Featured Webcast Speakers: Stephanie Cartin and Courtney Spritzer, Co-founders of Socialfly and Entreprenista
During this webcast, learn about:
- The power of women working together
- Starting and growing businesses
- Building a powerful networking community
and more!
True go-getters, Stephanie Cartin and Courtney Spritzer left their corporate jobs almost a decade ago to start their business. As Co-founders and Co-CEO's of Socialfly, a social-first digital and influencer agency, Stephanie and Courtney have a passion for helping brands reach and resonate with women and have built a client roster including brands such as HGTV, Conair, Girlscouts, NEST Fragrances, and John Varvatos. Their additional work with their podcast, Entreprenista, focuses on educating and empowering women in business through their interview-style show.
Transcript:
Webcast Producer:
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to welcome you to the keynote presentation in PNC's 12th Annual Women in Business Week titled The Strength of We: Friends, Followers and Confidantes. Before we get started, I'd like to mention that today's web seminar is being recorded and you are currently in a listen-only mode. It is my pleasure to hand things over to the moderator for today, and that is Alex Overstrom, Head of PNC Small Business, Deputy Head of Retail, the PNC Financial Services Group. Alex, you have the floor.
Alex Overstrom:
Thanks, Ian, and great to be with everyone for this incredible Women in Business Week discussion. We've got two phenomenal folks with us, among the biggest names in women's business. That's Courtney Spritzer, Stephanie Cartin, co-founders, co CEOs of Socialfly, one of the leading social media agencies specializing in how brands communicate with female audiences. We're going to talk a lot about Socialfly, how they built that business this morning. Not to be outdone though, Stephanie and Courtney are also co-founders of Entreprenista, which has basically I think become the go-to spot and really a community for female entrepreneurs looking to connect with other leaders and find ways to grow their businesses. Welcome, Courtney, Stephanie, great to have you guys with us this morning.
Stephanie Cartin:
Thanks for having us. Excited to be here.
Alex Overstrom:
We've got a ton to cover. We'll try to save a few minutes at the end for audience questions, but thought before we get into all the details of Socialfly, details on Entreprenista, and I've got a lot of questions, maybe just start us off. Have obviously built 2 amazing organizations. Curious where it all started. When did the entrepreneurial bug bite each of you?
Stephanie Cartin:
I'll take this one first. I was definitely a born Entreprenista as I like to say. I think I got my first taste when I started selling Girl Scout cookies when I was a little girl. I remember being recognized as the top seller selling Girl Scout cookies and realizing that it was just such an amazing rush and thrill to be able to find a need in the market. People really wanted cookies. They wanted to help support young women. And from there, I went onto selling Beanie Babies and friendship bracelets and Pogs and everything that was trending. And I just always had this born entrepreneurial spirit. And yeah, it was just -- I would say it was something that I was born with and always knew that I was going to have my own business.
Courtney Spritzer:
For me as a child, I can't say that I had aspirations to be an entrepreneur. I did grow up in a very entrepreneurial family. A lot of people in my family had their own businesses, so I was surrounded by that mentality and that hustle and that drive. But I wanted to do the opposite of what my parents and family was doing and I really wanted to work for a big company. When I was at NYU, I studied economics. I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I had taken on a lot of student loans and debt, so I knew I needed to do something right after college that could pay my bills. That's how I ended up working in finance after college.
And then once I started working, I realized how hard I work and how much time I spend working. And I realized you spend a lot of your time working and at that point I realized I need to do something that I'm passionate about. And what is someone right after college passionate about? Social media. That is when I decided I want a career in social media. It wasn't necessarily that I wanted to start my own business, I was really just following my passions. And that need to follow my passions has led me to other businesses, which we'll get into, but that's how I entered into entrepreneurship.
Alex Overstrom:
All right, so I have to ask -- you keep using the word entrepreneur, but then we've got Entreprenista. Talk to me about what Entreprenista means to you all versus being an entrepreneur. Or maybe it's the same, I don't know.
Stephanie Cartin:
Yes, an Entreprenista is a woman entrepreneur who has the drive, passion and energy to really go out and create the business of her dreams and the life that she wants.
Alex Overstrom:
Love it. I love it. Both of you are Entreprenistas?
Stephanie Cartin:
You got it.
Courtney Spritzer:
Yes.
Alex Overstrom:
All right. That's the starting point. Take us on a little bit of the journey here maybe starting with Socialfly, and Courtney, your point on social media. How did it all start? How did you all come together? Walk us through how we got to today.
Courtney Spritzer:
Yes, all right. I'm going to take you back to the early days. Stephanie and I actually met while we were on vacation in Miami. I was a few years out of college and Stephanie had already started a social media agency and we became fast friends. I was living in Massachusetts at the time, she was living in New York, and of course, we stayed connected and maintained a friendship through using social media, so Facebook and Skype at the time.
I eventually, after about a year of knowing Stephanie, ended up working, getting a job at American Express in New York. Now I'm back in New York which is where I was born and raised and I'm working in Corporate Finance for American Express. While I was there, they were forming partnerships with Facebook and Foursquare and Twitter and doing really, really innovative things with social media that I didn't see a lot of businesses doing. Around that time, I was working tirelessly and many, many hours and I was like, okay, I need to do something that I'm passionate about. A company like American Express is embracing social media, that's the department I want to be in. I told my friend Stephanie at the time and she said, well, I really want to start a social media agency, I think you'd be perfect, I need a business partner. And that's how we ended up partnering.
It was really a side hustle. We worked nights and weekends for about 10 months and then after 10 months we said to each other, if this is ever going to be a real business, we've just got to go all in and do it. And me being the finance person and the number cruncher, I calculated okay, how much money do we need to live in New York City and what's the bare minimum that we need to make in order to survive? That became our revenue goal in month one and really from there I like to say that everything kind of fell into place. One decision led to another decision led to another meeting with another person. And that first month we really set ourselves up for success.
Going back to that first week, so we quit our jobs on May 4 of 2012, so now we are 10 years in business at this point which is really exciting. And that first day, we went to Stephanie's apartment, that was our corporate headquarters at the time.
Stephanie Cartin:
For one meeting.
Courtney Spritzer:
And that was Monday.
Alex Overstrom:
I like where your corporate headquarters has moved, by the way.
Courtney Spritzer:
Yes, and we're in Florida. But we quit our jobs on Friday, we head to our corporate headquarters on Monday, Stephanie's apartment, and we decide that we need to get some interns to help us out for the summer and really scale the business. We put an ad on Craig's List, spent the next 2 days interviewing students who did get a summer internship at that point. By day 3, we had 6 amazing interns and they actually -- they couldn't have been more perfect to help us launch everything. And then by day 3, Stephanie said, okay, well where are we going to -- where are they going to report to?
Stephanie Cartin:
Where are the interns going to work at? They can't fit here in my apartment.
Courtney Spritzer:
We were being very resourceful, we self-funded this, we don't have any money for an office space. We fortunately were in New York City, there's a lot of resources available to entrepreneurs in New York City. We started looking for office space and I remembered that my mom when I was 16 took me to one of her business meetings at this printing company on 35th Street and 8th called Printech. I remember he had a huge office, the whole floor. And us, having to be resourceful, I just immediately remembered that moment and thought maybe he has some extra office space to just lend us and we can barter for space. I called my mom and I said, hey, do you still talk to Frank? He has a huge office, maybe he has a little corner for us or something. She called him, he said to her to come to his office the next day, he had some space for us. We go there the next day and it's not the nicest office. It's an industrial printing shop, there's paper and little mice running around.
Stephanie Cartin:
But they did great work, amazing work.
Alex Overstrom:
The mice are the interns.
Stephanie Cartin:
Yes. Frank is a key pillar and component of everything that we have accomplished. We owe a lot to Frank and the advice he gave us from day one and that barter we did with him.
Courtney Spritzer:
Yes, thank you, Stephanie. Frank has an amazing, amazing office. But the space, the area of his office that he lent to us wasn't the most glamorous at the time. But we took it. That was really our only option and we bartered with him for space like Stephanie said. And then the next question he asked us was, how are you going to get your clients? And we said, oh, we're just going to go to networking groups all around the city. And he had this network that he was a part of and he said they meet every 7:00 A.M. on Tuesday, come with me as my guests. We went and Stephanie joined the next week.
Stephanie Cartin:
Joined that networking group and it changed everything for our business and really set the foundation for how we were able to grow and scale Socialfly.
Alex Overstrom:
That's awesome. I want to come back to a couple of things you talked about, the bartering - an interesting question there. But just, did it start out as an agency focused on women or was that always the model or did that evolve over time?
Courtney Spritzer:
That definitely evolved over time. It wasn't the model. But what we found is that we were attracting women entrepreneurs who wanted to work with us. And we, even though that is a focus of ours on the agency side to focus on helping brands reach women audiences, which is something we realized we are excellent at doing, it didn't start that way. What started was we want to help small businesses with their social media and help them grow and scale their businesses using platforms like Facebook and Twitter and that has also evolved over time in terms of which platforms we focus on. But the core of what we do is help businesses with their social media.
Alex Overstrom:
And remembering back to those early days, and you implicitly answered one of my questions which is, when we stated, you actually had no clients. Talk a little bit about the scary moments there, of hey, we just quit our jobs, we don't have any clients, now we've got a couple of interns supporting us. What was that like? What was that process like?
Courtney Spritzer:
We did have a few. We did have a few clients that we lined up before we quit. We're not that crazy.
Stephanie Cartin:
Yes, we had a couple of clients that we were already managing their social media on the side of our fulltime jobs. Because Courtney and I were running Socialfly on the side for about 10 months as this side hustle business. And we realized that it was just too much work to be able to go to our fulltime jobs during the day and then we were on our lunchbreaks on calls together, every single night for hours doing work together, and then every single weekend we were doing work and there was literally no break because we had both our corporate job and Socialfly. We said to each other, all right, let's just go all in and do it and we're going to make it happen. And what you'll learn about the two of us is, Courtney likes to actually -- this is what's really ironic. Courtney on the financial side likes to plan everything out, be extremely disciplined and organized. And I'm like, let's just go, we're going to do it, we're going to make it happen. Nothing is going to stop us. And I would say that's been a theme of our relationship and business partnership over the years.
Alex Overstrom:
Awesome. You talked about bartering a moment ago. It was in the great interview we did for Women in Business Magazine. It's, coming from PNC and a big company, not the norm, but maybe talk a little bit about it and maybe you could talk about that or some of the other things that as an entrepreneur are really important, but maybe a little less traditional to bootstrap your business.
Stephanie Cartin:
Yeah. An as entrepreneur, when you're first starting out, especially as a small business without any funding, you definitely have to get very creative, or the words that are often used are, be really scrappy to figure it out. We, like Courtney mentioned, we didn't have any office space or a place to come in and congregate together and bring our interns together. When we met with Frank we realized, okay, what can we offer Frank for his office space and help him? He really needed help with his website, with social media, so we offered to be able to help him set up all of his social media in exchange for giving us space.
And I think what's really great about so many entrepreneurs who are just starting out, there are ways through networking groups, like our group with Entreprenista League, where I see our members are in there, they're connecting, they're networking, they're figuring out how they can help each other. Because in the beginning, to really set that foundation for your business, it can be really expensive and really hard to get all of the resources that you need. But if you find this group to be able to coordinate together and help each other with different resources, to help each other get your business off the ground, it can different be a great way to get things started.
Alex Overstrom:
We'll come back to some of those when we talk about Entreprenista, but maybe sticking to the Socialfly, talk a little bit about the evolution and some of the maybe inflection points as you took a business from ground zero really to scale today. What were some of the big moments, big decisions that mattered?
Courtney Spritzer:
Every year comes with more big decisions that you have to make and we call them good business problems. Because the more you grow, the more you need to figure out. In that first year after our amazing interns left us to go back to college, we were faced with the first big decision in hiring our first employee. Luckily, our first person was probably the best person we could have hired because to grow a business, you really need to surround yourself with an amazing team. And you need to figure out a way to hire the right people because the wrong people can really hurt your business. Fortunately, we found someone really great. Her name is Mary Kate. And like us, we trained here to be a little bit of a jack of all trades.
Social media at that time was still evolving and so new, so everyone on the team at that time as we were growing it for the first few years were generalists. The people that we hired were the people creating the content, posting the content, doing the copywriting, buying the ads. And what we realized as we grew and as social media was continuously evolving and becoming a little bit more complicated, in order for us to grow and scale, we had to restructure. We did that I think it was 2016 or 2017 where we decided, and maybe we were about 10 people at that time, to restructure and build out a team of specialists. We decided to build out a paid media team, an influencer team, a strategy team and a content and production team. And when we did that, we had to figure out, who do we hire? What experts do we bring in that are specialists in these areas that can help take the business to the next level? But prior to that, we were all just doing a little bit of everything.
Alex Overstrom:
Awesome. Maybe a little off topic, but I have to ask, social media, since you all got into the game formally to today has changed dramatically and feels like it's changing moment to moment. Any big macro-observations about where you think social media, the role in commerce and how companies use it, how that changes over the next couple of years?
Courtney Spritzer:
Social media just gets more and more important every single day. I don't know how you can be in business if you don't have a social media presence and a way to interact with your customers or get discovered. I see it continuing to evolve and new platforms coming into the mix. Which is one of the best and worst things about social media is that you always have to figure out something new and it really keeps you on your toes. There's no sitting back and relaxing. Because now, for any social media marketer, you have to think about TikTok and the growing importance of TikTok and how do you create content for that channel and how much time and budget do you allocate towards it versus some of the more traditional channels like Facebook and Instagram.
Alex Overstrom:
Crazy those are the traditional channels by the way. Look how far we've come.
Courtney Spritzer:
And then you also have to think about the future. How much time should you be spending on thinking about how to integrate this new Web 3 world, so the metaverse and NFTs? Where does that fit into your marketing strategy? It's evolving. It's getting more and more important. For any brand, you really need to think about it, because that's where your consumer is spending a lot of their time.
Stephanie Cartin:
And I think the key really is being sure that you have a strategy and that everything you are doing is very purposeful. Because there's always going to be new platforms that emerge, there's always going to be new content trends to jump in on. But it doesn't mean that just because something is happening, that it is the right fit for your business or for your brand. You can pause, evaluate what's going on, see what looks like it might work or not work, and then jump in on trends that actually make sense for your business.
Alex Overstrom:
But to take a little bit of time as a business owner to observe what's going on, form a strategy, obviously hire great expertise to support the work. One last question on Socialfly because I just want to know the -- and pick one, I know in my career there's probably been 1,000. Any of the oh my gosh, we don't want to do that again moments that you guys experienced just growing the business?
Courtney Spritzer:
There are so many. The first that we always talk about and we still see people make this mistake to this day is the importance of a trademark. When we first started, we started with a different name and we didn't have the trademark for that name. Here we are, two young entrepreneurs getting a letter from a big law firm --
Stephanie Cartin:
A cease and desist letter.
Courtney Spritzer:
In New York. And that was a good day for us trying to figure out how to navigate that one. And our lawyer at the time --
Stephanie Cartin:
Thank you for reminding me. We bartered with our lawyer at that time. During this situation. We get this letter in the mail, not to hijack the answer, Courtney, but we --
Courtney Spritzer:
I forgot about that, right.
Stephanie Cartin:
We get this letter in the mail and we're in our early 20s, we're like, are we going to go to jail? What does a cease-and-desist letter actually mean? We had no idea. And we had been introduced to David Feldman, our business attorney, through the mutual friend who connected myself and Courtney. We called him and he's like, look ladies, it's probably going to be better to change your name, but I'm going to have to help you with this. We're like, what is this going to cost? And then we were like, actually David, do you need some -- I think you need some help with your social media. We set up his whole presence on social media and we got legal help.
Alex Overstrom:
That is amazing. By the way, a lot of lawyers probably could use some help on social media from that perspective. All right, maybe a question. 10 years building Socialfly, got it off the ground, scaling and getting amazing traction. And then the decision to start another organization, Entreprenista, at the same in parallel. Talk about what drove that. I have lots of questions around the challenges. I can barely drive to work in the morning let alone run two giant organizations. Talk a little bit about that.
Stephanie Cartin:
Sure. It really happened organically. What started to happen, because of the growth and success of our agency business, we started winning all of these awards for our work, we were growing and scaling, we had this bootstrap business, never raised any funding. All of these women starting reaching out to us literally every single week wanting to go out to coffee and wanting to pick our brain and really wanting to hear how we were able to grow and scale Socialfly. And what you'll learn about the two of is us we are the type of people that like to help absolutely everyone.
But what we started to realize is, if we were to go out to coffee with every single person that reached out to us in New York City, we could actually never have time to run our core business. And at the time it was just Socialfly. Now we have a few different businesses, Entreprenista being another one of them. But we started thinking, okay, how can we help as many women as possible and not just share our story over and over again over coffee, but share all of these incredible stories of women in business that have so much advice and insight to share? So that was our aha moment, like oh, we should start a podcast. We can share all of these stories and then when women reach out to us, we can share links to episodes and share advice that way. That's what we did. We decided to start a podcast called of course, Entreprenista. And we released our first episode in November of 2018 and it really took off from that first episode.
And actually, the first year of the podcast, that's really what Entreprenista was, it was a podcast. We released a new episode every Monday, which we still do. We were organically growing our social media channels. And then in 2020, early 2020 when everything happened with the pandemic, we started receiving so many messages from women on needing help pivoting their businesses, women reaching out to us because they needed helping turning their brick-and-mortar store and having it go online. We had women reaching out to us because they had lost jobs during the pandemic and wanted to start a business. And Courtney and I were like, oh my gosh, we have created this community and this platform and we share this really great content, but these women need more help and we can help them. We figured, who better to help these women get their business off the ground, help them get a group together and a community together than us? Because we had done it before. We had been in every networking group; We had grown and scaled this business. That was our idea to launch Entreprenista into what it is today which is a full media company with a podcast network as well as our membership community called the Entreprenista League. That's how it started.
Alex Overstrom:
Talk about the membership community. What are the contours of that? What does it mean to be a member? Who should join? Maybe a little bit of background.
Stephanie Cartin:
Absolutely. The Entreprenista League is our membership community where women founders and leaders pay an annual fee to be part of our community. When you get access to the community, we have a private membership portal where all of our members are able to log in, they're networking, they're connecting together, doing business together, bringing partnerships together. We also feature all of our members on our Entreprenista.com website as well as on our social channels. We really help amplify our members to get their business out there, get their brand out there. We also do virtual networking events as well as virtual learning events every single week. Many of our members need help with social media strategy or business advice, legal advice. We do events that are all recorded, so if our members can't make it live, they have access to view all of the past recordings as well.
And then Courtney and I also host Office Hours every month so our members can come to our virtual office hours, ask us any questions that they have and get access to us. We felt it was really important to be able to be extremely present for our community so we can network and connect with our members. We've made introductions to our members that have led to millions of dollars of funding in their business and so much more. It has been one of the most amazing things that we've ever done together and so rewarding because we are able to help this community every single day.
Alex Overstrom:
Do you see a little bit of the companies or the entrepreneurs that go out and through your organization raise a bunch of money, do they come back and give back to that community? Are you creating that virtuous circle among your constituents?
Stephanie Cartin:
Absolutely. A lot of the questions that we get are, who are the members? Who is our community best for? We have members that are thinking about starting their business and want all of the resources and tools and the networking to learn how to get their business off the ground. We also have members in our community that have sold their company to Unilever for millions of dollars and they are in the community because they want to give back and they want to share guidance and resources. You really just have, like you said, this circle effect where everyone is in there helping each other with whatever is needed.
One of the rooms that we have in our community is called In Search Of. Members will post like I'm in search of an accountant or a bookkeeper and then other members jump in and reply and give advice and recommendations. It's like having an entire community of business cheerleaders literally in your pocket on your phone for whenever you need any business questions that you have.
Courtney Spritzer:
And Stephanie and I joined a lot of these types of groups in the 10 years that we were running and scaling Socialfly. And our goal was to take the best of everything that we learned and create this really valuable network and community for Entreprenista. It's like Stephanie said, it's very, very rewarding to hear the feedback from this group on the things that they're able to learn and the people that they're able to connect with through the platform that we've built.
Alex Overstrom:
That's amazing. Maybe to dive in, I don't know if it's a fair question or not, but the Office Hours, most challenging question you've gotten or most challenging thematic questions you've gotten? What are the most vexing issues that you see the entrepreneurs coming onto your platform facing?
Stephanie Cartin:
We get so many questions. I would say we definitely get a lot of social media questions because everyone is figuring out, what platform do I need to focus on? Should I focus on also building a personal brand and my business brand? We get questions -- many of our members have ecommerce businesses and they're selling physical products and they also want to get into retailers, so we've been able to make introductions to buyers at different organizations as well. What Courtney and I always like to say is, no question is off limits. If we don't have the direct connections or resources, Courtney and I also have our whole networking community that we've built over the years and we open up that whole network to all of our members. We'll always reach out and make introductions for our members as well.
Alex Overstrom:
That is awesome. Maybe a question related to the business of it. Obviously running Socialfly, running Entreprenista, how do you all allocate time, energy, efforts? Because both have important clients and are real businesses. What's the -- how do you make that happen?
Courtney Spritzer:
We really divide and conquer. That has been our approach since day one is Stephanie handles certain aspects of the business and I handle others. I would say Entreprenista probably couldn't have started the same day that we started Socialfly because we needed time to figure out how to grow and scale that business. Managing any business is hard work, so like I was saying earlier, you really need to surround yourself with the right team members. What we decided to do was to divide and conquer. And Stephanie runs Entreprenista and I run Socialfly, and then we come together to make strategic decisions.
Alex Overstrom:
Got it. We're talking all about two organizations who serve a purpose in many ways. Certainly, Entreprenista, and to some degree Socialfly, help female entrepreneurs grow their business. Maybe putting it, instead of asking the question around the challenge that your members face, maybe ask you all the question, what were the biggest challenges that you all faced as female entrepreneurs growing these businesses?
Courtney Spritzer:
In the early days, and even now, it was we're women and we're young. Always a challenge. Sometimes it still is, although we definitely have 10 years of experience under our belts to justify the things that we're saying and kind of prove we've proven ourselves. Although I would say we still have a long way to go. And then in terms of raising money, that was not something that we had to do when we were running Socialfly, but we've heard through our podcast and our interviews that that is a challenge for many, many women. And I know you have some additional things to share.
Stephanie Cartin:
Yes, definitely raising funding as a woman is extremely challenging and I think a big part of that is that so many of the VCs that are out there are not women and it makes it harder to get in front of them. Because what we've seen is that a lot of the men in venture capital, they are passing around deals to each other. And if you don't have more women that are VCs and seeing a lot of these other potential business and deal opportunities, it makes it really hard to get that funding. There is so much work that needs to be done in order to help women get access to the right network so they can get their foot in the door to get those meetings, to be able to raise money.
Alex Overstrom:
It sounds like you're doing that, you just need to do it a bigger scale. Because you are helping connect women to fundraising in the VC community, is that right?
Stephanie Cartin:
Absolutely. And we've built an incredible network of women VCs. We've had a lot of them on our podcast and they have shared a lot of their tips and advice for women that are raising money. We've also had a lot of founders on our podcast who have raised money where they've shared a lot of their advice as well. And I think the key really is education around the fundraising process and then access to the right people in order to get those meetings. And we're really helping bridge that gap.
Alex Overstrom:
Clearly, fundraising and the male dominated elements of the VC community are a challenge. Anything else that you would point out as places where we really need to focus in terms of making it easier for female entrepreneurs?
Stephanie Cartin:
I would say really, like I just mentioned, the education piece. Really going over like what does it take to raise money? And is that even the right route for your business? One of the guests we just had on our podcast, this woman Jean, she is the founder of her company called To the Market. On her recent episode, she really talks about figuring out what do you want as the ultimate goal for your business? Are you building a venture backed business where you do need to go out and raise VC money? Or are you better off getting a bank loan or doing a crowdfunding campaign? And really figuring out that initial structure initially and then putting together what your fundraising plan is or what the plan is to raise alternate forms of capital.
Alex Overstrom:
We like the bank loan concept a lot. Maybe actually as a segue there, as obviously a large financial institution, PNC, we've got a million small business clients, large business clients, male, female. Maybe a thought or a question to you all is, what we can be doing as an organization to better support female entrepreneurs around the country?
Stephanie Cartin:
I would say we should definitely do an event together for our community where you are going over like the education of what does it mean to get a ban k loan? What is involved? Giving that information to women so they have that knowledge to then be able to make the most strategic decision for their business. Because a lot of times, that information, like you really have to seek it out to find it. And if it can be more accessible and then you can make those strategic decisions earlier on in your business, women will have a better chance of succeeding.
Alex Overstrom:
Education, clarification, communication, just being out, more visible. One of the other things that we're really focused on as an institution is driving down the gender gap in wages. We see this across a lot of industries, so we started Project 257 around accelerating women's financial equality. Is there more that Corporate America, put aside PNC, this is obviously a project that we're hyper focused on, but Corporate America should be doing to address some of these challenges?
Courtney Spritzer:
Yes. There is so much that Corporate America could be doing. First, it's difficult for -- and I don't have any kids and hopefully I do one day, but obviously when you do decide to have children, it does take you out of the workforce for a bit. Being a company that has very flexible and understanding policies for mothers is very, very important. And then also, being a company that has representation at the top. A lot of women want to work for companies where they feel inspired and see someone that looks like them running the company. Making sure that it is more equitable at the top and with whoever is on the management team.
Alex Overstrom:
I love it. Stephanie, any other thoughts?
Stephanie Cartin:
No, that's exactly what I was going to say. Courtney and I were talking about this earlier today and as a new mom, I think I'll still say I'm a new mom until I don't know, Molly is at least 10.
Courtney Spritzer:
Until she's in college.
Stephanie Cartin:
She's almost 3, she'll be 3 at the end of May. But I still feel like a new mom. Just all of the challenges that come with being a new parent. And for us, it's running our business, but I think about had I been working in the corporate world and having to report to someone, how hard it would be to try to be managing everything. Making sure there really are flexible policies and that women feel that they can actually speak up and talk about their families. Everything -- so much has gone remote over the past few years since 2020, and the lines definitely have become more blurred between home life and work life. And I actually think that's a good thing because I think for so long, women felt like they had to hide themselves and their family in a corporate office. Where now, being on Zoom for a few years, you see the kids in the background and that's okay and that's real life. Just feeling like we as women can just be ourselves, whether we're at home or at work.
Alex Overstrom:
It's so funny you say that. My kids used to love coming into the office and now the office often comes home to them and they're even more intrigued and excited about it. Maybe a question on a slightly different topic, but it's one that spending time in the small business space in our payments business, we seem to be seeing an intersection between social media and selling and commerce. And more people selling through social media. Any thoughts on where that's going? It seems to be evolving very quickly in a whole bunch of different forms. Even live shopping through social media. Would love to get your perspectives on what's happening there.
Courtney Spritzer:
Yes, all the platforms are doing their nest to help businesses monetize their social channels and sell through the platform. Advertising is very important for driving sales for a lot of these ecommerce business. Facebook and Instagram do an excellent job of helping you do that. Google Search is really great. And then a lot of our clients are also investing in TikTok advertising. Then there are tactics and capabilities like what you just mentioned, like live shopping, that we have seen being very instrumental in driving sales for certain types of businesses. And then there's the organic element. Posting regularly on your social platforms and building a community and audience on those platforms so that you have customers to talk to. And the important thing to do there is to put out content that your customers genuinely want to engage with. Don't put out all of this salesy type of content, although that does work sometimes, but put out content that is going to get people invested in your brand and engaged with what you have to say. And then ultimately, over time, that will help with the sales process.
Stephanie Cartin:
And my best piece of advice if you are starting a business right now is to build community first. Community is everything. If you are thinking about starting a business let's say in the parenting space, build a community of people who are parents and share really valuable content and information with that community. And then when you're ready to launch and you have something to sell, you now that that audience to be able to sell to and you can make it super organic. Community first is one of the best strategies that we recommend for all of our clients and all of our league members that we talk to.
Alex Overstrom:
I love it. Community first. It also resonates a lot of the work we're trying to do at PNC as well. A couple of questions we got in from the audience, and maybe one I should have asked upfront, but who is Entreprenista for? Can anyone sign up? Is this open to any entrepreneurs?
Stephanie Cartin:
Yes. This is open to anyone who identifies as an entreprenista and wants to build her business and connect with other likeminded entreprenistas and get the tools and resources and get featured on our platform as well. Absolutely.
Alex Overstrom:
I love it. Are we doing a sweepstakes also to give away some memberships?
Stephanie Cartin:
Yes, we are giving away two lifetime memberships to the Entreprenista League and they include a one-on-one session with me as well. You can ask me anything you want from social media questions to business questions. There will be 2 winners and you can actually enter, you should see a popup on your screen right now that says Entreprenista Giveaway to enter to win.
Alex Overstrom:
I love it. All the questions I probably should have asked, they'll be able to ask you directly and get good answers. Maybe going into the -- you talked about this a moment ago, but I got the explicit question so I want to ask it in terms of best advice for a new entrepreneur. You talked about community. What should a person or a woman starting a new business be laser focused on in that first call it 6 months or a year?
Courtney Spritzer:
It's really about networking. With any business, you need sales, and networking really helps you do that and helps you build connections with people that can help you grow and scale your business. But something important to know when you're networking is it's not all about taking and asking. A lot of it is about giving. How can you help others? That helps you build relationships with people. It helps you build credibility, especially when you're new in the business world. That is one piece of advice. And then also, really try to stay focused. I always say entrepreneurship or really running a business can tend to be very, very overwhelming, especially when you have very limited resources and there's so much to do. Remember, things take time. And to try to figure out what are the best things to prioritize each quarter.
Stephanie Cartin:
And I would say be sure that you make a plan, but be prepared that nothing will always going according to plan. But you should have that plan because then you can figure out, based on what's actually happening, what's working, what's not working and be prepared to pivot. I can say that the common theme we have seen with ourselves as entreprenistas and also the many entreprenistas that we have met over the years is that resilience as an entreprenista is so important. There are going to be so many challenges and especially in those first 6 months. So many ups and downs. High highs, low lows and really being able to stay pretty even keel throughout everything. And as you have a lot of those challenges, being okay with pivoting and making changes and being okay moving forward. And the hard times really are just like we like to call them, learning lessons. What can you learn from the challenges to hopefully not make those same mistakes again? Accept that you made them, it's totally fine. We all make a million mistakes. Trust me, we've made probably thousands of mistakes over the years, but we've learned from every mistake. And then we pay it forward and share those mistakes with everyone so hopefully you don't have to make as many as we've had.
Alex Overstrom:
I love that. The growth mindset concept is so good and so refreshing. Another question in the audience talked about building these 2 businesses, and more frankly, and then supporting so many different entrepreneurs across the country. How do you make time for your own lives? Are you all spending 24 hours a day, 365 days a year on these businesses? Or have you been able to find a little bit of balance?
Courtney Spritzer:
I would say remote -- I don't think that this would be possible if we didn't work from home. I think that this flexibility has given us the time to actually start other businesses. Because we filled that what used to be commuting time with other business ventures and it allowed us to really take a step back, think strategically about what I should spend my time on versus Stephanie, and enabling us to divide and conquer. And then in terms of our personal lives, for me, I like to have my mornings to work out. I like to go really hard between 9:00 and 6:00 P.M. to get as much done as possible and be really productive during that time. And then stop, take a break, disconnect on the weekends if I can. But for the most part, I'm always checking email, always on, always available. You can reach me at any time.
Alex Overstrom:
Not exactly the poster child for work/life balance there.
Courtney Spritzer:
But I do force myself to stop and disconnect and not be sitting at a desk on a computer staring at my emails or on a Zoom call.
Stephanie Cartin:
It's really hard. It's not easy when you're so passionate about what you're building to actually take a break and step away. But what we've learned is that when you do take time to step away, it actually gives you some of that thinking space and new ideas come. So then when you're actually taking a break, all these new ideas come and you're ready to jump back in and start something else. But I have the same challenge that Courtney does. I have this growth mindset and even on the weekends, of course, I'm always checking my emails and on Instagram. And I feel like when your home life and business life is so integrated and you love what you're doing so much, it definitely makes it hard to disconnect. But I try. It's something I'm still working on. Courtney and I have had a really great business coach over the years, her name is Leslie, and she's really, really helped us figure out how to prioritize ourselves and our health. Something that I started doing now living in Florida is I try to block off at least 10, 15 minutes a day to get outside and take a walk. Otherwise, if I don't block it into my schedule, I'm sitting at my desk all day and not moving.
Alex Overstrom:
The comment you made resonated. If you have a job you like you don't really feel like you have to work a single day. It's an old Confucian proverb. All right, another one from the audience, a question on favorite app on your phones, which is probably going to be different than mine, but I'd love to hear it.
Courtney Spritzer:
There are so many. I would say of course Instagram, Facebook, my Gmail account. Shopify is a great one. Our banking app just to check which customers have paid us and who owe us money. QuickBooks is a great app as well.
Stephanie Cartin:
And then I love our new Entreprenista Community Platform. We use a tool called Circle is where our community lives and there's an app on the iPhone for it, so I am just on there all of the time. And then of course Instagram
Alex Overstrom:
Of course. I knew it would be slightly different than mine, but similar thematics. One more question for me. It's one I borrowed from a podcast that I listen to and always think is interesting. If you had a metaphorical billboard that everyone in the world could see, and I want to ask this of each of you, what message, image, anything would you put on it?
Stephanie Cartin:
We actually did have a billboard in Times Square on International Women's Day featuring all of our members and we shared all of their success stories on the billboard. But if it were to just be a static billboard, one phrase I would say, Just Start. Being an entreprenista, you can come up with all of these ideas all of the time and throw them out there, run them by a million different people. You just have to start. You don't have to know everything when you're getting started. You'll figure it out as you go. You'll be part of a community and learn as you go, but just start. That's all you have to do.
Alex Overstrom:
I love it. Courtney?
Courtney Spritzer:
I would really say the same thing. It would be a motivational message just letting the world know that they, that people, everyone has the power to create the life that they want through taking action on it. It might not happen overnight, but the more you try, the more you keep going, the more resilience you have, will ultimately get you to where you want to go.
Alex Overstrom:It's a great -- I don't know if it's taken, you can go ask your lawyer that you barter with, but it would be a great slogan, Just Start, for an entrepreneurial organization. Well, I don't want to take too much time. This has been awesome. Maybe before we close, I'll ask each of you, any other message or topic that you think we should talk about or cover before we go?
Stephanie Cartin:
I would just encourage everyone to not be scared to reach out to others. Feel free to reach out to us personally. As Courtney said, we're available everywhere 24 hours a day on Instagram.
Courtney Spritzer:
We're available on every communication platform known to man.
Stephanie Cartin:
No, but really, if there is someone you've been thinking about wanting to reach out to, to get advice, just reach out. You never know unless you try and I would just encourage everyone to do that.
Alex Overstrom:
Awesome. Stephanie, Courtney, thank you all. This has been amazing. You all are inspiring. Hopefully inspired all of our audience members and look forward to seeing what more you all will do and can't wait to see the next great Entreprenista endeavor that you pursue. Thank you.
Stephanie Cartin:
Thank you for having us.
Courtney Spritzer:
Thank you.
