Fire and Adjust w/ Nichole Lowe | Ep. 150

In this episode of the Biz/Dev podcast David and Gary talk to Nichole Lowe, the Founder and CEO of Zoee; a coaching platform with a strong sense of community. 

Links:
Zoee Website
Nichole Lowe on LinkedIn

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] David: It's the only job in the world that everything's great. And then an hour later, it's all falling apart and you've got to hold yourself together.

[00:00:11] David: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the biz dev podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host. I'm joined per usual by Gary Voigt. What's up, man?

[00:00:19] Gary: How you doing?

Everything going good? 

[00:00:22] David: I'm good. I'm good. I got my new phone. So I'm excited. Got my new fancy phone. I here's the truth. So last, whenever I buy a phone, I hand it down. The old phone to my family and I will tell you my entire family is ungrateful and my wife's going to listen to this and she needs to hear this because I love you, but my whole family. So I'll use my son because I don't want to get my wife mad at me.

So I, he has a phone that's now two years old that we hand. I'm a nerd. And so we have a guest. I'll get to her. I promise. There's a funny story though. I get to my, this is my 18 year old son. I hand him his two year old phone. This is his new phone. And I'm like, I have to do the swap. We call it the phone dance.

We all get together and we do the phone dance. And. I say, can I get your phone so I can swap it and do the thing? And he's now, and I'm like, dude, I'm giving you a free phone. Just uh, do you have to do it now? Like right now? And so I finally get it. I'd say it's convenient for me. So I grabbed his phone.

He got all cranky at me. Like they're ungrateful. That's all I'm saying. I get a new phone, you get a new phone and you just complain the whole time. Anyway, let's talk about something more important. More importantly, we are joined by Nicole Lowe, who is the founder of And CEO of Zoe. Hello, Miss Nicole. How are you?

[00:01:36] Nichole: Hello, David. I'm doing very well. Nice to see you both. Hi, Gary.

[00:01:40] Gary: Hello.

Nice to meet 

[00:01:42] Nichole: And might I just say I get the whole hand me down of phones because I'm a tech nerd in my family as well. And so I hand my phones down to my husband and he does the same thing. He's what do you mean? I want to go get the new 16.

I'm like, yeah, but I'm getting it.

[00:01:54] David: My wife does hate change in and especially around tech. I'll, she is still mad at me for when Apple changed in iOS six to seven and they did the huge UI upgrade. We're talking like 10 years ago. She still brings it up. Cause all of her, she's mad at me right now because the new iOS 18 at night, your icons turned dark.

If you've seen that freaks her out and she's everything's changed. Why did you do this to me? And I'm like, I did not write that software. Just so you know, I am not, I do not own Apple.

[00:02:30] Gary: Can we coin a phrase for this phenomenon and just call it trickle down iPhone omics?

[00:02:35] David: No, either that, or you have to act like Reagan when you say that.

[00:02:39] Gary: Trickle down iPhone omics.

No, not 

[00:02:42] David: you're the worst impersonator 

[00:02:44] Gary: We could edit that.

[00:02:45] David: So tell me about Zoe.

[00:02:49] Nichole: So Zoe it's just a, it's a software platform that is designed to simplify the business of coaching online. So it's soup to nuts business in a box from ditching your zoom, ditching calendly, ditching your CRM, ditching accounting. Everything's all wrapped up in one simple sign in. So I like to call it the universal remote.

If you remember the days when we had six, seven, eight different remote controls, we're trying to deal with the TV and the sound. And then you've got a universal remote. So Zoe's a universal remote for business and also a marketplace where we bring new business and new align leads to our customers.

[00:03:29] David: Very cool. So you are, but you yourself are a coach and have been a coach.

So are you still a coach or are you now just a software platform CEO? I think just, 

[00:03:43] Nichole: Just I'm only laughing because, you know, I've been in, I've been in this business for 15 years, the coaching business. And now and again, I'll get a call from a client that I used to coach and I'll take her on. And it's great. And I just, I love it, being a CEO of a startup is, you know, you got to get real scrappy, lots of grit, lots of time, lots of, you know, 18 hour days, long weekends.

I'm just a CEO 

[00:04:05] David: just a CEO slacker. That's all I'm saying. It's slacker. Okay. So how let's back up then you've been doing this. I think I saw four years. Is that correct?

[00:04:15] Nichole: four years.

[00:04:16] David: So where, obviously you were coach, so you started doing this. Did you do this in the classic? I need to eat my own dog food thing. Or did you do this because you were like, I know how to do coaching.

I think I can help other coaches

[00:04:28] Nichole: Yeah. I would say that there's nothing traditional about my path at all. I think I, you know, I was coaching and I started coaching other coaches and helping them with their business. I've done business in the past and, you know, just really frustrated, not only for myself. So it was I built something for myself that I could, you know, be proud of something that I served up to my clients.

And then I was helping other coaches and really saw this real, just a lot of innovation in this relatively new industry called coaching, but not a lot of innovation in the technology around it. And that's when I had my aha moment. And I said to my husband, I'm going to build a tech company.

[00:05:06] David: And did he sigh and go fine,

[00:05:09] Nichole: He kind of looked at me cause he knows me really well. And he's like, all right, you know, Hey, why don't you dust off that yearbook and see if it what it says in there. I'm pretty sure it says, Nicole's the least likely person to build a tech company, I'm sure. It's it's been a crazy ride.

[00:05:23] David: When you, I'm thinking about coaching online cause I get harassed. all the time by different people who want to sell me some sort of course, right? To teach me to be better at something. But that's only been around for a year or two, give or take.

It probably took off. I'm probably being unfair. Probably took off really big time during the pandemic. But if I'm getting my timeline right, you were before that.

[00:05:48] Nichole: Yeah, 

[00:05:49] David: really interesting. So you, that's some real vision there. Either that, or you just got caught up in a beautiful wave which is it?

Come on. Be honest.

[00:05:55] Nichole: Yeah. You know, I'm not one to toot my own horn, but I had a pretty strong vision. I saw that, you know, This younger generation coming in with very immediate, very now. Fix it now. What could be possible if somebody could actually be there with you in the moment that you're having the crisis, whether or not it's, you know, I'm trying to lose weight because I'm seeing the ex at the wedding or, you know, I'm having this really difficult situation with my boss, you know, and how do you effectively be a coach to just have it be more day to day and part of your life?

And that's the basis for what I saw Zoe. I had no idea that we would go from 10 percent online coaching to now 82 percent online coaching and not meeting in person. I had no idea that was going to happen overnight, but but it was really interesting to see. And like I said, it's a really young industry.

We really, Coaching only came on the map probably back in the 90s with Tony Robbins, you know, when he went out there. Oh, yeah coach Oh, what's this all about? So we're pretty new and we're just getting started

[00:06:57] David: Very cool. So you have this idea. You go to your husband. I'm going to do this. You're not a tech person. Is that safe to say before that? Okay. So what is your next step? Like that you're venturing into some very strange waters.

[00:07:13] Nichole: Yeah

[00:07:14] David: most of our clients are the exact same kind of people we have. Most of our clients are non technical people who want to build something technical.

That's so I'm used to people like you coming to me, but it's always a different path because it's hard to find people like us

not to toot our own home, but we're awesome. But it's how did you do it? Cause obviously we have not worked together. I should be up front.

We have not worked together. But how, where did you go from idea to you've built an entire platform?

[00:07:38] Nichole: Yeah, it's you know, it's a it's a really good question David And it's a crooked path, of course like all of us, I think a lot of it was fire and adjust and I was sort of playing around with my husband used to say I was the queen of plugins because when I was trying to streamline my business, I'd, you know, research and research, like how can I optimize this particular part of my business?

And I'd find some plugin or some app or something that would help me. And then how do I either zap it together? How do I integrate it? And so I spent a considerable amount of time just researching how to stream flow business. And so I have a lot of, and then I spoke to coaches and did a lot of interviews and stuff and really wasn't thinking about the technology.

And I think that's probably the secret sauce. Had I thought, Oh my gosh, I'm building a tech company. I'm not sure that I would have done it because I would have so had imposter syndrome. I'm not sure that I would have actually stepped forward to do it. 

[00:08:31] Gary: Would have taken 

[00:08:31] Nichole: The fear would have just taken over me. And so I think it was kind of dumb luck in the beginning where I was so focused on just what is the problem and how can I solve this just from a a wire frame perspective or a whiteboard perspective.

And that's really how things started. And then I met this really cool guy who his, he really cool guy. He's a computer science guy that. Worked on really interesting AI work back in the seventies. Like he built these algorithms in the seventies where it would match up when to release your ad on radio stations because of the demographics and all of that, and and I spent about six months with him, you know, just looking at the designs and creating the wire flows and all that stuff.

And he added a lot of really neat things and then COVID hit and I thought yeah, COVID hit. And I thought. Now what am I going to do? I don't know anybody in technology and I don't have any money. And so from there it was CED that helped me and introduced me to my very first investor, which then allowed me to build a prototype, which got me into Techstars.

That 

[00:09:37] David: Oh, very cool. Okay. So CED for those outside of the triangle is council for entrepreneurial development. Is that correct? Did I say that right? They are one of those organizations that are local to the Raleigh area that helps startups in a myriad of ways. We have been around them for years, but never really super involved. That's very cool. So you got into tech stars eventually, and they give you, if I'm right, a little bit of money and a lot of mentoring. And then they give you access to whatever their expertise is, which I've heard is the real value of those kinds of things. And so you use that money. Did you build, did you hire a dev?

Did you offshore it? Did you mix of all?

[00:10:19] Nichole: Yeah. I made some rookie mistakes. I definitely. I I hired an offshore team and it,

[00:10:26] David: How'd that go for you?

[00:10:27] Nichole: Terrible. 

[00:10:28] David: I say that never heard that before. 

I've never heard that before. I, and I need to preface it. Cause I come pretty hard on, we're us based, right? That's our shtick. And I come down pretty hard on offshore teams. That is not to say they can't be done. It's just very often not. And I know some people who've been very successful with offshore teams, but that's usually because of, they're just a driven human being and they've made it happen by sheer force of will. Most people, especially non technical people, they really struggle with that, but that dog, that price tag seems so enticing and. And that's where usually they get suckered into it. Is that fair statement?

[00:11:03] Nichole: David, I would say, you know, I've always been somebody that's really, I don't know just somebody who is more is not a penny wise pound foolish person, but in this case, it was definitely a penny wise pound foolish. Because when I look at how much I have spent over the last several years on tech and building it far exceeds the quote that I got.

When I decided to go with offshore and had, I just paused and said, all right, let me go raise some more money. Let me find some more investors and just do it right. Just set it up the way I intend to finish it. I could have avoided a couple of years of heartache for sure.

[00:11:38] David: So they built you something you didn't like. Did you then just keep muddling through until you got it where you wanted it? Or did you stop and find a new team? How did that work for you?

[00:11:46] Nichole: Yeah, I tried to muddle with it for a while and then I landed a pretty cool beta opportunity with an organization that said, yeah let's go ahead and test this out. And so we brought on about 50 coaches and maybe a hundred, Users that were clients and stuff and we had them on the platform for about two weeks and it broke And when I say it broke it didn't just break it broke like we couldn't log in We were having issues with the calendar like it wasn't syncing and people were getting frustrated.

So we said, okay stop the beta Let's go back out and I raised some more money and then we built it. We literally built it from scratch after that

[00:12:23] David: Was that your own people or did you find a us based team?

How did that work? 

[00:12:27] Nichole: I found a really, I found a US, this is where Techstars is great because I found somebody from Techstars who is my CTO and he had a, he also had a background in banking and he was a CFO. So it was really great bringing him on for about a 14 month contract. And so he built a team, we built a team together and they were independent contractors and we just built it all 

[00:12:49] David: You got it done. Nice.

[00:12:50] Nichole: We got it done, we got it done fast and we got it done right.

[00:12:53] David: So you are now, you have your platform. How long have you been live with your current platform?

[00:13:00] Nichole: Almost a year. We launched it last December and you know, that was really exciting. So yeah, so it's been about a year.

[00:13:08] David: And so where are you guys in the runway stage? Are you on a runway? Are you self independent? Like you make enough money, all that kind of stuff. Where are you at?

[00:13:16] Nichole: We're on a runway for sure. Yeah, we're on a runway. We're doing pretty good. 

[00:13:20] David: Yeah, it's, I, that's always. that stress of you have a runway, but what does success look like when you're, and this is different for everybody, but you've taken in a certain amount of money and those investors want X return.

[00:13:37] Nichole: Yeah. 

[00:13:37] David: so you might even get cash positive and they're still mad at you.

Right. And that's gotta be rough. I usually recommend when I talk to brand news Founders to try lifestyle business, meaning you own it and you build it, you, you figure it out because you can never go back to lifestyle once you've taken money and that's it, you're on that road, but you can always take money, but you can never go back to lifestyle.

Cause that stress point, but I will say, You know, most people don't, most people follow exactly what you're doing. And there are many are successful. Many are not. It's just the nature of startup, but but it's very exciting. It sounds like you're on a good path.

[00:14:12] Nichole: Yeah, I think so. I think that's really good advice, too. When I look back I just feel like I've been super blessed on my investors. I hear these stories and that hasn't been my experience. I have a really great relationship with my angel investors and a lot of them feel more like partners and some of them actually roll up their sleeves and do work for Zoe.

So we all feel like we're in it together. So I always, one thing that I tell people who come to me and say, Hey, you know, do you think I could start a company and I want to raise money? Absolutely agree with you, David. Don't raise money until when you have to. Right. If that's actually going to if it's actually going to directly help you build something that you can't build without the money or two, it's going to help you scale and it's going to help you actually, you know, move the needle significantly forward.

And then it's okay to be choosy. You know, at first when I was raising money, I felt like I had to say yes to everybody. Oh my gosh, you want to pay money? Okay. Yes. But a mentor. At tech stars was really good. And she said, you know, you can be choosy, be very true. You know, think about your target persona for your investor and who you want to bring in and who you want to yoke with, because you're going to be with that person for a very long time.

So think about who you want to partner with and who actually will bring value to Zoe. And I feel like we did a pretty good job with that.

[00:15:29] David: there's so many, I don't know the right word. Shyster is probably the wrong word, but that's the one I'm going to go with. And it's. In, in, in my world as well. There's a lot of scuzzy people, especially I know a lot of guys, not personally, but I've heard the stories where a devil come in.

It's you need me. And that's the attitude they're coming in. And so they'll demand

[00:15:50] Nichole: Yeah.

[00:15:51] David: here, demand like ridiculous amounts of equity in order to build, cause you need them. Right. And I find. When those people are scuzz, but they're, if you're a non technical person, you're, you agree with them.

I do need you and you sound like you will be amazing. You're going to, and they're making all these promises and you feel like you do need them and you make bad decisions, not you, obviously, but proverbially you, it's the same for investors. I think, right. Is there some guys come in there, right? You need me, you need my money. a lot of people don't take that advice to say, you know, I don't cause someone else, they need you just as much as you need them. That's what the dirty secret, those investors are desperate for good ideas. Cause I think the official term is deal flow, right? They need that. They need a certain number of people that fit their criteria.

And there's just not a lot of good ideas all the time. There's a lot of investors and there's a lot of good ideas and. So it's not always matched up and you can be picky. You should be picky. And that's true for probably every major thing you need done. And I think a lot of people, they come in on their back foot when they really have the position of power, because you've got the great idea.

You've got the platform that, you know, that's going to do this, and this, you got your spreadsheets proven all this, and they need you just as much as you need them. And having that attitude, that's a game changer.

[00:17:14] Nichole: It's a huge game changer. No, it's a huge game changer in, in all aspects. Whether you're bringing on a C level person, you're bringing on a member of the team, you're bringing on an investor, and I think that, you know, as an entrepreneur, we're going so fast and everything's happening so fast. And if there's an area where, you know, you're weak in, or you don't have the skills or the experience in you I just you have to be really careful not to look for a silver bullet because that silver bullet is always going to turn around on you.

You're never, you have to, you know, one of my tips is that it's not about the money, but it is about the money. And what I mean by that is you've got let's say you don't have a financial background, but as an entrepreneur, you need to know the money. You need to understand your business model. You need to understand the money flow, the competition and all that type of stuff.

And so if you go out and hire a CFO and say, okay, I'm going to give you a bunch of money to be my CFO. And you don't understand the money. You're just going to be pouring money into this person. That's actually not going to, you know, build the right model, which could ultimately. Lead you astray. You could end up pivoting without realizing it.

So I think it's really important as hard as it is as an entrepreneur to slow down, like we had, you have to slow down sometimes and just really think through enough. Does this ask the questions, you know, slow it down and make sure that you're making like informed decisions when you're bringing somebody on.

[00:18:35] David: That reminds me of a story. This has happened more than once, but we've had clients who, when they're talking about pricing and how much money their idea is going to bring in and they're making these promises for investors or whatever. A lot of times they don't realize what things really cost. And that's one of the things they just get blown away. A perfect example is Apple fees.

When they, when you have an iOS app and you sign for instance, I'm sure this is true for you. When someone signs up for your platform, if you have an iOS app, you have a digital good, so Apple will charge 30 percent tax for that every user you bring on, which most people, when they're non technical have no idea this is the case and that's a make or break kind of thing, because everybody comes in and I'm going to charge very little.

I'm going to charge 99 cents. Oh my God. Let's do the math here, buddy. 99 cents. You just lost 30. And, oh, you took a credit card. Does that's another, probably 30 cents a stripe or somebody took. So now you're down to 12 cents and everything you see here needs to be built on 12 cents. How many users do you need?

4 million. Okay. How many coaches are there? There's 10, 000. Okay. Do you see the math problem? I try to, and I'm obviously a little exaggerated here. I'm not a jerk to my clients usually. But I do try to frame it in a very simple math problem so that it is so obviously bad and then, but it's even, what's scary is and I'll have people early on, we haven't built anything.

We're just exploring, we're talking and the amount of money they have to charge when they start adding in how much a server costs, oh, they're gonna be this, how much is your fees? How much am I gonna get? How much, you know, I have four people that I gotta pay on payroll. Okay, what do they cost? Okay. We start doing the math and they start realizing. their monthly charge that they would have to get to make their idea work is like 29. 99 for an app that's no one's going to pay that for and they realize that and you can almost see that them just deflate and they're very sad because they realize their idea isn't going to go anywhere and they see that as a failure but I always encourage them after they've stopped crying to realize that I just saved you probably two to three years of your life. For an idea that wasn't going to work. That's okay. That's okay. That doesn't mean no idea is going to work this one, whatever it is. It might not be great, but I bet you have another one. Cause if you're an entrepreneurial type of person, you can't stop. And we just, but go in with your eyes open.

It's much better to walk into any dark room with your eyes open than closed. And so I try to explain that to them. They don't listen. Cause they're still sad but it really does work out that way. A lot of times.

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[00:21:47] Nichole: Something else a mentor told me at Techstars.

Once, as he said, at some point you will birth Zoe, and then you will become an employee of Zoe. Like you have to have that birthing process. You have to let her go. And then when you switch from being that I am my company, I am this idea and the idea is me and we're one, and you let it go and it becomes its own entity.

And then you're working for that and putting a CEO hat on. Oh my gosh. The things I think about now are completely different than a year ago because it's not thinking about What is in it for Zoe and me? It's what's the best thing for the company and the stakeholders and the customers and all of that.

It's great. And then you just make completely different decisions. 

[00:22:28] David: Oh, for sure. And that doesn't stop. I'm almost 12 years in and

[00:22:32] Nichole: Yeah.

[00:22:33] David: still ask questions where I probably should ask years ago, but I get new questions all the time and you never stop and it never stops being your baby either, which is why I think even at the biggest companies, a founder led company is something very different a CEO led company.

Not that those can't be the same thing, but if you look at say, Facebook,

Versus apple. Those are the biggest of the big, right? But the difference between a founder led like what Mark Zuckerberg is doing in AI and his machines and goggles, he's throwing money down a drain. The only way he can do that is because he has. Founder control, right? He is not an employee. He's the founder. And he, now in his case, he literally owns all the voting shares. So no one can fire him, which is a unique thing for Mark Zuckerberg. But if you're just, if you're just Tim cook example, he's, you know, biggest company in the world. He's still an employee.

He's still not the guy who started this. And also what's funny is he's also not rich. Like someone who started it either. That's another thing. He gets paid very well, but you compare his wealth to like someone like Mark Zuckerberg. Not even on the same planet, but his, he's now stock prices.

He's this, he's that he's not going to grab onto a five year vision. Like a founder would he's cause he's got to get these short term things when a founder is I'm casting this net, man. And we're going ride or die. Here we go. And I think there's something very special about that

[00:24:01] Nichole: Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, that's a really interesting way you just serve that up. I think there is. You know, there is something. It's just, you know, and it's really, I don't know, I lost my train of thought, but I just, you know, I think that it's so important. Yes, you got it. You got to stand the grit and the fight.

You got to be in that rank. You know, you know, sometimes it's do or die. And and that is so incredibly important as an entrepreneur. And then at the same time, it's like really important to kind of go high level and in and back and forth and that balance between the two. But yeah it's crazy.

I don't know about you, David, but I'm always, when I'm on LinkedIn and I see those videos going on, like what a day in the life of the entrepreneur is I'm like, yeah, you know, you got fires going on and it's not the whole thing.

[00:24:46] David: I tell the story, I've told this many times, Gary's going to be tired again, but I'm going to tell it again. Eric Boggs, I now finally know who said it. He is the current founder of RevBoss. Is that right, Gary? I say that wrong every time. 

[00:25:01] Gary: Sure. 

Let me go look it up real quick.

[00:25:04] David: I'm 99 percent positive. He has a quote that, that I look, I actually attributed it to him.

Gary go me. He has a quote that every founder has two songs in their head. Everything is awesome from the Lego movie and everything is broken by Bob Dylan. And they're both playing at the same time all the time. And I can, I connected on that. At such a deep level. I think I heard each said that in a speech, I don't know, a decade ago. And I was a new entrepreneur at the time. And I was like, man, he's speaking my language. And that's why I tell the story all the time, because it is absolutely because. 

It's the only job in the world that everything's great. And then an hour later, it's all falling apart and you've got to hold yourself together. Was I right, Gary?

[00:25:46] Gary: I'm impressed. Yes. You had the name of the company, correct? And you had the founder's name.

[00:25:50] David: Oh, yes. Go

me. I think that's probably the 

[00:25:52] Gary: Now in about six months, we'll learn that the quote is from someone else, but so

[00:25:56] David: confirmed it with him on this podcast. I am. No, that to me, that's anyway. So you guys now are how many people

ish 12. 12.

Are you in an office? Are you remote? How are you doing that?

[00:26:10] Nichole: percent remote at the moment. 

[00:26:12] David: How's that? How's that working for you? You like it.

You hate it.

[00:26:15] Nichole: It's, there's a lot that I love about it. It's great. Cause I can tap into 

[00:26:20] David: commute's great. 

[00:26:20] Nichole: from out, you know, the whole United States, which is really cool. We've been able to build a really cool culture on Slack, you know, in our meetings and we do fun things and stuff. You know, I would say in terms of culture building, we hired the right people.

People who are, you know, self resilient, self rely, you know, self starters and the whole bit and really love what they do and love the mission. And so that's great. The part that I don't like about it is that when you do things like UI UX design or you're whiteboarding things, or you're just like getting into the creative process, maybe with a marketing team that it's so much easier to be in a room together and just block out half a day and go, all right, let's order pizzas or burgers.

You know, block out a whole day. Let's order some pizzas and let's just dive in and just get it done. You don't quite have that attitude on, you know, Zoom and sometimes I feel like the creative is better served in person, so I am taking a look at that, you know, when we've got some extra funds to take a look at some co working spaces.

Half my team is in San Diego, the other half is in Raleigh, and then I've got a couple other people kind of sparsed about, so we'll see. All

[00:27:26] David: percent remote

and I do a lot of our, we call them exploratories, but they're deep dive with our clients or potential clients. You know, what do you want to build is really the question. And I have gotten to the point where a lot of them are remote and I will, I prefer them in person just because the camaraderie is much better, but I've gotten to the point where I have my iPad and I'm not an artist by any stress, that's Gary's job, but I will draw like I'm doing a whiteboard on an iPad.

So you don't see the top of my bald head while I'm drawing the whole time. And that's because, and so everyone's staring at my iPad as I'm drawing. And this is how, you know, I'm sketching things out and stuff like that when we're doing UI UX conversation, that's worked really well. Not as good as in person, but it's not bad.

And I will say what's really great about it is when it is remote, the whole thing's recorded. So if I have any questions as to what happened, boy, that's real nice. When it's in person, there's no recording of that. It's just in my head. And that's a very bad place to be. So I totally understand. Cause that remote thing struck strikes me.

I did not want a remote company when I started, but we've been doing it now. Eight or nine years. And so way before COVID because it was just a necessary evil for us. But you sound very similar to us. We live on Slack. We try to make it fun. We actually just won a culture award, which is very exciting.

[00:28:37] Gary: I was going to bring that up. Culture. That's, I think that's hugely important for any remote team.

[00:28:41] David: it's important for every team, but it's incredibly hard. It takes twice as much work to be remote because you know, you don't have the water cooler. That sounds so cliche, but that water cooler is, you know, you guys just having a pass by at the hallway and you're like, Hey, how was your weekend?

Right? You can do all that stuff. And it's just natural human interaction. You have to force that in a remote world. And that is not natural at all. And. Especially when you're half of your team are people who don't like to talk to people. That's really fun. 

[00:29:14] Nichole: I know, you know, very, yeah. Congrats on the award. That's 

[00:29:17] David: oh, thank you. Yeah, we were, Christie gets all the credit for it. She worked very hard. We had to do interviews and we had to do forms and she led that whole effort. And she did a great job,

but but yeah, very proud of 

[00:29:29] Gary: Earlier when you mentioned that you had your beta and then when you had what, like a hundred coaches or whatever, some people on there and then it crashed and you had to redo it did that deter anybody from joining like the next beta of the new and improved version, or were you still able to kind of pick up that traction and go,

[00:29:46] Nichole: Yeah, we were pretty lucky. I'll tell you what did happen. So first of all, to answer your question, that a lot of those beta testers just Came with us. I said, you know what? I get it. It's all good. Just let us know when you've got something We'll come back. So a fair amount of those did come back, but i'll tell you what did happen We had a whole like I had a ton of capital that I was raising and it was all kind of wrapped up into the kpis and You know, doing some marketing tests and getting through this test process.

And when that broke, then all that funding went through. And so that was a real difficult thing to go through. And try to figure out how to go back out there and tell my story and try to raise more capital and start over.

[00:30:27] Gary: But you were able to kind of pick back up steam with the newer version, the new release, and then just kind of keep the ball rolling from there.

[00:30:34] Nichole: Yeah, absolutely. So when I raised the when I raised the next round of funding, when I was able to do that, then that's when I hired the CTO and then we built the team and that's what we've been cranking on for almost the last two years. So And when I say two years, I mean from the moment we started building that to release

[00:30:51] David: I will say one thing that's worth noting for future founders, people who want to be beta testers generally are really forgiving

They are the tip of the spear of tech, whatever that tech we're talking about is they want to try something new. If it fails, it's really not a big deal. And if you want to try again, they're usually game.

[00:31:12] Gary: Then to bring it all back and bring it together, what did you experience through your journey that would kind of help me answer this? What are your top three pieces of advice for any new entrepreneur or business or startup?

[00:31:23] Nichole: yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, the one that I touched on earlier is just that it's not about the money, but it is about the money. And it's really important that entrepreneurs understand the business that you're getting into, understand your competition, understand the ecosystem, understand how the whole system works, understand the money flow understand your pricing, you know, like building your pricing model, all of that is so incredibly important that you understand that because if you don't understand that you can end up building You know, it's okay to fire and adjust and to pivot, but just not understanding the basic economics of what you're building.

Then you can be influenced by outside contractors. If you bring a CFO on that has, you know, him or her idea, you know, ideas and things like that. You can also be vulnerable when you're feeling low about your competition, you know, making a huge stride and it's just important to understand the money part of it.

And the second part I would say is, Embrace failure. You know, we've heard that before. But seriously, you're going to make a ton of rookie mistakes. I know I made a ton of rookie mistakes, but the beautiful thing about failure is you're actually in the rink And you're fighting, you're actually doing something and you're making something happen.

And it's through those moments that you learn and you grow and you're stretch. And you Become the entrepreneur that you're going to become. And if you let failure get you down and get you into a rut and it forces you to stop you're just, you're really cheating the world of this great idea that you have.

Cause you've got this idea and embrace that. Don't let it knock you off your guard, but take a look at it. And what's the lesson in that experience and just keep going. Perfecting it just keep moving forward and keep trying to do better and sooner or later you wake up and you'll look Back and go.

Oh, wow. I don't make those rookie mistakes anymore. So that's a good thing

[00:33:10] David: You make new ones.

[00:33:11] Nichole: Yeah, I don't know. I know I was just gonna say that you make a whole You know, I'm still saying I'm a rookie and I'm I'll be saying that for another 50 years. So exactly, And then I think the third one that's really important that I found is for most of us that start businesses, like we're, we tend to be workaholics and we tend to be perfectionists and we tend to just go all in.

Don't do that, man. You're going to burn out big time. It is so incredibly important to really lean into work life balance and whatever that means to you. And I don't mean work life balance in the sense of whoa, okay. I go to the gym every morning. Okay. So the gym is good. You're keeping your body healthy, but is that really filling your soul?

Are you really filling yourself up? And so for me, going to the gym does fill me up, but maybe somebody else is what I really need is I need to be alone and I need to be in a park and I need to just sit and listen to the birds. That's what fills me up. And so it's really important that when you start this journey that you, cause you won't see the burnout.

That's the scary thing about burnout. You're not even going to see the signs. Your loved ones will, but you're not going to see it. And then when you're burnt out, it's really hard to come back. And another really good way to avoid burnout is to trust the people that you love and that are close to you and check in with them and say, Hey, how am I doing?

How do you think I'm doing? Am I doing all right? And and they'll tell you, you know, they'll tell you where you are. So those are my three.

[00:34:36] David: Love it.

[00:34:37] Gary: Spoken like a true coach. There

was one thing you

said 

[00:34:40] David: got a career in there. I'm not sure.

[00:34:42] Gary: Yeah. You might want to consider this as a profession. No, but you said earlier something about If your competition does something and then you make the rash decision and the mistake to try to keep up with that, I think that's something people should definitely think about just because your quote unquote competition, you know, might be moving faster. Going a little bit further or earning a little bit quicker doesn't necessarily mean that you have to keep pace with them at all times at the risk of destroying what you built. 

[00:35:10] Nichole: Love it. Yeah. Love that, Gary. It's so true. It's so true. Cause right. 

[00:35:15] Gary: if anybody else,

I'm sorry, go ahead.

[00:35:17] David: Oh man. What was that?

[00:35:20] Gary: If anybody wants to learn more about you and Zoe, what's the best place for them to reach out and

[00:35:24] Nichole: Sure. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or go to Zoe with two E's. The two E's matter. It's the coach and the client and the community Zoe, Z O E E. com. You can email me at hello at Zoe. com. And yeah, we just, we love feedback and we love hearing from people.

[00:35:39] David: Hey, where did the name come from?

[00:35:41] Nichole: The name came from so Zoe is a female Greek word for life and it is the root word for zoology, so it is all life on the planet and in spiritual terms it means the God life in all of us and why I chose the two E's is because it's the community that we bring light to each other through the coaching and so it's the connecting of the, of the God life in all of us and building up humanity.

[00:36:09] David: Nice, wow. That was way more profound than I expected

[00:36:11] OUTRO: Hi, I'm Christy Pronto, Content Marketing Director here at BigPixel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the BizDev Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email, hello at thebigpixel. net.