Women at Work - Stacey Abrams and Lara Hodgson on Starting and Scaling a Small Business

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

Entrepreneurs Stacey Abrams and Lara Hodgson share hard-won lessons from starting and running three companies together. They reflect on what makes their long-term partnership work and how they manage self-doubt and guilt. They also give tips for networking, hiring and retaining employees, learning the ins and outs of finance, and developing an exit strategy.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. Self-doubt is often driven by fear. And I believe in the legitimacy of fear. We are exhorted, especially for women in business, that you're supposed to be fearless. That is the dumbest advice. Because fears are real, and they are salient, and they come from something. And one thing I think Laura and I do so effectively is we confront the fear. We don't ignore it. We don't pretend it doesn't exist. But we try to investigate the roots of it and figure out how we can befriend it. How do you navigate it? How do you leverage it?

You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Emily Caulfield. I'm Amy Gallo. And I'm Amy Bernstein. Stacey Abrams, whose voice you just heard, and her business partner, Laura Hodson, met in the lunch line at a conference. They struck up a conversation, became friends, and went on to start three companies together. They learned a lot along the way. In their new book, Level Up, they share plenty of hard-won lessons.

By describing their successes and failures, they hope to smooth the path for other entrepreneurs, especially women and women of color. Lara and Stacey's first business was a two-women consulting firm. The hours were long, but the money and flexibility were good. Soon, though, they discovered the limits of sole proprietorship. There were only so many clients and projects they could take on, and the hours were getting to be really long.

As they write and level up, scaling a professional service business is hard because you are the product and your unit of value is time. Neither scale. So they began looking for an idea that they could scale into a company that didn't have the same limitations. That's when they started Nourish, a company that manufactured spill-proof water bottles

that parents could easily mix baby formula into. After testing demand for the product online and in boutiques, Stacey and Lara attempted to get the bottles on grocery store shelves. In the process, they encountered a problem that afflicts many small businesses. Large distributors weren't paying invoices anywhere close to on time. The delays meant Stacey and Laura couldn't pay their own suppliers and vendors. In the book, they sum up one of the lessons learned,

like this. More businesses grow out of business than go out of business. Build in extra time and flexibility as you plan for the future. It will probably take longer and more money than you think. The cash flow problems that ultimately forced them to close down Nourish inspired their next startup, Now Account. It's a fintech company that buys a small business's

unpaid invoices and for a three to five percent fee pays out the revenue owed within a day. Over a thousand businesses have used Now to get paid. Stacey and Laura's takeaway? When something fails, mourn and then move on. The next opportunity is around the corner. Okay, now that you know a little bit about their partnership, here's our interview with them. I'm not in this, but I'll be back at the end of the episode. Laura and Stacey, welcome to the show. We are so excited to have you on. Thank you for having us.

Thanks. So I want to start with asking you about your experience. What do you think were the most important personal qualities that you brought to your entrepreneurship that made the difference in not only getting your businesses off the ground, but then continuing to actually grow them? Without a doubt, I would say my two most important qualities are a curiosity for learning and in a resilience slash grit. And the second one I didn't actually know I had

until well into our series of starting businesses. I'd say for me, I am incredibly risk tolerant. I'm not a risk seeker, but I am very risk tolerant, which meant that when Laura had some just moonshot idea, which was always an important part of our relationship, I didn't start out in entrepreneurship. When we met, I was a lawyer, I was very happy with paychecks. And so moving into entrepreneurship was a risk for me. And even though I'd started my own small company, going into business with someone making it a permanent thing rather than returning to a steady paycheck was odd for me. But it was the risk tolerance piece. And then I think one piece that always

drew Laura and I together is this curiosity, loving to learn new things, wanting to understand how things work and how to make them better, what a solution might look like, what new information might add to the equation. Stacey, you said that your tolerance for risk and your shared zest for learning were important to the relationship that you and Laura have as you founded companies together. What is it that you would tell our listeners about how you make these partnerships work? We got a lot of questions about that. How do you guys make your partnership work? We started out with rules

and those rules didn't come from longstanding friendships. A lot of partnerships begin with these long-term friendships and you morph into a business partnership. Laura and I were friends. We knew each other. We liked each other. We could reach out to one another. But our friendship was built more on a respect, a mutual respect than it was this longevity.

But when we started working together, we had rules about how we would operate, what we would expect of each other. One of the most important pieces of who we are, and she can talk about this, is honesty. And my caveat is that we do not only honesty, but transparency. Honesty is telling the truth. Transparency is telling the truth before you have to. And we have a lot of transparency in our relationship where we don't wait for the hard question. We don't wait for the mistake to be uncovered. We get ahead of it. And that not only helped in our business relationship, it helps in our personal relationship with one another, but it also helps with our clients because we have this ethic that you don't try

to hide from bad news, but you also have to be honest about the consequences and the catalyst. And having a partner that you trust both emotionally and intellectually makes it much easier. And Laura is one of the smartest people I've ever known. And so beyond just being a good businesswoman, I trust her intellectual integrity. And that also helped us work together because even when we disagree, which happens, we don't distrust the fundamental premise of the argument. We may disagree with the solution, but we don't doubt the other one's grasp of the challenge. Laura, anything to add to that? Yeah, I would agree. I think a lot of people, you know, they've got this best friend that they've

grown up with, and their lives are aligned on all axes. And then they start a business together. And you never have the space to step back from one another. Whereas Stacey and I, we didn't necessarily go to the same church or have children in the same school. So our normal week allowed us time together, but it also allowed us time apart. And I think that's incredibly important because it preserves the diversity of our thinking. And I think where a lot of partners go astray is they come together with diverse thinking,

but then they spend so much time together that they actually lose their diversity. They lose that diversity of thought, and they start to think alike. And that's dangerous. So Stacey and I always had the ability to approach a problem, appreciate the different perspectives, and then continue to develop those different perspectives by allowing our lives to have some distance. Yeah. So in the book, you mentioned this idea of a sticky floor. You say that sometimes what's holding you back is not a glass ceiling, but rather a sticky floor. Don't let your self-doubt overcome you. Can you talk about whether or not the two of you dealt with this in starting your businesses? And if you did, how did you deal with it? I think I deal with it every day. And women and underrepresented founders tend to constantly question, am I good enough? Right?

Am I smart enough? Am I approaching it the right way? And I think that's what is so valuable about our partnership. Because as individuals, you're always going to sort of wonder, am I missing something? Am I good enough? And so I think our partnership both keeps us grounded when maybe we're worried about, am I good enough? But it's also there to keep you grounded when you're going off in left field and you need someone to say, bring it back in. One of the corollaries is that self-doubt is often driven by fear. And I believe in the legitimacy of fear. We are exhorted, especially for women in business that, you know, you're supposed to be fearless. That is the dumbest advice.

Because fears are real and they are salient and they come from something. And one thing I think Laura and I do so effectively is we confront the fear. We don't ignore it. We don't pretend it doesn't exist. But we try to investigate the roots of it and figure out how we can befriend it. How do you navigate it? How do you leverage it? And it's easier to do that when you have a business partner and a friend, but it's possible even if you're on your own because both Laura and I came to this having done other projects independent of one another. And we brought with us both the fears that we had in those experiences, but also the learnings from those fears and our willingness to share that with one experiences, but also the learnings from those fears and our willingness to share that with one another,

but also to remember what we learned the last time. Because part of the sticky floor is that you're fighting yourself and you're fighting the legitimacy of those warnings. Fear exists because you're trying to tell yourself there's a danger. So let's make sure you're not ignoring the warning signs. Instead, you're investigating and preparing for the danger.

What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work.

That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Hey listeners, if you want to hear from more leaders to help you answer questions like, should I talk about my anxiety at work? Or how do I claim my leadership power? Then you should listen to TED Business, hosted by Columbia Business mini lesson from Madhupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. You both brought up an interesting point about being women in business, and I'm wondering if you feel like being women helped or hindered you as you launched your businesses. Yes.

Yes, both. I mean, there are doors that get cracked open just so they can see that you're out there. That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to invite you in. And a lot of women experience this with programs that are geared towards women. And as a woman of color myself, there's never the ability to leave behind the dimension of race when gender is also part of the conversation. Lauren, I talk about it in the book that there have been moments where we've had to confront both pieces, where there are expectations that come along with gender, some that come with race, some that come together. And the challenge is often trying to understand which ism you're facing. But the

opportunity is understanding how you can leverage the diversity and the distinction of who you are to differentiate yourself. And so as women in business, we often see problems in a different way. We are used to having to navigate and circumnavigate challenges. The same thing is true for people of color. And so I think part of what has helped our business relationship is that we bring our different perspectives from gender and these other dimensions into how we problem solve, because we aren't going to have access to the traditional resources. We're not going to have the standard opportunities that others may take for granted. And so our responsibility is to figure

out how do we get where we need to be, not despite who we are, but recognizing that what people see isn't going to change even if we close our eyes really tight and hope they don't notice. It's going to be and so you decide how you're going to leverage it and you prepare for when it is used against you. Right. Yeah, I would say I've always believed that your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness. And there are times when it's your choice how to use it, meaning the mindset that you approach it with could determine whether that becomes your strength or your weakness. where I am the only female. And I would tell people that when I see that situation, I choose for being a female to be my superpower. And I mentally choose that I mentally say to myself that I'm the only woman on this panel, that is my superpower. What I mean by that is, I'm not going to try to blend in. In fact, quite the opposite. I'm probably

going to wear a very bright and glaring statement necklace. And I am going to say something boldly that makes the audience uncomfortable. And I'm going to do that because you are going to remember me. Yeah, yeah. I think part of it is also whether what you're addressing is structural and institutional, or situational. And one of the reasons we wrote the book, and one of the ways we've both operated in business, and we both found our ways into politics and into organizations, because we recognize that sometimes the short term solution is situational, but the long-term solution is institutional. And so we also insert ourselves into the institutions. For a lot of small business owners, for a lot of women, we believe that it's a bifurcated choice.

We have to pick one or the other, or we are so overwhelmed by the systemic challenge that we abandon all hope and we focus on the situational. What we want to encourage is this understanding that the institutional is just people. They're really, really powerful people supported by less powerful people supported by people who don't think they can make things change. And we are, I would like to say we're instigators. And so part of the opportunity when you face those challenges is to insert yourself into the organizations that perpetuate them. And you don't go in saying, I'm going to destroy you from the inside. You don't come in as the conqueror. You come in as the inquisitor.

And you get yourself inside and you start to work and you start to create change from the inside. And one of our, I think, most effective approaches is that we work from the inside out and from the outside in. And because we both come from different vantage points, but we carry the same internal messaging, we get points of entry that are completely divergent from one another. And then they're shocked when they find out that we've met in the middle and both done our own to change the way things work. We sometimes let the size and scale of the challenge overwhelm us. And we become myopically focused on the situational to the exclusion of the systemic. But if we don't fix the systemic, if we don't address the systemic,

the system just gets more hardened and better at being bad. And we have to understand our power to be both situational solution makers and institutional solutions as well. Do you think the net 30 payment system is a systemic issue? Yes. Yeah, I think it's absolutely institutional, but it's an example of what Stacey just mentioned. Most business owners think it's situational. And quite frankly, we did the first time we came up against it. A net 30 invoice is when you deliver your good or service to your customer, and you give them an invoice that says you can pay in 30 days. So, you know, we had started Nourish. Two smart people had come together.

We had built this business. And as we started growing and our clients were saying, well, can we have net 30? Stacey and I thought, well, sure, we'll give you net 30. We know how to solve that. So we went to our suppliers and said, well, if we have to wait 30 days to get paid, would you give us 60 days? Seems like a great solution. Do the math. And we proudly walked away thinking we've got this in the bag. And it wasn't until that net 30 invoice didn't pay for 60, 90, 120 days. Our initial thought was we messed up. That's what we initially thought was, oh, my gosh, I remember thinking I must have missed a finance class at HBS. I must have been sick one day when we talked about this. But that's when we started to realize initially when something goes unexpected, as an entrepreneur, your first reaction is I messed up. I didn't negotiate correctly. I missed something. But as we started to talk to other people, and they said, oh, you just have a working capital issue. Everyone has that. Stacey and I were like, well, wait a minute,

if everyone has this problem, then the existing solutions must not work very well. Mm hmm. You know, reading your book, I learned more about financing a startup than I could ever have imagined factoring net 30. What were some of the sort of widely accepted practices that blindsided you to as you were getting your first business off the ground and how'd you handle them? As someone who did not go to business school, it was all blindsiding. My first company was a small consulting firm. I had one client and they paid me. When I sent them an invoice, they sent me money and it was great. And so the first time I sent an invoice and got silence for 30 days was astonishing to me because this is a major company.

And so I expected them to be able to remit payment in a timely fashion. And in our business, I did accounts receivable. So it was my job to go and find our money. These big companies that absolutely had the resources to remit payment would not do so for want of a few pennies. And that mismatch was confounding to me because I was taking time to call, which meant they had a staff person whose job, rather than cut my check, their job was to tell me to wait. And you could use the same personal hours to actually solve the problem versus try to appease me or misdirect me. So I think that's one piece. And then the second,

on the other side, and this is one of the reasons my curiosity and Laura's intellect have always been such a blessing to me. I learned about all of these other financing mechanisms. I did not understand how one with no money could do so much and how folks with money could do so little. That if you understand the code, if you know how financing works, if you understand how to put together a piece of paper that says what you think. And I'm a lawyer, I'm a tax attorney. But a financing statement is a work of magic and alchemy. And so I became more familiar with these things. But always with a skeptical eye to how in the world would someone who does not have the partner that I have, who's giving me my business degree while I'm making her a lawyer, how do you navigate these things? Yeah, one piece of advice I would have, and I did this early on, was find someone who's

not a banker. The one thing I kept reminding myself is that banker that's telling me what I should do has never run a business. They have never been in my shoes and almost missed payroll. And so find another business owner who's been there and find someone who can help you as a bookkeeper, a CPA, a finance advisor. But remember that when you bring that person on, their job is twofold. Part of their job is to manage the finances of your company. But the more important part of their job is to be able to explain it to you in common terms. So I think one of the mistakes a lot of people make is because finance is scary. They hire a finance person, typically someone who is a banker, and then they just abdicate

finances to that person. And they just assume it's covered and I don't need to know it. That is the biggest mistake you could make in your business. You do need to know it. You do not have to become an expert. But that person's job is to explain it to you in terms that you understand. If they can't do that, they're the wrong person. And ask questions. There is no shame in asking the elementary questions.

When Laura and I started working together, I would sit with Laura and we would be in meetings and having conversations. And I would just, I would make a running list of glossary terms. And then I would call Laura. I'm like, okay, tell me what this means. What does this mean? We often don't ask the question because we're afraid that revealing our ignorance will diminish our shot at the money.

If your idea is solid, asking thoughtful questions will not diminish the likelihood of their investment. But at the very least, getting their answers helps you get to the next person who might finance you. I have a question from a listener that I'd love to throw into the mix. So Lauren Sanford, she's one of the owners of Two Little Birds Eatery in Rockport, Massachusetts. She wants your help navigating the customer relationship. So here's her question. We've had to raise our prices during

the pandemic at our small restaurant because of increases in product costs. Some of our customers who we value and who have been loyal to us since the beginning have expressed disappointment with the higher prices. How can we maintain good customer relationships through the ups and downs of this economy? Do you have any thoughts for Lauren? I go back to transparency. When you are a small business owner, you are aware of the universe of challenges. When you're a customer, you're aware of your moment of interaction. Exactly. Yeah. But every person coming to shop, coming to eat, is experiencing the exact same challenge. It's just in a different part of their life. And so the transparency of saying, on your menu, I know our prices are higher because we're facing these supply chain issues.

As soon as this gets better, we're going to reward you. And so doing something that one, acknowledges the legitimacy of the pain, two, gives an explanation so it doesn't seem like greed, and then three, promises a remedy without giving explicit decisions because you don't know yet what that's going to look like. But what that does is it brings your customer in and makes them a partner in your business. It makes that person eating with you. It's no longer an oppositional relationship. It is solidarity. And it is in their interest to help you get through this so that they can get back to what they wanted. When you work towards creating not just customers, but common bond, people are much more forgiving of challenges. But when you pretend they don't see something or you don't see something, they may pretend they don't see you. is combining that transparency with a vulnerability. And I'll give you an example.

So a few years ago, our business was growing to the point where we had utilized all of the capital that we had to buy invoices. So there were days when I would wake up praying that payments would come in before invoices came in, because we were in a position to not deliver. And to Stacey's point, we could have tried to hide that, right? We could have like put the curtain up and bull rushed our way through. Instead, I actually sat down and I penned a letter to all of our clients. It said, I want to thank you. I want to apologize to you. And I want to promise you, I want to thank you for being a loyal client through the last couple of years. We've so enjoyed servicing you. I want to apologize to you because for the next several weeks,

we are going to fall short on our service promise. But I want to promise you that we have a solution in the works, and it is going to get better. And when I hit send on that email, I was sick to my stomach. Like I didn't know how they were going to react. I was actually on a plane coming back from Boston. And when I got to 10,000 feet, and I could turn my laptop on, my email just started like, pinging off the charts. And it was all these customers saying, thank you so much for everything you've done for us. You've always been there for us. And we are going to be here for you. Oh, that's so nice. And I was literally in tears, like that people felt that strongly. But it took the courage to be totally vulnerable and say, I'm not going to

serve you right now, but here's why. And I promise you it's going to get better. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting,

you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. So what advice can you give our listeners about hiring and hanging on to employees in a moment like this? We've got this war for talent everyone's talking about. When your company is still in its early days and you really can't compete with the same kind of benefits that the bigger players can offer.

I believe in growing talent. One thing that we did by necessity that became part of our brand is that we would find people who were eager to learn and we would offer opportunities not only for growth. We could pay you, but we would also give you these other options and opportunities that you couldn't get somewhere else. Titles matter. And sometimes in lieu of capital, monetary capital, social capital, and influential capital work. And so I've tried always to bring people in, grow the talent I need, but that means having a tolerance for mistakes. And a lot of small businesses and new businesses are very fearful of mistakes. One thing Laura and I've always been, we want you to be bold and innovative.

And if it doesn't work, okay, let's figure out why it didn't work. But if you are afraid to hire new or young or inexperienced because you're afraid of mistakes, then you're going to stagnate your business. And what I have found is that when you grow your talent, it is loyal, it is resilient, and it is forgiving. Yeah. The other advice I would give is hire slowly and fire quickly. And I know that's counterintuitive because when you're in a market like we're in today, where it's so hard to get good talent, you start to sort of panic and just hire quickly. And the problem is, if you hire quickly, you might find someone with a great skill set, but you haven't had the chance to assess their mindset. And the mindset matters more than the skill set. Because as Stacey said, if you have the ability to sort of train and develop from within, there's very few things I can't teach you how to do. But I can't teach you how to think.

So hire slowly so that you can assess mindsets, and then fire quickly when that mindset is not a match. Right. Okay. So let's talk about the importance of creating a network and a safety net. And you wrote about this in the book, that it's pretty daunting or can feel pretty daunting for a lot of people to pick up the phone or send that cold email. But you can't let that hold you back when you're trying to grow a business. So from your experience with doing that, what sort of opening lines or framing typically leads to creating the connection that you want to create? Well, I'll start because as Stacey knows, I've never met a person that I won't talk to. When I cold call somebody or I reach out to someone I don't know, the mistake most people make is that when you get someone on the

phone, you launch into what you're selling or what you offer or the solution you have. And the problem with it is that that's about you, not about them. And so what I found to be most successful, when you're reaching out to someone that you don't know, is to start by framing the problem, the shared pain that you know that they have. Because if you can build that connection on a shared problem or pain point, that connection can allow you to then build on collaborating about your solution. But if you launch in with the solution, it's the wrong perspective. You're too focused on yourself and not on the listener. Yeah. I would add two pieces. One is that we have a tendency to

tell ourselves no. We knock ourselves out of the game before we even start. And as someone who is not shy, but incredibly reserved and not a huge fan of a lot of human contact. One of the one of the diametrical parts of our relationship was that yes, Laura will walk into and talk to anyone. I'll be there. And eventually, yes, I will do it. But what I had to navigate it because I have this other job, this other life in politics, where apparently you're supposed to say things out loud. I've learned not to worry necessarily about the response. I have no control over what someone says back to me. I can only control what I put out there. And so to Laura's point, do not start with you. Start with them. Number two, do your research. Don't become a stalker. And it's not about reciting their lives like Wikipedia, but it is knowing enough to know

if this is something they're going to care about. And by doing your research, you actually refine how you're thinking about this connection you need. And then three, under-promise and over-deliver. And that even includes just basic communication. Do not say, I'm going to follow with you tomorrow. If you know that tomorrow you've got two soccer games, a Quidditch match and something else. Instead, say, I would love to be in touch with you in the next, to follow up with you soon. Give yourself the space to be able to meet your

obligations because that interaction, that engagement is going to also determine the longevity of the relationship you build. And so one thing I've always respected about Laura and that I try to always emulate is that we're going to be clear about what we can do, what we can't do, and when we can do it. Because when you're building this relationship, we always think about the first moment. That first interaction is the least important one. It's the one after that and the one after that. Because the first one is to get their attention, but to keep their attention and to build trust, you've got to meet your obligations. And that means giving yourself the space to be successful. Yeah. Let me switch gears a little bit. Some women start their own

businesses in the hopes of gaining some flexibility or control over their own schedules. In your experience, how realistic is that? I do not believe in work-life balance. I believe in work-life Jenga. Work-life balance is a lie. It is a lie. It is a lie from the pits of hell. Work-life Jenga instead acknowledges that you are going to be trying to make all of these pieces work. And being your own boss ignores the fact that someone's still telling you what to do, even if it's you. And so we've got to enter it with the right sensibility that, yes, it gives you more flexibility, but flexibility is a limited term. And so it's always about what do you prioritize? How do you set your priorities? And being honest with yourself as the boss about what the other

parts of you are going to need. And so I don't have children and I don't have a husband. He's out there somewhere. I'm hoping he figures out where I live. But I have parents who are raising my niece. And so part of my obligation was the financial stability they needed. And so when Laura and I were working together, when we started our businesses, I was very honest with her about the flexibility I needed to sometimes take on additional jobs because I didn't have the luxury of not having a steady income when we weren't able to draw a salary. And so it's being honest about what the constraints are, but also being intentional with yourself as your own boss about what the other pressures on your time will be.

But don't lie to yourself. Don't pretend that things are going to suddenly be fixed because you get to wake up at 8am instead of 7am and the world is going to be different because you're in charge of yourself. No, you're just shifting responsibilities. You're not eliminating them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, for me, it was becoming a mother and wanting to have this flexibility that was the catalyst for me starting a company. I can honestly say I work more for myself than I've ever worked for anyone else. But I think where there is flexibility is how and when I work. So my mentality has always been forget balance and strive for optimization. For example, if I have a board meeting, you've got me for two hours, you better be prepared,

because for that two hours, you have all of me. I'm not checking my emails, I'm not checking in with work. I'm not texting. I am all in. But the minute I leave, and I'm with my son, I'm all in with him. And I'm not checking emails, and I'm not texting. And so I think to Stacy's point, one of the things particularly women have cornered the market on is guilt. We layer more guilt on ourselves, because I'm at work, but I should be with my child. I'm helping my parents, but I should be doing work. And I think where that guilt comes from, is when we draw this line, and then we cross it, or we allow another person to cross it. So I think being intentional about where your line is, and holding that line will both remove the guilt, but it will also allow you to

do a lot of things and optimize your time. When do you think is the right time to start thinking of an exit strategy from a business? I will say the least favorite exit strategy is the failure of a business. So I would put that at the bottom of the list of exit strategies. And so part of the exit strategy is being ready to leave when you know you've done not only your part, but you've created your own irrelevance. When you no longer can put in what the business deserves, or when there is someone who can do a better job at what you do than you can. I no longer work day to day with Now Account. I am still a shareholder. I serve on our advisory board. I do consulting work for the company, but I am no longer in the day-to-day

operations. And that happened because I had this other life that took precedence because I wasn't essential at Now Account. I was essential at my other job. We've seen. And I would say there's two ways to think about an exit strategy. There's your personal exit strategy, and there's the exit strategy of the business. And all too often, we conflate those two things. They are not the same. The best time to think about the exit strategy for the business is actually while you're starting it. Because at the end of the day, the exit strategy for the business is actually while you're starting it. Because at the end of the day, the exit strategy is have you accomplished the outcome that you wanted to

accomplish? And does a certain strategy allow you to get to that accomplishment? So I think for the business, you need to start thinking about the various exit strategies on day zero, because those will guide the decisions that you make along the way. For example, if your exit strategy is you think you're going to sell your company to some type of buyer, you should know what that buyer is going to value as you're investing. Because otherwise, I'm actually reducing the value of the company at its sale. This has been great. I've learned so much. Laura, Stacey, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having us. That's our show.

I'm Amy Bernstein. I'm Emily Caulfield. And I'm Amy Gallo. Our editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoke, Tina Tobey-Mack, Rob Eckhart, and Erica Truxler. Thank you to the several small business owners who contributed questions for this interview. Special thanks to the women whose questions we ended up asking. Lauren Sanford of Two Little Birds Eatery, Rachel Bachman of Akiri Consultants, and Ivalice Morales of the branding and design agency Bombilla. And if you found this episode insightful, we hope you'll share it with the entrepreneurial women in your life.

Before we go, I want to let you know that in April, I'll be hosting another round of The Essentials, which is a Women at Work series that covers fundamental career skills. In each episode, an essential worker joins me in a conversation with an expert on a particular skill. For example, in one episode, an elementary school principal and a social scientist shared their knowledge about giving feedback. So keep an eye out for the essentials. Better yet, follow the podcast to receive a notification when those episodes are published. Finally, get in touch with us by emailing womenatwork at hbr.org. And for more coverage of women and work, subscribe to our newsletter. Sign up by going to hbr.org. And for more coverage of women and work, subscribe to our newsletter.

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