August 11, 2025 • 35 mins
Daniella Pierson launched her first company, The Newsette, from her dorm room. She didn't have a clue how to build a business or any idea where those first steps would take her. Today, Daniella shares her secrets for becoming a self-made millionaire—from overcoming self-doubt to winning over celebrity mentors like Diane Von Furstenberg. She's also here to share her new project Chasm, a company founded to close the gender gap through entrepreneurship.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Today on the bright Side, entrepreneur and self made multimillionaire
Danielle appears in is Here, the creator of the news
At newsletter, is going to show us how to stop
taking no for an answer, how to get scrappy and
create the kind of connections that open doors we never
thought we'd walk through. Plus, she's sharing the life changing
advice she received from her mentor, the one and only
(00:24):
Diane von Furstenberg.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Fear is not an option, she likes to say. That's
always resonated with me because I was somebody who definitely
became successful from a place of fear.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I'm Simone Boyce and this is the bright side from
Hello Sunshine. Who doesn't dream of financial freedom, growing a
successful business, building a life where we get to call
the shots and make our own schedule and follow what
lights us up. But let's be honest, reaching those goals
is no easy task, and it's way harder than people
(00:56):
make it look on social media, especially when you have
people in your ear telling you this is too hard.
You don't have what it takes, you don't have the
background for this, No one will take you seriously. In
our guest Today, Daniella Pearson heard all of those things.
As she was building her first company, the women's newsletter
Newzett from her college dorm room. By the way, as
(01:17):
she gained subscriber after subscriber, she could tell she had
a winning concept. But when she met with investors, a
lot of old men in suits in Manhattan skyscrapers, they
literally laughed at her. I mean they essentially called her
the poster child of who not to invest in. But
instead of giving up, Daniella doubled down and today that
(01:39):
same business has five hundred thousand subscribers and is worth
two hundred million dollars. Danielle has been on Forbes' thirty
Under thirty list. She's collaborated with Serena Williams, she gained
a mentor in Diane von Furstenberg, and she's become one
of the youngest and wealthiest self made women of color.
She's also recently launched a new project, Chasm, to help
(02:02):
up and coming entrepreneurs find mentorship and avoid some of
the obstacles that she ran into when she was first
starting out. What I love about this conversation with Danielle
is that even though she's sharing lessons that she learned
about building her business, from the ground up. I think
her takeaways are very universal. If you're secretly dreaming of
launching your own business, she's obviously got great advice for you.
(02:26):
But I think her story is relevant for all of
us because we all want to design a life and
a career that works for us right, and Daniella is
the poster child of that. I'm excited for you guys
to listen to this one, so let's dive in. Daniella,
congrats on your first company, Newzet, celebrating its ten year anniversary.
(02:49):
That is so major, considering you created the news At
with zero funding from your dorm room as a sophomore
at Boston University and now it's grown to over five
hundred thousand subscribers. Take me back to those early days.
Do you remember the day that you got the idea
for the news At?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yes, well, thank you so much for saying all of
those kind words. And yes, it feels very weird to
have a ten year old company as a twenty nine
year old, But I started when I was nineteen, so
it makes sense. I remember the day I started the
newst because it was almost like an intersection between my
depression me feeling like I didn't belong in the world
(03:27):
or wasn't adding value to the world. My OCD getting
almost unmanageable and kind of realizing I had to do
something and I had zero confidence, zero resources, zero anything.
But I had a feeling that if I put myself
in everything that I knew I was capable of into
(03:47):
one thing, into one dream, that I could kind of
manifest my own destiny in a way. And so I decided,
after you know, being at BU for your and a half,
seeing you know, all these people go get consulting internships
or you know, my dream was to go work at
a magazine. But the only people that I knew who
(04:08):
worked at magazines were like they knew a friend of
a friend, and I had, you know, no connections. I
also had pretty shitty grades, so it wasn't a surprise
to me because I was learning things, and this is
like a theme my entire life. I was learning things like,
you know, triangles and I don't know, looking at how
volcanoes are formed, which is great, but I knew I
(04:29):
was one hundred percent never doing anything like that, and
so I kind of felt like, what am I doing here?
I want to go work, I want financial freedom, I
knew from a young age. I saw a lot of moms,
at least where I grew up, didn't have jobs as
much as you know nowadays. And I realized that, you know,
the dads had the power quote unquote, and that kind
(04:51):
of annoyed me. I felt like, I was like, I
want to be the dad.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
I want to be the dad. I want to be
the dad. I like that. That should be a song.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, I I want to be the dad.
And so basically I said, Okay, fuck it, I am
not going to get hired by any place when I
leave BEU, I already have really shited the bed. So
if I'm going to have a job, if no one's
going to hire me, I have to hire myself. And
(05:20):
that's what I did. And so every single day after
that day, it was January eighth, twenty fifteen, I sent
out the first newzett, riddled with typos, to like eight people,
and who were of course like my cousins and people
I obviously knew. And even though it was so bad,
it felt so good creating something, and especially because I
(05:42):
had no idea who I was, I had zero self confidence,
zero knowledge of what I would do in the world,
and if I even added value and so building the
new zett sending that newsletter every single day for it
would be five years. I wrote it even when we
were making over a million dollars, you know, from five
am to ten am, and then going into either full
(06:03):
day of school when I was in college, or full
day of work. It felt like I was in charge
of my own destiny and it actually built me into
the person that I am today. It gave me confidence
that I could do something that maybe I didn't believe
I could before.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Well, you mentioned something so important, and that is just
making the first thing, whether it's bad or not. We
get so hung up on Okay, if I'm going to
start something new, this first one has to be perfect.
But we've all seen that quote that's been passed around
social media that's like, your first podcast is going to
be terrible, your first screenplay is going to be terrible,
your first book is going to be terrible. Doesn't matter,
(06:40):
do it anyways?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Exactly? I mean, I really did not have a choice.
It was like, when I decided I was going to
do something that would allow me to hire myself after college.
So essentially, what if I started building something while I
have two and a half years left of college. I
have a roof over my head, and so when I
was thinking about what it could be, I made a
One column was what am I good at? The other
(07:04):
column was what do I like? The column on the
left was so empty it might as well have been
in a Western movie when that like Mothball goes by
like do because there was nothing. And so then I thought, Okay,
well what do I like? And I remember growing up
in Jacksonville, Florida, the thing that I loved the escapism
(07:24):
was a magazine, and so I was like, what if
I create my own mini magazine that is delivered into
women's inboxes every single morning and makes them feel like
they can take on the world. It was kind of
me projecting or creating something that I wish I had,
And because I never meant for the Newsette to have
anything to do with me, it was like the news
(07:45):
at the brand. I felt safe that I could, you know,
be cheeky and kind of build this out because it
wasn't me doing it. I actually grew the newsletter list
to one hundred thousand subscribers while I was at BU
by telling people that I was an intern for this
really cool, big media company called the New Zette, and
if they wanted to be an ambassador, all they had
(08:05):
to do was invite ten friends.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Wait, no way, So you told people you were the intern?
Why did you tell people you are the intern?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
There's a theme in my life. I grew up as
the dumb twin. And that's not a name that I
gave myself. It's a name that my teachers and fellow
students in high school gave me because my Yeah, so
it was sad. But I kind of own it now
because it's like, Okay, I was the dumb twin. Now
I'm not right, Like I can evolve. So by being
(08:35):
the dumb twin quote unquote, I grew up basically knowing
that my sister, who's a genius, was going to be
a shining star and I was kind of going to be,
you know, kind of a disappointment, which is horrible, but
that's how I felt every day of my life. And
so that lack of confidence followed me into college. It
(08:55):
was just kind of a mess. I was incredibly depressed,
and I realized that even if I was going to
start this, I had no authority. Who was I? I
was the dumb twin. And so the reason why I
said I was the intern is honestly because I thought
that if people thought I started the company, they would
immediately just say, oh, okay, right, like disregard it in
(09:17):
a sense, because who am I to start a company?
Speaker 1 (09:20):
It sounds like it was your own self doubt.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
One hundred percent. Yeah. And it's not like I had
a lot of fans, Like, you know, I didn't tell
anybody what I was doing. I told my teachers because
I failed the Entrepreneurship project when I was a junior.
It's like the big project. It's called core every it's
like legendary, and I failed it. And then six years
later to the day I graduated, I was the commencement speaker,
(09:45):
And so it was like, you know, maybe you can
fail literally what you want to be when you grow
up and still make it right. And the fact that
I was able to put myself together not only emotionally
mentally and still do the newseett every single day, that's
where I learned, Wow, like maybe I am a strong person.
Maybe I should not have counted myself out.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
I'm sure. It's so much easier to talk about these
moments now with reflection and ten years behind you. It's
not easy to be stuck in those moments of crippling
self doubt. But there's something different about you, Daniella, because
everyone experiences self doubt, but you found a reason, found
a motivation to push through that, and I think you
(10:30):
have that quality. Someone like Melanie Perkins, the founder of Canva,
has that quality. Founders of other unicorn businesses have that tenacity.
Where does that come from? That ability to just push
through the self doubt and say I'm going to do
it anyways.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
So that's a great question. I always like to say
that the success of an entrepreneur the mindset of an
entrepreneurs where delusion, passion and just pure like want belief
in what you're doing meets. And so you have to
be a little delusional because you know, when you say, oh,
(11:07):
I'm going to build a newsletter that's going to be
worth two hundred million dollars when I'm twenty seven, like,
come on that. I didn't I couldn't even convince myself
of that. But every single day that I wrote the
newsletter and I continue to do it, I believed so
much in that this newsletter was not just a little
email this was going to, you know, help millions of women,
This was going to be a real company. That then
(11:29):
I believed it myself, And so I like to say
that the one thing that everybody has in common that
is successful or that pushed through boundaries is that they
either had no other choice. They were in survival mode,
which was kind of like me. I had no other choice.
It was like that or go live at home. I
had no internships, nothing lined up. I had to make
it work. But then also the people who keep going
(11:52):
are people who say, you know what, let the world
say what they want to say. I believe so much
in myself that like, I don't care if it's point
zero zero one percent chance that I'm going to make it.
I'm going to be the one right. And that's at
least how I felt. I also come from a family
that had a lot bigger problems than I had. You know,
(12:13):
my mother grew up in Columbia. She didn't come here
until she was twenty three. She's my inspiration. I actually
gave her fifteen percent of the new zet That is
so cool.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
You gave your mom a fifteen percent stake in your company.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, when I was twenty five, and we did forty
million dollars of sales, and I was able to personally
take home over ten million dollars. I wrote my mom
a multimillion dollar check.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
How did that feel?
Speaker 2 (12:38):
It felt like I could finally, at least try to
repay her for all of the times that she believed
in me when no one else did, and all of
the times that I wanted to die, I wanted to
just disappear, and she told me that I had something
(13:01):
special to share with the world. It felt really good,
And it also felt really good to give her so much,
you know, incredible financial freedom, and you know the things
I've been able to do, Like my mom in Colombia
was only able to become an oral surgeon because there
was one scholarship that she won every single year. She
(13:22):
was incredibly poor. They lived next to a mass grave
at that poor and she won that one scholarship. And
so after I made a few million dollars the year
before the big win, I started a scholarship program at
that school so that more people like my mom could
live out their dreams.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
What a beautiful success story and a testament to your
family and your family bond. We've got to take a
quick break, but we'll be right back with more. Daniella Pearson,
you had some really clever marketing strategies to get the
word out about the news that even making college students ambassadors.
(14:02):
Tell me about some of those scrappy early growth strategies
that you experimented with.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah, Well, when you have zero funding and you were
a college student just trying not to get kicked out
and you know, basically not sleeping, you have to get
pretty creative. And so I remember, and this is going
to quote unquote age me, but when I was nineteen
in college, in all the classrooms, you could see everybody
(14:29):
on Facebook, and everybody was like messaging with their friends.
I had no friends, and so instead what I did
was I went to all of the people. I went
to high school's profiles, and at the time, Facebook had chronologically,
you know, put their new friends, and so I knew, okay,
at least the last two hundred people for each person
(14:50):
were newer friends. They're likely from college, so that means
they could be anywhere in the country, right, And so
I started friend requesting all of the girls like a psychope,
and every time somebody would accept it, I would say like, hey,
I see that you're a sophomore. I am too. I'm
interning for this really cool brand called the New Zette.
(15:11):
I know, as a sophomore it's hard to put things
on your resume to get, you know, internships, but this
is something that is really easy. All you have to
do is just have ten of your friends subscribe and
you become a Newseet official ambassador. And I did that
about a thousand times. And so it felt like entrepreneurship
is so like not in your hands in terms of
(15:32):
the market and you know, if you're able to get
fun and whatever it is. But for me, it felt
like being an entrepreneur and building the New Zette was
the most in control I could be of my destiny
because it was like, Okay, they don't want to be ambassador,
I'll email one hundred other people until someone does.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
You focused on what was in your control.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah, and it was it was just me hustling. If
this didn't work, I try something else, Like I to
be on my laptop until my eyes were closing, you know,
because I knew there is a way for me to
get people to notice this without me having this big
marketing budget that I didn't have. Right, like there has
to be some way, and that's what I tapped into.
(16:15):
I saw a need of you know, people in college,
especially freshmen and sophomores, wanting to have stuff on their resume.
Ambassador programs were like not a thing. It was very new,
and so I found a way to make people feel
like they were a part of something, make them feel
like they were kind of the person being in on,
you know, this new thing that they found, and also
(16:36):
being able to give them something to put on their resume.
And so I always think about when with whatever I do,
even now, when I'm in a business meeting, when I'm
negotiating whatever I'm doing, I always put myself in the
position of the other person and ask what do they want?
And I always ensure that what I'm bringing to the
table is not just that it's even more so.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
The new Zett eventually caught the eye of legendary fashion
designer Diane von Furstenberg, and I hear that there was
a life changing conversation that took place between the two
of you. Yes, tell me everything about that encounter.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yes, So, Diane von Furstenberg her team reached out to me.
When I was twenty three years old, I had just
moved to New York after making twenty five thousand dollars
my first month of advertising when I graduated, and so
I used that money to move to New York. I
hired a few interns. It was very scrappy, but I
(17:34):
like to say the team that I started out with
was a team of three me, myself and I and so,
you know, we worked our asses off, and because I
sent a newsletter every single day, it became, you know,
way more of likely that somebody would see something because
it was every single day. And I didn't know that
(17:55):
at the time. I just, you know, was kind of
doing what I knew I had to do every day
to grow this. And so I guess someone read the newsletter.
Diane read the newsletter, and she was working on this
thing called the in Charge Movement. They basically were like,
Diane wants to meet with you, and I was like, okay.
As a huge fan, I've read her books, watched all
(18:17):
the TV shows, I was like, Okay, either one of
two things is going to happen. One I'm going to
be kidnapped because this is not real, or two this
is real and the first one is worth it if
it's real. So I went. Luckily he was not a
kidnapped situation. There was a huge magical staircase. Ellen, who
(18:38):
I'm very close to now, her assistant of over fifty years,
walked me in and closed the door behind me, and
I realized there's a meeting going on during my meeting time.
So I'm like, oh my god. And so I'm standing
there at twenty three years old in my wrap dress,
probably shaking and sweating, and I don't even think anybody
noticed me walking into the room. And they were talking
(19:00):
about a podcast. And back then at twenty three, being
a millennial was like being a gen Z. It was like, ooh, millennials,
what do they want? And so someone was pitching her
ideas about, you know, what millennials would want, and then
I basically had a mental breakdown moment where I thought, Okay,
(19:20):
I should say something because I know I'm never going
to be in this position ever again. But I burst
it out, well I don't think millennials would like that,
and it was like cover my mouth, like, oh my god,
what just happened. Like I'll just exit my I'll see
my way out. And so while I'm like peeing my
rap dress waiting to see what happens. They all turn
around and Diane is like, tell me more, and so
(19:41):
she dismisses the people from the podcast you know situation,
and she has me sit next to her and she's like,
what should we do together? And I didn't know that
I was there to like pitch her. But with OCD,
one negative that I've actually been able to turn into
a positive is you have, you know, like the thoughts
that someone without OCG has every single day. So some
(20:03):
of those thoughts are like did I turn the oven off?
Did I whatever? But with me, if I am put
in that position, I'm like okay, and there's like ten
ideas already, and so whatever I said must have sounded
kind of smart because she said, okay, like you know,
we'll be in touch. And I pitched her basically saying
that you know, she had the e commerce side, she
(20:25):
should have a content side called the Weekly Rap, a
weekly newsletter. And so she was like, okay, we'll be
in touch. And I knew again I will never be
in front of this woman. She's probably gonna put me
on like a poster like do not let in. And
so I said, Diane, you are known for being the
most female empowering woman since you invented the rap dress
(20:47):
in nineteen seventy four, right, And I looked around in
the eye and she goes yeah, And I was like,
what would be more female empowering than hiring a twenty
three year old to her company to do it for you?
And I just like looked at her and she was, Okay,
let's do it, and like I literally walked like I
got it was probably like sixty miles home, like in
my heels. I didn't even feel it. I was just
(21:09):
like on fire. Two weeks later, we were, you know,
pitching Mark Zuckerberg something because I had an idea about
her in charge movement that led to so many adventures.
And she's my fairy godmother. We talk almost like every day.
We talked this morning, and she has taught me everything
that I know honestly in life. She is the reason
(21:33):
why I became a fearless salesperson because she allowed me
to be in the biggest rooms of the world with
her and then the CEO of a huge company like
many many different companies, and would allow me, a twenty
three year old with no business being in business, like
no idea what I was doing. But I knew how
to make incredibly engage in content for millennials, and that
(21:55):
was what everyone wanted. And so I would literally take
the stage, like leading the entire conversation. And the fact
that she trusted me that much to do that on
her behalf really gave me the confidence to say, you know,
I don't care if I'm not the smartest person in
the room, or I don't have a special Ivy League degree,
or I don't have funding. If this woman, this icon
believes in me, I should believe in myself too.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
What is the biggest lesson you've learned from her?
Speaker 2 (22:21):
She is somebody who taught me that words matter a lot,
and so whether it's an email or an essay or
a speech, whatever it is, every single word should tell
a story. And she taught me how to edit down
(22:44):
things that I would ramble on about. She taught me
how to almost have a script on who I was
and what I was there to do, so that I
didn't have to think about that, that I could just
like breeze through this is who I am, this is
what I'm doing with Diane, like let's get to business.
And by doing that, she gave me the kind of
confidence that someone that's been in the industry for decades
(23:06):
would have. And so I really, to this day, every
time I send an email anything, I always think about, Okay,
I need to take at least two sentences out because
Diane would tell me too. But yeah, and then she's
also just taught me that life is meant to make mistakes.
Life is meant to, you know, fall in your face,
get back up. Life is never something to fear. Fear
(23:30):
is not an option, she likes to say. And that's
always resonated with me because I was somebody who definitely
became successful from a place of fear in the beginning,
and then I stopped and I, you know, had my
intention for being successful just to provide myself financial freedom
and then to provide every woman the freedom to own
(23:51):
their own destiny.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
More from Daniella Pearson after this shortbreak. So I want
to talk about your newest initiative and it ties into
your personal story too, because you've talked about getting left
out of the room when you went to find your
own venture capital investors for the news set. How did
that experience inspire you to create Chasm?
Speaker 2 (24:16):
So Chasm is an ecosystem with content resources, connections, et
cetera for any female entrepreneur from idea to exit. And
it's powered by the most powerful and successful people in
the world. Because that way, women never have to pay
a dollar for these resources. You know, when I came
to New York, everybody was like, well, how big is
(24:37):
your team? Oh well how much did you raise? Every
success metric was around like a facade, Oh where's your office?
And I, you know, obviously as a twenty three year
old trying to fit in, was like, oh, well, I
guess I have to go get funding. And thank goodness
that all of these old white men and I'm half
old white man, so like, you know, no discrimination there,
(24:59):
but like you know, love old white men. Some of
them suck, Like this guy that laughed me out of
the room and told me I reminded him of a
granddaughter that he hated. So I know, cried the whole
way home. That experience was horrific. And so if I
can prevent that situation from happening to even one person,
(25:19):
then like it's worth it. But the reality is that
whether I was laughed out of that room because I
was a woman, I was in my early twenties, I
was hispanic, maybe I was just bad at presenting right.
It could have been all of the above right. I
have realized that there is such an inequity in female entrepreneurship,
(25:44):
not just because of funding, but because of the way
that the world looks at female entrepreneurs. If you think
about a hundred of the most successful self made people
in the country, just the country, they have two things
in common. What do you think those two things are
grit and that is an amazing answer. I wish it
(26:06):
was that deep. Nope, they have two things in common.
They're all men, and they're all entrepreneurs. And so that's
why I thought, Okay, well, if fifty of these one
hundred people were women, no one would be, you know,
stomping all over us. We wouldn't be making less than men.
And so chasm is basically a way for us to
achieve gender equality by also making incredible waves in female entrepreneurship.
(26:32):
That doesn't just help when female entrepreneurs make a ton
of money, No, it starts right when they start launching
their businesses. Because the more female entrepreneurs, the more females
at the helm of companies, the more that maternity leave
policy will be better. Having women on boards instead of
having to pluck a woman, you know, out of obscurity
into a board and be like grateful for it. No,
(26:54):
the woman makes the board and there's probably going to
be woman on it because that's the kind of person
like that. Just people based on what their superpowers are.
This is a statistic, a fact that men are way
more likely to invest in other men because they look
like them. And so now with women having a seat
at the table, then it's not you know, an inclusivity thing,
(27:15):
it's actually like that person is amazing, let's invest in them.
And so yeah, that's the reason why I created a chasm.
It's essentially an ecosystem built for female entrepreneurs, all entrepreneurs,
but especially female entrepreneurs. We like to say that if
a man is walking out of a VC office and
he is one hundred times more likely to you know,
(27:37):
get an investment because he's a guy, then we want
the woman walking in to be a thousand times more prepared.
That's how we equalize everything. And so the tools that
we offer women are things that honestly I struggled with.
I use myself as you know, a case study. It's like, oh,
legal stuff. I had no idea what I was doing,
(27:58):
and I spent so much money that I didn't have
because I thought I had to have all these things. Great,
we're launching a resource that's a legal lab built by lawyers,
and we're partnering with a law firm where we can
actually provide women with a free consultation if they're raising
over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Let's say, okay,
who to hire? That's something that I struggled with. We're
(28:19):
building a hub where every single kind of person for
different kind of companies, CpG, service, et cetera, where it's
all of the people what they actually do, and then
a JD a job description for what they do so
that you can literally copy paste it, make a few changes,
and put it on LinkedIn. That's stuff that took me hours,
(28:41):
and if we're able to just streamline it, then fantastic.
We're having community calls with the biggest, you know, VC
firms in the world where let's say the partner, the
managing partner is speaking to five hundred women in a
zoom room about what he looks for in an investment.
That's powerful, right, But what's more power is if one
(29:01):
of those women right after the session, emails that person
and says in the subject line, I was just in
that session. Don't you think there're one hundred times more
likely to get an answer? Those are the things that
we're trying to do to create proximity, to create you know, resources,
to be able to actually give women the dialogue, the
glossary of words, all of the stuff that we just
(29:23):
don't have because of societal norms. And the other thing
about CHASM is we're bringing men into the equation. And
so if men control ninety nine point nine nine nine
percent of the resources, power money in the world, then
how are we supposed to achieve equality by isolating them.
(29:44):
When we built Chasm, it was important to me that
men and women were going to be a part of
the platform to you know, teach and speak and all
of those things, because I want people to learn from everybody.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Andielle, it's amazing to think that this all started because
you built a media company in your dorm room in
your sophomore year of college. And I have a theory
that I want to run by you. As we wrap
up our conversation. You mentioned that you always wanted to
work for a magazine growing up, and I think you're
a millennial too, And I can remember growing up watching
(30:19):
movies like Thirteen Going on thirty or How to Lose
a Guy in Ten Days or even Sex and the City,
and we were following these female characters who worked in
publishing and journalism in the editorial space. How much did
that influence your career trajectory?
Speaker 2 (30:35):
I mean I literally just watched thirteen going On to
thirty like two weeks ago, because like again, because of
that exact thing I rewatched, like the September issue. All
of those things one hundred percent influenced me. When I
got older, I didn't really know the mechanics or you know,
(30:56):
the behind the curtain part of building a magazine until I,
you know, was probably in college. But what always excited
me was the fact that I could pick up a
magazine from publics, beg my mom to let me buy it,
and then be lost in it and tranced in it.
That's the feeling that I wanted to give woman every
single day in somewhere that's oftentimes toxic, you're in box.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
I don't think that we have fully comprehended the impact
that magazines had on millennial women growing up, Like, yeah,
is it a joke old.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
I mean it was everything.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
The quiz is the I just remember, like the lifestyle
and fashion spreads, the boy crushes.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
The embarrassing stories, the embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Stories, those are so good. I mean I basically learned
what puberty was through a magazine.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
I'm pretty sure, oh one hundred percent. And every single
product I would say, like, Mom, I have to go
to CVS. I have to get this product like whatever.
I know that people are like, oh, magazines aren't good
at like selling you things anymore. When I was young,
I would literally say, Mom, we got to go to
CBS and get this like whatever cleanser that they're talking about,
because I just, you know, immerse myself in this world.
(32:10):
If I use that cleanser, I'll be more like the
woman who make this magazine. Right.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yeah, And I think magazines are still here. It's just
it's a bit fragmented now, and a lot of the
things that appealed to us about magazines are now on
social media.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Yeah. I think magazines have now transcended into not just
this coveted book that comes out once a month. Now
it's this accessible hub of point of views. Depending on
what magazine slash you know, website, media brand, you want
to go on and you don't have to wait for
(32:48):
the next issue, which was something that I, you know,
always was like I can't when I would see the
new cover and be like, oh my god. But now
you don't have to wait, and everything online is editorialize
and then reconfigured to fit social media. Magazines are now
basically taking the stuff that they would have put in
print and being able to have it be ten times
(33:11):
more effective and reach a way larger audience by you know,
putting those tips or tricks or recommendations in highly digestible content.
And that's what we do at The New Zett and
I think the reason why we've been successful because unlike
some magazines where they talk down to you, we always
have been like the accessible best friend that is learning
(33:34):
alongside you.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Danielle, thank you so much for joining us here on
the bright side.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Daniella Pearson is the founder and CEO of The New
Zett and Chasm, a company founded to close the gender
gap through entrepreneurship. Big announcement here, I am so excited
to share Shinaway is back this October eleventh and twelfth.
In Life, angels. If you've been before, you know it's
Hello Sunshine's incredible weekend of connection, joy and community. And
(34:07):
if you haven't, well, this is the here to come.
Throughout the day, you'll experience thoughtful panels, fireside chats, workshops,
and immersive activations surrounded by voices that are shaping culture
and shifting conversations. Whether you're a longtime listener or just
joining us, this is your chance to be part of
a truly special and memorable weekend. Tickets are selling fast,
(34:28):
so head to Hellosunshine dot com slash shine Away to
grab yours. The bright Side is a production of Hello
Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts and is executive produced by Reese
Witherspoon and me Simone Voice. Production is by ACAST Creative Studios.
Our producers are Taylor Williamson, Adrian Bain, Abby Delk, and
(34:48):
Darby Masters. Our production assistant is Joya Putnoy. Acasts executive
producers are Jenny Kaplan and Emily Rudder. Maureen Polo and
Reese Witherspoon are the executive producers for Hello Sunshine. Ali
Perry and Lauren Hansen are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts.
Tim Palazzola is our showrunner. Our theme song is by
(35:10):
Anna Stump and Hamilton Lighthouser.
Today on the bright Side, entrepreneur and self made multimillionaire
Danielle appears in is Here, the creator of the news
At newsletter, is going to show us how to stop
taking no for an answer, how to get scrappy and
create the kind of connections that open doors we never
thought we'd walk through. Plus, she's sharing the life changing
advice she received from her mentor, the one and only
(00:24):
Diane von Furstenberg.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Fear is not an option, she likes to say. That's
always resonated with me because I was somebody who definitely
became successful from a place of fear.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I'm Simone Boyce and this is the bright side from
Hello Sunshine. Who doesn't dream of financial freedom, growing a
successful business, building a life where we get to call
the shots and make our own schedule and follow what
lights us up. But let's be honest, reaching those goals
is no easy task, and it's way harder than people
(00:56):
make it look on social media, especially when you have
people in your ear telling you this is too hard.
You don't have what it takes, you don't have the
background for this, No one will take you seriously. In
our guest Today, Daniella Pearson heard all of those things.
As she was building her first company, the women's newsletter
Newzett from her college dorm room. By the way, as
(01:17):
she gained subscriber after subscriber, she could tell she had
a winning concept. But when she met with investors, a
lot of old men in suits in Manhattan skyscrapers, they
literally laughed at her. I mean they essentially called her
the poster child of who not to invest in. But
instead of giving up, Daniella doubled down and today that
(01:39):
same business has five hundred thousand subscribers and is worth
two hundred million dollars. Danielle has been on Forbes' thirty
Under thirty list. She's collaborated with Serena Williams, she gained
a mentor in Diane von Furstenberg, and she's become one
of the youngest and wealthiest self made women of color.
She's also recently launched a new project, Chasm, to help
(02:02):
up and coming entrepreneurs find mentorship and avoid some of
the obstacles that she ran into when she was first
starting out. What I love about this conversation with Danielle
is that even though she's sharing lessons that she learned
about building her business, from the ground up. I think
her takeaways are very universal. If you're secretly dreaming of
launching your own business, she's obviously got great advice for you.
(02:26):
But I think her story is relevant for all of
us because we all want to design a life and
a career that works for us right, and Daniella is
the poster child of that. I'm excited for you guys
to listen to this one, so let's dive in. Daniella,
congrats on your first company, Newzet, celebrating its ten year anniversary.
(02:49):
That is so major, considering you created the news At
with zero funding from your dorm room as a sophomore
at Boston University and now it's grown to over five
hundred thousand subscribers. Take me back to those early days.
Do you remember the day that you got the idea
for the news At?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yes, well, thank you so much for saying all of
those kind words. And yes, it feels very weird to
have a ten year old company as a twenty nine
year old, But I started when I was nineteen, so
it makes sense. I remember the day I started the
newst because it was almost like an intersection between my
depression me feeling like I didn't belong in the world
(03:27):
or wasn't adding value to the world. My OCD getting
almost unmanageable and kind of realizing I had to do
something and I had zero confidence, zero resources, zero anything.
But I had a feeling that if I put myself
in everything that I knew I was capable of into
(03:47):
one thing, into one dream, that I could kind of
manifest my own destiny in a way. And so I decided,
after you know, being at BU for your and a half,
seeing you know, all these people go get consulting internships
or you know, my dream was to go work at
a magazine. But the only people that I knew who
(04:08):
worked at magazines were like they knew a friend of
a friend, and I had, you know, no connections. I
also had pretty shitty grades, so it wasn't a surprise
to me because I was learning things, and this is
like a theme my entire life. I was learning things like,
you know, triangles and I don't know, looking at how
volcanoes are formed, which is great, but I knew I
(04:29):
was one hundred percent never doing anything like that, and
so I kind of felt like, what am I doing here?
I want to go work, I want financial freedom, I
knew from a young age. I saw a lot of moms,
at least where I grew up, didn't have jobs as
much as you know nowadays. And I realized that, you know,
the dads had the power quote unquote, and that kind
(04:51):
of annoyed me. I felt like, I was like, I
want to be the dad.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
I want to be the dad. I want to be
the dad. I like that. That should be a song.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, I I want to be the dad.
And so basically I said, Okay, fuck it, I am
not going to get hired by any place when I
leave BEU, I already have really shited the bed. So
if I'm going to have a job, if no one's
going to hire me, I have to hire myself. And
(05:20):
that's what I did. And so every single day after
that day, it was January eighth, twenty fifteen, I sent
out the first newzett, riddled with typos, to like eight people,
and who were of course like my cousins and people
I obviously knew. And even though it was so bad,
it felt so good creating something, and especially because I
(05:42):
had no idea who I was, I had zero self confidence,
zero knowledge of what I would do in the world,
and if I even added value and so building the
new zett sending that newsletter every single day for it
would be five years. I wrote it even when we
were making over a million dollars, you know, from five
am to ten am, and then going into either full
(06:03):
day of school when I was in college, or full
day of work. It felt like I was in charge
of my own destiny and it actually built me into
the person that I am today. It gave me confidence
that I could do something that maybe I didn't believe
I could before.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Well, you mentioned something so important, and that is just
making the first thing, whether it's bad or not. We
get so hung up on Okay, if I'm going to
start something new, this first one has to be perfect.
But we've all seen that quote that's been passed around
social media that's like, your first podcast is going to
be terrible, your first screenplay is going to be terrible,
your first book is going to be terrible. Doesn't matter,
(06:40):
do it anyways?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Exactly? I mean, I really did not have a choice.
It was like, when I decided I was going to
do something that would allow me to hire myself after college.
So essentially, what if I started building something while I
have two and a half years left of college. I
have a roof over my head, and so when I
was thinking about what it could be, I made a
One column was what am I good at? The other
(07:04):
column was what do I like? The column on the
left was so empty it might as well have been
in a Western movie when that like Mothball goes by
like do because there was nothing. And so then I thought, Okay,
well what do I like? And I remember growing up
in Jacksonville, Florida, the thing that I loved the escapism
(07:24):
was a magazine, and so I was like, what if
I create my own mini magazine that is delivered into
women's inboxes every single morning and makes them feel like
they can take on the world. It was kind of
me projecting or creating something that I wish I had,
And because I never meant for the Newsette to have
anything to do with me, it was like the news
(07:45):
at the brand. I felt safe that I could, you know,
be cheeky and kind of build this out because it
wasn't me doing it. I actually grew the newsletter list
to one hundred thousand subscribers while I was at BU
by telling people that I was an intern for this
really cool, big media company called the New Zette, and
if they wanted to be an ambassador, all they had
(08:05):
to do was invite ten friends.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Wait, no way, So you told people you were the intern?
Why did you tell people you are the intern?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
There's a theme in my life. I grew up as
the dumb twin. And that's not a name that I
gave myself. It's a name that my teachers and fellow
students in high school gave me because my Yeah, so
it was sad. But I kind of own it now
because it's like, Okay, I was the dumb twin. Now
I'm not right, Like I can evolve. So by being
(08:35):
the dumb twin quote unquote, I grew up basically knowing
that my sister, who's a genius, was going to be
a shining star and I was kind of going to be,
you know, kind of a disappointment, which is horrible, but
that's how I felt every day of my life. And
so that lack of confidence followed me into college. It
(08:55):
was just kind of a mess. I was incredibly depressed,
and I realized that even if I was going to
start this, I had no authority. Who was I? I
was the dumb twin. And so the reason why I
said I was the intern is honestly because I thought
that if people thought I started the company, they would
immediately just say, oh, okay, right, like disregard it in
(09:17):
a sense, because who am I to start a company?
Speaker 1 (09:20):
It sounds like it was your own self doubt.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
One hundred percent. Yeah. And it's not like I had
a lot of fans, Like, you know, I didn't tell
anybody what I was doing. I told my teachers because
I failed the Entrepreneurship project when I was a junior.
It's like the big project. It's called core every it's
like legendary, and I failed it. And then six years
later to the day I graduated, I was the commencement speaker,
(09:45):
And so it was like, you know, maybe you can
fail literally what you want to be when you grow
up and still make it right. And the fact that
I was able to put myself together not only emotionally
mentally and still do the newseett every single day, that's
where I learned, Wow, like maybe I am a strong person.
Maybe I should not have counted myself out.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
I'm sure. It's so much easier to talk about these
moments now with reflection and ten years behind you. It's
not easy to be stuck in those moments of crippling
self doubt. But there's something different about you, Daniella, because
everyone experiences self doubt, but you found a reason, found
a motivation to push through that, and I think you
(10:30):
have that quality. Someone like Melanie Perkins, the founder of Canva,
has that quality. Founders of other unicorn businesses have that tenacity.
Where does that come from? That ability to just push
through the self doubt and say I'm going to do
it anyways.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
So that's a great question. I always like to say
that the success of an entrepreneur the mindset of an
entrepreneurs where delusion, passion and just pure like want belief
in what you're doing meets. And so you have to
be a little delusional because you know, when you say, oh,
(11:07):
I'm going to build a newsletter that's going to be
worth two hundred million dollars when I'm twenty seven, like,
come on that. I didn't I couldn't even convince myself
of that. But every single day that I wrote the
newsletter and I continue to do it, I believed so
much in that this newsletter was not just a little
email this was going to, you know, help millions of women,
This was going to be a real company. That then
(11:29):
I believed it myself, And so I like to say
that the one thing that everybody has in common that
is successful or that pushed through boundaries is that they
either had no other choice. They were in survival mode,
which was kind of like me. I had no other choice.
It was like that or go live at home. I
had no internships, nothing lined up. I had to make
it work. But then also the people who keep going
(11:52):
are people who say, you know what, let the world
say what they want to say. I believe so much
in myself that like, I don't care if it's point
zero zero one percent chance that I'm going to make it.
I'm going to be the one right. And that's at
least how I felt. I also come from a family
that had a lot bigger problems than I had. You know,
(12:13):
my mother grew up in Columbia. She didn't come here
until she was twenty three. She's my inspiration. I actually
gave her fifteen percent of the new zet That is
so cool.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
You gave your mom a fifteen percent stake in your company.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, when I was twenty five, and we did forty
million dollars of sales, and I was able to personally
take home over ten million dollars. I wrote my mom
a multimillion dollar check.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
How did that feel?
Speaker 2 (12:38):
It felt like I could finally, at least try to
repay her for all of the times that she believed
in me when no one else did, and all of
the times that I wanted to die, I wanted to
just disappear, and she told me that I had something
(13:01):
special to share with the world. It felt really good,
And it also felt really good to give her so much,
you know, incredible financial freedom, and you know the things
I've been able to do, Like my mom in Colombia
was only able to become an oral surgeon because there
was one scholarship that she won every single year. She
(13:22):
was incredibly poor. They lived next to a mass grave
at that poor and she won that one scholarship. And
so after I made a few million dollars the year
before the big win, I started a scholarship program at
that school so that more people like my mom could
live out their dreams.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
What a beautiful success story and a testament to your
family and your family bond. We've got to take a
quick break, but we'll be right back with more. Daniella Pearson,
you had some really clever marketing strategies to get the
word out about the news that even making college students ambassadors.
(14:02):
Tell me about some of those scrappy early growth strategies
that you experimented with.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah, Well, when you have zero funding and you were
a college student just trying not to get kicked out
and you know, basically not sleeping, you have to get
pretty creative. And so I remember, and this is going
to quote unquote age me, but when I was nineteen
in college, in all the classrooms, you could see everybody
(14:29):
on Facebook, and everybody was like messaging with their friends.
I had no friends, and so instead what I did
was I went to all of the people. I went
to high school's profiles, and at the time, Facebook had chronologically,
you know, put their new friends, and so I knew, okay,
at least the last two hundred people for each person
(14:50):
were newer friends. They're likely from college, so that means
they could be anywhere in the country, right, And so
I started friend requesting all of the girls like a psychope,
and every time somebody would accept it, I would say like, hey,
I see that you're a sophomore. I am too. I'm
interning for this really cool brand called the New Zette.
(15:11):
I know, as a sophomore it's hard to put things
on your resume to get, you know, internships, but this
is something that is really easy. All you have to
do is just have ten of your friends subscribe and
you become a Newseet official ambassador. And I did that
about a thousand times. And so it felt like entrepreneurship
is so like not in your hands in terms of
(15:32):
the market and you know, if you're able to get
fun and whatever it is. But for me, it felt
like being an entrepreneur and building the New Zette was
the most in control I could be of my destiny
because it was like, Okay, they don't want to be ambassador,
I'll email one hundred other people until someone does.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
You focused on what was in your control.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah, and it was it was just me hustling. If
this didn't work, I try something else, Like I to
be on my laptop until my eyes were closing, you know,
because I knew there is a way for me to
get people to notice this without me having this big
marketing budget that I didn't have. Right, like there has
to be some way, and that's what I tapped into.
(16:15):
I saw a need of you know, people in college,
especially freshmen and sophomores, wanting to have stuff on their resume.
Ambassador programs were like not a thing. It was very new,
and so I found a way to make people feel
like they were a part of something, make them feel
like they were kind of the person being in on,
you know, this new thing that they found, and also
(16:36):
being able to give them something to put on their resume.
And so I always think about when with whatever I do,
even now, when I'm in a business meeting, when I'm
negotiating whatever I'm doing, I always put myself in the
position of the other person and ask what do they want?
And I always ensure that what I'm bringing to the
table is not just that it's even more so.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
The new Zett eventually caught the eye of legendary fashion
designer Diane von Furstenberg, and I hear that there was
a life changing conversation that took place between the two
of you. Yes, tell me everything about that encounter.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yes, So, Diane von Furstenberg her team reached out to me.
When I was twenty three years old, I had just
moved to New York after making twenty five thousand dollars
my first month of advertising when I graduated, and so
I used that money to move to New York. I
hired a few interns. It was very scrappy, but I
(17:34):
like to say the team that I started out with
was a team of three me, myself and I and so,
you know, we worked our asses off, and because I
sent a newsletter every single day, it became, you know,
way more of likely that somebody would see something because
it was every single day. And I didn't know that
(17:55):
at the time. I just, you know, was kind of
doing what I knew I had to do every day
to grow this. And so I guess someone read the newsletter.
Diane read the newsletter, and she was working on this
thing called the in Charge Movement. They basically were like,
Diane wants to meet with you, and I was like, okay.
As a huge fan, I've read her books, watched all
(18:17):
the TV shows, I was like, Okay, either one of
two things is going to happen. One I'm going to
be kidnapped because this is not real, or two this
is real and the first one is worth it if
it's real. So I went. Luckily he was not a
kidnapped situation. There was a huge magical staircase. Ellen, who
(18:38):
I'm very close to now, her assistant of over fifty years,
walked me in and closed the door behind me, and
I realized there's a meeting going on during my meeting time.
So I'm like, oh my god. And so I'm standing
there at twenty three years old in my wrap dress,
probably shaking and sweating, and I don't even think anybody
noticed me walking into the room. And they were talking
(19:00):
about a podcast. And back then at twenty three, being
a millennial was like being a gen Z. It was like, ooh, millennials,
what do they want? And so someone was pitching her
ideas about, you know, what millennials would want, and then
I basically had a mental breakdown moment where I thought, Okay,
(19:20):
I should say something because I know I'm never going
to be in this position ever again. But I burst
it out, well I don't think millennials would like that,
and it was like cover my mouth, like, oh my god,
what just happened. Like I'll just exit my I'll see
my way out. And so while I'm like peeing my
rap dress waiting to see what happens. They all turn
around and Diane is like, tell me more, and so
(19:41):
she dismisses the people from the podcast you know situation,
and she has me sit next to her and she's like,
what should we do together? And I didn't know that
I was there to like pitch her. But with OCD,
one negative that I've actually been able to turn into
a positive is you have, you know, like the thoughts
that someone without OCG has every single day. So some
(20:03):
of those thoughts are like did I turn the oven off?
Did I whatever? But with me, if I am put
in that position, I'm like okay, and there's like ten
ideas already, and so whatever I said must have sounded
kind of smart because she said, okay, like you know,
we'll be in touch. And I pitched her basically saying
that you know, she had the e commerce side, she
(20:25):
should have a content side called the Weekly Rap, a
weekly newsletter. And so she was like, okay, we'll be
in touch. And I knew again I will never be
in front of this woman. She's probably gonna put me
on like a poster like do not let in. And
so I said, Diane, you are known for being the
most female empowering woman since you invented the rap dress
(20:47):
in nineteen seventy four, right, And I looked around in
the eye and she goes yeah, And I was like,
what would be more female empowering than hiring a twenty
three year old to her company to do it for you?
And I just like looked at her and she was, Okay,
let's do it, and like I literally walked like I
got it was probably like sixty miles home, like in
my heels. I didn't even feel it. I was just
(21:09):
like on fire. Two weeks later, we were, you know,
pitching Mark Zuckerberg something because I had an idea about
her in charge movement that led to so many adventures.
And she's my fairy godmother. We talk almost like every day.
We talked this morning, and she has taught me everything
that I know honestly in life. She is the reason
(21:33):
why I became a fearless salesperson because she allowed me
to be in the biggest rooms of the world with
her and then the CEO of a huge company like
many many different companies, and would allow me, a twenty
three year old with no business being in business, like
no idea what I was doing. But I knew how
to make incredibly engage in content for millennials, and that
(21:55):
was what everyone wanted. And so I would literally take
the stage, like leading the entire conversation. And the fact
that she trusted me that much to do that on
her behalf really gave me the confidence to say, you know,
I don't care if I'm not the smartest person in
the room, or I don't have a special Ivy League degree,
or I don't have funding. If this woman, this icon
believes in me, I should believe in myself too.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
What is the biggest lesson you've learned from her?
Speaker 2 (22:21):
She is somebody who taught me that words matter a lot,
and so whether it's an email or an essay or
a speech, whatever it is, every single word should tell
a story. And she taught me how to edit down
(22:44):
things that I would ramble on about. She taught me
how to almost have a script on who I was
and what I was there to do, so that I
didn't have to think about that, that I could just
like breeze through this is who I am, this is
what I'm doing with Diane, like let's get to business.
And by doing that, she gave me the kind of
confidence that someone that's been in the industry for decades
(23:06):
would have. And so I really, to this day, every
time I send an email anything, I always think about, Okay,
I need to take at least two sentences out because
Diane would tell me too. But yeah, and then she's
also just taught me that life is meant to make mistakes.
Life is meant to, you know, fall in your face,
get back up. Life is never something to fear. Fear
(23:30):
is not an option, she likes to say. And that's
always resonated with me because I was somebody who definitely
became successful from a place of fear in the beginning,
and then I stopped and I, you know, had my
intention for being successful just to provide myself financial freedom
and then to provide every woman the freedom to own
(23:51):
their own destiny.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
More from Daniella Pearson after this shortbreak. So I want
to talk about your newest initiative and it ties into
your personal story too, because you've talked about getting left
out of the room when you went to find your
own venture capital investors for the news set. How did
that experience inspire you to create Chasm?
Speaker 2 (24:16):
So Chasm is an ecosystem with content resources, connections, et
cetera for any female entrepreneur from idea to exit. And
it's powered by the most powerful and successful people in
the world. Because that way, women never have to pay
a dollar for these resources. You know, when I came
to New York, everybody was like, well, how big is
(24:37):
your team? Oh well how much did you raise? Every
success metric was around like a facade, Oh where's your office?
And I, you know, obviously as a twenty three year
old trying to fit in, was like, oh, well, I
guess I have to go get funding. And thank goodness
that all of these old white men and I'm half
old white man, so like, you know, no discrimination there,
(24:59):
but like you know, love old white men. Some of
them suck, Like this guy that laughed me out of
the room and told me I reminded him of a
granddaughter that he hated. So I know, cried the whole
way home. That experience was horrific. And so if I
can prevent that situation from happening to even one person,
(25:19):
then like it's worth it. But the reality is that
whether I was laughed out of that room because I
was a woman, I was in my early twenties, I
was hispanic, maybe I was just bad at presenting right.
It could have been all of the above right. I
have realized that there is such an inequity in female entrepreneurship,
(25:44):
not just because of funding, but because of the way
that the world looks at female entrepreneurs. If you think
about a hundred of the most successful self made people
in the country, just the country, they have two things
in common. What do you think those two things are
grit and that is an amazing answer. I wish it
(26:06):
was that deep. Nope, they have two things in common.
They're all men, and they're all entrepreneurs. And so that's
why I thought, Okay, well, if fifty of these one
hundred people were women, no one would be, you know,
stomping all over us. We wouldn't be making less than men.
And so chasm is basically a way for us to
achieve gender equality by also making incredible waves in female entrepreneurship.
(26:32):
That doesn't just help when female entrepreneurs make a ton
of money, No, it starts right when they start launching
their businesses. Because the more female entrepreneurs, the more females
at the helm of companies, the more that maternity leave
policy will be better. Having women on boards instead of
having to pluck a woman, you know, out of obscurity
into a board and be like grateful for it. No,
(26:54):
the woman makes the board and there's probably going to
be woman on it because that's the kind of person
like that. Just people based on what their superpowers are.
This is a statistic, a fact that men are way
more likely to invest in other men because they look
like them. And so now with women having a seat
at the table, then it's not you know, an inclusivity thing,
(27:15):
it's actually like that person is amazing, let's invest in them.
And so yeah, that's the reason why I created a chasm.
It's essentially an ecosystem built for female entrepreneurs, all entrepreneurs,
but especially female entrepreneurs. We like to say that if
a man is walking out of a VC office and
he is one hundred times more likely to you know,
(27:37):
get an investment because he's a guy, then we want
the woman walking in to be a thousand times more prepared.
That's how we equalize everything. And so the tools that
we offer women are things that honestly I struggled with.
I use myself as you know, a case study. It's like, oh,
legal stuff. I had no idea what I was doing,
(27:58):
and I spent so much money that I didn't have
because I thought I had to have all these things. Great,
we're launching a resource that's a legal lab built by lawyers,
and we're partnering with a law firm where we can
actually provide women with a free consultation if they're raising
over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Let's say, okay,
who to hire? That's something that I struggled with. We're
(28:19):
building a hub where every single kind of person for
different kind of companies, CpG, service, et cetera, where it's
all of the people what they actually do, and then
a JD a job description for what they do so
that you can literally copy paste it, make a few changes,
and put it on LinkedIn. That's stuff that took me hours,
(28:41):
and if we're able to just streamline it, then fantastic.
We're having community calls with the biggest, you know, VC
firms in the world where let's say the partner, the
managing partner is speaking to five hundred women in a
zoom room about what he looks for in an investment.
That's powerful, right, But what's more power is if one
(29:01):
of those women right after the session, emails that person
and says in the subject line, I was just in
that session. Don't you think there're one hundred times more
likely to get an answer? Those are the things that
we're trying to do to create proximity, to create you know, resources,
to be able to actually give women the dialogue, the
glossary of words, all of the stuff that we just
(29:23):
don't have because of societal norms. And the other thing
about CHASM is we're bringing men into the equation. And
so if men control ninety nine point nine nine nine
percent of the resources, power money in the world, then
how are we supposed to achieve equality by isolating them.
(29:44):
When we built Chasm, it was important to me that
men and women were going to be a part of
the platform to you know, teach and speak and all
of those things, because I want people to learn from everybody.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Andielle, it's amazing to think that this all started because
you built a media company in your dorm room in
your sophomore year of college. And I have a theory
that I want to run by you. As we wrap
up our conversation. You mentioned that you always wanted to
work for a magazine growing up, and I think you're
a millennial too, And I can remember growing up watching
(30:19):
movies like Thirteen Going on thirty or How to Lose
a Guy in Ten Days or even Sex and the City,
and we were following these female characters who worked in
publishing and journalism in the editorial space. How much did
that influence your career trajectory?
Speaker 2 (30:35):
I mean I literally just watched thirteen going On to
thirty like two weeks ago, because like again, because of
that exact thing I rewatched, like the September issue. All
of those things one hundred percent influenced me. When I
got older, I didn't really know the mechanics or you know,
(30:56):
the behind the curtain part of building a magazine until I,
you know, was probably in college. But what always excited
me was the fact that I could pick up a
magazine from publics, beg my mom to let me buy it,
and then be lost in it and tranced in it.
That's the feeling that I wanted to give woman every
single day in somewhere that's oftentimes toxic, you're in box.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
I don't think that we have fully comprehended the impact
that magazines had on millennial women growing up, Like, yeah,
is it a joke old.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
I mean it was everything.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
The quiz is the I just remember, like the lifestyle
and fashion spreads, the boy crushes.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
The embarrassing stories, the embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Stories, those are so good. I mean I basically learned
what puberty was through a magazine.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
I'm pretty sure, oh one hundred percent. And every single
product I would say, like, Mom, I have to go
to CVS. I have to get this product like whatever.
I know that people are like, oh, magazines aren't good
at like selling you things anymore. When I was young,
I would literally say, Mom, we got to go to
CBS and get this like whatever cleanser that they're talking about,
because I just, you know, immerse myself in this world.
(32:10):
If I use that cleanser, I'll be more like the
woman who make this magazine. Right.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yeah, And I think magazines are still here. It's just
it's a bit fragmented now, and a lot of the
things that appealed to us about magazines are now on
social media.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Yeah. I think magazines have now transcended into not just
this coveted book that comes out once a month. Now
it's this accessible hub of point of views. Depending on
what magazine slash you know, website, media brand, you want
to go on and you don't have to wait for
(32:48):
the next issue, which was something that I, you know,
always was like I can't when I would see the
new cover and be like, oh my god. But now
you don't have to wait, and everything online is editorialize
and then reconfigured to fit social media. Magazines are now
basically taking the stuff that they would have put in
print and being able to have it be ten times
(33:11):
more effective and reach a way larger audience by you know,
putting those tips or tricks or recommendations in highly digestible content.
And that's what we do at The New Zett and
I think the reason why we've been successful because unlike
some magazines where they talk down to you, we always
have been like the accessible best friend that is learning
(33:34):
alongside you.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Danielle, thank you so much for joining us here on
the bright side.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Daniella Pearson is the founder and CEO of The New
Zett and Chasm, a company founded to close the gender
gap through entrepreneurship. Big announcement here, I am so excited
to share Shinaway is back this October eleventh and twelfth.
In Life, angels. If you've been before, you know it's
Hello Sunshine's incredible weekend of connection, joy and community. And
(34:07):
if you haven't, well, this is the here to come.
Throughout the day, you'll experience thoughtful panels, fireside chats, workshops,
and immersive activations surrounded by voices that are shaping culture
and shifting conversations. Whether you're a longtime listener or just
joining us, this is your chance to be part of
a truly special and memorable weekend. Tickets are selling fast,
(34:28):
so head to Hellosunshine dot com slash shine Away to
grab yours. The bright Side is a production of Hello
Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts and is executive produced by Reese
Witherspoon and me Simone Voice. Production is by ACAST Creative Studios.
Our producers are Taylor Williamson, Adrian Bain, Abby Delk, and
(34:48):
Darby Masters. Our production assistant is Joya Putnoy. Acasts executive
producers are Jenny Kaplan and Emily Rudder. Maureen Polo and
Reese Witherspoon are the executive producers for Hello Sunshine. Ali
Perry and Lauren Hansen are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts.
Tim Palazzola is our showrunner. Our theme song is by
(35:10):
Anna Stump and Hamilton Lighthouser.
Host
Simone Boyce
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