Entrepreneur Success Path

Speaker 1: [Music] hi I'm Melanie bar welcome to the she builted experience with Melanie you're here because you want to experience the life and business that you crave join me as I talk to women who have successfully built it a career and business that they love we dive into the topic of how they built it and talk about everything from Having the courage to make career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech innovation magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so let's dive in Mickey Reynolds is CEO and co-founder of grid 110 an LA based early stage startup accelerator and Community Development nonprofit since 2014 Mickey has focused on activating the startup ecosystem in Los Angeles through her work with grid 110 fostering community and connecting the dots for entrepreneurs through access to mentoring and critical resources thank you for joining us today Mickey you are the CEO and co-founder of grid 110 share with us about your early experiences prior to joining grid 110 you launched the downtown LA location for the tech company general assembly what did you like the most about your time there yeah so I've been in Tech my entire career since graduating college I went to UCLA I knew that I always wanted to work in some capacity in the internet and the digital space just didn't really know what that would look like for me so I spent my first kind of 10 years working at the movie studios so I was on the digital teams for MGM and fox realized really quickly that I did not want to work one in entertainment or two for large corporations and so I moved on from there to working for a smaller software development company where I got to be really Hands-On and helping to build technology and it's somebody coming from a completely non-technical background it was a really exciting opportunity just to learn I wore a ton of different hats uh during the time that I was there and just wanted to get involved in building things that was something that was really exciting for me and then it came to a the career Crossroads for myself where that company I was there for six years uh It ultimately ended up shutting down and so went through kind of a period of trying to figure out what it was that I wanted to do next I had spent the first 10 years building things for other people trying to figure out what I liked and what I didn't like but ultimately not feeling incredibly fulfilled with the work that I was doing I learned a lot but was looking for something that was more Mission aligned and felt like there was a sense of fulfillment in the work that I was doing and so that's actually what brought me to General Assembly it was at a point where I saw that they were doing different workshops and classes outside of the Santa Monica campus that they had and myself living in Downtown LA was really trying to figure out you know how do I figure out what I'm going to do next in my career where can I go to network where the events that are happening and I know I could go to General Assembly in Santa Monica but I didn't want to work in Santa Monica I wanted to find something that was a little bit closer to home and so I was really excited to see them thinking about expanding and offering up opportunity outside of the Westside area so I actually reached out to them directly and was unemployed at the time trying to figure out my next thing you know told them I had some spare time on my hands and if there was anything that I could do to help with their expansion efforts and that resulted in them actually bringing me on board uh to launch the expansion into downtown LA and to help support in some other new markets that they were exploring across the LA region so it was exciting for me to be Associated and to be connected with such a mission-driven company um of trying to help get more people into Tech so whether it was on the marketing side on the software side the design side technology and this industry was booming at the time but for folks that maybe didn't study computer science in college didn't have a background in that how are they able to access these careers that could really be life-changing for them and so it was exciting to be a part of that community and to help bridge the gap in terms of people that were looking to either level up in their career or to access a new completely new career point for themselves and that had to be such a great place to be because I've attended events at general assembly in Santa Monica and they do so many different events it seems like every event that they do is different so I'm sure you met so many interesting people so many different people my personal and professional Network really kind of exploded at that point of sitting in this position of working in marketing and hosting events and classes and workshops and really kind of being at the the top of the funnel for the General Assembly community of how can we bring people on to campus how can we expose them to all these different career opportunities um to different companies to maybe things that they hadn't really thought about before to entrepreneurs and so being able to Leverage The General Assembly brand to bring in incredible speakers from different companies across the LA ecosystem to really highlight in particular women and people with color in these spaces so that attendees could actually see themselves in these roles I love that tell us about grid 110 and why are you passionate about it yes at the same point of joining General Assembly again looking for this sense of community trying to figure out what I was going to do next kind of prior to actually Landing the role with General Assembly I connected with a group of people in the downtown area all entrepreneurs that lived or worked in downtown felt like downtown had the potential to be the next startup Hub in LA and Beyond there was a lot of resurgence and excitement happening in the downtown area it was becoming a place where people wanted to live work and play as you are you know very well familiar with it but feeling like there was a lack of a sense of community um of a connective tissue in particular for startups and entrepreneurs you know we knew that this existed on the west side and like the Silicon Beach area where a lot of startups co-working spaces centri capitalists like a lot of the community resided but in a place as dynamic as downtown LA where in other major metropolitan cities usually the downtown area is that Hub of activity we just didn't see that happening here in Downtown LA we talked for about a year as kind of an unofficial task force of how could we create the type of community that we feel like we're missing um and grid 110 was born out of that it was talking to entrepreneurs different stakeholders the mayor's office different city buildings about you know what could we do to provide a platform a sense of connectivity for entrepreneurs what are they missing how can we provide some sort of support in terms of what they're lacking and so grid 110 was really born out of that to to create the sense of community that we felt was missing and develop a programmatic element on top of that so what we ultimately ended up launching is a startup accelerator and so it was a cohort-based model of working with um at the time it was five Founders for six months now it's 20 companies for three months and really providing business support mentorship access to resources access to Capital and this sense of connective Community amongst entrepreneurs a lot of them are first-time Founders have never done this before and so really being able to bring all the tools and resources but also the people together to help them at this critical stage in their Journey that's so great and I would think that with any City it's difficult and challenging to bring people together at times and I mentioned I work for the Los Angeles Dodgers and as you were talking my experience of being downtown the stadium was so far away from the buildings and the action I would think if I wanted to leave for lunch it was an hour to go a mile and then get back and I also lived in Silver Lake for a while which had that sense of community but when you think of down toown it's interesting to think about how do you bring people together and it's so great that you're helping entrepreneurs and particularly people who are starting out and have never done it before because so often someone wants to work on their craft and running the business and the business part of it can be challenging at times because you you just want to focus on like what you like to do and what you do best yeah absolutely the the challenge blessing in the curse of Los Angeles is it's being so large and spread out right and so it's given rise to these different pocket communities that uh have been created to support innovation in our very own backyard so Pasadena has been doing it for years glendel Culver City Hollywood the South Bay and so I think that what was once perceived as a challenge of everything being concentrated on the west side and having to you know Tre through traffic for a 700 p.m. event now are there are things that are happening all over and even you know because of Co most things have been virtual so the accessibility Factor has enabled people to connect in a way that they've never been able to before and to your point I think something that we've seen uh oftentimes with entrepreneurs whether their first time or it's their fourth business they're often so much in the weeds of what they're doing and in the day-to-day and the operations of it and so our program really enables them to pull back out a little bit and to work on the business and not in the business and so they can think a little bit more strategic ically they can get other perspectives from the other cohort members or the team members that are coming in and it really allows them that head space and that designated amount of time to not think about you know the the conversion rates for sales or the new product that they're launching or the bug that they have to fix in their app or website and really think more big picture and you know why are we doing this who are we doing this for who actually wants this are we being successful at it and so I think it's it's a really helpful time that most entrepreneurs don't take for themselves or they you know have a hard time kind of creating that space that's so smart to help entrepreneurs see that vision and bring in other perspectives because you're right so often we do get into the weeds sometimes I think you know she built it with someone else's business what would I advise them to do because it makes you think in a different way and in a different perspective you offer friends and family and a Residency program can you share with us a success story that has come out of it yeah so I see friends and family as one of our success stories so for the past six years we've been running programs solely focused around Los Angeles so one of our primary funders is the city of Los Angeles we have a partnership with the mayor's office so we've been you know at first we were hyper local focused on downtown LA and the east side of LA and F and helping entrepreneurs there and then as word got out about our programs you know we wanted to support entrepreneurs across the region um but it's been solely focused here in LA and pre pandemic we thought about what would it look like to expand there are so many other emerging startup cities that are doing incredible things across the country is there an opportunity for us to partner are there gaps that we could help fill given the The Proven you know programming model that we've developed and so it was kind of a cityby city approach in our thinking then and then the pandemic hit and we went completely virtual our programs had been in person before based out of a co-working space because uh building Community really happened in person for us and the pandemic really forced us to think about that in a completely new way with running our programs virtually and even you know running them for the past two years still focused on entrepreneurs here in La it just enabled us to meet people exactly where they were at we have a lot of parents in our programs and so prior to the virtual nature of our programs they would have to commute into the location find Child Care like all of these things that are priorities for them and so being able to just you know zoom into a program session whether you're here in LA or maybe you know you're somewhere else for week I think it really made it much more accessible and so it opened our eyes to what expansion could really look like outside of the Los Angeles area and we just knew that we wanted to find the right partner to do that with so sing company which is a local Venture Capital fund that just rais their first one at the beginning of last year in 2021 was a really well aligned partner in terms of their focus around uh entrepreneurship and economic inclusion around investing in in a very inclusive lens and in terms of the types of Founders that they're looking at um and similar to us we've worked about 235 companies where 70% of those are led by women and 74% are led by founders of color the sense of inclusive entrepreneurship is really important to us and finding a partner that would want to launch a national program and support entrepreneurs outside of the area was really exciting and so we actually just wrapped up uh the first program for friends and family and so being able to you know be this local Grassroots community-led initiative in LA to now running a national program and being able to provide non-dilutive capital and attachment to that was really exciting for us and what I see as a success story and I think the other things like I can name a bunch of different companies that we've worked with that I think have gone on to do incredible things but I think that the majority of the founders that I see successful the ones who have gone on and raised funding or who have survived the pandemic and are still operating businesses today mostly women and mostly women of color and so when we look at the statistics of who's getting funding or rather who is not getting funding and it's an at an alarming rate of you know less than 2% of women and people of color that number is not growing and when they say it grows it's fractionally it's really exciting for us to see that the success stories that we're seeing are the inverse of that and that it is possible I think if you're intentional about who you want to support and seeking out uh incredible entrepreneurs to work with absolutely I had a conversation with Naomi said in and we were talking about the statistics of women leaving the workforce during covid so it is great that what you do is supporting women to stay it's the same way she built it it's like we want to empower women to stay in the workforce do what they are good at doing do what brings them joy and make money doing it we need more companies doing this because you're right when you look at the statistics and it's great that you now offer the virtual support for parents I have 8-year-old Twins and I was homeschooling 8-year-old twins throughout all of covid so when you look at that balance and that Dynamic of trying to run a business and grow a career and homeschool kids it's just really great that you're doing what you're doing for women in business at this point in time yeah I think the the reports that we've seen just the the number of women that had to leave the workforce because of the pandemic to be whether it's Primary Care ERS what we've seen is a large number of businesses being created during the the pandemic time and so perhaps it was because of that the typical kind of nine-to-five corporate structure was not something that uh somebody could really it it worked anymore for them for for lifestyle reasons um for family reasons and so having to create a new stream of Revenue having to create a new type of business was born out of a necessity and we've also seen that it's there opportunities that were created because of the pandemic so customers are now now being reached in a different way the future of work and different types of platforms and systems to help the hybrid and remote Workforce have given opportunities for people to create solutions to these new problems that we're now experiencing I look at it as exciting it's an exciting time it's just everything is also changing so fast so it's great but it's how do we keep up with the speed right right exactly what is your approach to managing teams and what do you think is the most crucial component of lead ership when it comes to focusing on what you're trying to accomplish or working with a team and helping them stay focused it's really keeping an eye on your Northstar and understanding what your why is Simon cnck has a great book and Ted Talk around leading with your why and understanding what that why is and why it's so important to leadership and how you rally everybody else whether it's your team members your customers potential investors around that why it's really important to have a clear idea of what that is and it can help you in terms of prioritizing it can help you in terms of focus I think about different partnership opportunities or program opportunities that we've been given and does it align with our why does it align with our mission and that helps to determine if it's something that we should move forward with or if it's something that you know this doesn't really fit right now and maybe it's a better fit for somebody else a really great activity that we went through about two years in once we had started was doing the Mission Vision Values exercise of being really clear with what those are and sharing those with everybody so it's it's on our website we talk about it in info sessions for our programs we talk about it with perspective and team members that these are the things that are important to us and we hope that this aligns with you being really clear on those and revisiting them to ensure that this is still kind of true to who you are still aligns with you know your why I think those are things that in when things can get stressful and confusing and frustrating if you're really clear on those things that they will help pull you through that's really good advice and great that you did the Mission Vision value because what I found is it's hard to be simple we do so many things for companies and businesses and people it's it can be very difficult to be simple and you're right about going back to that North Star because when you go back to it it just everything kind of syns into perspective after that what do you like the most about what you do the highlight of my day is talking to a Founder maybe having advising hours with them and talking them through something or reading feedback that they shared with one of our sessions um and talking about the impact that this program or a speaker or another founder had on their Outlook um the support that they got and so being able to connect people to whether it's these resources or to each other through these types of shared experiences is really the the joy of the work that I get to do and even doing that outside of the programs that we run if there's opportunities for for me to connect with Founders separately through volunteer work or mentorship opportunities do I do a lot of pitch competition judging and so if there are things that I can think of or people that I can think of to connect them to H and something comes out of that that's really exciting for me to see so it's that again that connectivity that's really rooted in community as someone who has such a social business would you say you're more of an introvert or an extrovert I am 80% introvert I am a a capital i to the core it's been really interesting I think just the progression that I've seen in my own self through the pandemic I had to be around people a lot and so when it comes to Fridays I'm exhausted and as much as I love that work it's very can be very depleting especially because you're supporting a team you're supporting other Founders you're constantly you know problem solving for other people which requires energy or speaking at events or producing events so it can take a lot out of you it was something that I enjoy I just needed to find the time to recover from and and early days of the pandemic being home alone most of the time you know 95% of the time I was like this is actually kind of nice I don't mind this at all and it was really interesting just to see what life was like before and after of having to strip away all the unnecessary things it really allowed me to focus in on what was really important what I wanted to focus on you know giving that energy back to my team giving that energy back to the companies that we were working with but two years later I definitely I'm like itching for like the quality time with certain people so I love kind of more smaller intimate environments not a fan of the small talk I definitely have social anxiety when I have to go to something where I'm not sure if I'm going to know somebody there I was actually just talking about this with a friend last night where if you know smaller dinner parties where I might not know anybody or okay but larger events where I'm like okay what's the agenda what time does the event actually start can I avoid the networking part in the very beginning and find my seat right away so yes hard hard introvert but I consider myself a digital extrovert so I I think I personality comes out a little bit more uh online yeah I believe in abundance I know two people will run a business the same and I'm listening to you and what we do is very similar and so I had to ask this question because everyone says oh Melanie you're an extrovert I'm like no I'm really an introvert I could be out and I love talking to people um like you were mentioning but I need that down time you know some people get their energy from talking to other people I get my energy from that alone time and I think it sounds like you and I went through similar experiences with the virtual how do you connect with people virtually and then appreciating the downtime y because you're right with what we do every day all day by the end of the week it's like oh was that a year or just a week yeah and I don't think Zoom has necessarily made it any better so even though I'm not having to you know run from one place to the next or commute from one place to the next there's still an energy transfer that happens through zoom and you're probably finding yourself know what used to be a phone call is now a zoom call and and and that requires energy and then trying to figure out how to best manage your time and be respectful of like even your own team's time of like when do we want to do team meetings versus one-on-one versus actually having time to do the Deep work part of what we do and so it's definitely been something to try and figure out yeah and you mentioned meeting people you don't know I was an ambassador for the downtown LA Area Chamber of Commerce very early in my career and the company I was working for said we want you to join the chamber so I joined the ambassadors and what I had to do was walk into rooms and meet people and get them interested in the chamber and it was the best thing that could have happened to me because it forced me to learn to walk into a room and talk to anyone I learned to say you know oh how are you involved in the chamber or just ask those questions that get people talking so it's definitely something that doesn't always come naturally yeah my my rule was always quality over quantity and so if I'm going to event I'm like let me make one or two really good connections here that will be my goal and once I've done that I just need to have like a quality conversation with somebody and not have any agenda around it just to make that initial connection maybe something will come up later and I think that's something investing in relationships has always been a big thing for me of making sure that they're not transactional that I may not have any idea where this is going to go when we first sit down and talk but like let's understand each other's goals see where this can go and you know a couple months a year two years if you maintain and invest in those relationships I have seen things come about like because it was the right time I was able to connect them to an opportunity we got to work together whatever it might be investing in relationships has become a really important value of mine so true and it's so genuine and I'm sure it's so appreciated yeah I believe that magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy what is one tip you can leave with us today about how you find and live your joy so I can't remember where I heard this but I have it written on a Post-It and the the quote is don't be complicit in your own diminishment and I think oftentimes we get in our own way and I definitely struggle with impostor syndrome and self-doubt the more quote unquote successful I feel like I've gotten maybe even the worst that it gets um of finding myself in rooms at seats at the table with people that I greatly admire and wondering how I got there and kind of having to remind myself that that I was invited to that that seat and that I'm there for a reason the only thing standing in you know our way between you and the thing that you want is yourself and so really just do whatever it takes to to get out of your own way so that you don't live in that space of fear and and self-doubt so whether that's therap getting an accountability partner uh a mentor and this can be for work rated things or personal things it could be like personal things you want to accomplish whether it's you know having a better Fitness routine um or writing a book or getting that promotion whatever it might be let somebody else be the one that tells you no and not yourself um and I think those are the the ways that I have found in both work and personal life to find that sense of joy and even though I continue to struggle with it it's definitely something it's a work in progress um but it's something that uh has really resonated with me even more recently such good advice I know I can relate to what you just said and I know our listeners can too thank you so much Mickey for joining us today please tell our listeners how and where we can find you in Grid 110 yeah so grid 110 is at grid 110 grid110 on all the social channels and also grid 11.org for the website check us out um add yourself to our newsletter to find out about our programs and we have really engaging content on social media and then I'm at mixer on every channel imaginable feel free to reach out and connect if you are new to Sheil it we'd love for you to join us we offer Community memberships masterminds Innovative virtual events and meaningful connections to entrepreneurs and corporate leaders please also check out our Sheil it shop curated products from women-owned businesses who put their heart and soul into their beautiful and Innovative products we offer she built it business Consulting and the Shelt tip blog thank you to everyone around the world who joined today thank you to my editor Rich stalino please download And subscribe wherever you get your podcast and until next time together let's let nothing stop us from experiencing the life that We crave