From Gamer to CEO

Speaker 1: 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 I am so thrilled to welcome NAA Reeves NAA is the CEO of trip an award-winning digital therapeutic platform designed to address mental health and emotional health prior to trip she held senior leadership roles at Electronic Arts as SVP Global online president of Tex plus Chief strategy officer at Guai which was acquired by Sony C Co of Machinima which was acquired by Warner Brothers and more she's one of the few women in the video game industry to lead large scale Tech initiatives and she frequently speaks on why more girls should play video games as a path for getting more females into stem NAA your career path is so interesting and we can't wait to dive into our conversation welcome to the

Speaker 2: show thank you for joining us thank you so much Melanie it's so nice to see you I think I met you when I was working at

Speaker 1: Guai in Orange County it's so nice to see you too and it's really fun to follow your career and see all of your success when looking back at the times when you made the larger career leaps in your life when you accepted your role at Electronic Arts at Tex plus and when you were at companies that were acquired what gave you the courage to make those leaps and to keep making the leaps

Speaker 2: throughout your career I've just kind of approached it like software development in the sense that it's best just to get a prototype of what your thoughts are so you can analyze it and then if you can get an audience to start trying it and giving you realtime feedback the product will evolve from there and in many ways like that's been my Approach To My Career it's been pretty organic I followed where I was interested I've always loved technology playing video games and experimenting with those interfaces in my own personal life and that Curiosity has led me to a wonderful career of working with technology the big leaps in my career have been facilitated by experimentation trying to say yes to new ideas and then allowing myself really to show up courage comes after you do something you're really terrified to do I thought for a long time I had to wake up one day and feel confident and then I could step up and raise my hand for oh I want to be a part of that but really it's just jumping in and trying to figure it out and then you go oh I was afraid of that but now I'm so much more confident about

Speaker 1: just being here you're so right and that's such good advice because usually it's that First Leap or that first step that is the most difficult and challenging to do and then the confidence shows up after and you realize you didn't die right exactly and then it gets easier and easier it's like public speaking right which is scary for anyone anybody who tells you it's not scary is is not being fully honest when I first started speaking publicly as part of my job my hands would shake I'd have to cram them into my pockets or clutch them behind my back to get grounded and every time I did it I was less and less fearful and now it's really something I'm much more comfortable with I've grown into it by

Speaker 2: doing it thank you for being so honest and real about that because someone who sees you speaking and speaking about your company and your career experiences might think oh that's so easy for her but it might not be for me so thank you for being so real because the more you do it you're right the easier it gets yeah somebody was showing me some virtual reality products where they help you face your fear so you can stand in front of a public audience in VR and safely kind of navigate the dry mouth and the shaking hands so interesting what's available to us today yeah can you tell us more about what you do at

Speaker 1: trip I'm CEO of trip trip is still an early stage startup but we're starting to get a lot of love from our users on what we're doing you can download trip on the Oculus app store it's a virtual reality product you can also download it on the PlayStation app store if you have a PlayStation VR device and you'll start to see US expand into augmented reality on the new smart glasses what we do at trip is in the virtual reality goggles right now that you can purchase they were so affordable the Oculus Quest is only $299 it was very popular gift over the holidays and in our experience you go into virtual reality and into trip and we create this really safe container for you to connect to yourself we incorporate sound frequencies and almost psychedelic meditative environments that are all designed based on scientific research that we've referenced to influence our design choices to help you decom impress relax sharpen your focus and we're now starting to experiment with different ways to expand into Mobile content that's Way Beyond just listening to a voice recording telling you to close your eyes and relax We're experimenting with new approaches to hacking different states of being and Consciousness and really giving your self agency over how you feel that's so

Speaker 2: interesting about taking meditation to the next level you're using technology as a way to meditate and a way to step away from it with technology involved

Speaker 1: yeah and so it was actually based on my own life experience I grew up pretty chaotic environment my mother was a heroin addict and as a result my sisters and I were pretty neglected and in some ways that built a lot of strength because I had to figure things out as the oldest child but what I found you know I'm that first generation of teenagers that went to the arcade and played video games right as soon as they showed up had every game console because what I found was for me it was a way to escape but even more importantly it was a way for me to feel in control of my environment and there are a lot of positives around playing video games and I've spoken publicly around this but for me it was a mental health support tool during a time of Crisis as a young person and then I was very fortunate from a psychiatric kind of meltdown I had as a teenager because of the conditions of of my family life and my inability to really know how to manage all of that I just didn't have the tools and I met a therapist at a hospital that I was in and she taught me how to meditate and this was way before the MC mindfulness of today like Dy and I love all that stuff because I think it's lowered the barrier of entry and it's got people thinking about taking care of their emotional and mental well-being but for me it was a game Cher because I could see that meditation helped me really rewire my decision framework and I started to make better choices in my life with trip what happened to me was about five years ago I was really happily married to a wonderful man we'v been together a really long time and he was suddenly diagnosed with terminal cancer and we were told we had eight months together and he was gone

Speaker 2: in8 weeks and I'm so sorry thank you and

Speaker 1: I appreciate that one thing I know about loss is it's something that we all deal with especially with if we have a full life that's filled with people who love us and loss is an effect of having great love but as we navigated that journey together and then ultimately I found myself alone on the other side of it and navigating that journey I could see the value of my meditation practice as well as my love for technology in a way that as I thought about how I wanted to rebuild my life on my own the idea to build a company that would have tools could help people navigate these difficult life challenges in a way that was easier than kind of the very long journey I went through with meditating and developing a practice that really showed up for me when I needed it the most I felt Mission focused that that's what I wanted to do with the rest of my career was to be part of the Force for good by using technology for good that's

Speaker 2: how we started trip I'm so happy for you and it sounds like you're living your joy because you're bringing your love of video games and meditation together and what a wonderful thing for you and as a mom of seven-year-old twins I have a girl and a boy and my son is playing more video games than ever before because we're all at home and he's at homeschooling and on Tech more than ever I'm curious your advice for young girls because my daughter is not as much into the video games as my son but what advice advice would you give young girls because I could see how it would be an entry for stem oh 100% it's not like you can say hey lady start coding playing video games there's a lot of research that if you get involved in them before age 12 you can develop spatial reasoning skills so this is why it's actually very critical for female children to be oriented toward technology interfaces because otherwise what's going to happen as the world and industries become more and more computerized females in the workplace will always be on a second tier of support roles if they don't have technical skills so that digital divide will probably impact our ability to have parity in the workplace more than anything and so it's really important and I have seen wonderful women enter the workplace Now who grew up playing games like Minecraft which they see themselves as Builders and makers they're working with little tool kits that look a lot like grownup software tool kits they're influenced by that and so it's really important to get girls into those interfaces in early and if we are have a awareness we can see how we kind of migrate them even unconsciously away from those things and boys are much more encouraged I always think of this stupid jpeg somebody sent me of a science fair and it had like this whole program for the boys and it had like Robotics and this and that like really fun stuff and on the girls track it just said science with the Sparkle and I just thought wow this is you know it's so

Speaker 1: good that you're bringing this up and to talk about this topic so openly

Speaker 2: Minecraft Roblox where you're building and making are really important Goldie blocks has really put an emphasis on building physical mechanical toys that get girls brains thinking that way it's really weird maybe one of the byproducts of having a mom who was really checked out she was sick and now I understand she had mental health issues as a kid obviously you look at your friend's mom and then your own mom kind of in the bathroom all the time and wonder what's wrong but there's a weird benefit that I got from it was I didn't get a lot of programming from her on how a girl should be or how a girl should behave and so my interest kind of just naturally for fun I would take apart the TV to try to figure out how it worked you know so great yeah and I like toys like Legos and playing chess that were I guess more boy toys one thing that's great about having twins is it my son brings my daughter into those things like my son loves the Legos and gravitates towards that but because of that now my daughter is too and Elliott will say I want to be an architect and Parker wants to be an architect now too so that part has been really fun and we're into sidoku and now they're

Speaker 1: getting into those kinds of games on the

Speaker 2: App yeah I love that because that's the kind of brain that you want to really develop and obviously I think there's like this weird narrative where girls kind of think that they're not good at math Etc you have to be good at math to be good

Speaker 1: at business and to be a good leader the data to understand is the math in business is not that hard right you might have to calculate a ratio or a percentage here but it's mostly adding and subtracting I had that exact conversation with my twins because my son would pick up the math super fast and then my daughter started to say I'm not good at math and I said Parker do not say that because just because someone's learning at a different pace than you does not mean that you are not good at math and then there was a time when because we were zooming and at home she would go to my son to have him check her math and I said do not go to Elliot to check your math I will check your math so it's been really interesting to see that dynamic between the two of them

Speaker 2: yeah I noticed something really interesting because I have a lot of girlfriends who work in Tech you tend to all know each other and one thing we all had in common we went to all girls schools which I thought was really interesting and maybe we learned differently because of brain chemistry I'm not sure what the science is behind that at all this is one of the things that I've said about playing video games you learn how to fail it's like incremental learning in order to get through a game you die over and over right but you die less over time right you figure oh okay I got to start running before I hit those spikes a little longer like it's incremental learning and that is a muscle I think that you learn in sports you learn in playing video games and we need girls to

Speaker 1: build that muscle that is so true I never thought about that but the more you fail the more you try it's the same way with hearing the word no sometimes we don't try things because we're afraid to hear the word no but that's so interesting as it relates to video games and teaching that perseverance right incremental learning I think maybe there's this sense like when your daughter's saying I'm not good at math she thinks there's some inherent knowledge that she doesn't have that her brother has right she sees him pick it up so fast yeah but why is he picking it up so fast because he's probably playing math like games right in preschool I would put magneet tiles and Legos every day I'd put something on the ground when he came home from preschool CU I knew he would go straight to it and start building right and Parker does the same thing she would go and build with him you've had so much

Speaker 2: success in your roles leading teams and scaling businesses what is your strategy for management and staying on task to accomplish what you set out to do and what is your approach for motivating

Speaker 1: teams and those around you oh gosh there's so much there to unpack so first of all how do you get into the position to lead a team there's a whole strategy to that right and how I have navigated that I had to figure it out no one gave me a Playbook and the more I felt dismissed my attitude around like why isn't anybody listening to me and you know and often times I was the only woman in the room and as a young woman I was really frustrated with how do I get heard and then I was at a company they had a really strong data product team and this was way before data products were readily available and they used data in such a sophisticated way and I got really curious about it and I started I I would just hang out with them in my off hours and this I was very young in my career I was product manager at that time and I said will you show me what you're doing I want to learn more about how you're analyzing the performance of applications and it was from there that when I started showing up in the room with numbers that people actually started hearing me and so it was really like thinking about how do I present my ideas in ways that are focused around contribution whether it's in the early part of my career it wasn't so much about generating Revenue but I could figure fure out ideas that could save the company money whether it was like speeding up operations or analyzing throughput creating a tool but it if I wanted to do something that I could own if I could show the impact of what it might have that's when I started to get funding within an organization and getting more and more responsibility and if anybody had any kind of bias against me at that time as a young female even if it was an unconscious bias where they would be dismissive of my ideas they couldn't dismiss the data that I was presenting especially if I showed up with oh I took the initiative to run a little test and here were the results and this is what I think if I get $50,000 worth of budget I could take it to this and it would have this impact there was a way to I started to see that I could present my Concepts that it was hard to say no so you start building influence one thing I'm starting to understand is that it really comes down to the energy that you're bringing in the room I remember one day around the 2008 crisis I was out of company and the stock had just gone down significantly in a couple of days there was very real fear in the room and I was really trying not to get jacked up by that fear and was just trying to use my meditation practice in that moment and I remember the CEO after we came up with a game plan we were walking down the hallway and he said I just have to say I feel better when you're in the room and there's something about that made me realize could be an anchor for my career that if I show up with a good attitude I'm fun to work with but I'm always focusing on Solutions and also making people feel safe around my initiatives and that I'm also going to take care of my team I found that this was something I could really evolve as a person it made me happier at work but it also became very much my authentic leadership style it's easy enough to be a jerk by accident I think it has to do with that energy and then focus on really being a team player and contributing to it and outcome but also to have fun doing it

Speaker 2: all of your experiences have come together you went to an all girl school

Speaker 1: where I'm sure that was a collaborative environment to a male dominated industry where it's give me the facts and give me the numbers and then your meditation in the room making the team and those around you feel comfortable yeah comfortable with me first which is its own thing what I'm starting to learn now and it's been a growth area for mean as a leader it's really important to create the psychological safety to build trust and if the team trusts you as a leader and they trust each other even if you're a small team of eight you can build something great and I believe that's what we've done it's motivated by trying to help people we have a mission we have a feeling of a sense a purpose we're all proud of what we're doing not in an arrogant way but more like we're making a real difference in people's lives especially this past year the some of the emails we've received from our customers you'll see like our whole team will get tears in their eyes when they read them people Thanking us for helping them through this stressful year of 2020 that's been a growth area for me because it's sort of that hedge fund kind of mindset I've worked for those kind of bosses where it's like when at all cost let's crush this and I think that can make business fun you know it's the game of it's fun to be competitive you it's okay to have a competitive nature and it's okay for a woman to have a competitive nature 100% especially as it relates to business and it's super fun to win as a team and that becomes addicting too it it does and obviously you want to do it with integrity and you also want to do it with compassion too right I'm constantly looking at how to be better because as the power Dynamic changes and you have more and more responsibility it's not always a balanced conversation when someone's livelihood is dependent on you being receptive to them right and so I have realized that I have to be very mindful about those interactions the damage you can create by giving someone feedback in a way that they might take it as criticism and I'm not even intending to do that but it's just the way I say things or so I've gotten coaching on this and it's actually really help you

Speaker 2: mentioned playing video games and meditation and how it's contributed to your life and success can you tell us why and it seems like trip might be the accumulation and birth of that what

Speaker 1: happened from playing games was this organic evolution of technical knowledge you want to get online you learn how to set up a community server or access one uh how to mod games modify them just basic principles of networking it just builds upon itself and meditation for me has been an amazing Consciousness hack a lot of people approach meditation initially with the goal I want to be calmer I want to be more focused I want to be better it's more like a self-improvement mindset but once you get into it with any kind of consistency it can actually change the neural Pathways in your brain I think the research behind it is 27 minutes a day for eight weeks you can actually change your brain and I found with it when you have a consistent practice your ability be more self-aware shs up that shift from looking at how you're being treated to how you're treating others or maybe even how you're treating yourself with negative selft talk sometimes you might even need support through that process because it can be very painful to see oh wow the way I talk to myself in my own head is just so not helpful in fact it's a abusive having that awareness it's a huge transformation because then you can start to see how am I impacting others how can I treat myself better how can I treat those around me better and it has this amazing ripple effect in the world so that was a huge part of my life my late husband was a very deep meditation practitioner we both evolved into a Tibetan meditation practice that you do with your eyes open and really bring your awareness present and start to learn how to integrate it all throughout your day you know 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the evening is good but what about all those landing pads you might need throughout the day to help anchor to reset connect to your breath connect to really being present in the moment where I saw that really show up for me was I was with my husband when he took his last breath it was in his meditation room we had brought him home so he could be more surrounded by love and as I saw him leaving you know there's that moment of wanting to grasp and kind of panic and I was able to pause in that moment and allow this other thought to show up rather than don't don't leave it was more show up with love and in this moment for him don't let his last image in this life be someone he loves in despair what a

Speaker 2: powerful thought and moment and thank you for telling us about taking it a step further because you're right I think a lot of us just think of it as surface right and not taking it a step further as to how we can be there for others and how we can rewire our brain to be better at doing so and you can't develop that much in that moment on the spot it requires a dedicated practice to

Speaker 1: get there but what that moment did for me was it allowed me to show up fully for and I get goosebumps thinking

Speaker 2: wonderful that you could do that for him

Speaker 1: it was the most profound moment of our entire relationship and I would have missed it had I craved into the emotion of what was happening with me that's so

Speaker 2: beautiful so beautiful so that's the benefit right and obviously in our career life is just all about being present whether we're working and we're showing up for our families we're showing up for ourselves

Speaker 1: for me that's what meditation gave me was that gift and so the concept for trip was to help people use the power of VR which is a full immersive hack to to get their minds present connect to self and then hopefully build that muscle to bring into their day-to-day cuz I think meditation is hard for a lot of people I'm really interested and I really would love to try it with twins my life became so chaotic and to the point of what you're saying I realized early on I have to be present in every moment or I'm not going to be good at anything because the babies needed my attention I wanted to work so work needed my attention our family life needed my attention and so I just had to become really good at being present in the moment but I haven't been very good at taking as much time for myself as I probably should and I know our listeners are probably thinking the same thing as far as how they can add meditation to their life Tech has become such a part of our lives and I was so excited about our conversation with you because I love learning about new tech new platforms new apps are there video games either for kids or adults that you can tell us about or are there new apps or platforms that you use either for business or day-to-day that you love

Speaker 2: great question games for kids where they are building is really important because that's that's the foundation for future innovators right and we need all of our people over the next few decades really helping to solve some very big big problems and they need an Innovative mindset they need to see themselves as Builders that's why I love the name of your podcast yes thank you we need everyone thinking like that you know even in their own lives like how do I want to build my dayto day what do I want to focus on I will say we are on the edge of a massive evolution of computing moving from the hand to the head and these lighter weight head mounted display units or glasses or goggles are going to start hitting the market very soon and it's going to transform the way we see the world and this is very exciting to me because we've kind of been walking around for the last decade with our heads down hunched over a small screen so to be able to start looking out into the world and be able to have data on top of that is so interesting it's going to be very I mean just imagine GPS on a glasses overlay in a way that just telling you turn right and you're looking around as opposed to just looking down at your phone so fun to think about that I had a client one time who told me you know Melanie someday a computer keyboard is just going to pop up into the air and you'll just be able to type in the air and I remember thinking and this was probably 10 years ago he said this to me I remember thinking what for forward thinking that was and how he's probably right oh it's already happening yeah so interesting to think about all of those advances it's not mass Market just yet but within the next five years it definitely will be and I love the thought of looking up and not looking down yes and it's going to drive a lot of innovation we have to also make sure though there's a lot of ethics and responsibility and integrity because the worst thing is sort of having a in fly

Speaker 1: across all the time yes yes we're

Speaker 2: already inundated enough yeah exactly a

Speaker 1: lot of the online marketing right now it's really messed with our self-esteem in ways that I think is really unhealthy so I want to unravel a lot of that and just kind of use those same mechanisms

Speaker 2: for promoting Wellness that's such

Speaker 1: forward thinking it's one of the reasons why I created the she built it shop because we're inundated by product offers right but I thought if I could create something based on the community where we're buying from women owned and Le businesses that we love that takes some of that noise away you know when you think oh I want to buy a gift for a friend or a treat for myself buy from that shop rather than just all the other noise because you're right it's so much

Speaker 2: noise today yeah and thinking about

Speaker 1: contribution support one of the things we have been developing as we communicate unate with our customers is we just sent out an email to them it was one of the first times we ever sent out an email campaign CU we're mostly all Hands-On code we're a small company but we're starting to move into the next phase of our company development we're getting ready to hire a bunch of new people in scale because we're growing and but what we found was we sent out this email just saying to people because last year a lot of companies went out of business a lot of women left the workforce which I hate hearing with this email we just thanked people for supporting our company the inbound love we got back from that because it's true like it really meant a lot to us that people supported us that I didn't have to lay off people which would have been terrible for them to try to get new jobs especially during the first six months of last year I was very grateful that we were able to keep going and building you

Speaker 2: know good for you yeah thank you since we all dream of travel and having a new unique and exciting experience outside of our day-to-day life we'd love for you to take us on a quick mental Journey what is one of your favorite trips that you've ever been on where did you go and

Speaker 1: why did you love it so the first one is my husband built a monastery in rural Tibet and we flew to China and then traveled over the scariest Mountain Mountain Roads ever and I wanted to see what he built and it was spectacular but the condition like I you know I'm Hawaiian I need to be at sea level not 14,000 feet above sea level I got so sick but it was otherworldly and the people were so beautiful and compassionate and uh just I'll never forget it it was I never thought I would ever even want to go there I was motivated to really see what he had built and meet the people he was supporting and what an amazing thing for

Speaker 2: him to do that's so beautiful that's a podcasting in of itself obviously I wish he were here one to tell you but his

Speaker 1: whole life was transformed and he just got focused on really wanting to help others about a year later my cousin threw this amazing party for his mom's 65th birthday in the south of France it was all expenses paid like 15 of us the most lavish decadent three weeks in the south of France and it was so much fun and the fact that someone was gifting that to all of us was an amazing journey and goes back to that thing I was saying too about the energy that you bring into the room attracts the network and the people and the experiences in your life and that's been a road of uncovering and Discovery for me to find that and the fact that when I was a child was almost as if all the cards were stacked against me and finding my way out of that and the fact that I do have an incredible life I'm in a deep state of gratitude around it I just sometimes I don't even know how it happen

Speaker 2: good for you seems like it taught you resilience and to be independent and look at the beautiful places ending up in the south of France and Tibet well

Speaker 1: there's also been a lot of loss I lost my sister to a drug overdose and you know watched my husband go through cancer which is so hard to watch someone you love struggle whether it's with addiction or illness you feel so powerless it's got It's like the worst feeling in the world but I think what I'm starting to understand is that life is just life and all of it is important and meaningful if I hadn't had great love with my husband I wouldn't have felt the tremendous loss after he was gone and so it's just a different side of the same coin which is connection and love and

Speaker 2: relationship and how lucky for you to

Speaker 1: have known such a great love I feel very fortunate and I I do have a new boyfriend well he's not new now it's two and a half years and he's very different from my husband but we're madly in love and good you know life does go on and like what you were saying about feeling like you're not being good at certain things or cuz you just have a lot of responsibility and scope sometimes that pressure can stop us from actually really being here for what's really important you know we get distracted and by what you know because it's really focusing on the things that are important in life right yeah so in the she built it Community Helping other people's dreams right it's a contribution and it's an opportunity to feel that you supported someone right now and it's one of my favorite things to do I'm genuinely happy when I see friends and women in the she builted family and Community succeed and I love being someone's biggest cheerleader because it can be lonely running and scaling and growing a business can be incredibly lonely and I created she built it so you don't have to feel that way so there is someone in your corner that says there's room for everyone to

Speaker 2: succeed and I'm so happy for you yeah

Speaker 1: yes and so when I met you I immediately liked you and you were also involved with that nonprofit as well step up and I think we met through Emily Delora yes thank you Emily she's the best she is the best she the best and there's kind of this weird narrative out there that women don't help other women which I actually think is BS I have not experienced that when I met Emily she was working at a big ad Network and I was working at a video game company and she's like hey let's do a deal together of course I love her energy she's just a light in the world and when you're making business decisions you're like who are you going to give the job to someone you want to hang out with that's it all goes back to the energy yes it's someone that has a positive energy I mean I joined a board and I was the youngest by five years and I was a little bit intimidated when I went in because I didn't know anyone and Emily walked up and said let's go to lunch I want to know you she has such an intuitive nature for making someone feel welcome and positive and Connecting People she's one of the most incredible connectors I've met amazing people through her I have other friends in my network like that men and women often times when I Mentor women friends who want career help I really helped them just focus on getting their head in the game and not showing up like they're an outsider from the get-go there are ways to be included in things whether it's showing data and getting initiatives that will help the company win Etc you'll get sponsorship on those initiatives um there are things that are inherent to being a female in business currently that I hope do change like being held to different performance standard you get punish more harshly when you make mistakes than maybe other colleagues do your initiatives get questioned or scrutinize more harshly but I think all that will change and evolve once there's more of us in leadership positions yes which is why I hope she built it encourages more women to stay at work and to keep being Innovative and to keep creating Innovative companies and Brands yeah and don't give up right like I almost gave up a couple times being a Founder is not easy the mental health issues the support that you need with the stress the sense of responsibility having to have your game face on all the time in and of itself for me I I found the value in in having coach support being coached really important because I needed a container where I could express some of my frustration in a way that you don't want want to do as a leader all the time it's one thing to let people feel connected to you and be open I love brne Brown's talks about vulnerability but if I got on a plane and I saw the pilot sitting there with her head in her hands like just or arguing with the crew I would feel nervous about the next few

Speaker 2: hours of my life right yes yes and you

Speaker 1: can't always have those conversations with your team and you don't always want to have them with family members either because you know you want to have different moments with family members

Speaker 2: you're so right so this is where having

Speaker 1: the coach really helped me and I was very grateful the investors that I have in trip the team at alphabridge ventures who's one of our investors they have

Speaker 2: created a whole coaching arm because they actually feel that if they can provide this level of support to their the CEOs of the companies they've invested in the companies will be more successful of course and yeah it's super smart and many of us are taught like we we shouldn't have that kind of help or we should have it all figured out and that's not true you need support it's not easy to do most startups fail and you need to know how to navigate the failure in a way where you don't give up right failure and success are two sides of the same coins just like grief and love are so true failure is an opportunity to learn and for growth incremental learning right and it might lead you to a better idea I gave a talk on this once you know Botox was created to fix crossed eyes and when they started injecting it they went oh look at that smooth forehead and crows feet we can make more money off that it's a larger market love it we all appreciate

Speaker 1: it yeah somebody else said Viagra was

Speaker 2: created for um angina and then when they started testing it they saw some other results so interesting so funny and yeah how our failures can lead to better ideas or more profitable right right magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy what

Speaker 1: is one tip you can leave with us today about how you find and live your joy

Speaker 2: having a sense of purpose in what I do has really made me love showing up for my life even when it's hard and once I saw this Mission or this concept for trip emerge and it actually came out of a meditation as I was moving through my grief uh after losing my husband I got really excited about building and looking at my this new stage of my life with optimism and hope and every day I do I feel like I'm showing up with a contribution mindset really cuz I want to have that same sense of peace that Vic had when he left when he took that last breath and he felt like he had done a good job while he was here and so for me I break it down to what am I doing today as if it were my last day to make a difference in how I interact with people that I am connecting with every day that I'm being kind and considerate and mindful that when I make mistakes in those areas that I immediately clean it up and that I can finish my day with a sense of I did good today I showed up for my day fully and sometimes that the best of my ability is to say I'm going to stay in bed today and just watch TV and just rest cuz I need it and so I would advise anybody who has a dream to build something to really be present for the Journey of building as opposed to focused on the outcomes because that process of iterating and course correcting and getting data in real time and letting it evolve organically it might even lead you to a better outcome as well as really get you connected to the journey itself and that's something that I've felt has really brought a lot of peace

Speaker 1: and happiness to my life such good

Speaker 2: advice to listen to yourself and show up with optimism and hope thank you so much

Speaker 1: for joining us today N I feel like I could talk to you for hours can you please tell our listeners how and where

Speaker 2: they can find you sure I'm on Twitter n n Nea you can hit me up there and you

Speaker 1: can connect with us if you go to our website trip.com TR hit us up at our support email support trip.com we read all the emails and be happy to hear from you if you are new to shilt 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 sheb built 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 shil 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