wanted to create a place for women founders have access to all of our learning lessons, everything we had invested all of our all of our money in over the past 10 plus years, 11 plus years, now. And just help everyone do it faster and have a community to support them and be there for for these founders every step of the way. Because it's what we wish we had on on day one of starting Socialfly.

Callan Harrington  36:53

So I have about probably about a million follow up questions on this, because I'm very curious. Because this is something that with Flashgrowth that I'm personally doing as well, is building this media company, consulting and eventually community, something I'm very interested in pursuing as well. So like, what I'm curious is, when did you know it was time to start the actual community aspect? You had the podcast, your social following was starting to grow, what was the point where it's like, okay, we really need to make this into a community?

Stephanie Cartin  37:25

It was during the pandemic, it was the summer of 2020, and we were just hearing what people were asking for, and what these needs were, and thinking about what we needed at the time, too. So during the pandemic, we created our own community advisory board of all of our other friends who are agency owners, and we were getting together every week on Zooms, you know, talking about how we were running the business and things that were happening because of the pandemic, and clients, and churn, and employees, and all of the things. And we were like, everyone needs access to this, and be able to connect and collaborate together. Like this is, this is what Entreprenista needs to be. So we said, we're gonna launch this as a community, and we had never launched a community business before. So we were like, you know, back to square one. And it was so exciting for me to, you know, feel like how we were starting Socialfly again, like just figuring it all out as we went along. And I- Courtney and I both moved down to Florida during the pandemic. We made a whole plan so we could both move down here. She's now in Miami, I'm also in the Palm Beach area. And I- through a community, I met someone down here and she's like, if you want to launch a community business, there's this coach who helps with community businesses, launching, you should go do her program. So I signed up. I was like, great, signed up for her program, learned how to like set up the foundation for everything and then just went from there.

Callan Harrington  38:52

I have a question on this, because it's something that I've personally struggled with. Is how- is it fair to say this is a very mission-driven purpose for you?

Stephanie Cartin  39:02

Absolutely.

Callan Harrington  39:03

Do you struggle with- Because of that, do you struggle with okay, what do I charge? What do I give away? And how do you make those decisions?

Stephanie Cartin  39:14

Yes. So now we've talked about this, I feel like that this whole time is investing in yourself and investing in your business. As a business owner, and especially a woman in business, right? We have to invest in ourselves and invest in our business. And if we're not willing to spend money to help our business grow. It's like if you don't pay for something, you're not going to necessarily take it seriously or commit to doing it. So everything is free, and we're just handed everything for free, are you going to like put in the work and actually build? You have to charge something. Now, do we give away scholarships and do partnerships with brands to offer scholarships, especially to people who are like super early and just starting out? Absolutely. But for founders who are already building businesses, have revenue in their business, you have to be willing to spend to grow your business. And we're a business, right? So the only way that we can provide all of these resources and tools and an access, we have to have a team and be able to, to execute this. So is it something we think about all the time? Absolutely. And do we want to be sure that we are, you know, charging for, like, what's fair and what makes sense? Like, we're not sitting here, like, how could we make a billion dollars and you know, charge people more than they should be paying. Like, that's not our mentality at all. It's, we just want to be sure that if you're in business, you are making that commitment to invest in yourself and invest in your business.

Callan Harrington  40:44

I find that to be 100% true. Even with my own stuff, if I get something for free, I'm not that invested in it. And I can't tell you how many pilots we've ran with companies, where they've given the pilot away, and it's not been successful. Even if it's co-opt at 75%. And the company only has to pay 25% of that fee, they're infinitely more successful. So I totally agree. That makes complete sense to me. What's the difference? So for you, and I've asked this funny enough, I've asked Jen the same question on this, because Jen's at a very mission-driven company as well. How is that different on a day to day basis, working for a company that's very mission-driven, versus I'm gonna say, business-driven? But the reality is, you know, a lot of businesses, myself included, are to grow the business and ultimately sell the business. It's not, I care about my clients a lot, I care about their problems, I really enjoy solving those problems. But at the end of the day, it's this isn't a very mission-driven business, as it stands today. I actually want to make it more mission-driven, which is why I'm curious. But what's that, how is that day to day different in a very mission-driven business?

Stephanie Cartin  41:55

I see the differences really in our team. So when you have a mission-driven business, and the team that is working for that business, they're just so aligned with the goals and the purpose, with Entreprenista, with what we stand for. And I just see just a different mindset and attitude, versus other companies where like, again, in an agency business, where you have ten different clients, and you're working on all of these client projects, and it's like, all across the board. It's just a different mentality when there is a mission behind what you're doing each day, and you see the impact that you're making. For our team, I just see such a difference. We start our team meetings off at Entreprenista every Monday, sharing impact statements from our members in our community and how the community has changed their life, changed their business, and for the team to be able to be part of that every single day. In our team, they're all in our membership community platform and seeing all the connections that are happening and businesses that are growing. There's nothing better.

Callan Harrington  43:07

What's been the biggest challenge that you faced in building a community?

Stephanie Cartin  43:12

The biggest challenge has really been figuring out what the- and going back to like the pricing model, what that pricing model should be. We are about to update our membership model based on our learnings from the past two years. So what I saw happening was, we use for our membership model, it's a yearly membership fee, or our members can pay quarterly. That's how we had been doing it. And what I saw happening was, because we use Stripe for payment processing, anytime someone was coming up on renewal, either their quarterly payment was coming up or their yearly payment, Stripe sends out a reminder and says "your subscription is about to update," your subscription is about to update. So then what I saw happening is members would email and say, "oh, you know, I'm not using my subscription anymore. I want to cancel my subscription." And I started to realize, I'm like, oh my gosh, that's not the community that we've built, like this is not a subscription business. That's not what we are. That's not who we are. We're a community based business. And our goal is to help everyone in our community have all of the resources and access and there for you, throughout your business journey. So what we've decided to do is change our access model to be a lifetime access model. So when someone joins the community, once they you know, paid to be in the community, they're in the community for life, they have access for life. The membership fee will be a bit more than it is right now for like a one year access, or one year membership that would renew, so it'll be a little bit more, but the value that our members will be receiving over the course of the lifetime of their business is so incredible. And this way we can really be there for our members every step of the way. So if they do have- we would see things sometimes like, you know, having a hard month or hard time in my business, I want to cancel my subscription. And I'm like, no, that's actually what we need to be there for you the most. We don't want that to be even a thought. We want people thinking, oh, if I'm having trouble my business right now, where do I need to go? I need to go to my community to get those resources and get that help. So we're changing the mindset, changing the model, just so our members understand when you're an Entreprenista, you're part of this community forever. You don't need to be thinking about this every single year as another, you know, line item in your budget, like once you're in, you're in and we're here to help forever.

Callan Harrington  45:33

That's excellent. That is definitely backing it up. Because if anybody knows, there's nothing more powerful than recurring revenue. So if you're moving to that, for that reason, I mean, I think that is a- there's not really a bigger sign of "this is what our mission is, this is what we care about" than that. So, I think it's excellent. I know you've had so much success with Entreprenista, and I wish we had more time because I would dive in. I still have a million other questions. The last question I'd love to ask you is, if you could have a conversation with your younger self, what advice would you give them?

Stephanie Cartin  46:07

Surround yourself with a community of others who will help you and support you. And it's all going to work out. It's all going to be okay.

Callan Harrington  46:18

I can't imagine a better place to stop it. I mean, community has been huge for me. I'm a big believer. I love what Entreprenista is doing, and what you're building with Entreprenista. Steph, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

Jen Lyttle  46:33

Yeah, awesome story.

Stephanie Cartin  46:35

Thank you for having me. For your listeners, feel free to reach out to me. I'm always here to be a resource and to help, and thank you for for having me on.

Callan Harrington  46:43

Absolutely. This has been fantastic.  I hope you enjoyed Stephanie and I's conversation. I loved hearing how Entreprenista organically formed from the challenges they heard other women were going through. If you're interested in learning more about the Entreprenista League, you could find a sign up link in the show notes. Also, if you liked this episode, you could find me on LinkedIn to let me know. And if you really want to support the show, a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next week.