More Money Podcast - From Centrestage to Software CEO - Founder of Mentorly, Ashley Werhun

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

This is a special mini-series of the More Money Podcast sponsored by Visa Canada to highlight the latest winners of the Visa She’s Next Grant Program.Most entrepreneurs walk an unexpected path, and Ashley Werhun, founder of Mentorly, is the perfect case study. Starting out her career as a professional ballerina who toured the world and performed hundreds of shows per year, when it was finally time to hang up her ballet flats, she took a very different direction by becoming a tech founder. Seeing that there was a big need for mentorship, well beyond just ballet, Ashley founded Mentorly, a B2B mentorship program and learning and development platform, to help companies invest in their people by using smart mentor matching and AI that seamlessly integrates into existing HR tools. With her diverse background, Ashley not only shares how she was able to make such a big career change, but also advice she’d give to people just starting out, such as building your audience before your product.For full episode show notes visit jessicamoorhouse.com/439Learn moreLearn more about MentorlyLearn more about Visa's grant programFollow meInstagram @jessicaimoorhouseThreads @jessicaimoorhouseTikTok @jessicaimoorhouseFacebook @jessicaimoorhouseYouTube @jessicamoorhouseLinkedIn - Jessica MoorhouseFinancial resourcesMy websiteMy bestselling book Everything but MoneyFree resource libraryBudget spreadsheetWealth Building Blueprint for Canadians course Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, this is Landis from What the F, the podcast that's about adulting, but with epilepsy and all the what the F moments that come with it. From those awkward days in the office to dating disasters, med side effects to the latest science, there's nothing that's too weird to talk about here. So if you ever thought, what the F is happening with my brain, you're in the right place. New episodes drop Tuesdays. Pull up a seat. It's going to be good. Lou Lou, Lou, Jessica Morehouse here, and welcome to a special mini-series of the More Money podcast, sponsored by Visa Canada. In this series, we're shining a light on some of the latest recipients of the Visa She's Next grant program by speaking with incredible Canadian women to learn about their inspiring entrepreneurial journeys. Each year, the Visa Shoes Next Grant Program selects 20 recipients to receive $10,000 in funding, along with access to an accelerated, coaching and mentorship program through Wisepace at York University. Since the program's inception,

Visa has provided more than $900,000 in funding to help empower women-owned businesses from coast to coast with the tools and resources they need to grow. Now, as a woman entrepreneur myself, I wanted to do something a bit different with my podcast and use my platform to share the stories of these women so we can all get to know and support the incredible Canadian businesses they're building. And if you'd like to learn more about the Visa Shoes Next Grant program, head over to vizza.ca slash grant program. Please note the views and opinions expressed on this podcast are solely my own and those of the guests and do not reflect the views of Visa or his affiliates. For this episode, I'll be interviewing Ashley Wurhan, co-founder and CEO of Mentorley,

based in Montreal, Quebec. Mentorley is a mentorship program and learning and development platform that helps companies invest in their people through running high-impact mentorship programs with smart mentor matching and personalized growth pathways and AI intelligence seamlessly integrated with existing HR tools. Now let's get to that interview. Welcome to the more money podcast. Ashley, I'm so excited to have you on the show with me. Thanks for having me. I am so excited to have you on the show, especially because I really, on a personal level, want to know how you ended up where you are now as a founder of Mentorley, especially because you kind of took an unconventional route to tech. I was surprised to read in your bio that you were previously a ballerina, which I already

know is like that is such a crazy career, super competitive, super difficult to do. And now you're a tech founder. So kind of catch me up. How were you able to like, I want to know how were you able to become a ballerina? What was that journey like? And then what happened for you to decide I want to go a different route with my career in my life? Yeah, it's definitely an unconventional path. kind of to say the least. With that career, you start to focus in on professional training at about age 11 or 12. You sort of decide this is my path forward. So from that early on, I made that decision and then got my first professional job at 18

until I was about 31. I toured the world. We do 100 to 200 shows a year. We covered most continents. I would travel about seven months of the year for work. So really lucky to have a very full and successful career, super competitive, like a very small percentage of people kind of make it to that level. But a lot of that commitment and grit and skills sort of transfer over to sort of the life of a founder. It wasn't like a, I always knew I

wanted to be in tech. I think naturally you're going to retire in ballet that happens generally in your mid-30s. Second careers are pretty common. I think it's actually pretty common for a lot of people today to not be in the same career for their whole professional life. But the whiplash of the industries is certainly something. I was always interested in like the business side of what we were doing. So where did the donation come from? How did a nonprofit get set up? Why were we paid what we were paid? Like just very curious. So really early on, I was invited to board meetings. And at that level in professional ballet, the board members are like these very worldly, very wealthy, very experienced people. So hearing them talk and and dig into problems and how

they thought about them. It gave me more empathy as an artist. I understood like why we were doing the extra show. And so I'd always be curious about the business side. So I'd always sort of have side projects like that. And then it came time to retire. And this issue of mentorship kept coming up in my own life as a dancer as an artist. And we sort of just landed on that the solution was a technical one based on a lot of the inputs we were learning. So I didn't think I'm going to go into tech and learn everything I can. It was really like the problem and then what led me to try to solve that problem. That's amazing. It's interesting because you think maybe a natural path for someone who was in dance for so long would be to maybe start your own company or be a

choreographer, but you felt like, no, there is this gap and there's this need for mentorship specifically. I'd love to learn a little bit more about what mentally is. And, you know, at the start, were you just helping other people in your sphere or what was kind of the game plan at the start? Yeah. At the start, we were talking to creatives because that's who we were surrounded by. Those are the problems we knew. But really early on, it was clear that like this, this solution existed in program-based solutions. So in the market, a lot of people, were running their own program, which was a concentration of this mentorship experience of people coming in, learning from people that had been there before. And so we pivoted in 2020 in the

summer of 2020 to what I call a B2B solution. So selling to businesses and organizations to help run their programs in the back end. And it really came from customer demand. Like we developed solution B2C to consumer. And then some of the organization saw it and just said, hey, could I have that, but without the people that you've recruited? And we were like, sure. better margins, way more reach. Because if you unlock one company, then you're obviously unlocking thousands of opportunities for mentorship. And a little simpler to build around as a tech solution versus a marketplace. So where we are today is essentially we're a back-end solution. So anyone running a mentorship program has all the tools they need from algorithmic

matching to ratings and reviews. Now we've laid on a ton of AI for sentiment analysis. We kind of go above the market now. We're the first ones to do a lot of skill development, tracking of analyzing in your company, what skills you're lacking, where there's gaps, understanding, like, where are your mentees and how you want to provide guidance for them to ultimately create better performers in your companies. Companies have been through, like, a lot of whiplash recently. They operated through COVID, then they operated through a downturn. Now they're coming back from hybrid and keeping culture and performance consistent is a huge challenge to integrate. And so we work with them and set up thriving programs with them. That's amazing.

just so I can kind of wrap my head around it, how does the mentorship actually work? Is it that the higher ups in a company are the mentors and then people that are kind of lower on the kind of, you know, as professionals, maybe they're just at the start of their careers, they're the mentees all within the company, or how does that kind of work? Yeah, so the nice thing with software is you can kind of build a horizontal solution and let the customer decide what they're building. Depending on the customer, they have a huge PDF of how they think of, mentorship and how they want to operate it, whether that's employee resource groups or interns or

women in the workplace. We also support a lot of network-based clients, meaning like they're nonprofits and organizations. So we don't decide that, but we have all the tools to decide what that is. So they can analyze who they want to invite and then use our algorithmic matching based on different parameters. So maybe it's skill set. Maybe it's I want to be matched with someone in this region, like in Asia Pacific, you want to bridge the gap between that region of your employee base with North America, for example. So based on the company goals, they're going to shape their program, and we're going to do everything else. So matching email nudges, feedback, AI analytics around what's happening in the program, where the skill base is in their company. Because based

on that incoming data set, you have a lot of interesting things that you can tell the customer from. you can tell them like skill patterns, needs, requirements, sentiment, and you don't need to do another survey. Like you have all this employee data. So it helps them, you know, maybe they used to spend like 10 hours a week running a program of 100. Now they can expand to 500 or 1,000 with no extra team, no extra cost. But they can keep that level of like the experience to be really high. A lot of our customers have it completely white label, meaning it looks like they built it themselves as well. Is this something that's just available in Canada or like how can people like, hey, I want to. And do you, it sounds like you offer the B2C and the B2B still, or is it mainly

the B2B right now? Yeah, just the B2B enterprise solution. We're in all markets. And a small amount are our Asian Africa and Europe, but most we've like gone to market mostly North America, just because it's simpler. Like you have a customer success person on those hours. Also like word of mouth and go to market also so spread. So if you're in the New York area or California and companies are talking to each other on what they're using for. leadership and development, you're obviously going to build a customer base there. So we're focused mostly on North America right now. Amazing. And I'm curious, too, because it sounds like you're able to get a lot of data. Are you able to see, you know, what, you know, kind of things

they were able to achieve before and then after using mentally and just how it's been able to help like the company grow and the company culture and all that kind of stuff? Totally. So we integrate with a lot of HRIS tools. And so that's really like collaboration with the team. You want to benchmark with them kind of pre and then post mentorship. Some of the metrics that they really care about are retention, employee engagement, and performance. That's what they're really looking at. So those are kind of the measurables. And then the nonmeasurables are, you know, are people more engaged and happy and more productive in the workplace? Do you feel like your company culture is improving? That is something that you absolutely feel, but you might not

have a metric around it. Like you might have a metric, but it might not be consistent all the time, but you can feel it. It can go all the way up to finance and performance of the actual company. But whether people feel supported, like there's a famous gallab answer that everyone asks their team is, does anyone that the company care about your future other than your manager? And traditionally, companies rank quite low. I think we're also addressing just like a cultural moment. There is a large distressed right now. We've seen it online in conversations. We certainly see it in the comments of young people going into the workforce unsure. Like, do they trust their employer that they won't be laid off? They're really

nervous about AI. And so helping that mentee base, whether it's millennial, like you and I or Gen Z, of kind of the self-determination and building their confidence in the workplace is so important. Because if you go into a career, I think, with a transactional mindset, you're just not going to get a lot out of it. But when you're always just performing up to your manager, it can be pretty intimidating, right? A lot of the cultural stuff is asking someone else, on the team. What does this really mean? Like, I know this what it says in the handbook, but like, how do we really go about this? Or, you know, we'll dive into like that I'm a new mom, but how does maternity leave really work here? Like, tell me your experience about it before I

even decide to tell my manager this, right? And so you want them to have so much context in their workplace on how to perform that they can be super prepared and feel really confident in their role, not only introducing them into a job and everything is being measured and everything. is getting feedback already. Like there needs to be this sort of socialization within the team first and then you can kind of really thrive. So that's what we're seeing as like an outcome. That's incredible. Honestly, just talking to you, I'm like, I feel like you've probably been in this field your whole career. You're so, you feel like so comfortable with the language and exactly what you're doing, what your purpose is. So I would love to know, though, the reality of making that

transition from the arts into tech. What was that kind of entrepreneurial journey and I guess also as a ballerina like how different it is working for I guess a company you know ballet company to then doing it on your own how different really was that it's different like I had to teach myself how to sit down on the computer and work for eight hours a day like I was used to I mean the start of my day was going to the gym and then going to the studio for eight hours and then after maybe rehearsing you know looking at tape taking notes like the again the soft skills around it, like the extreme diligence and the openness and the willingness to like work at something for an extended amount of time with very little results and all of a sudden results come

are similar, I would say, like soft skills or you could even call them personality traits type of thing. And so that level of dedication helped. I think like the other thing is like I needed to learn finance. I needed to learn all these things. So I spent a lot of my time studying. Like it would be work day and then, oh, I need a coach for enterprise sales at night or workday, okay, I'm listening to this podcast on the best enterprise products. I mean, luckily all the information is out there. Like if the information is not what's holding people back, I don't think, because we would all be like wildly successful. But I definitely needed to like study at night or study on the weekends and kind of every waking moment was learning. Luckily, even if you're

coming from a corporate job being a founder super different. anyway. So I think all founders sort of go through that high learning curve, but I think in my case it was intense. And then also like the change of identity. Like I think I, I, I looped in a lot of my identity to what I did. I thought the world saw me as that. And now I have this identity as a founder. So that was also, I didn't allow any time. I like, I stepped off stage and I flew to a conference. I would go back and give myself a little bit more time. But that's, yeah. Yeah, that's, that's, that's quite the transition literally within one day we're changing our whole career or whole identity who we are which is wild you kind of touch on this there's you know and i say

this all the time when it comes to you know personal finest technically all the information is out there whether it's in books or online or on podcasts but you know people struggle with money all the time why is that so you know i know the same thing is when it comes to you know starting your own business there's a lot of obstacles that aren't necessarily well i don't have the information. So for you, what were some of those kind of barriers that you had to figure out on your own or break through? And how were you able to kind of make that progress on your own? Yeah. I think one of the ones is sort of, I was thinking about this because there's a lot of festivals happening, startup festivals in the summer. And I see a lot of really early stage people

go and say, if this, then that. Like, if I just meet that one investor, it'll all be so much better and I almost got in that mindset a little bit at first like if we raise money then all of this will be so much easier and it's sort of this category of like wishful thinking and it's just not true like once you raise money then you have investor stakeholder meetings and if growth isn't up to par then you have to re you know it like it makes things more complicated and so I think I learned the lesson of like the reality of the numbers and our SaaS growth is a reality of our strategy and And sometimes money is the answer, but other times changing in strategy is the answer. And also sometimes you have to listen to the market.

And so like we've launched in COVID, then we live through kind of a scenario where raising money was really hard in 2022 in tech. Yeah. Sort of interest rates rose and funds were not making moves. And we essentially pivoted to be profitable. And that was like a hard decision for me to make. But I think I had a few years under my belt to just look at the reality, like a first principle, look, what are our options here and what's the best path forward instead of chasing?

I think early on I was really chasing someone else to unlock my next step, if that makes sense. And I think that was the wrong approach. And now I'm just rooted in brute reality every day. Well, speaking of, you mentioned that you made the decision to stop chasing funding, trying to be profitable, which is not something you often hear in tech, a lot of it is just like funding, funding, funding. Why did you make that decision? And was that a hard also transition to make? Because I would assume then you kind of have different goals or different steps that you have to take. Yeah. So we raised a million in 2020, 500K, 2020, 500K,000, 500K,000, so sort of spread out in two batches. And then the market just really changed. Like in 2022, we were going

go out to raise and I took a few meetings and like funds were just not deploying capital. They wanted way higher revenue, you know, outcomes for what we were trying to raise. So I just looked at our options and I also just looked at our team capacity to say like, do I want to spend three to four months in market going after another round with metrics that are like, they weren't exceptional. If they were exceptional, we would have gotten yeses or and or like is our better time because I lead like sales and go to market is just focusing and getting those really big customers because we're enterprise.

So we can get customers that are the size of angel checks, right? Like, what is more beneficial to us? So we made that decision. I think internally, definitely, when you announce it to the team, some people want to be on that train of like round to round, millions. And, you know, they want to be on that startup experience and other people really get it. And so it also leaned out the team and just to like,

who wants to be on that track and then who doesn't. Luckily, the feedback was I saw a lot of people in startup sort of get disillusioned by the overgrowth. Like they had a layoff or they had a lot of their friends layoff because teams raised a ton in 2020 in that peak market and then they had to lay off 10% of their staff. So they were actually grateful to say like, well, let's just keep it real. Like let's spend less money and grow more and let's grow in a sustainable way. It doesn't mean that you don't ever raise again. It just means that you have a default alive company, as we like to call it.

And like Paul Graham's sort of matrix of default alive or default dead, basically you won't run out of money because you have. more coming in. And I think that's a healthier place to be right now. I also think like the reality with AI, like your cost, they should not be as high as 2020. Developers can do five times more. One marketer can do two times more. You really have to look into tooling over growth, I think, right now. So that's been our approach. Yeah. I mean, that sounds smart, especially from everything that's happened in the past to kind of think of that in the future. Like, we don't know what's going to happen. But one thing that you can, I think, feel a little bit certain about is like, well, we were the ones that are kind of in control of the money kind of coming in. Speaking of money,

you are one of the recipients of the Visa She's Next Grant Program. Congratulations. I'd love to know a little bit more about your experience with the program. I know part of it includes a grant. Part of it includes mentorship, which is actually kind of funny. Mentorship all around. Everyone's getting mentored. What has your personal experience been with this program? Yeah, it's been great. So just to, we're on the money podcast, you get $10,000 of a non-dilutive grant, which is really unique. I think we're at a great place to get it because we know what each dollar does in the business. I think earlier on, if you're an R&D and you don't really know how that, it can go really fast. But we know what it can do and where we want to put it.

So that's really great. And the other part is mentorship. I actually participate. I try to be participatory in one of our programs, like, because one of our customers, evidently, is something to do with entrepreneurship. And they might ask me. So I always try to be present in one to have that, like, really. experience. So this time is great to be a mentee. And I work with my mentor every second Friday. We've had two sessions. I think what stood out for me is it's like that information question.

Like I know how to prepare for a session, but maybe I was late from a meeting and I didn't do that. And then I wonder, why aren't these mentees doing it? Okay, how could I product be better to help them? Because it's certainly not of we don't know what to do. I think one of the things I've learned so far in the mentorship program is really giving enough contacts before diving into advice. Because sometimes I think what happens is I'll come with just a bunch of questions and I'll get written. But I could have given so much more context of why that advice doesn't make sense for me. So I think laying contacts for the first, you know, within the hour or within the session as they evolve over the weeks is super helpful because then the mentor can kind of say, okay, for your reality, I would advise this. In a lot of

cases, I'm just asking, have you ever been through something like X, right? Yeah. Am I crazy? Or is this normal. And normally it's like, oh, no, I've been through worse. And you're like, yeah, great. And it is a different relationship. Like, it's a different. I have mentors that are also investors and mentally, it's different. Like, you can kind of let your guard down a little bit. You can say, here's what I'm really struggling with. Maybe it's just like a mental block of making that decision. Whereas to an investor, you might want to say, like, oh, yes, I've analyzed this and this is what I think. I'm more like results with them. It's just a gift to have a time to say, I'm going to self-reflect on what I've done these last two weeks. What do we

talk about last time? Let's be accountable. This is what we've done around it. And let's move forward. He's a Canadian founder. He's grown an AI company before. So it's been a really good match so far. And it's great to eat your own product a little bit. See how you could improve this for other people. Totally. No, that's amazing. One thing I wanted to touch on, and you already mentioned this earlier, you are a new mom. And I know for people thinking about maybe starting their own business also having a family being a parent is you know how do you balance and I feel like from all the people I've talked about I don't know if balance is quite possible but that's what we're always striving for um you know how has your experience becoming a parent kind of recent maybe some of

your priorities has it changed any of how you operate your business because you have kind of maybe a bit of a different perspective now yeah I think the the canned answer that a lot of people say of this that I hear when you first say, like, I'm going to have a baby. They go, oh, it just makes you so much more focused. And like, I think that's, like, does it? I think that's true. Like, it does because you have to prioritize. But I think we also never want to say, like, you have to work less hours. Like, I'm leaving to go get my daughter at daycare now at 4.30. Like, that was just not my work day before. And I think we should be a little bit more honest, especially with founders about, like, how does that shift your day? Because on the edges, we do say it makes

you more focused and really tuned into your work. And you do, like, you don't have time to let your brain wander. You have to, like, go and do your hours and leave. I think in a way, because I've always had an intense career, I have never missed other parts of life. Like, I don't miss friend groups or going on vacation. Like, because I find a lot of purpose in my work, and now I find a lot of purpose in parenting.

And so those two things from me, I'm, like, super full with. I've had friends that do miss the, like, the flexibility. like we don't leave our house after 6.30, that's bedtime, right? Unless like one of us is going to work things. So I think that like the best conversation I can have with founders is like the reality of how it changes your day. I've had founders come to me, be like, can we have lunch? Because I didn't want to ever say this, but like I'm holding off on that decision with my partner because I'm a founder and we're going into our series B. I don't know what that looks like. I'm too nervous. So it's really nice just to do it because you often like just get this inbound of like ham struggling

with this decision a little bit. I think the big focus for me is my health because being the mom and having the child is like a huge health challenge. And the one thing you can't do is like really get over exhausted. I already, I think maybe because I'm tuned in so physically, but you feel like your brain capacity, your physical capacity, it eventually wears down and you can't react as you would want to. Right. And so the moment I feel like that, I'm going to bed super early or I'm sleeping I'm taking a day on the weekend I'm sleeping during her naps like I think taking that really seriously is important and I think we tend to stretch it too far yeah no it's especially last of the stories I've heard from other you know entrepreneurs that are in tech especially where it's

very you know highly competitive people work all the time long hours really stressful and then trying to you know add a family into the mix the only way to survive is to set those boundaries and to take care of yourself because that's the only way we're going to overall change the environment and the expectations because, you know, people shouldn't be working all the time, whether you have a kid or not, not healthy. I don't know that, like, I don't think my hours have changed. I just think it's like, in the time off, what are you doing? And sometimes it's sleeping for a whole afternoon because she's sleeping. But like, I did that as a dancer all the time and people thought it was crazy. But like, you know, we'd fly to Italy in Milan and we have our day off. And the expectation was like,

you rest in bed with your feet up. Like you're not going around. So the rest piece is essentially like a big unlock for high performance, but it means that you're not doing other stuff in your life. So I'm a huge rest advocate. I know. I love sleep. I love sleep so much. I take naps all the time. So I'm glad it's like, oh, no, I should be. That's what entrepreneurs do. Good entrepreneurs at high levels do. They take naps. Hopefully it'll get better. She's one years old. So it's really like in the trenches the first year to figure out like we talk about learning curve. It's a huge learning curve. So as they get bigger, I know. know the capacity changes, but I think it gets easier as you grow. Yeah, that's what I've heard.

I'm sure it will get better. I'm curious just to, you know, kind of as we kind of get to our time, where do you see mentally? I know, like how long has mentally been around and where do you kind of see what's the kind of overall vision? I know it's hard to say. It's so hard to predict what the future holds, but where do you kind of see it going? Yeah. So we launched our B to C platform in 2017 and then we pivoted in 2020. So this version of the company has been in market for five years. I just see more growth and automation and really integration of AI. I think tools are going to change in terms of in the capacity to build whatever you want, which is really exciting. So one of the things that hold you back in SaaS is all of these requests from customers or I want to do this and I want to do

this. And there's so many requests and you have to prioritize and then build what you think is best for everyone. Now with new technology, you can essentially lay it flat and, like, say, just upload all your information and we'll go from there. It makes the opportunities really big. I do know it's going to have to integrate super seamlessly. There is a sense of we can't have too many things, especially when the technology is so good in our tech stacks. I want to see it in every company. I want to, like, if you join a new job, I want you to have a mentor. I want you to be in the groups you want to be in. I want you to be socialized right away. I want people to feel like they're not just closing a browser at the end of the day, especially for remote work. I want to

feel like they make connections that really live in their lives for long times. I think that's the gift of work. Sure, it's the work you do. But it's also those people you find that are helping you. It naturally overlaps into your personal life. I have an investor and mentor that has a young child and I always go to him for advice. So I want that for everyone, whether it's in like a professional organization or it's in your workplace. I think we can do more for people and eventually they'll be more high performing because they feel like people have their back and there's a path for them forward. I think even in the age of AI, it'll become more important. We're going to interact a lot with technology. Like we're going to be in conversation with it. We use a lot of voice

mentally, like we talk a lot to our documents and our code. And AI's great employees because it gives, it does a feedback, no feedback, it just does it and it deploys. But we're already seeing a rise in loneliness and a rise in its connection. And so I think that that human component, I think that's why we're seeing a rise in-person events too right now. Absolutely. But I think that's going to become really more important to maintain human connection and work. Because when you're making big decisions about companies or pass forward like you have to align on a personal level you can't really do that with AI today we'll see we'll see if you can like develop trust with your CFO robot I don't know but you do have to like you have to want to work together you have to trust each

other you have to have the same ethos behind your work and I think mentorships are really fast way to get there and it's it's organized it's not just like an abstract this is our culture this is what we hope to do it's like it's an organized thing that you can deploy So that's my big goal. Yeah, that's exciting. And last question for you, because it seems like you've learned so much and kind of a short amount of time when you think about 2017, in my view, isn't that that long ago? You've made so many amazing strides.

What kind of advice would you have for anyone listening? Maybe in a similar situation, they were in one career, they want to pivot to another career entirely. What would your best piece of advice be to make that big leap, which can be very intimidating and scary? I would actually do something we didn't do eventually because I'm seeing other people do it really well. I'm seeing people build audience before they launch their product. I think there's, it's wide open. Like it's a wide open net. When I was in the dance world, you had to have media's

permission to distribute and now you don't. And so I'm seeing these amazing things. I don't know like different podcasters that are like creators first and then they launch a company. I think one of the hardest part of entrepreneurship is distribution. So I love seeing people sort of battle test their idea in like the public sphere a little bit, see if they can build a little audience, like is there interest in it? Because what that does is it ultimately de-rises it. We did it a little bit with like surveys and forms, but now in this public sphere, like you can really do it. And I see successful businesses. They launch on day one. They already know they have a customer base. So I find that to be like a really interesting approach that I would try if I was

doing it all over again. And hopefully we'll do a little bit more of that marketing now. Very good. That's a great piece of advice. Well, thank you so much, Ashley, for coming on the podcast sharing so much with us, your journey and so many great pieces of advice. It was a pleasure having you. Thanks for having me, Jessica. And that was my interview with Ashley Wurhun. You can learn more about her company at Mentorley.com and follow her company on LinkedIn, Instagram, and even TikTok. And if you've been inspired by Ashley's story and are a woman entrepreneur interested in learning more about this grant program, you can find more information at visa.ca.ca slash grant program. And a big thank you to Visa for funding this amazing grant program, supporting Canadian

women entrepreneurs, and sponsoring this special series on the More Money Podcast. Thanks so much for listening and watching on YouTube. Until next time. The More Money Podcast would not be possible without the amazing talents of video editor, Justice Carrar, and podcast producer Matt Rideout, who you can find at m ravav canada.com