How To Make $80 Million ARR From A Mastermind Business
Chief: A Network for Women Executives - May 12, 2022 (almost 3 years ago) • 52:22
Transcript:
| Start Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
Sam Parr | So, I have a friend who's part of it. He runs an agency, and I'm pretty sure it's $60,000 a year, so quite expensive. I think they only do 2 events a year, so it's almost basically an events business. They sold for $100 million recently to a private equity company.
And then another one is Aventa. Have you heard of Aventa?
| |
Carolyn Childers | I haven't heard of aventa | |
Sam Parr | Okay, so it's E V A N T A. AventA was sold to Gartner for about $250,000,000. It was almost like the same thing, but it was worse because it was advertising-driven.
The reason why we asked you to come on is because Chief is awesome, and we love community-based businesses. Most community-based businesses have horrible business models. From the outside, it appears as though you have, from the press and whatever I can read about on the internet, a really good business model.
That's what I wanted to talk to you about today—your business model. We've talked a lot about Tiger 21 and YPO, which is kind of interesting, but you guys are like the next kind of person attempting this, and it seems like it's working really well. That's what I wanted to ask about.
| |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, awesome! Well, congratulations on the podcast, and thank you. I was excited to come on and chat because there's been a lot happening for us at the beginning of this year.
| |
Sam Parr | so yeah and before this where were you casper | |
Carolyn Childers | No, that was my co-founder. We both have been in the New York City ecosystem for a while.
I actually started the startup scene at Handy. I launched and ran Soap.com under Mark Lohr. Soap.com got acquired by Amazon, then I went over to South Korea and worked on Coupang, which is the Amazon of South Korea.
Most recently, right before Chief, I was at Handy running operations for them, and my co-founder was at Casper.
| |
Sam Parr | and when did you decide when did you go all in full time on chief | |
Carolyn Childers | I probably went full in 2018. That's when I officially left other positions and dedicated myself full-time to this.
It was one of those things that I felt I had to fully commit to and actually put everything behind it. Otherwise, it would just keep that slow crawl of kind of an idea. Without putting everything into it, it just wasn't making the same progress that it really needed to make.
| |
Sam Parr | I do the same thing, and that's what I tell people. I think the phrase is, I used to say it was "burning your bridges," but it's not; it's "burning the ship."
There is this kind of conquistador—I forget who his name was—but it's like where he landed in America or somewhere like that, and they're like, "Look, we have to succeed now because I just burned the boat." So, like, we ain't going home.
I guess that's the story. I don't know if that's real or not, but I totally believe that that's the way to go about this.
And what, Chief, how would you describe Chief as it is now?
| |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, so Chief is really focused on senior executive women. It's under the phrase that we hear so often: "It gets very lonely at the top." But it gets lonely at the top for women a lot more.
Our mission is really to drive more women into positions of leadership and keep them there. By focusing on senior executive women, our belief is that just getting more of them into true positions of influence can create a ripple effect across all different companies and organizations. This is really where we wanted to go and tackle this first.
| |
Sam Parr | And I kind of call it like a YPO but for VPs, which is basically... and this is all from the outside, obviously, I'm not a member.
But this is what you get: you pay some sum of like $5,000 to $8,000 a year, and the company pays for it. You get to meet up with a core group of like 5 to 10 different women, or it's the same women. Then you have a coach, and you have the ability to chat with the entire group whenever you want online.
I imagine you have some type of programming throughout the month that you can join as well, right? Is that basically the model?
| |
Carolyn Childers | It's very, very close. So I would say YPO definitely was an inspiration for us, for sure. They only focus on CEOs and presidents; that is their entire focus. As a result, not surprisingly, it's largely men that are a part of YPO since that is the makeup of a CEO and president.
| |
Sam Parr | when I think of ypo I think like old white dudes | |
Carolyn Childers | It's not far off, and it was just an inspiration for us to say, "Wouldn't it be great to have an organization like this focused on women?"
So, we're VP level and above. We also have a lot of CEOs and presidents who are women that are a part of the organization, but we focus on VP and above.
As you mentioned, probably the heart of what we do is what we call our **core groups**. It is this group of 10 individuals. We go through a very curated process of finding the right group of 10 to come together. They meet every month, and there's an executive coach in the room.
It's called **core** for a reason; it is the heart of the service that we provide. But around that, we have all sorts of different services and resources that you can tap into.
We have our own programming that you can attend as much or as little as you would want to. You can tap into the whole network through our community product. We even have clubhouses in three cities across the U.S. that you can use.
So, there are lots of things that are kind of around the core experience, but that truly is the heart of what we do.
| |
Sam Parr | What was the original idea? How is it different than how it evolved into what it is today? What was the original premise?
| |
Carolyn Childers | I, as we did this last fundraise, it was funny. We pulled out our seed deck of what we were showing when we were raising, and it didn't change that much, which is kind of phenomenal.
You always hear so many stories of, you know, "We tried this, we needed to pivot because this wasn't working or that wasn't working." The heart of what we wanted to do was always very much what it is today.
I think the biggest change that we've undergone is that most of our services were all happening in person when we launched. That's the reason why we had kind of these physical spaces; we had the clubhouses, and we were doing core in person.
But with the pandemic, everything moved over to virtual, which has, you know, in some ways been a small silver lining for us. We've been able to extend to more cities faster because we don't have to do big build-outs.
It's actually even more powerful and engaging for our members because this truly is like the movie trope of the busy woman. Now, instead of having to trek across a city to get to a clubhouse to get the benefit of Chief, it's now in your pocket wherever you go.
| |
Sam Parr | and at this. Did I see 15,000 members is that right | |
Carolyn Childers | it's close to 15,000 members yes | |
Sam Parr |
Wow, or maybe it's at... I forget what the... You guys, you... Whatever it's at, 13 or 12, whatever it said recently. Because you raised $100 million in funding at a $1.1 billion valuation. So it's like... it's a pretty huge business. And you only launched, what, 3 years ago? Like, launched live publicly 3 years ago?
| |
Carolyn Childers | 3 years ago yes | |
Sam Parr | that's crazy right | |
Carolyn Childers | It is... I can remember back when we were launching and we were like, "We're going to have just 100 great members as we launch." We were really excited.
Even from the very beginning, during the launch that we had, we had thousands of people sign up for a waitlist for Chief. Now, yes, we're close to 15,000 members, but we have a waitlist of close to 60,000, which is kind of incredible.
I think it just really shows how much a community like this is truly needed and the value that it's really creating for our members.
| |
Sam Parr | So, let's say you're at 15,000. Let's just say the average price is $6,000. That's $90,000,000 in revenue. I imagine the truth is like give or take 20%. Maybe, and I don't know if you say that or not what it is, but regardless, if it's in that ballpark, it's a pretty substantial business. In such a case, that's let's say $60,000,000 to $100,000,000 in recurring revenue in 3 years. That's wild, right?
| |
Carolyn Childers | It is, it is. I think what's really... what I feel so much privilege in, on any given day, when people hear about Chief, is that it's such a mission-oriented business. That's what they think of. They're like, "Oh, it seems like such a good business with a great mission."
I don't think that people realize that it's both: a great mission and a great business. I think, you know, we live in a capitalist society, and being able to have both of those things come together is... well, it's important.
| |
Sam Parr |
I would say that you just do the math. Like, it makes sense... if you scale to like $50,000,000 in recurring revenue in 3 years, that's a great company. You're probably a lot higher than that. I mean, what... do they know how to do math? Can they use a calculator?
| |
Carolyn Childers | I don't know I've I've talked to a lot of vcs so there still needed to be a lot of convincing | |
Sam Parr | So, when I started The Hustle—my company that we sold to HubSpot—it was basically just a daily email. It was relatively easy compared to what you have started because the person receiving the email had no idea if there were a million people or just one person getting it. That didn't impact their experience.
Then we started Trends, which is like our subscription business. That had a paid community, and that was tough because I had to make it cool before I thought it was going to be cool. I had to convince my friends to join and post in it, making it seem like a restaurant that already has customers before you actually know if it's any good.
I know these businesses can be tough for that reason. How were you able to get your first, let's say, 10 or even 100 people? Because it's like you're selling them something that isn't real, but it only becomes real when they're sold on it and bought in, and they commit to it.
| |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, I mean, I think that there were a lot of small tactics that all bubbled up to a meaningful investment in the brand. This allowed people to understand what we were trying to build and who we were trying to build it for.
We were really fortunate to have some amazing early members that kind of kept that ball rolling. One of the things we did was have a physical space at the onset. The physical space, in some ways, was like marketing for us to show the brand we were trying to develop and really bring that to life. That was a conscious decision and investment into the brand.
Things like not having a social media presence at all were also part of our strategy. We felt like, "What were we going to say? How would it be meaningful?" This actually helped create a really interesting tightness among the people in the community, as opposed to trying to shout it out into all the different social media areas.
There were a lot of things that I think we did, and ultimately, word-of-mouth was by far our entire acquisition strategy, which was pretty amazing. So, you just became the mouthpiece.
| |
Sam Parr | You just emailed like your 10 or 20 closest friends. They probably told a handful of people. You just said, "Hey, we're launching this in like 60 days. Apply and we'll let you know if this is a good fit."
| |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, I mean, it was not just our closest friends. We definitely sent some cold emails out to people that we had never met before. I remember even some early VC conversations where we were showing, you know, "Here's our first members," and they were like, "Oh, so are these just all your friends and Lindsay's friends?" [Lindsay is my co-founder.]
We were like, "Actually, no, that's not the case." It was amazing. A cold email to C-suite executives at Fortune 500 companies, and people were excited to join. I think being able to also reference the YPO model, which a lot of people understood, helped to create some of that traction, even within the companies themselves.
So our model is one where we sell directly to her. She then goes and gets it sponsored within her company. We didn't know how well or how easily that sponsorship would go, and companies signed up really quickly. I think for them, they look at, you know, one-on-one executive coaching, which can be $30,000 for a six-month engagement. So relative to that, this was a great way for them to invest in some of their top talent.
| |
Sam Parr | And you got to... I was reading, I think. So, you launched—I'm looking at my notes—you launched like around December 2018. Within like a month or two, you passed 7 figures in recurring revenue or like a run rate, right? But you had that cash in, and then by the end of the year, you were nearing $10,000,000 in revenue. I mean, that's pretty wild.
| |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, we started to sell at the end of 2018. We didn't officially launch services until February of 2019, and we were just in New York City.
We continued to add members in New York City until around mid-2019. We went and raised our Series A, largely to expand into new cities, which at the time was a more capital-intensive way of expanding because we were in person. We had to make investments into clubhouses.
So, we were in the midst of those build-outs when the pandemic happened. That's when we made the full pivot over to virtual, and as we did that, engagement actually went up across every one of our services.
| |
Sam Parr | definitely | |
Carolyn Childers | It was a time when something like Chief was needed more than ever. It allowed us to expand in a much different way.
| |
Sam Parr | How did you know what to tell the coaches? Like, what to tell them about how to run their group? Or if it's at YPO, they've got facilitators. I don't know what you call your folks, but basically, I've done a couple of these things and they're pretty amazing.
It's basically, and some people get insulted when I say this, but it's basically group therapy. It's awesome and incredibly necessary. But a good facilitator or therapist makes or breaks it a little bit.
| |
Carolyn Childers | They do, they do. We do a lot of vetting to make sure that we have the right coaches coming on, who act as we call them, guides on our platform. They're just fabulous.
We have close to 400 executive coaches that act as guides for us now. For us, I think there's a little bit of a beginning introduction into core that is very similar for all core groups. In the first few sessions, there's a very prescribed way of bringing the group together and making sure that everybody creates a deep sense of community, even within that group.
From there, a lot of it really is for the coach to decide the right path for that group because every group is different in terms of what they need and what they're looking for. We have created a lot of content, but it's up to the coach and the group to really decide which direction they want to take those conversations.
A vast majority of those conversations are real-time, dependent on what's happening with the people in the room. For example, if somebody's about to go through a massive restructuring within their company, they're going to want to have a little bit more airtime in that session, with people helping them work through some of those things.
So, it's heavily structured and guided, but with a lot of flexibility depending on what is needed for each group.
| |
Sam Parr | So, I want to kind of nerd out a little bit on this, on these models, on this business, this community business model. I think it's awesome.
I actually think that, with the remote work environment we are in now, you're going to see a lot more of these pop up. I think you're the first of these new age ones.
But I want to talk about some old school ones. I want to tell you about my research, and you tell me if you've heard about any of these. Have you heard of World 50?
| |
Carolyn Childers | I have yes | |
Sam Parr | What do you know about World 50? So, I... you're going to know all the ones that I know and more. You're the only person that is able to nerd out with me on this stuff, so that's why I like you.
| |
Carolyn Childers |
Yeah, I mean, they're all... What I have generally found is that most of the communities that existed before now were all very focused on the most senior people, for CEOs like, you know... And a lot of what I'm guessing you're about to list are all that.
| |
Sam Parr | they're all that | |
Carolyn Childers | but I think yeah they're all that no no | |
Sam Parr | no no one isn't I have one that isn't | |
Carolyn Childers | okay what's the one that isn't | |
Sam Parr | On Deck. A lot of people know what On Deck is. I don't even think On Deck knows what On Deck is. I think they're still trying to figure it out, like their existence or, you know, their identity.
But they are attempting to do something. It seems as though they've... I have no inside information; this is all just looking at their website. It seems like they're pivoting into kind of what you're doing.
| |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, I mean, I have deep respect for them as a company. I think a lot of times what you often find is there's this question: what leads, does community lead or does curriculum and professional development lead? I think for them... | |
Sam Parr | when it's education I think I think it's hard that's it's hard | |
Carolyn Childers | It is, and for us, community has always led. You could extend that to many other paradigms, like: does community lead, or does space lead? What is the actual service that you are providing?
For us, we knew that community had to be the thing that always led. Even if you think about some of the analogies that you could make, like business school as an analogy. Yes, a lot of people think you're going back for the curriculum, but I don't think you do. I think you go back for the network and the people.
So for us, that has always been the major thing that we knew we had to focus on. I think, for On Deck, I'm not sure that they lead with community as much as they do with kind of the programming. That, I think, is the difference that I would see there.
| |
Sam Parr | So, here are a few businesses in the space that might surprise the listener. We talked about World 50. As I know it, World 50 is basically for CMOs. I think just CMOs, right?
| |
Carolyn Childers | I thought it was broader than CMOS. I thought it was actually more of like CEO individuals.
| |
Sam Parr | Started as CMOs, but yeah, I think it's expanded beyond that. Basically, I think they were sold. So, the CMO or whoever it is, and there's like agency owners. I have a friend who's part of it, and he runs an agency. I'm pretty sure it's $60,000 a year, so quite expensive. I think it's only two events a year that they do, so it's almost basically an events business. They sold for $100 million recently to a private equity company.
And then another one is Aventa. Have you heard of Aventa?
| |
Carolyn Childers | I haven't heard of aventa | |
Sam Parr | Okay, so it's E V A N T A. AventA was sold to Gartner for about $250,000,000. It was almost like the same thing, but it was worse because it was advertising-driven.
The attendees would log on, and it would be like this Chief Information Officer. Frankly, I don't even know what a Chief Information Officer is, as I've never worked at a really big company. In order to have a Chief Information Officer, you're going to be a pretty huge company.
They would host these webinars where a Chief Information Officer and a bunch of others would come and do like a group therapy thing. They would explain the pros and cons of working remotely and all that. I don't know, whatever. They just complained and improved with one another and all that type of thing.
They would charge companies like Bank of America or some big sponsor money to be there, and they sold the company to Gartner for about $300,000,000. It's pretty wild.
| |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, event businesses in general are a type of business model that I didn't really have much familiarity with until Chief. I would never consider ourselves an event company, but it's been pretty interesting to see the opportunities that exist for people in that space, for sure. | |
Sam Parr | So, what are the opportunities you see with events?
I used to own an event business, and we did like 7 figures in a year with it. It was a pain in the ass. It was so hard and so stressful.
There are not many businesses where, if it rains, you're screwed. If it rains one day out of 365 days, you're poor.
| |
Carolyn Childers | Well, I mean, I think that there are all sorts of different angles that people have created in that world. I think a lot of the content businesses have even started to extend into that a little bit more.
But, you know, like Summit Series, I think, was just a really interesting model of what they were trying to create. It had a lot of community within it, but again, it was more events-led than I think community-led.
So, it's been an area that we definitely pay attention to because it feels related, but not in our exact wheelhouse for sure.
| |
Sam Parr | have you heard of vistage vistage is is an interesting one too right | |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, Vistage is basically like YPO. They focus specifically on that CEO and president profile. I think they're close to a $200,000,000 business. | |
Sam Parr | I heard that they're doing $100,000,000 in profit a year. That's what I heard from a relatively trusted source, but I don't have proof of that. Would that surprise you?
| |
Carolyn Childers | I think that if you look at some of those business models, let's take Vistage or YPO. You know, YPO is a nonprofit and yet might be one of the most profitable nonprofits, I would imagine.
What we have is our biggest expenses; you know, we have these spaces. We invest heavily into our coaches and we do a lot of that stuff for YPO. They actually don't have paid facilitators; they train members to be the facilitators of a lot of those groups.
So it's an interesting model to think about.
| |
Sam Parr | I | |
Carolyn Childers | Would imagine that as a part of that, they do pretty well. But I've never seen their financials, so I cannot speak with authority on either of those businesses. | |
Sam Parr | and wait ypo you've never seen | |
Carolyn Childers | no no we've never seen | |
Sam Parr | it's public isn't it can't you just log in and because it's a nonprofit | |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, they bucket things in ways that I think makes it pretty difficult to really discern what's underneath each thing. So, I'm not fully able to break that down.
| |
Sam Parr | Right. Are you guys, as chief, able to run it mostly breakeven, or were you losing a lot in order to get big fast? Because it seems like it worked.
| |
Carolyn Childers | I would reframe the latter statement to say we were spending to make the experience as strong as possible. I wouldn't say that we were spending to grow faster. Like I said, most of how we have grown has been through word-of-mouth, so we haven't had to continue to just pour money into a marketing cycle.
But for us, particularly over the pandemic and everything else, we wanted to make sure that we were really investing in the member experience. We're continuing to do that, and that's why we wanted to raise more capital to support this effort.
You know, I think about when brands are made, and it's in those tough times. For us, being able to be there for our members through the pandemic was crucial. At the very beginning of the pandemic, there were furloughs and all of those challenges. How we invested in that experience over that time was really important to us.
| |
Sam Parr | If an employee, if one of your members quits or leaves their job, do you just have a team that will holler at their new employer and be like, "Hey, you know Ashley was a member of Chief. Her, you know, IBM no longer pays for it." And then you somehow get in with that company a little bit?
| |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, I mean, I think that is actually one of the other reasons that we wanted to go in and raise this money. Right now, it is an A to C to B business. We develop the relationship with her; she then goes and gets it sponsored. What we have found is that when she asks, the sponsorship has actually been pretty easy to get. | |
Sam Parr | yeah it's a no brainer | |
Carolyn Childers | The barrier is her asking. So, us going and actually building more of those relationships directly with the company seems like a no-brainer for them to proactively do more of this instead of reactively approving.
I think that's an opportunity for us to explore to really take that burden off of her, so she doesn't have to go and get that sponsorship.
You know, we definitely see that 20% of the workforce changes jobs in any given year. So, there's definitely a lot of new relationships for us to help both the companies and the members navigate. | |
Sam Parr | We are talking about Tiger 21, and it's cool. So, Tiger 21 is basically a community for people who have, I think, above $10,000,000 in liquid net worth. That's cool; that's pretty sexy. You're just hanging around with rich folks all the time. That's great!
But it's actually kind of a tough sell, I would imagine, because it's the person paying for it. When I heard about Chief, I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is like..." you know, when our company sold, we were only 40 employees. We were probably just crossing that threshold where we could afford to send only a couple of employees to things like this.
I was thinking about my leadership team, and I'm like, "Man, if one of them came to me and asked for this, like, this would just be the easiest of like, 'Yeah, yeah, totally.'" I would probably make them sign a deal that says, "Alright, but if you quit within a year, you owe us some reimbursement."
But I was like, "Yeah, this is just an easy sell for Chief." I understand why this company is going to get so big.
| |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, I mean, I think we've definitely heard stories where there are some companies that say, "Well, you're going to go in and you're going to meet new people, and that could actually open up new opportunities for you that you may not otherwise have."
However, it's actually the exact opposite. What we have found is that when a company says no to the sponsorship, it is a really clear signal to a lot of these people that, "Okay, you're not investing in me. You don't value me."
So, that is actually the trigger for someone to think about leaving and finding other opportunities. They will self-sponsor and go find something else, rather than being sponsored, being happy in their job, and continuing to grow as a leader for that company.
| |
Sam Parr |
What other... you know, you're focused on your thing, but a lot of times what we do here is talk about ideas. So things that we may or may not do, but it's interesting. Based off the intel that I know, what other niches or opportunities do you like this business model for?
| |
Hubspot | Yeah, I mean, I think that this business model, in particular, is one that will have a really interesting next few years. As people are still working from home and navigating this hybrid world, they are wanting that community and those connections.
I think in any area where that feeling of loneliness is still really present coming out of the pandemic, there are some really interesting opportunities. The hard part is that the nice aspect of Chief is that ultimately, it's the company that can sponsor it.
So, how do you find those areas, those demographics, and those people who need that community and will crave it, but also have a company willing to make that investment in them? That's the one-two punch that I think makes Chief really interesting and harder to find outside of the professional sphere.
Our software is the worst! Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best. HubSpot: grow better. | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, well, I was thinking about this model, and I was like, it makes perfect sense for this group.
I was like, you know, we have a problem with women not being equally represented. So, of course, I would invest in this in order to help my folks.
In doing so, whenever you have a group that feels disrespected or like they don't like how they're being treated, they bond together in a great way. It's like "us versus the world." You know, it mobilizes them, and that type of dynamic is what every great community is based on.
I was thinking about, well, if you just did this for anyone, like let's say, I think there's a company called Venwise. Have you heard of Venwise?
| |
Carolyn Childers | yeah yeah | |
Sam Parr | I think it's basically just what you're doing, but for everyone. I'm like, "Well, why is that succeeding? Why is Chief succeeding and not Venwise?" Those companies are probably succeeding, but they're nowhere near as big and impactful as you guys.
It's because of this idea of "it's us versus the world." You need that in any type of community, I think, in order to mobilize one another and to feel bonded. | |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, I think Venwise focuses on senior executives, probably like C-suite executives and high-growth startups. That's their focus.
A lot of what they do really centers on that peer group model solely and doesn't have a lot of the broader community around it. It doesn't have that shared mission.
I would potentially reframe what you said just a tad to say that I don't know if it's as much an "us versus them" situation as it is a galvanizing mission that brings you together. It creates a feeling of togetherness that doesn't have to be at somebody else's expense.
I think that is what the mission of Chief really allows for: that broader connectedness within the community. | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, that's what I meant. I didn't mean "us versus the world," but it's definitely not like we're trying to kick anyone's ass. It's like, you know, not everyone can identify with how we feel. Finally, I'm amongst my tribe, and others don't exactly understand.
You know, Vistage could be cool. I think Vistage, I think their whole shtick is kind of like blue-collar. So, like, someone who owns a moving or plumbing company that does like $10 or $20 million in revenue. That person probably says to themselves, "I feel alone. I don't hang out with people like me. I need to find my people."
So, it's like that finding your tribe may be a little bit better than "us versus the world."
| |
Carolyn Childers | Yes, exactly. It is that feeling of, you know, I don't have a group of people that understand my context easily. Finding that, being able to tap into that, and to have the confidentiality that goes with some of that too is important. Because a lot of what happens in these peer groups is, you know, pretty raw, honest, authentic conversations that are hard to have with just anyone.
| |
Sam Parr | How are you, as a founder, able to get intel and insight into your customers and your product? Because I bet you don't go to some of these groups. I mean, you don't go. That wouldn't be great to have you, you know, like the big boss, in a bunch of these groups. So, how are you able to learn quickly and figure out what's working and what's not?
| |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, I mean, we do not... it's a confidential space for them to have their conversation. So, we're not able to watch what is happening in each of these sessions.
But I think, you know, even going back to what we were just talking about, there is a galvanizing feeling around this mission. Our members are just so passionate about this mission that they are not shy to give us feedback on anything and everything.
So, it has truly been an amazing experience to be able to get all of that feedback and create some of this in partnership. We have some amazing members who have stepped forward. For example, we have one member who said, "I'm going to run a sub-board services community group within Chief, bring in speakers, and help each other find opportunities."
So, you've just seen such an uprising of both feedback and a really big interest in stepping forward and helping to create things together.
| |
Sam Parr | So, for one of our communities, we have about 15,000 paying members—sort of like you have, but not even close to the same amount of revenue. We have a lot of people, but the hardest part, in terms of tactics for starting a community, is getting people to participate online. It's literally just the friction.
A lot of the things that I've done involve building various communities on Facebook groups. I've never seen a platform or a community platform get as much engagement in terms of the ratio of people in the group to those who participate in the group.
However, I've seen a couple of friends with huge blogs. For example, one of these blogs is Financial Samurai (financialsamurai.com), which is an awesome personal finance blog. He was like, "Oh, I'm just going to create a forum on my website (financialsamurai.com/form)." Even though he has this huge audience, the forum is crickets. It's because literally going to that website and posting on a forum is... it's like a barrier.
| |
Sam Parr | The ratio of people in the community and readers to participants is about 1%. Whereas on Facebook, I've found it to be like if you have 100 people in the group, only 10 or 20 people will actually participate, which is pretty astounding.
Have you been able to crack that code with getting people to log in, go to your website, and make it all happen? How do you encourage participation?
| |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, absolutely. So, we started in the early days with a pretty similar tactic, candidly. We asked ourselves, "Where are they already?" and "How do we not create that additional friction of needing to go to our proprietary app or website?"
So, we actually started on Slack in the early days, and it was amazing to see the amount of interaction that was happening there. People were stepping forward to help each other, connect, and do all sorts of different things.
The problem is that Slack is definitely not built for a community of... | |
Sam Parr | no man slack sucks I hate it | |
Carolyn Childers | Like, you can't... you don't even know who you're talking to unless they properly filled out their profile. It's just not the forum.
So, we switched over to our own in 2020, and it has sustained. I think for us, a lot of it is around, you know, there are these known touchpoints that are going to come up. Every month, you're going to have a core meeting that's going to pull you into the product in order for you to get what you need to have that conversation.
There are many of those types of things. There are many utilities that exist within the platform that pull you in, and then once you're in, they draw you into a lot of the community aspects.
So, it's been really great to see. It's everything from, you know, "I'm looking to hire somebody" to "I need an employment lawyer." There's just so much need.
For you to have a vetted network to be able to tap into, you can't really do that on LinkedIn at this point. | |
Carolyn Childers | Because if your LinkedIn is like mine, I think I know about 20% of the people that I'm connected to at this point.
It's a really valuable utility and resource that we've been really excited about. It's great to see how much people have engaged with it. It's not just a platform to go on and doomscroll or look at our content; it's actual utility for them.
| |
Sam Parr | What I'm about to say kind of sounds like a backhanded compliment, but it's not. It's very much a compliment.
Basically, you guys have created this brand. The reason it sounds bad is because I was going to use the word "elitist," but that's not fair. I don't mean "elitist" in a bad way; maybe "elite," like just "badasses," you know? It's like Harvard or something, where it's hard to get into.
There's not much on the internet about you guys because I don't think you have a Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. You only have LinkedIn. So, there's this thing where it's like, I don't know if you like to admit it, but it's like FOMO (fear of missing out). It's like, "Oh man, the cool people who I want to be with are part of this thing. I want to be part of it, but I can't. I gotta get accepted."
How do you go about creating a brand like that on purpose? Is this just something that came naturally to you? How do you make this where it's like... I mean, you just executed that strategy well.
| |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, I mean, we like to think of ourselves as a vetted community. We're not an exclusive community; we're not an elite community, but we are vetted.
So many of the people that are members de facto fall into the mentor position or, you know, the manager. For it to be a beneficial community for her, it has to be vetted for people that are more her peers.
I think there is a level of aspirational branding that we wanted to create with Chief. Candidly, if you think about even like three years ago as we were building this, if you heard the term "a women's professional network," you would not think of something aspirational. It would be like warm white wine, name tags, and pantsuits. That is what would come to mind when you think of a women's professional network.
So, it was really important for us to create something that felt like we were celebrating our members instead of what so often a women's professional network gets turned into. That was why we talked about this at the beginning. We wanted to have a space that felt like it brought that brand to life and helped to showcase what we meant by that.
The space really allowed that brand to come through. It's why we didn't want to be on a lot of those social networks. My co-founder and I were talking about a social media strategy, and we were like, "What are we gonna do? Just put inspirational quotes out there every week?" We've seen that. How do we make this feel different?
So, it was very important for us to really create a brand that we thought our members deserved.
| |
Sam Parr | How do you think this story is going to end? In terms of like, is someone going to buy you? Do you think that like LinkedIn would buy you? Do you think you want to go public? What do you think is going to happen 5 or 10 years down the line? | |
Carolyn Childers | I think that we are excited to keep any and all options open. But at the end of the day, the entire value of this organization is our members. Our members are here because they need the value that we create, but they also care deeply about our mission.
So, anything that we do, any partner that we want to talk to, or any strategy that we enact has to be very much in line with that mission. I've been very fortunate in going the VC route that we've been able to find the right partners who can come on as those VCs that understand that. That leads everything and anything for us.
| |
Sam Parr | would you wanna be ceo of a public company | |
Carolyn Childers | It has never been on my bucket list of things that I am craving to do. However, I want Chief to be as successful as it could possibly be. I want there to be a great outcome for our members, our team, etc. That leads more than anything.
| |
Sam Parr | This is awesome! This is really intriguing. You haven't done a ton of podcasts, I think, right?
| |
Carolyn Childers | No, we have our own "The New Rules of Business" by Chief. But I've not been on many podcasts as a guest.
| |
Sam Parr | Do you think... good? I noticed that, and that's why I wanted to talk to you.
Do you think that you're just so under the radar? I think there are so many other businesses in our little circle-jerk startup world. It's kind of full of stupid hype, and there are so many of them that we talk about so much, but they're like kind of bullshit—like not good companies—and they're going to go nowhere.
But then you folks are the exact opposite, where you seem like you actually have a pretty substantial business. I think it's going to be incredibly big. Very few people are talking about you, you know what I mean?
I find that... I kind of think that's actually cool. I wanted to know, how does that make you feel?
| |
Carolyn Childers | I'm right where I want to be. I think there's actually something really amazing about being under-hyped. I really like making sure that we are focused on the most important thing, which is building a great business.
Even for Lindsay and me, as co-founders, part of the reason why we don't do a lot of publicity and other things is because we are actually trying to showcase our members more than ourselves. They're actually a hell of a lot more impressive than either of us.
So, it feels right for what we are creating to be heads down and focused on building a great business versus building hype.
| |
Sam Parr | yeah well it's awesome where where are you from where were you raised | |
Carolyn Childers | I grew up in ithaca new york area | |
Sam Parr | okay so you so and and where's your cofounder from | |
Carolyn Childers | Also, upstate New York, but like New York City upstate New York, like an hour. Not my true upstate New York.
| |
Sam Parr | Well, that's badass! I'm happy we got to talk. I think it's amazing what you guys have accomplished. You're under the radar, I think.
The reason I wanted to talk to you was that I noticed not a lot of people had talked to you. I don't know, I feel like maybe I could take a little bit of pride in spotting this winner not quite early on. You already raised money at a $1 billion valuation, but maybe, just maybe, a $1 billion will be considered quite early for how the story ends.
So, I'm really appreciative that you guys decided to come on and give me a shot.
| |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, no, I was excited to come on and have the conversation. Like I said, I think a lot of people... I remember the very early days of even just trying to get a lawyer to help us establish the company.
I was talking about wanting to be VC funded, and I literally could not get a lawyer to work with me because they were like, "This should not be a VC funded business. This is a very nice lifestyle business." So, I couldn't even get a lawyer because I was going to pay to do this.
It is nice to be able to celebrate some of these wins and for people to know that we have a deep mission, but it is a great business too. | |
Sam Parr | and lawyers wouldn't talk to you and and you're happy that you're able to like celebrate this win | |
Carolyn Childers |
Yeah, so... we couldn't even pay lawyers to represent us. So it's nice to have these wins and be able to, you know, not only show that we're a really mission-oriented business, but we're a great business too.
| |
Sam Parr | And I think that's, first of all, I hate when people say, "Oh, this is a nice life. This is a nice lifestyle business." I hate that.
For one, they're trying to be a little insulting, and for two, they're wrong. Because lifestyle businesses are like... what does that mean? It's a lifestyle business? Oh, like it's just a company that can make like $20 or $30 million a year in profit, and I could just own it all? Yeah, then it is a lifestyle. But what's that mean?
Like, I don't know, like Mars Candy, a family-owned business that's like the largest company in the world. They have a sick lifestyle. So, I cannot stand when they say that. I think that's really stupid.
But with your business, I do think, "Man, I would want to be greedy and own the whole thing. I wouldn't want to raise money." So, is there any... do you think you'll have regret about raising money, or at least about raising as much money as you have? Because the business model is pretty freaking perfect. It's like a pretty efficient, amazing model, I think.
| |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, I mean, I think that there is a definite strategy that businesses like ours could have of going very slowly and using proceeds from the business to feed back into the services that we want to create. That's definitely one way that the strategy could go.
I do not think that I would have any regret with the way in which we are going because I think we're impatient in trying to build a really meaningful, powerful network for badass women that need this.
At the heart of the mission is to drive more women into positions of leadership and keep them there. It's over 200 years before we get to gender parity in senior executive positions. If a little bit of dilution means that we can go and execute on that mission faster, I'm game.
| |
Sam Parr | I understand why people invested. You're very good at your pitch; you've honed it in. You seem like a force to be reckoned with. Congratulations on everything! I'm happy I got to speak with you.
Thank you for coming on. Do you use social media? Is there anything that you want to plug, like your... I don't even think I saw you using social media, did I?
| |
Carolyn Childers | Yeah, I'm not as much of a social media person as my co-founder. I'm on LinkedIn, but I think the thing I would plug is our podcast, "The New Rules of Business" by Chief, which we just launched last year. So if people want to check that out, they can see us there. | |
Sam Parr | how's it going podcasts are a pain in the ass to grow aren't they | |
Carolyn Childers | It's fun, though! I actually like that with every single podcast episode, I'm kind of like, "This is a nice little learning experience for me too." You're just talking with experts in their fields and learning a ton through it. I'm really enjoying it.
| |
Sam Parr | I think it's fun to do so at the hustle. When we were acquired by HubSpot, we no longer had advertising. Before that, we were focused on making money through advertising, and that was very tough.
It was like, "Alright, how do we get downloads up?" For you folks, maybe because you're not making money directly from it, it's still important to grow your audience. However, it's not like you're going to go hungry.
So, yeah, if I were in your position, I would think it's awesome as well.
| |
Carolyn Childers | yeah that is true that we are not a advertising led podcast business | |
Sam Parr | I appreciate it thank you | |
Carolyn Childers | yeah thank you this is fun |