the bossbabe podcast - Inside Create & Cultivate's $3M Festival With CEO Marina Middleton

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

How do you sell 3,800 tickets to an industry-leading business event with zero ad spend and a team of only seven people? In this episode, Create & Cultivate CEO and Partner Marina Middleton explains the fully organic growth strategy that has scaled Create & Cultivate into the biggest festival for women entrepreneurs and business leaders, from user-generated content to placing a strong focus on value in every asset. She reveals why she doesn't pay Martha Stewart, the Kardashians, or other A-list celebrities to speak at the event and her outreach framework for speakers, guests, and brands. Finally, she and Natalie break down the unique challenges women entrepreneurs face in friendships, marriage, and public perception.  In this episode, Natalie and Marina discuss: (01:24) How We're Building a Tentpole Event for Women Entrepreneurs (05:04) Are Paid Ads The Best Way to Grow From Scratch? (09:08) Year-Round Organic Promotion for Create & Cultivate (12:04) Putting On a $3 Million Event With a Seven-Person Team (16:54) How to Provide Clear Value to Event Sponsors and Investors (20:50) The Balancing Act in High-Achieving Marriages (27:14) Identifying Fake Friendships as a Woman Entrepreneur (31:47) How to Rebuild Your Relationship with Work and Success (35:38) Is Social Media Killing Your Ambition and Burning You Out? (40:31) The Unique Challenges of Running a VC-Backed Business Marina Middleton is the CEO and Partner of Create & Cultivate, the largest events and media platform advancing women through access to resources, connections, and opportunities. A former corporate strategist turned bootstrapped founder and now VC-backed CEO, Marina has led the launch of the world’s largest festival for women in business and developed CONNECT, the largest AI-powered matchmaking platform for women, transforming how women network and collaborate. She has been featured in Forbes, Inc., and Business Insider, and regularly speaks on entrepreneurship, venture capital, business growth, and building inclusive communities. Sponsored By:  Quince - Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns at quince.com. FreshBooks - Get FreshBooks for less than $3 a month for your first four months at ⁠FreshBooks.com/podcast⁠.  Faire - Sign up today and get 50% off your first wholesale order, up to $100 at ⁠faire.com/bossbabe⁠.  AG1 - Save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at ⁠drinkAG1.com/bossbabe. ⁠Hostinger - Go to ⁠Hostinger.com/bossbabe⁠ and use code BOSSBABE for 10% off. Resources Mentioned: This December’s Supper Club in Miami Connect with Marina: Website LinkedIn Instagram YouTube Create & Cultivate Connect with Natalie:  Instagram LinkedIn Website YouTube Natalie’s Book, The Freedom-Based Business Method event planning, entrepreneurship, women in business, organic marketing, event marketing, event sponsorship, Marina Middleton, Natalie Ellis, Create & Cultivate, event planning tips, event marketing strategy, event sponsorship strategy, event business, event promotion, organic marketing strategy, women entrepreneurs, female entrepreneurs, sell event tickets, event sponsorships, business events, conference marketing, event management, experiential marketing, brand partnerships

The festival is our tent pole event. It is what we focus on. Everything else that we do throughout the year is to drive back to festival. It is very different to be creating content as a founder who's running a brand than it is to be creating content as a content creator. I love educational posts. I love like, here's the stage, here's what you're going to learn. I'm always, I'm constantly looking at assets and being like,

why should I leave my family, pay for this ticket, potentially pay for a flight, hotel, like what am I getting out of it? For you getting into this, how do you even begin? begin to start to wrap your head around. Here's how I contact talent. Here's where I look for security. Cardi B with her performing this year, that's a little different. When she was at her opening in New York, I guess they had to like shut down the streets because

her Barty gang, they like swarmed the streets and shut down the streets. People assume you're a 100-person team and actually you're a seven-person team and you guys are really scrappy. How do you communicate that with brands? Nobody ever really feels like we're a small team besides the team. The team's like, we feel it, we know. Speaking of the kind of people you have there, you were just saying you don't pay speakers. Yeah, so it's funny because...

Okay, let's just dive in at the top thing. Because I have so many questions. We just started talking. I have so many questions. Crane Cultivate, the largest festival for women and business is coming up this weekend. I cannot wait to speak at it. You just said you've sold 3,800 tickets. Yep.

Okay, how are we selling tickets? What is your sales strategy here? Because that is insane. Yeah. What I was going to say is 30,000. 800 is insane. We have two more days. We have two more keynotes that we're announcing, which will spike up the ticket sales. And that's definitely one of the strategies, but we do have to turn off tickets because we, I say only, but we only have exactly 4,000 gift bags. So like logistically, you know,

we only need to sell 4,000. And so although we had the plan of selling 4,000, it's still insane to see it come to life. And so we'll talk through, okay, how do we say? How do we say? sale ticket. So for us specifically, we want to make sure that the festival is something that people know that is year over year. Every September will be in L.A. It is the most important thing. It's the same exact thing as how South Buy does it in Austin, how Can Lion does it, how it's a tent pull event that every woman, whether she's Gen Z, millennial, Generation X, she's building, she's not building, she needs to be in that room. Because we're going to talk about all of the things, right? So we spend about like, I would say, so we'll start selling 2027 tickets the day of the event.

And so we launch immediately and we give everybody that is their first access to buy tickets at the cheapest price. Okay. So there's the pricing tier. I don't love sales because I don't want people programming to think that like they're going to wait for a sale. But we'll do like spikes of sales like every once in a while. We did a lot of giveaways this year, meaning we did, we created archetypes this year.

So I really wanted to have different archetypes of different people that are there. The creator, the founder, the person that's raising money, the investor, the student, we have 10. Each archetype, we did a giveaway. So we gave 20 tickets away for each of those archetypes. So that guarantees that we're going to have those people in the room. More people see it. They apply if they don't make it. They still get a discount.

They can attend. So that really helped. We launched a creator program this year. So we have over 1,500 creators coming, all sizes. like millions and millions of followers are just starting out. So that has really helped just to get them in the room. We did a UGC program, which was encouraging the attendees from last year to post their content of their experience last year.

So it's not just creating Cultivate that's posting, you know, the videos and pictures and our experiences, but it's like real stories about them finding an investor, them finding a job, their business partner. And so it didn't feel as testimonially, but if that's a word, but they, it was more of like the user-generated content that they posted. And then the fifth thing that we launched, which is crazy to actually say that we launched all of these five things, as I'm saying, is an ambassador program. So people are always promoting create and cultivate events. And I'm like, why don't we give them like some commission for it? You know what I mean?

And so ambassador program, you had to apply. You then get 10% kickback. So we did a lot of different things that encouraged audiences or like people to post and then us tap into their audience, right? So we were very strategic, like women in tech, women in finance. We just wanted to tap into audiences that may have not known about creating cultivate. So I think those programs and initiatives really helped get us to that number really fast. I'd also be lying if I said like announcing Alex Earle and Emma Greed and Cardi B as our concert like didn't help. Like, of course it helped, you know.

So it's definitely talent too. And are you all organic? Do you do any ads? You don't do any ads. What? So you've sold all these tickets with no ad spend? Never done ads in the history of the company. I really want to get into ads, which is funny because I come from the publishing world from working at Yahoo. But there's just, I would rather spend my money somewhere else. I get it.

Yeah. Like, I don't know. I've never, like, been able to nail the ads because you're spending so much and you're trying to get like a widespread in front of as many people. But I'm like, I just would rather focus on like concentrate. communities tap into them and have them convert faster. We've never done an ad. Yeah, I get it. I mean, in the whole decade that BossBade's been running, we've only spent $3 million

on ads in that whole decade. Yeah. And so we've tested it and then never really ran with it until this last kind of three months and now we're scaling ads, which is really fun. It's just a different channel for us. Yeah. But I do think you kind of go all in on one or the other. I think it's very hard to do both things really, really well.

Totally. But the fact that you've done it all organically is phenomenal. And having it be the same time every year. So true. I mean, I spoke at a create and cultivate event. I think it was in 2019. Like it's been, we know it has been going on every single year and got better every single year. The branding's so iconic. It's very recognizable. Obviously, all of that. So that's amazing. How does security work at an event of this size? That scares the living daylights out of me to think about the kind of people that you have attending, headlining, artists, security. I mean, at one point you had a Kardashian there.

It's insane. Does that keep you up at night? No. Everything else does. But security is that. Security is the one thing that I feel really good. We have, I think it's like 93 security guards on site. It's packed.

Every corner has security. There's security down the street. It's overnight. Talent has their own security. We have like five people security guards walking like Sierra last year. She was supposed to get off stage and go. straight to like golf cart back. And she was like, no, I actually want to walk into the crowd and do pictures.

And I'm like, oh my God. So it's like you completely shift and, you know, and get security plan. Cardi B with her performing this year, that's a little different. Like we haven't been able to share the date or the venue publicly when she was at her opening in New York. I guess they had to like shut down the streets because her party gang, they like swarmed the streets and shut down the streets. So this is like, that's like a.

real thing of making sure that people, we have a very strict registration process of coming into the doors and all that stuff. So making sure people like really registered and have their tickets and all of that stuff. So it's a lot. But the security, yeah, we have almost 100 people on site. And speaking of the kind of people you have there, you were just saying you don't pay speakers. Yeah. So it's funny because obviously when you say like, oh, we don't pay speakers, it feels very like like crazy to say just because we've had so many of these big speakers, right? So Martha Stewart, the Kardashian, Alex Earl, Emigreed, we don't pay anybody. The reason is we'll give them space on site to activate. A lot of the brands that are coming in and for people that are building

businesses or wanting to work with talent, a lot of the times is like you want to learn about who has something going on, right? Do they have a book launching? They have a product launching. Like, how can we support by giving them access to this massive, group of buying women. Women are coming and posting and engaging. Like this is the best marketing, you know what I mean, experience that they're going to have. So sometimes people don't really understand that. It doesn't work for everybody. There's definitely times we've gone out to people and they're like, hey, like, either here is my speaker fee or like the timing doesn't work. I will say usually it's not the A-list celebrities. They're not usually asking for a speaker fee because

it's like, like the Kardashian isn't going to care for 10K, 20K. But she would. But she would, will care if we have this like massive skims build, you know, and people are posting pictures and stuff. So just trying to learn about what someone's, what do they want and just make sure that's equal value. For you getting into this, how do you even begin to start to wrap your head around? Here's how I contact talent. Here's where I look for security. Here's how we pull all of this stuff together because it is such, it is the kind of space where if this was all you did, I get it, but this is only one part of your business. Yeah. So how are you getting your head around that? Yeah. So the festival specifically is definitely the biggest part of the business. It's the most

important product that we have. It's the, it's what we bought the business around. It's what we raised money for. It's like the festival is our tent pole event. It is what we focus on. Everything else that we do throughout the year is to drive back to festival, our social, our future summit event that we do in Austin, all of our dinners, is to ensure that we're like still engaging the community and being able to provide value in show or programming, but at such a smaller scale than festival, and then festival is a big firework moment. I didn't know that. I didn't realize that all of those micro, I mean, not micro, smaller events are pushing toward the bigger, and that's your main product. Yeah, but that's a new thing, right? So once we acquired the business historically creating

cult fee, it's done like 89 events a year. It's crazy. Like events everywhere, small, big conferences, L.A., New York, like, it was just insane. And so when we bought it, that was something that I felt strongly about changing the business model to create this one tent pole event that will grow year over year that really becomes the one industry event that, like, everybody goes to. And so it's just a different shift of, like, priority. We still do a lot of events. Like, again, I said, like the summit, we do lots of dinners. We do bespoke events. lots of like podcast recording and all of that stuff. But again, the core is driving to festival. And the main ways you monetize the event is ticket sales and brand activation. Yeah,

sponsorship is, yeah, sponsorship I would say is like 90%. And then 10% is attendee tickets. And the goal is that we like obviously get as many sponsors as possible to offset the cost. Because people don't realize, I mean, maybe they know how much it is. It's like over $3 million to produce this one single event. Yeah. So and that's like we're really scrapped. Like, we are really scrappy. We do a lot of marketing trades. We love to support, like, the, it's so amazing, like, thinking through, like, florists or artists that will come and say,

hey, we'll do this mural. And then they'll do the mural. And then this, like, massive brand that was sponsoring will then bring them to their own event. And, you know, it's like, it's so cool to see the ripple effect of it, which I get really excited about. But, yeah, $3 million. And that is, like, we are very scrappy when it comes to it. and very, like, creative on how we can bring that to life because we want everything to be so grand.

This year specifically was the largest builds we've ever had. We had over 83 activations versus last year we had 21. So it was just like a massive jump. So I would say 90% sponsors and then 10% attendees. That is wild. Yeah. That jump from 20 to 8. And you have a small team. You have a team of 7, right? Yeah. So talk to me about that scrappy side then because I'm assuming you have a separate events team agency. No. Your team of seven is arranging this event. Yeah.

How are you doing this? Yeah. So we bring vendors on like on site. Obviously there's like the AV team. There's like the on site production team that'll help like coordinate the fabrication companies and rentals and stuff like that. But yeah, it's all my team, which is also something. I don't know if you've ever related to this.

Like creating culture is a large company from a brand perspective and has insane reach. And we work with amazing, like massive talent. people think we have this like 100 person organization and sometimes we get no grace because they're like expecting there's like hundreds of people I'm like hey that email is going to bria one single person you know what I mean like sometimes you're just like I love to remind people that because it's no matter what you're building it's still like they're still like it's a small team so yeah so it's a small team we spend a lot of our time so it's like budget sheets really organizing everybody has their own thing, right? So our head of talent really focuses just on talent,

focuses on who's repping these talent, what's their contact information. It's a lot of sourcing, reaching out, negotiating contract. So like there's one specific role. Then our marketing team is like graphic design, all of the socials, getting really creative with like, how are we showing the value of the event through these posts? I love educational posts. I love like, here's the stage, here's what you're going to learn. I'm always, I'm constantly looking at assets and being like, what's in it for them? Who cares? Like, nobody cares about this. I'm always like pushing that because I'm like, if someone's reading it, they want to know what's in it for me. Why should I leave my family, pay for this ticket,

potentially pay for a flight, hotel, like, what am I getting out of it? And I don't think a lot of like people in marketing think that way when they're, when they start scaling, right? Because they're like, okay, we're just going to get this ad out. We're going to, you know, drive to whatever. I'm like, I just think we need to think a little bit more about the actual viewer and think, again, what's in it for them? We're in the last quarter of the year and this is where I want every loose end tied up before things get busy, before the New Year sneaks up. And the finances are always the biggest one.

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do you work in sprints where you just know you're sprinting towards? this and then do you take any downtime afterwards? So it's tough with an events business. I also feel like time goes by so much faster when you're working an event timeline because you're like, okay, now we're going to this. So we have down times for sure. The downtimes are like, it's not that we're not doing anything. We're just prepping for the next event. We just have a little bit more time. So right now, you know, some people on our team have it quote unquote slower than others, right? So sales right now is a little bit slower because they're prepping for the renewals. They're prepping for the next events for 2027, putting that together so we can get ahead of it for these sponsors for their budget season, right?

So you're always trying to plan ahead. We plan about 18 months in advance so we know what events we're doing, where we're doing them so we can sell into them. And so there's never like an off season. It's just a slower season and then the peak. I would say like three months to the event is all hands-on. deck, probably the most challenging three months just because it is you're trying to lock as many sponsors. People don't usually buy tickets until like the last 30 to 45 days, which is the worst feeling. The anxiety. The worst feeling. I'm like, where the heck have you guys been? Like I thought

I thought I was going to have to give all 4,000 tickets away. You know what I mean? Like I'm not joking. Every event, I'm always like, what if no one shows up? What if no one shows up? What if no one buys a ticket. I still think that to this day. And it's terrible. But that is like, that's part of it. And so, yeah, so there's just these sprints. It's like you're trying to lock in the sponsors. You're trying to sell tickets. You're trying to lock in speakers. Like, we still have, we're two days away from when we're recording this. We're two days away from the festival. We just had our three keynotes sign their contract today. And they're like confirmed. Their assets are confirmed. Just going through their red lines. And so it's just funny because I'm like, no, we got to post.

we got to announce this, or by the time we announce it, we're going to have to turn off tickets, you know? So it's just logistical, like, puzzles there. I mean, I just, it takes so much, like you say, 18 months in advance. And I really want the woman listening to this who's interested in running events, which I really think a huge percentage of digital businesses are going to be doing, especially in the next few years. In this age of AI, getting together in person, is just becoming more and more important, and we're seeing that trend. And so that's why I want to get so specific with you on this.

Yeah. Because I know people are craving this and are going to want to be doing it. And you guys are really setting the blueprint. You said one thing about getting scrappy and bartering. And I just want to ask, because this definitely makes me nervous, the cancellation of brands, be through. I don't know if you've seen it of, oh, we're going to do a swap. And some brands, you'll approach smaller brands.

If you approach for a swap, sometimes we'll think, well, I'm not getting paid. I'm going to go blow this brand up on social media. Have you thought about that kind of approach and how do you manage that? I mean, fortunately, we work with like really nice people for both ends in the sense of like, we're so clear about the value exchange. Right. And the value exchange might be that we have to pay a little bit or vice versa. You know what I mean?

Like we just have to be so clear about there's clear value for each person. we don't do as many like free where we don't pay and they don't pay. We do a lot of like annual contracts. So we'll sign year over year. People know that we're like committed with them. And so they'll give us more of a discount. Some of these like new artists will be like, hey, can I showcase, like I can't sponsor. I don't have the budget to activate.

Can I showcase this and provide this value? So that's where we'll negotiate. And it's worked really well. But also like it's okay if someone doesn't want to do it. if it doesn't work. You know what I mean? I think sometimes like if we pitch someone, they're like, hey, like, no, we're not interested. It's like no stress. You know what I mean? And so just knowing for the people that are thinking about events, like, you can definitely pitch, know that you might get a know before you make the ask, get really clear about what they want. Do they have a launch coming up? Do they

have a new product? We do this for a lot of food and beverage brands. Because obviously food and beverage, like how I decide, like, what is a, what we can negotiate on is our fixed costs. So what is something I'm going to pay no matter what? That's food, alcohol, you know, water, like, what are those things? And then we'll say, okay, well, for food, like, who are these sponsors that are coming and that are providing food? Great. If there's, like, maybe someone that's providing just a small breakfast, great. Then we'll do their marketing for, like, their menus and our social and all of that stuff. And so that's a win for them. It's a huge win for us because it helps us with our bottom line. So just thinking about like, what are you going to pay anyway,

start negotiating there and then trying to get sponsors, obviously, to like cover the rest. And how do you approach conversations where, like you say, people assume you're a 100-person team and actually you're a seven-person team and you guys are really scrappy? How do you communicate that with brands? So with brands, like nobody ever really feels like we're a small team besides the team. The team's like, we feel it. We know. We are small. Yeah. So nobody ever feels it. I think for me, it's more of like, as never the brands. It's usually the attendees. There's like, yeah, it's usually the attendees that have a hard time not getting like immediate answers. So we have like a, you know, 48 hour like turnaround policy and responses for emails. Our standard internally is 24 hours, but externally we push 48 hours. It's communicating with them like, you've got to give us a second. You know what I mean? And my team handles it really well. It's me that is the problem. I'm like, tell them that you're just you, you know, but nobody cares. Like when I'm asking customer service, I don't care how big or smaller team is. I want my questions answered. So I

understand that. I think, yeah, brands don't ever feel it because we have such a like a system, right? So sales goes out. We negotiate the sponsorship. We get them signed. They go to accounts. Accounts will then work with production. Production will then work with marketing. So everybody is in their lane supporting. So nobody's ever like doing, I was going to, I was going to be. I was going, and say nobody's ever overwhelmed or doing too much, but everyone's overwhelmed and everyone's doing too much, but everyone's kind of in their own lane, so it really helps. Okay, so pivoting slightly, you were just talking about your husband is running a big event at the exact same time. How are you both managing being really ambitious, successful founders in a relationship together

and you have a son? That's a lot on top of your own work. So talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah. It's not for the faint of heart. No, it's 100% not. And I think that there's so many people out there that have really figured it out. Like they schedule date nights, they schedule all that stuff. Matt and I don't do that. And it works for us in the sense of we refill our cups in different ways. So for a little background, I actually went to my first business festival because of Matt.

It was his event called Future Proof. This was the world's largest wealth festival. had ever existed. Now it's, I mean, it's massive, massive. But I remember going there and being like, I want to build something like this. And this was before I bought creating cultivate. And so I don't, I've realized how much work it is that goes into it. But now being on the same side and building it early on when I wasn't doing events, I think that like resentment was there where I'm like, you're always working. Like, now I get it. Like, I'll never be like, what are you doing? I know exactly what he's doing. And I think it allowed us each to give each other grace because we're so clear

about the workload that we have. I think the other flip side of that is like how we manage it is like we set times where we are like making memories with Sebastian and taking him to the Knicks games and going to like giant games and like spending time that is not just like sitting on the couch and watching a movie even though we love it. But like what are those big moments that can anchor us down to be very present and have it be not our normal day to day. So I've really. realize like over the past couple years, that's really where we're spending most of our money or our money and time, but like really investing in these like vacations, these like big championship games, going to the parades, like big moments. Other than that, we're both constantly

working, truly. And how do you prioritize marriage in that season or do you just decide, you know what, right now is not the time to be doing all the scheduling. We're just making it work. Yeah, we are like best friends. Like, we talk through everything. And there are times where I, like my favorite thing to do is I'll come to him. It's easy to always talk about work because we both do the same thing. So like we're constantly talking. I'll come to him and be like, I'm going to say something. I don't want your advice.

I need you to listen. You know? Yeah. And then he's listening. And then you could tell he's dying to give me his advice, you know? And so that's that. There's also times where he might be like, hey, I need to talk about something. And I might not have the capacity.

And so it's less of us trying to schedule these like, again, going back to dates nights, it's more of like we know the energy and where we're at capacity, where we're not, and communicating. The times that we would have struggled in our marriage were the times when we weren't communicating. And that like build up of you're not paying attention to me or like, I need help or I'm like, you know, I was the queen of always like doing everything for Sebastian to like prove a point that I could do it. But it's like, no, he wants, tell him. You know what I mean? Like, tell him, communicate.

So I think the biggest thing is we communicate all the time. There's also times where it's like, when we're at dinner, no phone. Put your phone down. Like the work never ends. So it's just like those boundaries of like phone and not at dinner, having those like big firework moments where it's like the three of us, I'll take Sebastian to do stuff. He'll take Sebastian to do stuff because I think that's how we really fill our cup is making sure that we're not also dropping the ball in parenting.

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And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was the BossBad podcast. It's the best way to support the show. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Yeah, and we were kind of talking about that before the episode. And it's so interesting, I think about before I was a mom, I had, if I think about a big jug of water and I could equally pour into my marriage, myself, my health, my work. That big jug of water doesn't exist when you have kids because already your attention, you're thinking, about the 24-7. Your attention is diluted. If you're in the trenches, I am, we don't sleep. Like, we have babies. And it's, you have so much less energy or water to pour into all of those

areas. I feel like I have to be really discerning about what does and doesn't get my attention in each season. And so earlier this year, I launched a book. I really wanted to hit the New York Times. That was a big goal of mine. And so I actively had to say to myself, you know what? This is not the season for going out for dinner with friends. This is not the season for going on these regular date nights. And then as I've transitioned out of that season, I have to remake those agreements with myself. I'm curious your perspective on that, because I just do not believe I can have it all and do it all at the same time. No. Something has to give. A hundred percent. And I will say this has been the hardest year for me to learn this because it's, the company is growing at a rapid rate.

and it has forced me to think through, because even when you're asking about marriage or motherhood, it's like, I feel the best about those. Yeah. You know, like, I feel the best about the systems that Matt and I have, and Sebastian and I's schedule, and being able to, he gets out of school,

and I'm working for a couple hours, and then it's homework, and then it's soccer. Like, I feel so good in our routine and what we have in the foundation. It was everything else that I was trying to give my energy to. It was trying to stay up to date with the group chats and trying to be present and trying to, you know, check in on people and remember to do that and going to see my parents and it was everything else that I felt was like truly draining me. And I wasn't, I had no boundaries. And that was one thing that I've been working a lot on this year is like my own boundaries, my own emotional boundaries being able to say like, okay, this is spiking my nervous system. I'm going to pause for a second and step away. So I was talking about. I was talking about. I was talking about. I was talking about. I was. I was talking about. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was. I was about losing my spark on my Instagram recently, and it's like I had to cut out frenemies and like saying yes to everybody and I had a hard time saying no. So it's like those were the

things to your point is like really deciding what matters most, what you're going to say yes to, what you're going to say no to, and sticking to it. And I show up as a better wife and as a better leader and as a better mom when I'm actually sticking to the things that I said I was going to do. Say more about the frenemies piece because there's going to be a lot of people agreeing with you on that. I think a lot about this. Like, I grew up with nothing. I had no money. I had like, we didn't have any, like, flashy things. I didn't have anything. I don't want to say I didn't have anything to offer, but I didn't have anything that people were, like, wanting. Right. This role specifically is so interesting to me. People are coming out of the woodworks asking for things.

Yes. Woodworks. Yeah. And there's this, like, entitlement that I owe people something. Yeah. And it makes me feel like a bad person. Like it literally I'm like, and this is what I talk about like emotional boundaries. Like I'm in therapy trying to figure it out because I'm like, am I a bad person for not being able to say yes to everything? Especially things that like aren't projecting the business forward, things that aren't supporting the team.

So it's been really hard because everybody wants something from me. Yes. And they've wrapped it up into friendships. They've wrapped a little bow and made, me think that we're friends. And it's not, I don't want to say, like, they're not doing anything wrong. They're just thinking of themselves. And I haven't really thought about myself. I've been thinking about everybody else. Yeah. And so I think that that is, that was the most uncomfortable thing to be like, I don't think you're actually my friend. You just want something from me to support your goals.

And like, that's great for you. But if I can't give it to you, that's okay too. So it's just removing that guilt of feeling like you have to say yes to everybody that you. That you're not. That you you have to give, give, give, give. And I think like the past couple years I've been, I'm like, oh my God, I have all of these new friends. And I'm like, wait. Do I? Do I?

Yeah. You know? Emma Greenhill book talks about that. She says that when you do build a business or you become well known for something, as a woman, you get a lot of fake friendships in that a lot of people will try and build relationships with you thinking they are kind of putting money in the piggyback. bank to call out a favor six months, 12 months down the line when they need something. And she was saying what she sees with men is actually very different in that they just ask for what they want.

They are not trying to fake a relationship with you to then get what they want six months down the line. And she was saying that, and I'm paraphrasing, but she was saying, actually, I just ask for what I want. I'm not going to fake that I am your friend. I'm not going to butter you up to then make an ask. I'm just going to make an ask. And I prefer when someone does that to me too. because then I know where I stand. 100%. I think that it's like the emotional baggage that comes with everything else. That I'm like, we are not friends.

And that's okay. We don't have to be friends. And I think that, again, it's like certain things have been harder for me to learn and accept because I'm like, oh, I thought this person was my friend, but also they actually just want something. So I love that. And I couldn't agree more in the sense of like, because Matt and I are in the same industries,

I, the things I get asked as a woman, he would never get asked. Like, and I'm like, why? Yeah. Like, why are you asking me to discount? Why are you asking me for free stuff? Why are, like, why are you so comfortable doing this? And then posting being like,

we support women and we want small businesses to grow. I'm like, wait, do you? You know, so I think it's a lot of that where it's, it's just women get it way more than men. And I don't, I don't know why. I don't know why there's that level of comfort to do that. I think it's very hard. I think women have so many more eyeballs on them. And I think, you know, whether we like it or not, subconsciously, we are brought up against each other.

We're pitted against other women. And I think it's one of those things that is so ingrained that if you ask a woman to give you something for free and she says, no, oh, now you don't support small business. no, I'm trying to build a business. Yes. You wouldn't go and ask a man for that. It just doesn't happen. And you wouldn't cancel them on social media. Also, if you did, they wouldn't give a shit.

I have this conversation with my husband all the time because he was in the creator industry long before I was. And I would ask him, you know, did you ever fear about the cancellation, this, that, and the other was like, we don't think about that so much as men. We just get on with shit. And people tend not to say it or if they do, we're not paying as much attention. As women were so, we get so scared about that. Or we're so emotive. we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings and it just is a very different thing. Okay, so coming back to something you said on losing your spark, I'm so curious about that. Can you share more? What was it that

you were saying? Where were you at? Yeah, it was like, I'd say three, like July. July of this year was started to become the most challenging. I had the biggest travel sprint that I had ever had. And so that was really overwhelming because I had to do a lot of work and also travel. We had way bigger goals than ever before. We're VC-backed. So, like, our numbers that we forecast are so much, it's so much different than if, like, you're a bootstrapped where you're figuring it out, like, you have to hit your numbers. You know what I mean? You have to hit it in a milestone that you need to because eventually you want to exit this business. You know what I mean? So the pressure is just a little bit different.

Yeah. And so I felt like every single moment from the second I opened my eyes until I went to sleep was work. Like there were days that Sebastian would come home and like during the summertime and I just like would not see him until like 8 p.m. And we're in the same house. And I was just in my office all day. And I just felt like I couldn't shut off because I needed to hit this goal so badly.

You know what I mean? like tickets weren't selling fast enough. Now I was saying like people don't buy tickets until like the month before and it's like it's so hard to just accept that and feel comfortable with it. And so it was just a lot of that. It was a lot of pressure. No boundaries. I was just like go, go, go, go. I felt very alone like as much as I'm so close with my team, they're my team. And so there's a lot that I can't like vent to them about how tired we are. You know what I mean? And so it was just, it was that. It was a lot of that and not not. setting some boundaries. And I had to, one, I got a therapist because I'm like, I need to figure out,

look, what am I trying to prove here? Really realigning with like my mission. I think that's one thing that I'm like, I know what I'm building, why I'm building it, who I'm building it for. No matter how hard everything else is, if I can anchor myself to those things, I'll be good. So it's just sometimes you just need that like reframe and like reset for your body and for your day. And I think that has helped me definitely get my spark back. Did you change anything about the way your days were flowing, how you were doing your mornings, boundaries, like anything specific and tactical in your days? Yeah.

So I had a really strict schedule originally. Like I naturally woke up at 6 a.m. 536 a.m. I would open my emails and actually like just start checking my emails. Once I got through any of my emails, my to-do list, I'd then go work out. By the time I'm done working out, Sebastian would be up. get him ready for school, breakfast, all of that stuff. And then I'd go get my coffee, come back, sit on my desk, work, get him from school at three o'clock, spend two hours with him, getting him homework, like learning about school,

all that stuff. And then finalizing like my email thread and then taking him to soccer. That felt like it was like my really good routine. The moment my Spark had like died was because I stopped all of that. Right. 6 a.m. I was opening my eyes in bed on my emails, like answering, things, I was not delegating the things that I needed to delegate. Like, I was answering every single thing that came to Slack, even if it wasn't sent to me. You know what I mean? Like, I'm like,

let someone else on your team do it. Yeah. And so I have had to shift back to the routine that I know works for me, which is wake up, get out of bed and grab my water, open my computer in my living room, like in a place that I'm comfortable. And so it's been realigning to the systems that I know have worked before. It's so true. It's that feeling of, oh my goodness, I'm being chased by a lion. I need to answer every email, do all of this. And breaking that cycle sometimes is so hard. If I find myself in that, I have to delete all the apps off my phone. No email, no slack, no nothing on my phone. And it's so funny because I can delete the apps. And within 10 minutes, I'm like, oh, I'm not being chased by a lion. You know, I moved my Instagram from like my homepage to the last page of my thing,

because I was like, I don't want to check it anymore. And I think that was the other thing. So, Social media has burnt me out so much. And I know everybody's feeling it. Like I know everyone's doing the talk-to-camera videos. They're, and they're amazing. And they're cranking out content. I felt like every day I would open it. And it was like, this person is teaching me.

And this person, I literally was at capacity. And thinking through, like, well, what do I need to post? I need to do the talk-to-camera videos. And I need, and I'm like, I don't want to do those. Yeah. It's not me. And so I think sometimes we think like we lose our spark or whatever because of maybe things get busy and stuff, but it just starts like little by little. It creeps up on you. And so if someone's listening and thinking like, well, I don't, I think I lost it. It's like it might. You know, you just need to like re-align your like your schedule, your process, what you're consuming,

you know, that's the most important thing. It's so true what you said that I want to highlight because I really want a lot of the women listening to this show are business women. They are running businesses and they still want to build the personal brands. I think building a personal brand is your moat in the age of AI. I love it. But it is very different to be creating content as a founder who's running a brand than it is to be creating content as a content creator. 100%. If it's your full-time job to create content, you're going to have so much more bandwidth for creativity, for testing formats.

When it's not your full-time job and we look at content, content creators and that's the bar we set for ourselves. We wake up feeling behind. 100%. And it's, I think we have to figure out that balance of, you know what, I'm probably posting less, but maybe it's a bit more potent because I can show behind the scenes and the journey, whatever that is. But we have to have that grace because it's such a different world. Yeah. And I would say like content creation and being a content creator is a full time job. Like it's a lot of work. And adding a full time job when you have a full time. job is genuinely so hard. And I think that goes for like content creators, your competitors.

Like I have muted my, I've muted friends. Like I'm like, I can't, I have to decide what I'm able to consume. And it's no, you know, no offense to them. It's literally me and what triggers me and what I can allow. And so I think we just need to be more comfortable making those decisions. I agree. I agree. Okay. So one thing that you said in this episode, which I didn't fully realize about the create and cultivate business model, which is so interesting, is the festival is really your main thing, your one thing, and all roads lead to that. So I'm curious, how do you think about your business ecosystem? How do you think about making sure you keep the one thing, the one thing? Because every successful business that we look at, they have one thing.

They have their main thing. So how do you think about that? Yeah. So for us, it is thinking through what will provide the most enterprise value for the business. Right. So that way, as we continue to grow, as obviously we have investors, all of that stuff. Like, what is the most valuable thing when it comes to the time of exit, right? And so for us, we understand the large-scale business game. We understand how that is growing so unbelievably fast. And so we continue our focus on that. The way that we can maintain that is by feeling very uncomfortable by saying no to other things, things that we feel like, oh, we should be here and we should be there. It's a distraction.

And I'm constantly saying no to things. I'm constantly saying it's a distraction, it's a distraction. If it is something that can support getting in front of an audience that we don't have, connecting us with talent and speakers that we want to build relationships with, getting us in front of brands that we want to be in front of, if it's hitting the things that will drive back to the enterprise, provide enterprise value for the business, we'll do it. If not, it's a no. No matter how much money they offer. I think that's the important thing. And it's hard when you're building a business because

you want to say yes to everything. And every dollar matters. And every dollar still matters to us, but what's the trade-off? I think you've got to be really clear on that. And then my final question is, based on that, being a VC-back business, such a different game. Yeah. When you have these goals you need to hit and you're gearing towards an exit, how do you keep your motivation up running a business like that, do you find it more challenging having quote-unquote people you're reporting to? Do you find it motivating? How do you feel about that? That's such a good question. It's not motivating. It's not that it's not motivating. No, it's not motivating. It's not exciting to like, you know, go in my board meetings and be like, here's our numbers that we're doing.

like it's just a lot of pressure. It's a lot of pressure. And I want to make our investors as much money as possible. You know what I mean? Like I want to make as much money as possible. But at the end of the day, I can't think about that because it's, if I'm only thinking about the money, I'm doing it wrong. Right.

Which is no investors wants to hear that. Yeah. You know, VC don't care. They don't, they do not care about your like fluffy mission. They don't care about the sentiment. They don't care. They don't care if people are happy. They don't care if you're doing well.

They care if you lose your spark. They don't care. They do not care about your spark. Oh my God, not at all. And so I think that's something that I've had to learn. Like, they're not, we're not friends. You know, we're not friends. You are an investor.

You have one focus. And that is fair. And people invest money. And like, I owe it to them to do what I said I will do. And so if I can, understand that that is the goal, get really clear on the finances of what we're forecasting. It is my job, which is the hardest thing that I've learned, is to communicate that to the team and get them motivated, not because they're nervous that we have investors. They don't care if we

have investors, right? Motivated enough to execute that. That is like, that's the mission. But the VC part is like, I'm grateful I have my VCs and my investors. They're amazing. But they, um, they, they are there because they want the business to grow and they have this end end goal. I'm here to build this business and change millions of lives for these women. And I need to make sure the team is focused on that. And if we can focus on that, they will get their return. I appreciate the real answer there because I think it's very easy to give the fluffy answer. And at the end of the day, running a VC back business is a very different ballgame. So I just appreciate the realness. I said that was my last question. I lied because another question popped up as you were talking

through that because like you say, you're driving towards enterprise value. You're driving towards very specific goals. I'm curious if when you're setting goals, you're thinking about the revenue and the enterprise value is on one side. I wonder about channel growth, email list, social size. Are you also considering that as like a long-term enterprise value thing? Or is that deprioritized in the list? How do you think about that? Yeah. So I would say it's like the amplifier, but it like having a big email list, I don't want to say it doesn't matter as much anymore, but it's sometimes easier to get than you think, right? There's so many different systems and you're scrubbing on the websites and all of that stuff.

So it's more of the conversion and how sticky your audience is and then the retention rate of the sponsors and attendees for us in the event business. Like if we can secure multi-year partnerships, that's amazing, right? because you're never at risk of starting fresh every single year. And so that is, I would say like it doesn't, it's not, it's our marketing leg. That's what allows us to not have to do paid ads. That's what allows us to grow the way that we grow. And we have, we have our email list as 500,000 subscribers.

We have a 70% open rate. That's insane. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like that's so good. And so, and they're clicking and they're buying. And there are things that we sell tickets directly to them before it goes online. Like, so yes, it is important.

but it just amplifies what it is that we're doing. I will say it depends on the industry that you're in, what is valued as enterprise value, right? And so if I'm trying to have a large-scale event exit at the multiple for a large-scale event, they're focused on the year-to-year partnership, like contracts you have in place, they're focused on attendee sales and is it going up, right?

They're focused on the expansion. Can they come in, can a company in five years, ten years, come in, take it, and then bring it to international. Can they, you know, it's like that is what matters is the actual product. And that's just, I'm just speaking from the events perspective. Yeah. So good. Thank you for being such an open book.

When you sat down, I was like, okay, how real can we get? And you very graciously said, nothing's off the table. Yeah. Ask me anything. And I just really appreciate that. Because I think these conversations are what really moves the needle for women in business to really hear the real shit behind the scenes of it's not just, I just like, I just like, upon an event and here we go. It takes a lot of work and hearing how you guys have done this

brick by brick year after year is so inspiring, what you've built amazing. So you have an event coming up in December. Can you tell me a bit about that? Yeah, so we do our supper club dinners. So it's a dinner series. We take it to a bunch of different cities, 75 to 100 women. It is such an amazing experience. And so we're going to be in Miami during Miami Art Week. Amazing. I'm very excited, yeah. Okay, great. So where can everyone find out about that and other events that you're doing. Createcultivate.com. Every single event that we're doing,

we're launching our 2027 calendar soon, which is really exciting. So we'll be back September 25th and 26th in L.A. for the festival. We'll be in Austin in March for our future summit event. And so everything will be on our website. And then what about your personal Instagram?

Are you doing stuff there? Yes, yes. My personal Instagram, Marina A. Middleton. I'm so active on there. And I feel like after I've lost my spark and then talked about losing my spark, people love the comeback. You know what I mean? I'm loving the stories. I mean watching your stories

loving. I'm pretty unhinged on there. But yeah, so I'm, I spend a lot of time just like showing the back end because I'm like, that's what I need to see. I just need to see the real shit. Great. Okay, everyone go follow. I'm going to put all of those links in the show notes as well. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me.