Interview with Terri Mead: Author, Founder, Angel investor, Pilot, Public speaker, and Podcaster. Terri's book: Piloting Your Life, as well as her career in angel investing and working with life science companies, are explored.
This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. The series interviews women and women-identified entrepreneurs, founders, business owners, and gurus across all industries to investigate those voices in business today. Both the platform and discussion are designed to further the global conversation in regards to the changing climate in entrepreneurial and founding roles.
TRANSCRIPTION
*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors
[00:00:07] Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series will contain interviews I conduct with female and female identified entrepreneurs, founders, co-founders, business owners and industry gurus. These podcasts speak with women and women, identified individuals across all industries in order to shed light for those just getting into the entrepreneurial game, as well as those deeply embedded within it histories, current companies and lessons learned are explored in the conversations I have with these insightful and talented powerhouses. The series is designed to investigate a female and female identified perspective in what has largely been a male dominated industry in the USA to date. I look forward to contributing to the national dialog about the long overdue change of women in American business arenas and in particular, entrepreneurial roles. You can contact me via my media company website Wild Dot Agency. That's w i l d dot agency or my personal website. Patricia Kathleen, dot com. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.
[00:01:29] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I am Patricia, your host, and I am thrilled today to be talking with Terri Mead. Terri is partner of Bravo Ventures, author, angel, investor pilot, public speaker and podcast to welcome Terri.
[00:01:47] Well, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
[00:01:51] I'm excited to eye.
[00:01:52] A couple of weeks ago, I attended Women's Venture Summit, where I had the honor of hearing Terri, of hearing you speak and you got into a little bit of your history and your book, which we're going to get into today.
[00:02:04] But I cannot wait to kind of unearth. I have so many questions and I'm really excited you have such a prolific and dynamic past. I just can't I can't wait to talk about it and future to come. I have no doubt a quick roadmap for everyone listening. Today, we are going to cover actress, academic background and early professional life. And we're going to drop into her current work with Bravo Ventures. Then we'll go straight to her book, which is called Piloting Your Life. And after that, we'll go into goals that Terri has for the next three years. And then we will wrap the entire podcast up with advice that she has for anyone looking to get involved or glean some of her wisdom or possibly contact and work with. Terri, a quick bio on Terri before I start peppering her with questions. She is the managing partner of Bravo Ventures, assisting life science companies with their digital health strategies and president of Solutions to Projects providing IT compliance and expert witness consulting services. She is an active angel investor, a Springboard advisor, a podcast. Her podcast is called Piloting Your Life and author of the book Piloting Your Life. Terri invest in early stage digital health startups and Women's and Children's Health. Her spirit in her spare time, Terri loves to fly helicopters around San Francisco Bay Area, especially under the Golden Gate Bridge. And I want that to be my bio.
[00:03:31] I think we should start with saying, like, I need to do something as excellent as writing helicopters, piloting helicopters around the and under the Golden Gate Bridge. That sounds both terrifying. And if that's what you're doing in your off time, we need to you need to hang out.
[00:03:48] Well, I think you might go surfboarding or go surfing every single morning or as many mornings as you can. So I think I'm living on the edge, too.
[00:03:57] It's true. But I can take my ways. I feel like a helicopter.
[00:04:00] Well, we can get into that, too, because I know a lot about helicopter piloting and it takes a certain amount of just Jinnah's secure about the in this like very devil may care attitude on some level because the conditions are so crazy.
[00:04:16] I do love pilots in general. I think that piloting is an amazing pretense and body to kind of structure your work around. So I can't wait to get into that. I want to start off with the roadmap and have you just drop into, like, your academic background and early professional life.
[00:04:33] So I think it's important for me to lay this out, I live up in the Silicon Valley and I was born in San Francisco and grew up in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, and I've never lived anywhere else. And the reason why I want to throw this out is, is just to show kind of my bias in how I talk about things and how I approach things as a cis gender, middle class, educated white woman married to a cis gendered white, middle class man who's educated, coming from the same with with my parents, because I think for anybody listening to what I have to talk to, this has become something that's important for anyone listening to it to understand my biases and my perspective with anything and any apologies around that. So I grew up in public schools. My undergrad and my MBA are both from Cal State Hayward. And the reason I bring that up as important is I lack pedigree from a university perspective in a world in Silicon Valley where pedigree is incredibly important.
[00:05:39] And I think only in the last two weeks have I stopped apologizing for lack of pedigree with my with my education. And and I've stopped seeing it as something that is a negative, that somehow I didn't go to Stanford or MIT or Harvard or USC. And is it something that comes up on a regular basis in my investing life, which which I now find absolutely ridiculous, but it's at the ripe old age of forty nine.
[00:06:10] I recently rejected the snobbery around the university pedigree.
[00:06:17] I can I completely agree and I think it's it couples.
[00:06:21] What you said earlier about, you know, it's it's funny that we're even in this realm where we're competing with talking about which university you went to when a lot of people are just talking about whether or not they went to university.
[00:06:33] So it's. Well, the next level.
[00:06:36] Yeah. And it's the opportunities. I didn't have the opportunity to go to anything more than a state school because I have an identical twin sister. And what my parents did, OK, they had their own business, they had their own house. We didn't qualify for any financial aid. And I don't think it even occurred to my parents to incur any debt to send us off to college. And so with sending both of us off at the same time, there was a finite budget. And even though I loved Pepperdine when I went to it, I was still resenting my mom a little bit for showing me Pepperdine because I was like, yes, this is where I want to go. And she said, you can't go here unless you get a full ride. And at that point, even though I had great grades, I just didn't qualify for Pepperdine in Malibu.
[00:07:19] Yes. I was thinking I feel like that's a really like a coastal tropical. Got you. Yeah.
[00:07:26] Yeah. No, yeah. So but for a lot of years, I apologize for that. And I no longer I no longer apologize for it. I got a great education. The early academic also ties into my early professional career because my dad had a CPA firm. So I was doing filing in his office at the age of nine and at 16 I was doing tax returns and financial statements and at 20 I was doing audits and reviews. And in between I worked for all of our clients, a lot of our clients businesses, whether it was helping out in seasons at the chocolate, at our friend's chocolate manufacturing company, boxing bunnies or Easter eggs, or helping out at a law firm or helping to set up a candy and not distribution company. I got exposed before the age of twenty to more than I would say.
[00:08:15] Most people get exposed to or have work opportunities before the age of 30. So after I graduated and with my undergrad, I then kind of bounced around to a couple of different opportunities.
[00:08:28] I took a job in San Francisco and completely underestimated my capabilities and my experience. And after about six weeks I asked for more. They said no and I said, OK, well, I'll give you six weeks notice and let me help you hire and train the next person coming in. But the opportunities aren't here. And I completely overestimated the job and underestimated underestimated my qualifications. And so eventually I went back to work with my dad. I think there were expectations that I know there were expectations that I take over his firm, but there was no way I was going to do tax season, which turned into three times a year and month after month, quarter after quarter, year after year.
[00:09:13] The same thing. I like to build things. I don't like to maintain things.
[00:09:17] So I ended up going to grad school. I was working full time, was a controller and a human resource manager for a local company. And then when I finished, when I was about twenty seven, took me two years to go to grad school. For what was it in it was an MBA for a new venture, small business management. So this was back at a time when entrepreneurial ism was hot at Stanford and Hayward decided to copy some of the Stanford programs.
[00:09:45] And so I got just an incredible opportunity to learn and develop business plans and figure out how to start businesses and learn about venture financing, not realizing that it wasn't going to be until 20 years later when I got into angel investing, that I would really leverage all the things that I learned in grad school. I love the path presents itself and that you get these little bits of information and eventually all of that makes sense.
[00:10:12] Yeah, absolutely. Hindsight in the story are all all of our biography and legacy.
[00:10:17] Right? It's all better when done in hindsight, thinking, doing it as you go would be a.. Skeptical to the point.
[00:10:25] Yeah, exactly. And just the next jump was an important thing, an important time, because after I finished grad school, my husband and I wanted to move to San Francisco. And so I was looking to be a financial analyst and ended up at NorCal Waste Systems doing system implementations. And I fell into it, had no idea what I was doing.
[00:10:46] And I figured, well, worst case scenario, I give 30 days notice and help find and train somebody and then off I go to do something else. And what I ended up doing is falling into the work that I've been doing to some degree over the last 20 years.
[00:11:04] And I feel incredibly grateful for that opportunity. But at the same time, I'm a total opportunist. So I saw the opportunity and then I was able to piece together my business experience, my technology experience and my ability to see the big picture and also dove into details and do project management and wrap that all into leveraging technology to optimize business performance, which is my primary value proposition over the last 20 years.
[00:11:35] So when you say system implementation, are you talking about social tech? Like what system implementation did you start off doing?
[00:11:41] So it was tech? It was. I remember the conversation where the guy said they're doing a JD Edwards implementation, e.g. Edwards, and they said JD Edwards. And then I'll go check it out. And JD Edwards is an enterprise resource planning, manufacturing, resource planning ERP, MRP software similar to Oracle or SAP or NetSuite.
[00:12:05] You know, the more current the more current systems that are out there to really effectively manage the data, the processes and all of the reporting around organizations. So it was technical implementation.
[00:12:21] OK, yeah, I definitely gave it sounds like the backbone for what you're doing. So how long was it until you came to work for Class Brabo Ventures or no help found it or how did so classifiable ventures.
[00:12:34] So a couple of years ago I decided I wanted to raise a venture fund and so I created an LLC.
[00:12:41] Glassboro Ventures started working with an attorney to put together the legal structure and all the documents around. It started to put together the stack because I got very frustrated by the lack of financing venture money that was going towards primarily women founded women led businesses. And so I saw a big opportunity in that, and my personal wealth wasn't enough to really have significant impact as an angel investor. So a couple of years ago, I started Class Brabo Ventures and then when I was at the what was called the Herra Venture Summit, which is now the women's venture summit where we met recently, I saw how other women were investing in the world, coming together and realized that I didn't have to do it through a venture fund, which was good because it was feeling out of alignment with what I wanted to accomplish in the world. I was trying to play in a sandbox that didn't want me the very pro centric space. And I just decided, yeah, that wasn't it wasn't the right thing to do. So I've since pivoted class Bravo ventures into a couple of things. I have two different companies have solutions to projects, which is my my consulting company that where I do it compliance and really it strategy type work and expert witness work for life sciences companies.
[00:14:07] But just this week I've decided I want to pivot some of that as well. So over the course of the next three to four months, that's going to change the the world I'm getting tired of. I'm just getting tired of trying to get people to see the problems that I see.
[00:14:25] And so a couple of years ago, when I became an angel investor, the reason I did is I got tired of the arrogance in life sciences. And the resistance to adopting technology and so I thought, well, why don't I do something different, became an angel investor to see what other opportunities were out there and to see if I could bring technology into Lifesciences. When I say life sciences, I mean biotech, med device diagnostics and also digital health companies.
[00:14:52] And that either bring the technology in so that my value prop could be appreciated or see what the next opportunity was going to bring. I also started doing expert witness work on technology cases where there is litigation around, say there was a technology implementation that went bad that can be brought in on either side to be an expert. But I think I'm also going to shift on that. I'd really like to see more work done to get to better places between the two parties where there's a dispute and look for ways to avoid litigation like mediation or something. I'm definitely looking into that. Yes. Or just being an attorney's consultant where an attorney has some sort of a technical issue that their client has brought to them around systems that I'm familiar with, that they can give me a call and say, hey, do we have a case? Do we not have a case or is there a way for us to remedy this without going to litigation and positioning that I see that there's an opportunity in in that space so that my solutions are projects, consulting is shifting and having to let go of the work that has been incredibly profitable for me for the majority of the last 15 years, but has really dried up since the we've seen more and more cloud solutions. And so so class probably ventures. I published my book under Class Bravo Ventures, and I do a lot of my investing related activities through class Bravo Ventures.
[00:16:40] So can people come on under the LLC? Are you looking for other people to invest or bring their funds? Is are you looking for a partnership or is it a single woman show?
[00:16:52] Right now it's a single woman show. Does it mean that it will always be that way? I continue to learn and as I said, I'm an opportunist, so I'm constantly looking for new and better ways to do things. And I'm constantly learning one of the things that I've talked about with a couple of other women investors, because a lot of US investors do a lot to not only just invest, but we do a lot of startup advising for women founders and others, other underrepresented in the ecosystem. But we also we just give away a lot of time to build the ecosystem, to make it friendlier toward women led businesses and helping them really scale and grow, because a lot of them have products and services for the rest of us.
[00:17:33] And but at the same time, we're seeing our male counterparts not doing nearly the amount of work. And so we just feel like we're just giving a lot away. So I'm talking to a couple of angel investors about potentially creating an underclass Bravo Ventures, because create entity and then we start syndicating deals on Angel list. But because we have created this entity, we don't get management fees like a traditional venture fund, but we could eventually get parity so that on the chance that something does really, really well, we would eventually have some sort of compensation or monetization around the work that we do to really build the ecosystem.
[00:18:17] So there's talk I'm talking to a couple of women about that.
[00:18:21] Yeah. And I want to dove in a little bit more to the social intricacies of what you're talking about. You mentioned it in your speech. Your book addresses pieces of it. But as an angel investor, being a woman alone sets you apart. I don't know the percentage off the top of my head, but the amount of female angel investors or VCs at all are is incredibly small. But I know that in and of itself definitely differentiates you. But I think you personally have things that characterize how you come at investment. And I'm wondering if you can speak to some of the aspects that make you different from your contemporaries, not just men, but even other women, angel investors. And you talk about some of the inconsistencies that you've seen in the community and things like that. Can you elaborate on some of the, I guess, some of the reasons that drove you to develop class brother ventures and kind of invest under your own umbrella?
[00:19:18] So when I first started Angel Investing, I started investing through Stanhill Angels, and I spent two years with that Angel group up here in Silicon Valley. And it was a great training ground, but. It was a very bad fit for me personally, because what I wanted to invest in and what I saw as important didn't necessarily align with most of the members. I ended up on the board and really tried to make it a more inclusive, more open and less of a bro centric boys club type of thing, because even some of the women who were involved were still buying into the whole boys club type of thing. And I found it incredibly frustrating. And it was it was a daily battle. So after two years, I finally was like, I'm done because it took me a year and a half to realize that it wasn't me.
[00:20:18] I was trying to fit into something that that didn't want me, which seems to be I have a habit of mine, a pattern of mine.
[00:20:25] And just like, oh, I'm going to come in, I'm going to play.
[00:20:28] We're all going to be good people. Yeah. No, we don't we don't want you here. That's a whole that's a whole separate other thing. So, I mean, from the get go, I was told that the board was probably not going to approve my application because I didn't fit the profile and I didn't have the wherewithal to ask, well, what's the profile?
[00:20:50] If I had, I probably would have had a better idea of what I was walking into. But I thought that when they approved my application that they made an exception and I thought I had to prove myself. And it was a good, solid year and a half before I realized, wait a second, why am I trying to prove myself? I what I bring to the table is different. And from the very first and I did it took me a year and a half to realize it, sometimes a little slow on the uptake that I was able to see things differently. That you talk about the number of women angel investors. I think I saw a number this morning on headline that there are one hundred thousand women angel investors. And I don't know if it's global or if the US if it's just the US, but we're finally there, finally more of us. And what we look for generally as women might be a little bit different. So in terms of my approach, I don't believe in ROIC at all costs. So I have a philanthropy bucket that I make donations out of. So I don't see my investing as philanthropy. But I also believe that you can do well and you can do good at the same time. And a lot of the women that I share deals with, I call them my investor gal pals and I'm trying to create more of them through a global mesh network of like minded investors so that we can make it easier for women founders and other underrepresented founders to get access to capital. I just see that there's an opportunity for us to look at things with a different perspective than the ninety two percent. Ninety two percent of the voices are male. Forty seven percent of them come from Harvard and Stanford. So you're going to have a lot of similar thinking coming from a lot of these people. So they're going to look for a lot of the same things. I think we're starting to see a bit of the crumble with the whole rework situation that there's been an even we've seen it with the electric scooters chasing this flomo around, missing out on the opportunity. And one of the things that I know I look for is I see huge opportunities and spaces that don't necessarily align with what these primarily male investors are looking for.
[00:23:04] But there's still huge opportunities. For a long time, people would say that the women's markets were in the market or black or brown. Consumers are a niche market.
[00:23:18] If you look at the numbers and you look at the spending patterns and habits, not necessarily niche markets. A couple of years ago, I moderated a panel in Helsinki on the shifting demographics and the need to shift our investing along with it. And so then there's the question of do we create Flomo with massive success and then get those male investors to come over? Or do we try to get those try to get or we just don't even worry about it and just create our own new set of investors who see that there are opportunities and spaces that have not been traditionally interesting to a lot of male investors.
[00:24:01] So, I mean, I know there's there's a lot there's a lot in this in terms of I tend to be and this doesn't sound very humble, but somebody else pointed it out to me.
[00:24:11] I tend to be about two years ahead of a lot of people in the way. You'll appreciate this, because I'm sure you're this way. Two is two years ahead and seeing where things are going or what the opportunities are. Sometimes people get on board with it, sometimes people don't. I think where we are right now with the opportunities we're seeing, we're just seeing more and more momentum. The.
[00:24:32] Getting more women to invest, getting more women to start, companies, just really embracing the opportunities and the advantages of having more diverse leadership and that perhaps if you have a woman led company, that they may see the problem a little bit different, which means they're going to create a solution that's a bit different, which means there's a different market opportunity and there's an opportunity for all of us to make more of us to make a sh*t ton of money off things that haven't been traditionally funded by men. So. So you asked about cost problem ventures. So that was when a couple of years ago I wanted to start the venture fund. And now it's just it's kind of the umbrella under which a lot of my investing activities go into because I'm trying to keep the brand separate from my solutions to project stuff, the consulting work versus my investing, my advocacy, my writing, my blogging, podcasting, et cetera.
[00:25:37] Well, and I think that given.
[00:25:39] Yeah, I think you're creating a powerful archetype. And in my humble and novice opinion, in an industry that I've only observed from an interview standpoint for the past 20 years, I think that you are spot on. And I think that there's a lot of economic and social statisticians that would agree with me that where you're headed in these changes that you're finding to be so vital to change as an investor and someone functioning in that market is absolutely accurate. I think that it can be an incredible advantage. And I also think this ability to forecast can be a level of Dante's Inferno. I think that there is a level of hell you can experience and knowing that something's coming and trying to stay patient for it and still remain a flagship. But I truly believe that what you're doing will it is absolutely headed that way. There really isn't a doubt there are some social changes. The recent presidential election that I find to be an anomaly of the odd ethos of the dark and dark outdance of life. And then there are things that are just in the bag. You know, that they're coming Skittles is going to come up with another color and flavor. It's going to affect how I look at it.
[00:26:55] And the the thing that we're seeing with the negative backlash on the shifting of the power. And we're seeing it in our in our political landscape and our national and international landscape as well, is when you see people who are trying to grab on and hold on with their fingernails and with their you know, you're on the right track because you're tapping into some fear, you're tapping into some change.
[00:27:21] And this time I really feel like progress is going to happen. I feel like it's inevitable, though. The tsunami of change is here.
[00:27:31] Yeah. And it's and money drives. Right. A capitalistic society that we're in, for better or for worse.
[00:27:38] And the next money field is turning to reevaluating how we're investing and the companies that that we're looking at. I want to turn now because a lot of these issues run in tandem with your book. And I want to get into your book, which is called Piloting Your Life. And you also have a podcast series based on that. But I just finished it a couple of nights ago. It was it was a delightful read. And I know it's very egocentric because I myself am a forty two year old woman coming into midlife, but it's for me. I'm going to let you drop in and explain it and talk about your favorite parts and things like that.
[00:28:17] But just so that my audience knows, for me it was a very tactical and brave exploration without any of the kind of fluff and gentleness that accommodates a lot of books that explore actually female issues. It was lacking in the dialog that I myself don't even identify with. And it had such a candor. And the word is used a lot.
[00:28:45] However, I just feel like the the authenticity of the tone that you wrote it in is so wonderful. And I think it's such a rare exploration of getting into a woman's roadmap as to where she could potentially be in midlife. And you collected stories from other women and you did a whole bunch of research. These weren't just your diary musings, which I would have loved as well. But I think that I do want to put it out there that I don't condone all literature. I read I read a ton and I hate most of it. And that's why I keep reading. But I think that this was one of the best reads I've done this year. So I encourage everyone to go out and check out the book Piloting Your Life. I don't back a lot of stuff and this is one of them, but I want you to first drop us in.
[00:29:32] What your inspiration for writing the book was, so I'm absolutely honored that you took the time to read it, because I know you're super, super busy and I am I am beyond grateful that you enjoyed it. It was very important to me that it not be condescending, that it not dumb things down. And that's that's hard to do when you're writing a book for a certain segment of the audience, because as my writing coach is like, you have to go the lowest common denominator.
[00:30:06] And there were times when I pushed back and I said, we're not that stupid. So and that's not my market, because this this target that I'm trying to go to is smart enough to figure this out. So I appreciate that. I didn't it didn't come across as condescending. Talking about earlier, like what to expect when you're expecting, which a lot of us read many, many years ago, the the impetus for the book. So piloting your life, I wrote to embolden specifically women over the age of 40 to take the controls and be the pilots in their own lives. There's so, so often we are dismissed and overlooked. We're expected to slide into the old hag after the age of 40. And I was like, screw it. I reject this at forty nine. I'm conceivably only halfway through my life and I have experience and I have a joie veev and I have so much more to offer and so much more that I want to live within my life. But I see a lot of women who aren't necessarily embracing life the way that I do or the way that you do. And so. Piloting Your Life, the podcast came about a couple of years ago when I was listening to a bunch of investor and startup podcasts and I realized it was the show, primarily the White Show. And I was feeling left out and I thought, if I have trouble seeing what's possible, there have got to be other people who seem to have trouble seeing what's possible.
[00:31:34] So I spent the first year interviewing people who I thought embody the notion of being the pilots in their own lives, whether they were black, brown, LGBTQ plus socially, economically disadvantaged women, really anybody. And what I found over the course of the first year, two different things. One, I completely missed the mark because I was trying to hit too much. And that meant that each week some people would tune in, some people would tune out, and it was far too inconsistent for the listeners.
[00:32:07] And the second thing was I'd just gone to Europe and done kind of an investor tour, which I did by myself, paid for by myself, and went to Paris, Tallinn, Estonia, Nese and Anberlin to talk about innovation happening anywhere, anywhere, not just in Silicon Valley, the opportunities to invest in underrepresented founders, especially women founders, and came back going, I really want to focus on women. So then you're two of the podcast. I started out interviewing startup female women's startup founders who had raised series and beyond women investors and then anyone supporting the ecosystem. And then I got bored and then I started focusing on women's health. And I see so much opportunity for research and investing. And I mean, that's a topic that I did a whole season on women's health. But in doing in being a woman and often the only woman in the room at some of the investor type stuff, I was as I said, I was feeling dismissed. I was feeling overlooked. I don't have the university pedigree for me, the table states of being a commercially rated helicopter pilot for some of these guys to pay attention to me. And I was like, I'm I'm done with this. And so the that's why I decided to write this book. It's like I want I wanted more women to really embrace the goodness, the juiciness of midlife and really capitalize on what we can all bring to our own lives. And it just the timing was just right. I started writing a book a couple of years ago called Keep It In Your Glove Box and Champagne in Your Fridge.
[00:33:54] And I wrote it really quickly and I thought, OK, let's just get this published. And then started talking about it was like there's a bigger opportunity, but then it just kind of went sideways. And it wasn't until two years later that everything converged. I found a gal to work with to help me to coach me on writing because I've never done anything like this before. I never considered myself an author. Now, at forty nine of an author, a published author. She also how she edited the book. And then she also helped me produce the book because I realized I had no idea how to produce a paperback and e-book and an audio book.
[00:34:30] So I hired a gal and it all just kind of came together and my consulting work was really low at the time. I was preparing for my my son to finish his senior year and go off to college. And I was very grateful that I had the luxury of time to be able to research it and interview women for two months, write it. And so that was December, January last year. I wrote it from February to June and then in June to August was the production type stuff. So it came together, as most things do when things are the timing's right in my life. It came together very, very quickly. So but part of it, one of the most surprising things about it is I really didn't expect to go on my own personal journey as I was writing it. I'd work with coaches and I just I didn't know the growth that I was totally lockable that I was going to go through as I was doing this.
[00:35:27] Because the thing about interviewing the other women, I didn't want it to be all about me.
[00:35:33] How did you find those women? Like, how did you come across them?
[00:35:39] Well, I started with women. I know. And then I asked for introductions to other women through them who might be good candidates to interview. At one point I realized I didn't have enough representation from nonwhite non straight demographics. And so I reached I did calls out on social media, said if anybody fits these profiles, send in my direction so that I can interview them. So I ended up interviewing about thirty five women from five or six countries ranging in age from forty to seventy five. And I made sure that I was inclusive. So straight, gay, trans, black, brown, Indian, white, married, not married, divorced, widowed, with children without children, works inside the house, works outside of the house.
[00:36:39] A combination of the the three and and I put in the introduction that I make sure to put as few tables as possible on the women so that let's say you're reading through the book and maybe you don't relate to some of my stories, but you might relate to somebody else's stories. And it doesn't matter what they look like or where they came from, it's just a matter of it's just that I'm going to say the woman experience. I don't use the Internet to use the word female anymore. I try to use the word woman because it's how we identify or how we present and it has less to do with our genitalia. So I just wanted to make sure that it was really very human on a woman's level, regardless of where we are in our lives.
[00:37:24] And I specifically targeted Gen X women because we are seriously overlooked as a generation. Yeah, the I'm sure you saw the MSNBC. What was there was an info graphic, the show, The Silver Generation, the baby boomers, the Millennials and the Joneses and completely left off Chens, Gen X.
[00:37:44] Yeah, you have that in your book. And I remarked to myself, like my word, I looked at it and didn't even think there was anything missing.
[00:37:50] And it was me, cause there is sixty five million of us. And we're as I put in the book, we're sandwiched between two oversize generations to the point where we are just completely overlooked. And if you. Back at some, I did a bunch of research on Genex and also pungency because my kids are GenZE and just to see what people have thought of us over the years is a screwed up generation. And but a lot of good things have come out of our generation because of the things that our generation has suffered. Now, that being said, even though I wrote for a specific target, which I did exactly opposite of what I did with the podcast when I totally missed the first year, is I went after a certain demographic that it was primarily middle class women, Gen X, and it ends up resonating with women between the ages of twenty one and eighty five because the book ends up and this is what somebody else told me, giving giving women permission to design and live their the life of their own creation.
[00:39:02] Yeah I agree. And I would go further than giving permission because I think it does that. But I also think that it a it warrants and encourages exactly that to the people to jump into piloting their own destiny. And even though we have also tried to say that anyone who is a brave, successful, even young entrepreneur to an age old one would say that. But it lays out a roadmap and trajectory and testimony from other stories that you gathered. I think that is a crucial piece of women that you can come at it from a negative standpoint or a positive one or even one in between. But we are moved by testimony, by personal story, and we have since the beginning of time, women have functioned. And our particular society right now is it's built. And what I argue is that actually so is money. You still have the biggest drive from customer and service to applicable sale or service provided when personal testimony is the first thing that's going to actually sell someone. That's why marketing is still based on clips and video shorts and things like that. Like there's never going to help anything. Anyone decide to buy or invest in you faster than hearing your personal narrative as as an angel. You know this. You sit down with people, you vet, you hear their story, and 90 percent of the angels I talk to, you say everything can be in line. But if there's something that kind of rubs me wrong about their story or if they don't have that special, I'm not into it. And that is still that huge common factor that your book carries through. And I don't know if it was designed to be that genius up front or if it's something that you I mean, you have a chapter called The Unexpected Opportunities and Serendipity. So this could be one of those examples. But the idea that includes that moment of testimony is really important to the exploration of what you're saying, which is giving permission and encouraging women to kind of not just go forth and endure, which I kind of complain to my own mother sometimes that her generation did. But to take the reins and continue to explore and evolve. And you talk about how you hate the word pivot because it's been used to do a lot of different things in the book. And I think that that's true. It's just this new change into exploration and taking everything that you find negative and really looking towards that as something that could be a factor of your change in something that's trying to motivate you to go somewhere else. And I think that's a really a powerful point. I want to talk about briefly. One of the ideas that I loved about that is also the way you coined it. I think a lot of women that I've spoken to have danced around this term. But you have a term of the giving addict, and I kind of want you to get into that so the audience can hear. So how did you come up with it? How did you identify that first and then encapsulate it as you did within what you within the chapter of the book?
[00:42:06] So and so in in the book, I wanted to let me preface it with something. So I have a couple of what I call The Inbetweeners. But in the audio book, I called Flight Diversions and I read the audio book. So if anyone's interested in the audio book and loves my voice, you'll get it in your ear.
[00:42:24] If you hate it, just read the book instead. But I. I wanted to make sure that the body of the book really was around the research and stories from other women, because I really wanted the book to be inspirational. I wanted women to be able to come up with their own roadmaps based on seeing what other people were doing and some evidence and some suggestions on what might work for her. One of them there was in October, I got completely burned out on my angel investing and I got to the point where I was resenting every email that was coming into my inbox and. You and I were talking about earlier, I hate being I hate feeling like a victim, this is not something that aligns with any of my my values. And so I was trying to figure out a different way to operate in some time. Over the course of when I was writing the book, I, I have a thing that's like a daily house called Awakening's or something. And there was one on being a giving addict and I was reading it. I'm like, oh my God, I'm a giving addict. I get I get my jollies off of giving something to somebody else, but I don't really think about how that impacts. There was a program at my kid's school that your bucket filling your bucket, that you keep giving, giving, giving, giving, giving until your buckets empty. You have to keep refilling your bucket. And I was doing a terrible job of establishing boundaries. I was doing a terrible job of giving and I thought it was under it like champagne, karma, like if I give, it's going to come back tenfold. I mean, how many of these things we seen and we women are socialized to give until there's nothing left of us. I think one of the books that I hate the absolute most is the book The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein.
[00:44:22] That book, Dear to the Boy, is the most ungrateful, meanspirited.
[00:44:31] And I think one of the reasons that I hate it is largely because the tree keeps on giving without expecting anything in return and ends up giving away until there's nothing left. And and I think that I've had a habit of doing that, expecting that something will come and return. Now, where this is problematic is if I actually accepted and was able to receive things from other people, this would not be a problem. But since I struggle with this and this is one of the four billion things that I work on every day, I need to be better at receiving because I need to find a way to refill that bucket. I have to be better at asking for what I need rather than just being so self reliant that I'll just kind of take care of it or assuming that somebody else might know what it is that I need. And so that little thing with a giving addict was it was just serendipitous that I was in a very low point and read this little thing. And it just happened to be on a day that I used to. And I'm trying to get back into like a daily meditation and stretching practice every single morning where I can either listen to a guided meditation or just breathe through. And there was just one particular day I was like, yeah, I'm a giving addict and this is something that I need to recognize and start being better, be better about establishing boundaries and be better about asking for what I need and what I want without the fear of somebody saying no and then being able to receive without feeling like I have to overcompensate with giving back that in my mind, there's constantly this this bank balance of giving and the receiving. And I never put anything in the debit column of the receiving. I'm always putting I never give myself credit for or the giving that I do.
[00:46:30] Yeah. And I, I mirror that. I feel that tremendously in myself obviously, which is why I extracted that from your book. But I have a very difficult time receiving and not immediately giving back. It's like I have this insatiable desire to always be the giver at the end, you know, it's because I owe some to pay. I don't want to do anything right because part of my power has been in the self maintained and there needs to be power in receiving, you know, there needs to be power and receiving graciously. And then I wish I had heeded the words of my grandmother who lived to be one hundred and three. And she said, there's nothing wrong with getting something as long as you do something good with it. And I thought, that's so I wonder why don't why didn't I listen, I've spent the past forty two years kind of constantly neurotically needing to give and then give back if someone accidentally gave to me. It's just this horrible cycle and asking for help. And I think that ties into this entire circular enterprise of mentorship and women that has been lacking for so long. Part of the endeavor with why I launched this podcast was it just felt like women not only weren't asking for help or mentors or guidance in a way that men do in the steam room, the golf course, like they are just constantly part of this social mentorship program. Not only do they not do that, but they also weren't sharing their stories as much as they drove each other on testimonial and things like that, like. Female career and success stories were few and far between as being shared with a roadmap and then that tying in to, God forbid, a mentor or this actually ties straight into what I really want to pepperwood you about. You're one of the first professional women that I have spoken to that is very candid and open about your use of executive life coaches. You mentioned Bev in the book heavily, and then you also talk about people you interviewed. There was another woman you interviewed who had a personal brand strategist that she benefited from heavily, even after she had turned 50, when she was kind of reorganizing her change in life. And so I want to get into what drove you to seek out an executive life coach, what that moment did for you and speak to that hole. You drop it very quickly. I think a lot of people are actually a little quiet like a therapist. A lot of people I've learned that people meet with life coaches and won't speak of it. And so I'm not sure if there is some kind of a stigma or if they're not getting enough help out of it or how all of that works. But I love how you kind of launched into it and how much you get from it. So can you walk us through how you how you came to find one?
[00:49:18] Oh, my God. It was I was in such pain when when I when I found Bev. So I was seven months pregnant with my son, who is now 18 and a half, when the biotech company I was working for was acquired and it was acquired by a Seattle based company. And just just to say cultural differences, there are cultural differences between Seattle and San Francisco Bay Area companies. And back then, especially within biotech, it was supposed to be a merger, but their management ended up taking over.
[00:49:53] And I have always been outspoken, I've always thought been very driven, very ambitious, etc. And I thought I needed to make a good impression and show that because the transition was really going to happen while I was out on maternity leave and I needed to make sure I had a job when I came back from maternity leave.
[00:50:18] And so I made a slightly tactical strategic error and I decided to really try to impress with just how amazing I was. And I did a full court press, essentially, and that backfired. I ended up working for I was in the I.T. group and I reported into the CFO and it was a woman who we did not get along well at all. And it was incredibly brutal. I ended up going out a month early on maternity leave because I was having preterm contractions because she was yelling at it was so unprofessional. Looking back, the stuff that I put up with it was it was mind boggling. But I remember being up in Tahoe for the weekend with my husband and she called me up and just ripped me apart. And it was like unfounded. I think it really was. It was a power play. And anyway, I may or may not have handled it right, but I went into preterm labor, at which point my doctor said, you're done with work.
[00:51:23] And so while I was out on maternity leave, I was like, I can't I can't go back. And so I started talking to some friends and a friend of mine said she worked with this gal, Beverly Ryl, out of Massachusetts and suggested that I get in touch with her to do to figure out what my next steps were going to be or how to deal with this very difficult situation. And I became her very first virtual client. We have never met in person.
[00:51:50] She and I went out and she and I just talked to her yesterday. I talked and now I talk to her every two to four weeks. I take a couple of years off in between, depending depending on the work that I'm doing.
[00:52:05] I'm very goal oriented cause I'm like, OK, this is a situation, let's work through it and then I'll stop. And then it's like, OK, something's come up now.
[00:52:13] And that's what's interesting for me. Your personality strikes me. I think I might have a misperception of what executive life coaches do, because those are two different things.
[00:52:24] Life coaches are different from executive coaches. Those are two different things.
[00:52:28] OK, so what is best? That is my executive coach, OK?
[00:52:33] And so I feel like with someone as strategic and organized as you, there wouldn't be a need for either of those people in your life. But it seems like there has been and you've benefited greatly. Can you lie or how?
[00:52:47] So I, I am a huge fan.
[00:52:53] I pay for help when I need it. I'm terrible about asking for free help, but I will pay for help when I get there.
[00:52:59] Is there is a difference between these two. So what then, Bev? When I work on things, the work that she has helped me on has been all around professional stuff. So when I was trying to navigate this whole situation with the company and the CFO and figuring out what my next career steps were going to be, she really helped me navigate it. And she also helped me understand that wherever I went, I was going with me. So I had to do some work to make sure I was in the best possible place. Wherever I decided to go, she helped me figure out. I ended up even though I interviewed with other companies, I stayed with that company until there was a significant layoff. I was part of the layoff and that was devastating. And so she helped me work through all the devastation around being laid off, even though I was very appreciative because I didn't want to be there and I got a good severance package. It still sucks to be part of a layoff. And so she helped me navigate that. And then all of a sudden it went over to another biotech company. And I was there for about three years. I make a really great consultant. I don't make a great employee because I will tell you it, tell you how it is like how how I think things need to be. And that that tends to intimidate certain people, especially some older white gentlemen who don't like uppity women. So there was a lot of navigation through helping me develop communication methods or dealing with certain situations to de-escalate, to make sure that I could achieve what I wanted to achieve and doing maybe diplomacy, maybe I was learning how to be more diplomatic. And then when I got laid off again, she helped me navigate through a few. Maybe it is time for me to start my own consulting firm. And so she helped me navigate through those transitions. And that is one of the things that she's incredibly good at is helping through transitions. And I would say that in mid-life we are in constant transition. And right now, as I'm trying to continue to develop who I want to be and how I want to operate in the world, working with her every couple of weeks gives me just somebody who I mean, she absolutely loves me and absolutely wants me to succeed. And at the same time, she calls me out on my bullsh*t. So yesterday I was talking about this afternoon I'm presenting at Serendipity, which is a women's conference, and I'm doing a 90 minute workshop on piloting your life. And it's not specifically for midlife women. And I'm thinking about creating a workbook to accompany the book to help women navigate through some of the stuff with some additional information. So beta testing some material today. During my call with Bev, I said, you know, I'm I'm not I know I'm not a professional and trained on the workshop kind of stuff. Now, I speak on staff. I'm a consultant. I teach on all sorts of things. And she's like, wait a second. And I'm like, OK, wait a second. And she said, you did extensive research. You talk to all these women. You're a dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. You've already created this body of knowledge. And I'm like, OK, my impostor syndrome is popping up. And she said, and I'm like, yeah. So I was able to step off the ledge and go, I am actually qualified to be able to do this. So she helps call me on my bullsh*t, but then at the same time helps me see things in myself that I don't necessarily see. So my relationship with her, it's it's it's absolutely invaluable. Life coaches that I've worked on with before have been very different. And I worked with one for three months to try to strip away the adaptations and accommodations that I put into place to fit into a male dominated space. But after reading the book Feminist Fight Club, I realized all of these adaptations and accommodations and I was like, wait a second, I'm missing out on a whole feminine side of my myself. And I learned that some of the best decisions that I made were made intuitively when I felt them, when I decided to become a helicopter pilot, when I decided to start my consulting firm, when I decided to jump in to leave my dad's accounting firm and go get my MBA instead of my CPA, when I decided to go to Necker Island for the first time and ended up playing tennis with Richard Branson, well, of that. So there are all sorts of different places where that I've actually, I think helped me see that there were these intuitive spots and that I needed help from someone to help me feel good about getting in touch with my intuitive side, not feel like it was a weakness, but actually embrace the strength around it. And so I worked with a life coach specifically on that.
[00:58:03] I worked with a life coach on when I came back from Necker Island the first time I knew I wanted to do something bigger in the world. I'm able to execute other people's visions. And I didn't feel like I was able to really create my own. And so I worked with the life coach over three months to figure out what my vision was, what was I passionate about? What did I want to be working on?
[00:58:29] And that's actually where Classifiable Ventures came out of where I said, I want to go do a venture fund the work that I did, even though I didn't end up executing on the venture fund for reasons I talked about before, it was still incredibly important work to get to the point where I could trust that I could create a vision and I trust that I can change my mind and not see it as failure.
[00:58:56] Yeah, and I so taking the life coach and the executive coach kind of advice and things like that, even in latter day, what are like do you look at life? And I always posture it to my guess as the next three years, but if that's an uncomfortable term for you, we can use a different amount of time. But what are the goals that you have over the next three years? Are there more books in your future? It sounds like you're already kind of developing this workshop circuit.
[00:59:26] That I think could go somewhere beautifully, but you have your investment, you've got Brabo Ventures kind of transforming itself, as it sounds like, as we sit here. And what are some of the places that you would like to see things end up or you have an inkling towards?
[00:59:48] So last year for my 30th birthday, I came up with my vision that I want to live in a world where everyone has the opportunity to live equally freely and have an extraordinary life. So I created three North Star goals around that one, leverage data and technology to flip health care on its head, to start moving the needle on leveling the playing field. And the third one is not asshole kids.
[01:00:15] One man that is so great, I love it.
[01:00:19] So in terms of the next three years, I thought I had it completely nailed down. And with the book and the impact the book has had, I wrote the book to solve a pain point that I had and was hoping it would resonate with some women. The book is Become a movement. It's not just a book, it's a movement is really what's coming out of it. And so I don't know what that's going to be. But if I can help embolden women and if I can do something to really move women forward, that's that's going to be really an area that I focus on. And I don't know exactly what that's going to look like. Yes, there's going to be there are going to be more books. I found that I really love to write. I will not do diversity and inclusion panels. I wrote a blog post about that because I'm technically qualified to speak on a lot more and not just a diversity and inclusion panel. It's all it's all involving and a lot of this is just come up really in the last couple of weeks in how well-received the book has been, the impact that it's had on women.
[01:01:27] Right. It's and it's interesting because you're really embracing the change, which is I mean, piloting your life is about writing that wave and like looking at change as not this like hence the anti pivot. You're not pivoting. You're just kind of morphing your journey.
[01:01:47] It's a journey, right? Exactly. So I always wrap up my podcast with asking people, so if your daughter or someone that you considered to be a daughter, so someone you were deeply invested in with love and energy and time, equity, sweat equity came to you and said, listen, I just got my bachelor's, I'm going to launch off. And right now I'm looking at doing a bunch of different things. What are the three core pieces of information you would offer this woman as far as moving forward with her life and her career as you're exploring or as you're looking for what your next opportunity is?
[01:02:29] I think it's important to put down what your priorities are. Your top ten priorities are whether it's at one point. One of mine is I like having my own office. I wanted to be near my kids daycare. I didn't want to have to travel because my husband was a police officer at the time and we didn't have a nanny. And so it was like no trouble. I wanted I don't like open workspace type things. So having my own office, I wanted to have somebody I worked for who challenged me and supported me and wanted me to succeed. So I think understanding your priorities before you embark on something I think is really important. The second thing is it's important to explore and experiment and understand that maybe the first thing that you go into isn't necessarily going to be the right thing. But as long as you learn from the experience, it's never a failure anyway. So and then the other thing is that you just don't have to have it all figured out. So you do the first thing you learn from it and then you figure out the next thing and then you learn from it. You don't know what you're going to learn. You don't know what opportunity is going to come up. But as long as you're learning and as long as you're opportunistic and taking advantage of all of that to learn, you get to see new opportunities. I'm a firm believer in the past will present itself.
[01:03:53] So, yeah, it's the first of the three things. Yeah.
[01:03:57] Yeah, it's well. And what I, what I'm hearing from that over the past hour is I find that advice comes from either, you know, I did it, don't do it, or this very other smaller piece of advice that comes. I did it and it was right. But the greater is the fear based right.
[01:04:15] The greater is don't do this. That as parents, we just spend our time going, no, don't, don't. And I'll tell you why. Don't do that. Don't go into the middle of the street. Don't do this. But your advice for your son as of late, where's your childhood, which is this expansive before you were 18, having these exposures to these massive amounts of different industries and jobs? And it feels like you use that as a vehicle to create this. This open terrain is open season, if you will, on looking at a career and coming at it with opportunities and opening yourself up instead of this like microscopic, which you mentioned, you know, the eighteen year old getting out of college right now. I think it's a tragedy. I think it's the death of academia and the free thinker to think that you one ought to know what they're going to do at eighteen is absolutely terrifying.
[01:05:08] Like to end on the on a really, really positive note. So I was down in San Diego where I met you and I took my son and his friends. And then Amy Chang, you know, from San Diego. I do. Out here. Yeah. Out to dinner. We've talked on the phone a whole bunch of times. It was the first time we'd met in person. I didn't realize that because we become friends over the phone. I, too, have interviewed her for my podcast the next day because Adam was like, yeah, whatever. When I go out to dinner, I want to have breakfast, whatever. I'm here for you. This is not the same kid that I wrote about in the book. So I if you read the book, who he was in February and March when I wrote, this is very different. So they were driving me to the airport and I realized that I had taken the back seat and Adam and his friend were in the front seat of the car. And it was I remember my mom saying the transition to the back seat was a tough one, but I think it was only ten years ago. And here I am with my son at eighteen, but realized I was in this backseat and when I was like, so excited. For the opportunities for both Adam and then his best friend, Baaden, and at one point I realized we're going to the airport and I start to cry and my my son's like, you OK back there, Mom? And I said I said yes. I said, I'm so excited. There's this transition. You're doing great in college and I absolutely love it. And I love the person that you've become. I, I, I just I'm just so proud of you. And he reaches around and I'm probably going to cry and puts his hand back and says, Mom, hold my hand. I got you. I've got you. I mean, it was like this because if you read the book where he was six months ago to where we are now and even he it's just a completely different place. I sent him a copy of the book. He texted me. He says I'm 12 pages in and he says, I teared up three times. And I'm like, Why? And he said, This book is giving me a view into you as a person, into your mind that I never had before. So I'm just like, OK, job done as as mom first kid did not raise an asshole.
[01:07:15] So and as a writer, I think it's true. What an awesome observation of him. It's true to see our parents through their eyes, especially as we matriculate out of that adolescence, is it's one of the most powerful stories you'll ever read. It's your heritage. It's it's going to become part of your legacy, his legacy. I think it's an awesome turn of view and lens to analyze his mom that way. I think that's fantastic. Yes. His first child down maybe maybe a couple more.
[01:07:45] The second the second one is fabulous. They are. They are. They are great. Ray was we I gave birth to a daughter, Rachel. Olivia and Ray has decided they are non binary and it's now real live. And so we are on as I talk about in the book, we are in a completely new adventure with Ray. But Ray is a phenomenal human being. Ray was out there at seven o'clock this morning when we were out supporting Planned Parenthood in our local community and Ray was in their pink shirt and their knee high rainbow pride socks. And we are back out tomorrow at seven a.m. and Sunday at seven a.m.. And Ray is Ray is a phenomenal human being.
[01:08:31] That's fantastic.
[01:08:32] Thank you so much for taking the time today and speaking with us. Terri, I think that it's you don't disappoint.
[01:08:40] You write your book is written in the same way that your delivery is in person. And that kind of continuity really can't be found that much anymore. Everyone's different in person than they are an insta and you are not. You are like this continuous voice. And I applaud it. And I know you're a wildly busy person. I just wanna say thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today.
[01:09:01] Well, thank you for the opportunity. I really look forward to getting to know you better and continuing to support you and what you are doing, because I love what it is that you're bringing out in the world to.
[01:09:10] Yeah, awesome. You're welcome. And I am learning to say that. So that's why it came out. That awkward talk more.
[01:09:18] I'll circle back around for everyone listening and I will grab Terri up again in the near future because we all of you have been asking me to follow up on specific members.
[01:09:29] And I will definitely be coming back to Terri because she's just such a prolific individual.
[01:09:34] We're going to have to catch up on her life until then and until next time for everyone listening. Thank you for lending me your ear and remember to always bet on yourself. Slainte.
