The Curiosity Shop with Brené Brown and Adam Grant - Brené with Janice Omadeke on The Mentor Method and Why Values Matter

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

Janice Omadeke is the creator of The Mentor Method, an enterprise software that transforms company culture through mentorship. We talk about her entrepreneurship journey, from building fan sites as a hobby to being named one of Entrepreneur magazine’s 100 Women of Influence in 2022. As The Mentor Method’s founder and CEO, Janice became one of the first 100 Black women in the United States to raise over $1 million in seed funding for a tech start-up, and she is the first Black woman in Austin, Texas, history to have a venture-backed exit. This is the kind of leadership conversation we started this podcast to have, and I consider myself lucky to have met this entrepreneur. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, everyone. I'm Brne Brown, and this is Dare to Lead. Oh, my God, Barrett, what are you thinking? She's coming over here so she can get her. I'm not allowed to talk without coming to the mic anymore. Yeah. We are talking to Janice Omadecki. I met her when I taught a summer short course at the University of Texas at Austin. We had our interns there with us. And so the day after the class ended, we decided to take our interns on a tour of, the Capital Factory, which is a entrepreneurial startup accelerator, this amazing program in Austin. We are the guests of my good friend, Mellie Price. She gave us a tour and we're meeting some entrepreneurs that have their startups in the Capital Factory. It's a vibe, but it's also a building in a specific kind of startup accelerator. And we were introduced to Janice. And she must have

been close to transaction at that point, like selling her business, but she had the mentor method, which is this incredible technology used to match mentors in ways that create deep learning and meaning as opposed to let's just put these two people together. And do we talk to it for like one minute before I looked at you and I mouth to bear it? Yeah. Dare to lead podcast. I want the world to know this person. And that's the person we're talking to today.

I have to tell you it is the most, what would? word you use to describe this conversation, emotional, inspiring, smart. Yeah, and just in terms of like just, yeah, clinical entrepreneurial learning. This is, yeah, yeah, oh yeah, she's got all these words. We're both now just wiping off like the mascara at this point. But I'm glad you're here. This is such an important podcast. Before we jump in, I'm going to tell you a little bit about Janus. You're going to learn a lot more about her in the podcast, but she is a proven leader focused on combining data-driven decision-making

and using intuition to guide strategy, team-building, innovation, and overall better life. She created the mentor method and enterprise software that transforms company culture through mentorship. For her accomplishments, she has been named one of the entrepreneur magazines, 100 Women of Influence. As the mentor method founder and CEO, she became one of the first 100 black,

women in the United States to raise over a million dollars in seed funding for a tech startup, which is such a huge honor and that needs to change. She is the first black woman in Austin, Texas history to have a venture-backed exit. She is recognized as a thought leader and advocate for mentorship and entrepreneurship by Forbes, the Harvard Business Review, Ann Inc. She is certified in entrepreneurship from MIT and is PMP certified with over 10 years of corporate leadership experience in Fortune 500 companies. This story, this learning, buckle up. So good. Just so good. All right, Janice, welcome to Dare to Lead. We're excited you're here. Thank you. Humbolded and so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. Oh, my God. I just, as I said earlier,

like the split second I met you, I'm like, I'm talking to her on Dare to Lead. There was no decision to be made. I looked at Barrett, and Barrett's like, I already have it written down. Thanks. We all, we knew. I want to start with a question we ask very often. Tell us your story from the very beginning. Happy to. Yeah, like very beginning. Very beginning.

Okay. So let me set the stage first, which is sort of a high-level spark notes version of love it. Where we are. You know, if I had to define my story, I would say, I think it falls into three different pieces. The first being that. I am divinely protected.

And the moments where I listen to my body and my intuition are the moments that really changed my life. I am the first generation of women and my family to have full freedom of choice to be whatever and whoever I want. And that's not something I take lightly. I'm the 94th black woman to raise over a million dollars or more in institutional funding in U.S. history. When you look at the stats, the black women only receive 0.03% of all venture funding in the world. So to make that hurdle is a huge, huge accomplishment. I'm the first black woman in Austin to have a venture-backed tech exit when I sold my company, the mentor method, to a phenomenal black woman-led New York-based company called the crew back in September.

I love this. Thank you. Thank you so much. You know, I built the mentor method just out of my own frustrations with corporate culture and systems that intentionally excluded 90% of the workforce. I hate bullies, so it made me upset. And I paired that with my passion for advocating for those who don't have the agency to advocate for themselves. Being a true believer in the proven power of mentorship because it's magical when it's done right. and just being raised to be entrepreneurial and a problem solver from the very beginning.

The acquisition happened. We announced it September 21st, 2022, so it's still recent. And honestly, for like the two weeks after it happened, I felt like I had just run a marathon immediately after getting hit by a bus, immediately after getting caught on fire. Oh, God.

I can relate to that horrific analysis. Yeah, it's exhausting. I was physically exhausted, emotionally exhausted, and just kind of recovering from five years of stuff, you know, trauma, winds, lows, everything that I just didn't realize I hadn't given myself time to process. So out of that now, doing great, but just really thinking about, you know, who I am and how we got here. So setting the stage, and I'll go back to the beginning and then we'll get back to present day. So I'm Angolese American, proud daughter of immigrants, and my parents were always teaching us how to have a hard work ethic, the importance of problem solving, and for me personally, the importance of tech and my excitement around that. Really? Yeah, yeah. So where were you born? I was born in the D.C. area. Do you have siblings?

I do. I have an older sister and a younger brother. Okay. So middle child. Middle child in all of its glory. Tell me about your parents. They were amazing. They were married for, I think, 37 years, and they were friends first, and you could tell in the way that they built their relationship and the way that they parented us. You know, growing up, one of my favorite games at the dinner table, because we always ate dinner as a family, was we would all go around and share a problem that we either. faced or we saw somebody facing and what was an idea, product company that we thought could fix it.

And I loved that game. That was your dinner table game? One of them, yeah. Oh my God. That's amazing. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed playing those games. It's a good way of seeing what other people are going through in their day to day as well.

But it was fun. And then I was about 11 in middle school, obsessed. with the Backstreet Boys, always holding up the phone lines, this was the days of AOL, looking at Backstreet Boys fan pages. And so my dad slid an HTML for Dummies book over to me and showed me that I could actually make my own fan pages. And yes, I mean, he wanted to, you know, free up the phone line, but it also showed me how much fun tech could be without me realizing it.

Because I was learning to code. And, you know, 20 years later became a graphic designer in corporate America. and had a really successful career in that space. So I'm grateful for that. Wait, wait, I got to stop you here for a second. This is amazing. How many years ago was this when your dad slid you the HTML book? Wow.

Well, I was 11. I'm 35 now. So 24 years ago. Correct. Was your dad in tech? He was, yes. So he would spend weekends building computers, like tearing them down and building them back together for fun.

And we saw a lot of prosperity in our family's lineage through entering into the tech space. He was working several part-time jobs and was making ends meet for our entire family. And this random stranger sponsored him to participate in like a tech workforce development literacy program. And through that, he then got a security clearance, started working in IT at the Pentagon, had opportunities to travel and expand his career. So we grew up, instead of having better homes and gardens magazine delivered, we had PC World delivered every month. And that was kind of my dad's jam.

So you were just thinking about the backstreet boys and technology was just the means to get to the back street boys' home page. I mean, this is the smartest parenting move I've seen. It's so slick. He was like, you know what? She's a bit of a control freak. She's very particular. and she loves the Backstreet Boys, let's have her pick up her own colors for the fan page,

pick out her favorite pictures and sound bites. And it was everything to me. I loved it. I spent so much time doing that. Okay, so then high school? High school? I mean, your typical high school nerd experience. I played the trombone, loved it, did theater, went to Bible study every Wednesday,

went to a small school in Southern Virginia for undergrad where I majored in graphic design. No surprise there after sharing my love for tech and coding and everything. I immediately got a job in defense contracting as a graphic designer for one of the top 10 defense contracting companies in the world. Coming from D.C., it's a right of passage to work for a defense contracting company. But it was the first time that I really saw wealth. I saw greed. I saw misogyny.

intentional bias exclusion and just how toxic cultures could be and how it eroded my mental health, but also the mental health of everybody around me. Everyone was suffering, and it was really fascinating to see that and experience that. Were you able to see it and be in it at the same time and not internalize it? Were you able to say, you know, sometimes in those situations, they consume us so we can't float above and say, oh, man, this is not about me. Something's wrong here. So many people say something's wrong with me as opposed to, well, this system is not good. Were you able to identify the systemic issues? I was, but I also knew that there were things that I needed to do for myself. So I think it was having the self-awareness to say, okay,

I do not want to be an entry-level graphic designer. I want to pay off my student loans before I'm 30, all of these pieces. What am I responsible for to help myself move up the corporate ladder and get the opportunities that then give me the salary to do that? But at the same time, I felt insane some days. I remember crying, you know, driving back home with a two-hour commute thinking, I cannot be the only person that thinks that this culture is insane. Like, I cannot be the only person that thinks throwing a paperweight at an employee as a vice president of communications is inappropriate behavior. But all of...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can't be the only one. True story, exactly. I have a paperweight story, actually, my first job out of graduate school. I'm quick on my feet. I dodged because I was the target of it. I did a matrix move and then quit because I thought, this is the height of insanity. So tell me in this job, toxic culture, fair to say toxic culture? Very fair.

What happens next? I suffered for years, quite honestly. And then 2013, again, taking ownership of what I could do to get out of those situations, I studied entrepreneurship from MIT. And the logic behind it, I had no business idea. at the time. But my logic was, I am a graphic designer. Companies need graphic designers. So how do I present myself as a business inside a business? So I'm the business selling services and corporate America is now my customer. How do I tailor my skill set and present myself in a way that gets a

larger company to understand my value and pay me a salary that affords all of the things? Okay, wait, I got to stop you here because this is like such brilliant strategic thinking. Thank you. So you don't have a business background. You have a coding and design background. So you have a background in the intersection of art and technology, basically, right? Right. And so you say to yourself, I mean, this is so, I have to think about what you said or ask you to say it again because not enough.

people think this way. Tell us your thought process about how do I see myself as a business and reframe the world I want to work in as potential clients, but I am a business. It's like, tell me about that thinking. That is amazing. Well, thank you. And it came out of desperation, quite honestly. I was in such a point when I made the decision to, you know, take these MIT classes. I was self-medicating. So I would come home at 5.30, take to Advil PM and just try to survive until the next day type of thing. And I'm like, this is not a way to live. And, you know, I was broke. I had five roommates in a tiny house. I was just really unhappy. I saw a path to financial freedom, if you will, by paying off my car title and things. And also just had such a deep hatred and resentment

about the systems that were in place at the companies I worked for. And all of that then propelled me to say, okay, well, I can't change the bias of a VP of communications, but I can change not working here. I can make a list of the values I want. want in a future employer and then make sure that through these MIT classes, I'm learning how to position myself in a saturated market because there are thousands of graphic designers to differentiate myself through either skill set, portfolio, what have you, to make myself more desirable and more valuable to these corporations. So I served as the business selling myself and my strengths to a company that needed that,

and they would serve as the customer in the case of my entrepreneurship classes. So what happened? So how did it work? I know the answer. I know the answer. It worked well. Yeah. I mean, it did.

Thankfully, thankfully, thankfully. I mean, it took a lot of work. I mean, it was a grueling year. You know, I hate when people come on to podcast or interviews, and they're like, I don't know, I blinked. And now suddenly I'm, you know, making X-M-My. No, I suffered and it took a lot of work and there were a lot of nose. But a year after completing that one particular class on customer segmentation,

I ended up getting a fantastic job just through getting entrepreneurial about it. So I worked at one of the top four management consulting companies in the world. And it was everything that I wanted on that list. It was remote. This was 2014, so a time where nobody was working from home, but I was tired of commuting. Right, right. So it was remote. You know, I was making six figures finally.

I had an amazing creative director named Amy that served as my first positive corporate mentor, where I felt like she actually saw something in me and it wasn't just checking a box. She felt invested in my development. And that changed me in a really deep way and just a better culture. And then through being there, so while I was at PWC, they also. So then covered my Harvard classes when I was studying strategic management. One of the classes that I took was disrupting technologies and I had just built a mentorship program for my team and was already feeling hooked.

I didn't know what intuition or listening to your voice was fully. Like I learned it from my parents like, yeah, yeah, okay, fine, I'll try it. But I hadn't fully embraced it the way I did now. And so I was tinkering with it. And I texted my older sister who lives in New York just like, hey, I have this like, of better mentorship for the way that people work now and you won't just match two people based on race or location. Do you think, like, am I crazy? Is this insane? And she texted me back saying, let the world tell you know, smiley face. So I have goosebumps from head to toe.

I have a great older sister. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let the world tell you know. Mm-hmm. That's always been her motto. Let's go. Let's go. Let's do it. And so, I did. That night, I wrote my first business plan, which is very humbling to look at now, because it's a mess. But, you know, I never looked back after that. And that's really where the mentor method started. Let me just pause here for all the people who are driving, commuting, on a run, walking your pet. I guess you can say dog because you're not walking your cat or your horse probably. But like, let me just give a pause right now. So you can take a deep breath and then just like give a round of applause to Janus. Because it's a little. This is a thing.

like amazing story. Thank you. And if people think you're weird because you're clapping in the street, join the club, I do it all the time. Tell me what was it about existing mentoring programs that felt broken to you? What problem were you trying to solve? That's a great question. So I come from a long line of activists and radicals in the racial justice space. You know, my family, they were marching. for everything in the Congo and here in the States. And so for me, seeing that my straight white male counterparts were invited to go golfing, and then they would get the mentorship that followed, whereas I would be excluded from that

as a woman and as a woman of color felt uncharacteristic of what I had been sold about pursuing the American dream. And that is what got me started on mentorship. because I saw that in the mentorship space where I would sign up every year, sign up for a corporate mentorship program, and without a doubt, I was just matched to the only woman executive that signed up for the program. And when I would ask the program administrators,

like, oh, you know, what skills does the mentor have that you think I should learn? Like any tips? I don't know this VP, what have you. They would just say, and look at me like, I'm crazy. Like, you're both women. Like, what, why are you asking me this question? you're both women or you're both black, let that be enough. And I was like, no, actually, that's not enough.

Because I have things to do. You know, I have plans that I want for my life. And to set us up for an important relationship like mentorship that somebody like me relied heavily on, somebody who wasn't well-networked and couldn't rely on nepotism or other pathways to advance in my career, I needed to build that community a network. I knew that people deserved to be seen as people. I knew just as a connector in my own personal life that values mattered, that who you want to spend time with is based on how well you get along in that ethos

alignment. And I didn't understand why mentorship didn't have that and why it was just saying, okay, well, age-race demographics, those line up. So off you go, go figure it out. It needed to be more intentional, especially in a corporate setting where you have the budget and you have the most brilliant people working for you, it doesn't have to be this duct tape and hope every single time somebody signs up for corporate mentorship.

So that's really where the fire for it got started. And it burned. I mean, it just that way. It burned. So problem identification. When you identify this problem, like this whole idea of you are. are matching us on variables that are easy and fast, but can be meaningless and have nothing to do with skills attainment and everything that mentoring should be. Let me stop and ask you

this. What should mentoring be? Of a filling relationship between somebody with more experience and somebody with less experience with the goal of helping both individuals become elevated versions of themselves so that they can bring their authentic leadership styles into the way that they relate to work. That can be traditional, right? Somebody more senior to somebody more junior, reverse. So somebody with less years in that industry, let's say, mentoring somebody with more tenure in the space. It can be group. It can be peer to peer. There are so many forms, but at its core, that's what mentorship is. Wow. Okay, so what's your idea? What idea do you have about how to solve this problem that you've identified?

Well, the mentor method was the idea. But yeah, I'm seeing a version of the Backstreet Boys. So what's happening here? Yeah, I started tinkering on it nights and weekends. It originally started as a B to C model, so selling a mentorship, offering for women to meet mentors outside of where they work. And I'm so grateful for the privilege

that working at PWC for almost four years at this time when I had the idea afforded me because I didn't have to take outside investment. I just bootstrapped along the way until 2021, just through my savings and having worked at PWC for a long time. But I tinkered with it, refined the model, pivoted to selling to companies, and found through this data that people wanted to be matched based on personality, values, skills, and industry. They wanted it to be easy to implement the companies they work for. Most HR people are non-technical. So giving them something that requires an HTML for Dummies book isn't going to last very long because they have a thousand other priorities on their plate. So it needed to be something

that was easy to implement and at a price point where the CFO wouldn't bat an eye and instead think that it was a great investment. And so those were really the cornerstone pieces of building a the mentor method for large companies. And it worked. We had companies including Amazon, Department of Education, and others as customers. We saw people's lives actually changed, which was amazing, to take an idea and then see people get connected to real mentors that help them get promoted or help them build a greater awareness with cultural and racial blind spots.

And, yeah, very, very proud of that. What does the mentor method do? How does it work? Think of it like e-harmony. Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah. Think of it like e-harmony for internal corporate mentorship. So you take a quiz, then it shows you your matches, mentees, mentors, you communicate with them,

pick the best match. The software had monthly guides and checklists that they could use every step of the way. And then, of course, data in reporting to show that the program was working, the matches were successful and how companies could use that data for more, inclusive business practices. Did both the mentor and the mentee have the slide right and the slide left ability? Correct. Yep.

They had the option of accepting or declining requested matches. Wow. And would you sell into a company that either had a mentor program and wanted to make it better or wanted to start a mentor program were both of those potential customers? Yes. When did mentor method have its first employee other than you? So after I raised the $1.6 million, so April 2021 is when my dear friend and mentor and former chief growth officer now, Joseph Copster, joined the team. And it was me and Joseph and our offshore dev team in the trenches swimming this little canoe for a while.

And then he was really helpful in the strategy for building out the rest of the team. And so he scaled up to about nine, ten people at its largest. Dang. Before then, it was just you? Yeah, just me, bartering. You know, I have incredible mentors and advisors. So it wasn't just me. I had phenomenal vendors that could help.

I looked at my strengths and the things that energized me. I looked at the things that I knew would take me 15 hours, but if I got an expert, it would take them one. and started finding people to help me sort of patch the holes in the canoe along the way until I was at a place where raising capital really made sense. Wow. I want to ask a question because a lot of entrepreneurs listen to this podcast, and I'm sure they're taking copious notes.

I'm hoping they're pulled over in the passing lane or something on the side of the road doing that. Tell me about, you know, a lot of times entrepreneurs I know say, give me a lot of money and then I'll build it. And I'm going to hire, y'all can't see her, but she's making a face. She made like a bad cheese face, like a, no, mm-mm. I want to know what your thinking is, and it's smart thinking.

I want you to share it. Do you understand what I'm saying? Like, give me a million dollars. Then I'm going to hire a big dev team, and then I'm going to run out a great building, and then I'm going to build something. Versus, you were lean and hungry. You built, you outsourced.

You made it work. Tell me about that choice. That's a choice. It was. Thank you. I binged so many publications that highlighted women entrepreneurs, especially women tech entrepreneurs. When I had the idea, I was real with myself.

I said, I have never done this. I have been a corporate graphic designer my entire career. Entrepreneurship is a completely new field. Yes, I have Harvard and MIT supporting me on this journey, if you will, through the education I got from them, but there's still a difference between institutional education and then being in the trenches and in the arena. So let me learn everything I can about this landscape

as I'm building my concept. And so I'm a big believer in using data, values and data-driven decision-making. And so a common thread along all of the interviews I read was just learning from people who did it before you, getting that mentorship, getting the informational meetings, getting that network built as you're building to help you along the way. And so I was like, great. That's what I'm going to do for the first six months. I'm just going to, I mean, my entire time, I come from like a learning mindset and always seeking to understand. But for that six month period, I was just asking questions. Like, hi, here's my baby. How would you keep it alive? I'm thinking about this idea. Tell me why it's a horrible idea and why you would never invest in it.

tell me all the things that keep me bright-eyed and bushy tail that I need to know before I get in the arena and get hit in the face. And that was really educational for me. And then realized that fundraising, especially when you're a first-time founder with no network, and as a woman and a black woman, the stats were there. And I remember looking at them and thinking, wow, these are really atrocious. So how do I up my chances of getting funding later by proving out the concept, by having customers, by showing that I know what I'm doing to an extent, right? Nobody knows everything, but I knew what steps I needed to take to get there. And then I just started following that and continued building the business. I would, through those informational meetings, the people

that I really connected with, like Jennifer Ives, she was one of my first advisors for the mentor method. And, you know, she was really helpful. She was a VP of business development at the time. And so she helped with me thinking about customer acquisition and the cost of customer acquisition, all of these little pieces along the way. Or the former co-founder of Blackboard, the educational tech company. Oh, wow. Yeah. He lives in D.C. I met him through a networking event. And he went through my very first financial model and was like, this is trash. Here's what you should do. about your margins, da-da-da-da, and that information was extremely helpful. And I would ask them, I always had a Google doc of asks because sometimes meeting people, I get so starstruck,

and I just have to have it ready versus trying to remember it in the moment. And so I would have questions, like, okay, I need to meet somebody that can help me with five social media graphics. I need somebody that's going to help me get Twitter followers. I need someone that will help me build the first prototype of the mentor method for proof of concept so that I can start socializing it with the waiting list that I've built with my newsletter. Do you know anybody that could do this for cheap and or free? And inevitably, they would know someone or know someone who knows someone. And so I was able to barter my graphic design skills in exchange for, you know, whatever knowledge or skills they possessed, and it helped me along the way.

And then I also used accelerator programs to give me, you know, peer community, but also access to resources and education and entrepreneurship to help me along the way. There's such a powerful paradox that I see so clearly in you that I, you know, you have to fared out a little bit more than other people, but you exemplify it. And it's this combination of intellect and humility. You know, and it's interesting because when I was writing Atlas of the Heart, I wasn't sure what to expect when we decided to add humility is one of the emotions that we were going to tackle trying to understand

and what are the data and what is humility. And it turns out that humility is not shyness and aweshocks and no, really. You know, humility is a deep understanding of what we do well. and a deep understanding of where we need to grow and learn and ask for help. And I just don't think your story is possible without a grounded confidence in humility. Like, I know that I'm smart. I know that I'm focused. I know that I'm these things.

And that is the platform for asking for help. Does that make sense to you? It does, and I'm so touched. Thank you. I think I get it from my mom. She's really the muse behind the mentor method. And, you know, she's sort of that Batman origin story that we haven't gotten into yet. But I learned all of that from her.

I mean, she was a shining example of it day in and day out. Middle school and high school were tough. We did not get along because we were so similar, right? And so I didn't realize it. It's kind of like that movie, I think, Lady Bird, where at the end, God, yes. She finally thanks her mother because she gets why they were in conflict so much. That, like, that's my relationship with my mom in, like, middle school and high school.

And then as an adult, and we had this phenomenal adult friendship, I realize that a lot of the training came from her, like, this resiliency, this headspace, the ability to say, no, I am great. I am a mentorship expert, but I also do not. not know these thousand other things that I know I need. So how do I motivate people to join me? All of that's from her, for sure. And the mentor method wouldn't exist to this day without her as sort of that origin story and her passing being a big part of that. I'm loving mama and daddy Omadeki. I'm going to tell you right now. I'm into the parentage here. Like, yeah. Tell us her story. Do you want to share her story? Sure. Yeah. Everybody loved her. Her name is Lorena, and she's just the most incredible person I've ever had the privilege of getting to know.

She was the cornerstone of our family. Everybody went her for guidance. She was just so brilliant and poise and fun, all in this little five-foot-five feisty package, and I'm just 100% her daughter. and it was a big shock to our family when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer January of 2018. You know, a week or so after that, I got into an accelerator program here in Austin, which is how I got here. And she gave me her blessing, and I went back and forth between Austin and D.C. for four months. If you know pancreatic cancer, you know that it's fast and brutal.

And so at the time came for at home hospice. And so we did that for about a week. And it metastasized to our brain. So her brain was essentially Swiss cheese at this point. And out of the blue, like truly, I've never seen anything like it. Never seen. To this day, it's one of the two things that haunt me. But she had this moment of clarity where she looked directly at me.

She was holding my hand. she told me I was beautiful. She told me what to name my firstborn daughter, where I was like, a lot of pressure, but we'll remember that for when I'm ready, that she was proud of me and that she would be doubling blessings on the people that the mentor method touched. That was the last time I heard her speak. That was our last conversation. And the next day, she passed away. I think in a way that made sense for her, because we had a lot of people in and out of the house, you know, visiting and everything else. And so it was August 11th, 2018. It was warm, but a little cloudy so that it wouldn't be too hot. There was a nice breeze. It was just me,

my brother and sister and my dad, no music playing, just the fan. And I had just gotten back maybe an hour before that from taking my brother to see the cemetery and the plot that I thought Mommy would like the most. And yeah, that's it. I mean, I think the other thing that haunts me is just the sound of her leaving her physical form. Again, that's something I've never experienced and something that I can't get out of my head. but I've used that loss and used her legacy as a big motivator for me.

I went a thousand miles an hour for four years after that, just charging and building the mentor method. You know, we did a lot and we won a lot. We got featured in Ebony, Black Enterprise, Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine. We helped people like I talked about. We did a lot. We broke a lot of barriers. But even when,

I would win and have these amazing moments, I immediately, like every single time, I felt like somebody had stabbed me in between the ribs with grief, every single time. And I knew exactly what that's, like, it's just debilitating, every single major milestone. And so I didn't like that relationship to it because I didn't want to be afraid of feeling her.

And that's what I started feeling like. And so worked with my therapist, Danielle and my leadership coach, Jeannie, still work with them, appreciate them, to change that narrative. I basically, I wanted to pair my drive for abundance with still honoring the grief that I was going through early grief and the grief that I still have. And so we changed the narrative from, I don't want to win because it hurts every time because I miss my mom to, I'm doing this to honor her. I'm doing this to honor, you know, the generations of women that came before me that didn't have full access to do this. And yes, I wish they were here physically,

but they can't. That's out of my control. So here we are. And this has to be okay. You have to be okay because there's still more work to be done. Your cousins are looking at you. Children that you may have in the future are looking at you. You have to do this for them as well. And that was a tough process, really brutal process, just sitting with that grief and in the muck and everything. but 18 months after I really felt like, you know how it is. Like there's saying it and then there's when it becomes a part of you in your true alignment. It's embodied, yeah. Yes, exactly.

It's no longer a talking point. It's just done. And so 18 months after that alignment feeling, we sold the company, you know, September 21st of 2022. So, you know, this has all been for her. And I think the last piece I'll say on that is a week after we announced the acquisition, I was then able to announce that I was one of entrepreneur magazines 100 Women of Influence 2020. Like in print in the magazine.

I was so excited. And to me, like, it's the perfect bookend for that chapter of my life, honestly. It's like the last piece of recognition as CEO and founder of this company with, You know, Jaila was on the cover and Ava DuVernay and women that I looked up to in this space as well. And as I mentioned before, you know, I am my mother's daughter. I look so much like her. So for me to have a half page feature in print, an entrepreneur magazine means that they're not seeing me. They're seeing my mom.

You know, they're seeing her story. You know, they're seeing generous. of women that were smarter than I am, more tenacious than I am, but just were born in a time where they had to be small to survive. They're seeing my culture. They're seeing my upbringing. And it's just great. And I'm really grateful for all of it. And it's a phenomenal way to wrap up that chapter of my life and then start this next one, still honoring her and still an expert in tech and mentorship and everything else, but, like, it's done.

You know, I did it. I showed everybody Lorena Omedecki in her truest form through my existence, and anything after this is just an additional gift, I'd say. I don't have any words, which is unusual for me. It's... I'm so grateful that you... have the courage to be vulnerable and share that story, that people will look at you, young women

will look at you, you're not afraid to say my therapist, my coach, you're not afraid to say, I asked a bunch of people for help, you're not afraid to say when the culture was toxic, it hurt me. You know, there is such a depth of grace and courage to the way you've done that. this work, I just talking about daring to lead. It's, it's impressive. Impressive is just a small word. Coming from you, that means everything. Thank you so much. Yeah, I have to like regroup for a second, which is so good, because I'm not moved to regrouping a lot. And I need to be reminded that it's big. All right, should we take a deep breath and go to Rapid Fire?

Are you ready for this? Yes, I'm ready. Value people listening to understand now why, like, I was across from her for five seconds at the Capitol Factory in Austin was like, we got to talk to her. I got to introduce her to a bunch of people because we have some stuff to learn from her.

We have shit to learn from her. I mean, that was it. And we're learning. Versa, vice versa. I mean, I told you when we met, again, one of the best days of my life, truly, I was floating after meeting you. I met up with two friends and they were like, oh my gosh, did you meet your future husband? And I was like, no better, I met Brne Brown. And she is one of my heroes. True love in a different sense. But, you know, you changed my relationship with my father. 100%. You know, the loss of my mom, as we talked about, was really impactful and hard,

and vulnerability wasn't something that we learned. It wasn't something that was a skill, if you will. And so being able to share your Netflix specials with him, because I knew having the conversation would land, but only so far, because I'm still his child, right? So I always saw my mom, if she wanted my dad to work on something, she would just buy a self-help book or something, leave it on the dining room table. I love the strategy. My mom has the same one. He loved to learn, but it had to be on his own time, and I respect that, right?

So I recommended your special, and it changed our relationship. He got into therapy, and we were able to have real conversations. So just thank you. It's been such an honor to be here, and I'm so excited to jump into the rapid fire questions. I just didn't want to not say that before we wrap today. Well, thank you. All right. I'm so curious about where this is.

Okay, I want to do a mashup because there's some questions from Rapid Fire Unlocking us that I want to know the answer to from Janus. I've been thinking about it for a week. Oh, okay. Fill in the blank for me. Vulnerability is... Vulnerability is the first thing you do in fear. Vulnerability is recognizing that the serenity prayer is more.

realistic than we give it credit for. Say that prayer 400 times a day, so no one has ever said that to me. That shit's real. The serenity player is real. I mean, it's real. Okay. You, Janice, are called to be brave. Okay.

But your fear is real. You can feel it in the back of your throat. What is the very first thing you do? I determine what part of my internal self needs me the most to help me move forward. Tell me what if that means. Give me an example. So I try to assess where the fear is coming from. Am I hungry? Am I afraid of scarcity? Am I afraid for my health and well-being? Am I afraid of losing something? Like what is this? There's multiple forms of fear, right? Right. So what is this fear? And then once I identify that and what part of my inner self or what inner child is reacting to the situation, then I say, okay, well, what does this part need to down so that I can solve the problem. Because if I'm triggered and activated, I can't do anything. I'm just there wasting time and not bettering myself or the situation. So I start there. And then once I know what that part is and what I need to do just first, the other steps become easier. But for me

personally, when I feel that level of fear, I just kind of feel stunned for a second. And I have to just take that first step out of that place. And then things can keep moving. Unless I see a spider, then forget it. I'm just leaving, I'm leaving the apartment. I can't do it. You're leaving your body. That's it. That's your done.

Yeah. Okay. What is a piece of leadership advice that's either so good you need to share it with us or so shitty you need to warn us? Something you've been told or a piece of advice you've been given that's so great, you need all of us to know are so terrible you need to warn us. I'll spare you the garbage advice as a woman in the tech space. You hear a lot of it.

Oh, my God. I would say protect your mental health before everything else. Because when you're in the entrepreneurship space especially, you are the one in the arena. So entrepreneurship has a lot of parallels to high performing athletes like Serena Williams or Tom Brady and others. It's mentally grueling. And you have your nutritionists, you have your doctors, you have your fans if you're an athlete. and the parallel to that is you have your investors,

you have your team, you have your shareholders and customers, and they're all relying on you to bring a thousand percent of yourself to every situation. But at the same time, you are the one on the court, you are the one on the field, you as the CEO especially are the one getting bloodied in the arena. So you have to make sure that your mental health is in a place where you're doing service to yourself and your well-being first and not coming from a place of people pleasing because that'll end up putting you

through a longer career than necessary and you're the one that ends up in the hospital. You're the one that ends up with mental health issues if you're not looking out for yourself. And it's not because these people want to see you not do well. It's just they're doing their jobs for what they're responsible for. And you're responsible for having your boundaries.

You're responsible for saying no. You're responsible for advocating for yourself. And you can't do that if you're not in therapy and having the mental health resources to actually put that entire portfolio of well-being together. Let's look. We're everybody. Yeah.

We're all staying ovation. We're doing the wave in the arena. We're watching and we're doing the wave. Okay. That's such a good question. Yeah. I can imagine as a woman in tech the shit advice. Okay.

Last TV show you binged and loved. Ooh, the watcher on Netflix. Oh, I'm so scared. It's too creepy. Is it creepy? It's a lot. I live in a two-bedroom, two-bath-aport. there was only one door to go in and out of my unit,

and I still checked my front door five times before going to bed. And I knew that nobody was breaking in, but I was horrified that it's really well done based on a true story. Yes. The cast is phenomenal, and it's, yeah, I couldn't stop watching, though. I just chose my own fear. Yeah, no, I read the true story first to understand, you know, but I'm too scary fake.

Okay. favorite movie of all time. I have two. Slumdog Millionaire and Beauty and the Beast the Cartoon. Oh, so good. Okay. Who's your favorite character in Beauty and the Beast the Cartoon? Belle, of course.

Oh, Belle. Bonjour. Yeah. You know, she's a little different. She likes to read. She loves her father. Five-year-old Janice saw a lot of parallels. Got it.

Yeah, I can see that now because she is kind of a geek. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay, a concert that you'll never forget. Matt Marr, Christian artist, that was the last concert I went to with my mom. And then Florence in the Machine about a month ago, it felt like church. It was just a phenomenal out-of-body connection experience watching her perform.

I've been a fan for years. I mean, over a decade and to finally see her and to be able to afford good seats to see her was really, Really phenomenal. That's awesome. Okay, favorite meal. Ooh, my family's version of stewed goat meat with pundoo, which is like a spinach dish, and then ginger cake with hog and daws vanilla ice cream for dessert. God, that sounds good.

No specificity on the ice cream there, huh, Janice? Just hogging. Hagen, yeah, you got it. It's my best. That's your favorite. Okay. What is a snapshot of an ordinary moment in your life that brings you real joy? I like right now.

It's fall. So here in Austin, it's still warm, but it's dark until like seven. I naturally get up like 545, 6. And so the stillness feels more still when it's still dark. I don't feel like a rooster where I'm getting up and now I have to. to be productive because the sun is up, which means I should be doing something. I feel this heightened level of self-compassion to just ease into the day, you know, and be awake, but enjoy that darkness. Maybe make a cup of tea and just journal and sit in it. And just enjoying that slow sunrise is

bliss to me. I absolutely love this season. You got three weeks left until the time changes, and then it's bright at six. Oh, yeah, I'm with you. I always feel like I've got to to jump on the day when it's still dark and we can rise together. But when I get up like at 630 and it's already sunny, I'm like, what have I missed? There is something, yeah, it's something weird. Tell us one thing you're deeply grateful for right now. I'm deeply grateful for my girlfriends and the community I have around me. Landing the plane, as in selling my company, was a tough process. It sounds glamorous, but it's really hard. Really hard. And it's something that I hadn't done before.

And so my girlfriends were there with me through, and I didn't tell them what was happening. They found out the same day the public found out that I sold the company. But they were still in the trenches with me holding my hand when I would have panic attacks, which isn't common for me, but I had four in a month and a half. That's how tough this process is. They would listen to me cry. They would be with me. They would check in.

be my conversation before reviewing the term sheet with the crew, I was so nervous and so scared. And I was crying. And I just, I had never experienced this step before. And my very first friend in Austin, Nicole, was the first person I texted. And I was just like, hey, can we talk for a second? She dropped everything, gave me a phone call. I didn't speak. I just said, this is hard and just cried.

I didn't give her any context. We talked for like 10 minutes, and she was like, get back out there. Good luck with your meeting. Hung up, and the meeting was successful. So that was an example of the power of women helping women in an intentional way. And I'm so grateful for my relationship to these phenomenal women. Very, very grateful. Yeah, I just cannot do it without friends.

It's just not possible. Okay. I love that you gave us five songs you can't live without. Yes. Okay, here's your playlist. Missing You by Robin. Is This Love by Bob Marley? Spring One by Max Richter.

Unstoppable by Sia. And Great is Thy Faithfulness by Jordan Smith. In one sentence, what does this playlist say about you? But I have layers. I'll stop there. That's one sentence. But I have layers. Oh, good.

Oh, man. Thank you for sharing your time, your wisdom, your stories. We're so grateful to be able to hear them. It's a real honor. Thank you so much for having me. This is such an honor. I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you. Hold y'all. This was going to be a good conversation. I told you. I mean, I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. You can learn more about the mentor method at the mentor method.com. You can find Janice on Instagram and LinkedIn. If you go to Brneighbrown.com and go to Daredelead, you'll see the podcast with her, and you will find all the links to her social media. Woo! Humility, grace, love, thoughtfulness, badassery for the win.

Y'all stay awkward, brave and kind. Deer to Lead is produced by Brne Brown, Education, and Research Group. Music is by The Sufferers. Get new episodes as soon as they're published by Thoughts. following Dare to Lead on your favorite podcast app. We are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award-winning shows at podcast.com.