June 10, 2025 • 55 mins
What if AI could finally solve one of the most overlooked challenges in women’s health?
Millions of women experience menopause, yet real support has always lagged behind, until now.
In this episode of the 2B Bolder Podcast, I sit down with Susan Sly, tech founder, health advocate, and CEO of Pause AI, who is transforming how women navigate menopause through the use of artificial intelligence.
Her journey is anything but traditional, from working on facial recognition algorithms in the ’90s, to building a career in holistic health, to a life-threatening illness that nearly derailed everything. But that experience lit a fire—and brought her back to tech with a new mission: to build real-time, personalized solutions for the 1.1 billion women facing menopause.
We talk about:
- The spark behind Pause AI at a Women in AI event
- How wearables and real-time data are changing the game
- Why only 2.5% of VC funding goes to women founders—and what she’s doing anyway
- The resilience it takes to walk away from what’s working to build what’s needed
Susan gets real about leadership, aging, and why women should solve women’s health issues.
🎧 Tune in and be inspired, as bold leaders innovate and listen to what women truly need.
Search 2B Bolder wherever you get your podcasts, or listen now at 2bbolder.com/podcasts.
Resources:
Susan Sly on LinkedIn
Official Website: https://susansly.com/
Company website: https://thepause.ai/
Learn more about AnitaB.org
When you subscribe to the podcast, you are supporting our work's mission, allowing us to continue highlighting successful women in a variety of careers to inspire others helping pay our wonderful editor, Chris, and helping me in paying our hosting expenses. 🎉
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi there, my name is Mary Kiloalea.
Welcome to the To Be Bolderpodcast providing career
insights for the next generationof women in business and tech.
To Be Bolder was created out ofmy love for technology and
marketing, my desire to bringtogether like-minded women and
my hope to be a great role modeland source of inspiration for
my two girls and other youngwomen like you, Encouraging you
(00:22):
guys to show up and to be bolderand to know that anything you
guys dream of it's totallypossible.
So sit back, relax and enjoythe conversation.
Hey there, Today's show is forall women.
Menopause is finally getting theattention it deserves, and it's
about time.
Millions of women go through it.
Yet the solutions and supporthave lagged behind until now.
(00:45):
Today's guest is on a missionto change that.
Susan Sly is a powerhouseentrepreneur and tech visionary
who's using the power of AI toreshape how women experience
menopause.
She's the founder and CEO ofPause AI, a groundbreaking
platform that's bringingpersonalized, real-time support
to the space.
(01:06):
That's been ignored far toolong, and this isn't her first
bout with technology and solvingproblems.
Before launching Paws AI, sheco-founded Radius AI, an
award-winning company in thevisual intelligence space.
Susan's passion for solvingproblems that matter to women
using cutting edge technology tolead with purpose makes her the
(01:27):
standout leader in AI, and I'mso honored to have you here
joining us today.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Thank you so much Well thanks, mary, and to all of
our listeners, I think you know.
First and foremost, I want toacknowledge you.
I mean, as a podcast hostmyself, I always start my day
with a podcast and I justcommend all of your listeners
and everyone here because I knowwe're going to have a great
conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Fantastic.
Okay, so let's start with yourorigin story.
What's your background?
Let's start there, since you'reobviously in the tech space now
and you've had an interestingbackground eclectic, so tell
everyone about it.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah, sure, I've been on the bleeding edge of
artificial intelligence since2018, but I haven't written a
line of code since 1992.
And part of, I think, the bigpiece for women to understand is
we are going to have anywherefrom seven to nine I think is
the latest statistic Mary careeriterations.
(02:26):
And for me, when I was inuniversity I was working on
early facial recognitionalgorithms from 90, 91, 92.
And then I really wanted to beJodie Foster from Silence of the
Lambs and I thought I would usethis technology to go catch
criminals, and you know thatthat would be it.
But I went into that world offederal law enforcement right
(02:50):
out of college and realized veryquickly that, to be candid, it
wasn't conducive torehabilitation.
What, especially for seriousoffenders?
What the modalities being usedthen and nothing has changed in
30 years really only supportedrecidivism, and by that I mean,
(03:11):
like you know, offenders wouldgo into the prison and they'd
have a drug problem and they'dhave a worse drug problem.
And so I became very easilyjaded in my early 20s with that
and I decided to pursue apassion in the holistic side of
health and I went into the salesand marketing side of the house
and built sales teams thatgenerated over 2 billion in
(03:33):
sales.
But in 2016, I've had manynear-death experiences.
But in 2016, I've been toAfrica many times.
I've been to Cambodia, I'vegone undercover, rescued girls
from sex trafficking and I wentto Africa.
But this time came back verysick and I was misdiagnosed and
I was gaslit by severalphysicians.
(03:54):
One told me it was all in myhead and gave me a personal
development book and I saidlisten, I do speaking events
with people like Tony Robbinsand I've written seven books.
So no, it's not all in my head.
Swipe left and then anotherdoctor said it was just PMS and
it wasn't.
And I had an amoeba, mary, andit was shutting down my organs
(04:16):
and I was dying and so inhaleMary.
A friend of mine said there's adoctor who specializes in
tropical diseases in New Yorkand he's in his eighties and I
flew to see him and he hadworked in over 30 UN camps for
Doctors Without Borders,diagnosed me.
I went on two years ofantibiotics, holistic modalities
(04:39):
, and came out the other sideand said you know what?
I was given a second chance atlife.
What do I want to do?
And I wanted to go back intotechnology and so I ended up
co-founding a company with fourguys and they were looking for
someone with my skillset raisingmoney, sales.
And because I hadn't writtencode in so long, I went back to
(05:00):
school.
I went to MIT, sloan, and thenlast year I graduated from
executive education, theengineering department.
So there's a lot more to thestory.
Being homeless I'm sure youread about my background.
You know turning things around,but those are.
You know that's some of thecareer highlights.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
That's fascinating and so life-changing.
I mean just being working withthe traffic, you know, rescuing
young girls or women intrafficking.
I can't even imagine what thatdoes to you and how it shifts
your perspective on life.
But I guess in all that youhave an incredible drive.
What derives you personally?
Speaker 2 (05:40):
That's a great question.
You know, as women, especiallyin our age cohort and I did a
post in our private Facebookgroup today for the company, for
all of the women.
You know, at this stage of thegame, we either have aging
parents or we've lost parents.
(06:00):
But my father passed lastsummer.
We may still have kids at home,we are navigating career, we
may be one of my friends hasthree months to live, which is
heartbreaking we might be goingthrough separation, divorce, I
mean the list goes on and on andthe.
(06:21):
You know, some days it takesmore energy than others and I
think it's very different forwomen than it is for men.
We have more cause and effect.
I mean, back in 2000, I thinknine, I was doing a big
television show in Australia andyou know, I, you know women
have more synapses between theleft and right hemisphere of our
(06:41):
brain and I was explaining tothe host I'm like, look, my new
book, the have it All Women hadcome out at that time.
And I'm like, listen, we, youknow, we're thinking about so
many things at one time.
I mean, you know, what isso-and-so going to wear to
school, what are we going towear?
What is for lunch?
What is for dinner?
Do we have enough groceries inthe house?
Do I need to go to the drycleaner?
The list goes on and on.
(07:01):
And it's not to diminish howmen's minds work, but the
reality is and there's newresearch, even in terms of how
different cultural groups marry,navigate menopause and
perimenopause.
There's something calledweathering and what that is.
It's years and years and yearsof stress, and it could be
socioeconomic stress, it couldbe physical stress that
(07:24):
literally begins to degradeourselves.
So by this time in our lifethere are days when you know
you've had, maybe you're youknow on HRT and you've had a
decent night's sleep and you'refeeling amazing and you can be
motivated.
And there's other days when ittakes work.
I was a professional athlete anda lot of my background in being
(07:45):
able to self-motivate.
Not every day that I went onthat start line did I feel like,
yes, I'm going to be a podiumfinisher today.
So what motivates me right now?
And I think the root of thequestion is what is my?
In French we say the raisond'etre, or what is my why?
My why right now is there aresoon to be 1.1 billion women in
(08:06):
menopause in the world and weknow McKinsey is doing a lot of
research and some studies showup to 41% of women in this age
cohort want to quit their jobsdue to lack of support.
And these women are managers,directors, heads, vps, c-suite
and so forth, and we're notbeing supported.
And the number one periodtracking app out there is
(08:29):
actually created by two guys,and kudos to them.
They have had a tremendous run.
But who better to solve women'shealth than women?
And?
And so what keeps me up atnight?
What gets me up in the morning,is how are we going to solve
this?
How are we going to createprecision recommendations?
Because perimenopause andmenopause is not a one size fits
all, and we're seeing blackwomen, asian women, mixed women
(08:50):
like myself.
So many different groups arehaving different symptoms.
No one is addressing that, andso that's what keeps me going.
But some days, you knowcandidly, it's easy and some
days it's.
I need a little more.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah, it was funny was funny because, like you said
, I'm in that demographic.
So it was.
I was on some chat with somewomen friends of mine and
they're all like are you goingto watch the Oprah show tonight?
You know, because it wastalking about menopause.
It was something that hadn'tgone on prime time.
So of course, we all tune inand compare, but what I loved
(09:26):
about it, honestly, was justbringing the conversation to the
masses.
So talk to me about real-timeAI I want to say real-time
analytics, but real-time AI andthen also about your business
Paws AI and how they can use itpause AI and what women can, how
(09:50):
they can use it.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So there's a there's an Intel origin story, so I'll,
I'll.
I'll start with that, becauseit's going to frame in why do
this right?
So it's September of 2023, andthere's a event that happens
every year called Women in AI,and it's 32 women are invited
and these are women who are fromthe top tech companies Intel
and NVIDIA, hpe, amd andfounders like myself and what
(10:13):
happens is you spend the morningfor a couple hours to talk
about AI, have brunch, and thenyou go to a fashion show, so you
drink mimosas and it'sfantastic, and it's like if I'm
in, I've been two years in a row, like if I'm invited, it's Mary
, it's an instant, yeah.
So I had been going throughmenopause and it was getting
more and more severe, even tothe point where I said I'm going
(10:34):
to get my breast implantsremoved, which I did.
I was like, desperate to doanything.
I was on HRT, I was not feelinggood and I'm co-CEO of a
growing company and we have fouroffices, 100 employees globally
, and my days are long and Iloved what I was doing, but I
kept thinking why am I suffering?
(10:56):
I have a background in holistichealth, I know what to do, I
eat the right things, I do allof the right things.
This is not right and I kept onthinking how do we solve for
this?
So we're at the event and we'reon the party bus to go to the
Badgley Mishka fashion show andone of the girls says Susan, you
know, can you solve this withAI?
Because we're not talking aboutAI, we're talking about how
(11:19):
much sleep did you get and doyou have hot flashes?
And so a few months after that,I decided to walk away from my
previous company and step outwith no salary, just my savings,
and start to build this companyand start to bootstrap it and
bring in investors.
And that road is not easy andfor everyone listening I would
(11:42):
say you know, we have to startas women, which is the majority
of this listening audience.
We have to start as womensupporting women-led companies.
Like, as I said, the LeadingPeriod app is started by two
guys, not that you know great,but women need to support women.
So I said how do we do this insuch a way where we do something
different?
And because of my background,last year I was voted one of the
(12:03):
top women in the world inreal-time AI.
Along with Mira Murthy fromOpenAI and a group of us by an
independent party, I said how dowe take real time?
So what that means is, mary, ifyou are not sleeping, how do
you get supported to in themorning Not like I'm going to
talk to my menopause coach thenext day or I'm going to talk to
(12:23):
someone.
How do you if your heart rateis weird or something's going on
and you're not feeling good?
How do you get a recommendationin real time that says hey,
this isn't a day to go for a run, this is a day, like you know,
you need to maybe go for an easywalk here's a meditation, do a
breathing exercise, because thatplatform is taking the input
(12:48):
that you're giving it and makinga recommendation based on that.
To build it is insanelychallenging and most people
would look at it and go, oh,that's a fun problem to solve,
but it's a very difficult one tosolve.
So that's how the companystarted and that's what we're
(13:08):
aiming to build, and we alsothis is so critical Mary say you
know, a woman has never hadchildren and she ends up having
a surgical menopause.
As an example, she's 34 yearsold.
Why is she getting the samerecommendations as a 54 year old
who's had four children andnever had a hysterectomy.
(13:30):
Like this is the stuff that'shappening, and so, just like
when my girls were little, they,the American girls, had the.
Just like you, doll, this ishow we're looking at
perimenopause and menopause.
It's just like you.
There were some very consistentrecommendations that are
evidence-based, and thoseinclude things like sleep,
alcohol, exercise and so forth,but then there are other things
(13:53):
like nutrition that really andtruly, we need to look at your
culture of origin, right, weneed to look at your activity
level.
So that's what we're buildingand the product is out there in
flight in its initial version,and I'm going to tell every
single woman.
Of course, we'd love downloadthe app.
We want to be supported.
It's not as pretty as it'sgoing to be, but I have a friend
(14:17):
who has an app-based company,mary, and they are four years in
and they're just now bringingon customers.
As a female-led founder, lessthan 2.5% of women-led pitches
to VCs get funded.
Women raise more money, but ourcompanies are 68% more
profitable.
I said we're going to put theapp out there at a discount $29
a year.
We know it's going to be ugly,but we're going to get feedback,
(14:39):
we're going to refine it andthat's what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
That's amazing find it, and that's what we're doing.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
That's amazing.
So how does the data get inputinto the system?
I love that question.
So when a subscriber comes ontoour platform, she is anonymized
.
We actually don't know who sheis because Apple doesn't.
Your email could be ABC123,hotmailmail, for example.
We don't know who you are andyou can't put a picture in that.
We don't allow it.
So you have like a carousel ofum different avatars you can
(15:13):
choose from.
You choose a username, um.
We always suggest you don't useyour actual name, so just
choose whatever you want, um.
And so then we now are um.
You have the ability to sharehow you're feeling.
We have a symptom tracker, butagain, we don't know who you are
, which is the thing that wasreally important to me, really,
(15:36):
and and that poses itschallenges, because some of our
competitors want to know yourname, all of your medical
information, your exact date ofbirth.
We only ask for your month andyear, and you know I'm not going
to give my information to aplatform, especially medical
information, when theyphysically know who I am, right.
So that's how we begin thejourney.
(15:58):
We are in the process ofintegrating with Oura, ring,
fitbit, garmin, all of thewearables.
Right now we have Apple Watch,and so if you do choose to
connect a wearable, we also getwhat we call a resilience score,
which is pulling from differentbiometric feedback.
So I'll give you a real worldexample.
(16:20):
So I've been going through afew things in my personal life.
As I said, one of mygirlfriends has three months to
live, going through a move, I'mrenovating a house, I'm building
a company, I mean, the listgoes on and on, and my
resilience score was 76yesterday and for me, normally
(16:41):
I'm in the high 80s, but becauseof that score, I know that
today I'm in the high eighties,but because of that score, I
know that today I didn't go foran interval run, I got on the
elliptical, I took it easy, Idid weight training, I will go
to bed early tonight, and that'sjust one of many examples of
how were the.
The data is there, but it'sanonymized and you're still able
(17:05):
to get precisionrecommendations.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Okay, oh gosh, there's just so much I want to
talk to you about.
Let's back up, because you'rein a room with these women who
are some of the brightest mindsaround talking about AI.
What words of encouragement oropportunities do you see for
other women who want to stepinto the arena of AI and where
(17:31):
they can build their careersfrom not having a ton of skills
to being really skilled?
And it seems like seamlessintegration, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Yeah, ai is shifting so quickly and the first thing
I'm going to say, step one iseducate yourself.
Ai is a buzzword that really,within AI, I liken it to let's
use the pie analogy technology.
(18:12):
So computer vision, where Icame out of, is one form of ai,
and someone I was at a like atech meetup and someone's like
explain computer vision, and so,for those of you don't know,
computer vision is when you'retaking security cameras and the
ai essentially is lookingthrough the security camera and
doing what we call motioninterpretation.
So what is a human, a machine,whatever, an airplane doing, and
24-7.
(18:33):
So those are big data payloads.
It is a lot of complexity, alot of elegance, a lot of use
cases to keep humans safe even.
However, that's just one form ofAI.
Then, a couple of years ago,chow Chibiti everyone starts
talking about generative AI.
So what that is is when you putyou know type or your voice or
(18:56):
something goes into the AI,mostly a machine learning
algorithm, and then it has anoutput.
It could be more text, it couldbe voice, like you know your
Siri or Alexa.
It could also be an image or itcould be a video, like with
Sora.
That's another form.
Now everyone's talking aboutagentic AI.
So an AI agent to perform asimple task that is a repetitive
(19:20):
task, but eventually you trainthat AI agent so it can have its
own logic.
And to give an example becauseI love when I do talks is to do
a talk just like this on whatare these different types of AI,
when we think about autonomousvehicles so I'm based in Phoenix
and Waymo is allowed to go tothe airport and pick up people
(19:41):
and it was so Mary startling thefirst time I pulled up next to
a Waymo and I look over andthere's no one in that passenger
seat.
So there's a lot of AI agentsworking in tandem to interpret
what is going on for thatvehicle.
So there's an example ofagentic AI.
So we look at all thesedifferent forms of AI and there
(20:04):
are others and first thing isfirst is that's knowing the
difference.
And number two is deciding howwould you like to be involved.
So there's the ethics component, if you come from any kind of
policy.
Then there's the sales andmarketing side.
Then there is the businessdevelopment side, which is, you
know, where you're looking athow do we implement AI and how
(20:27):
do we scale it, where you'relooking at how do we implement
AI and how do we scale it?
I'm one of the only women womenwho've actually scaled
artificial intelligence in theUnited States, and so there's a
there's a seat for everyone atthe table, and I didn't pivot my
career until I was 45.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
So someone who's listening and this isn't
something I usually talk abouton the podcast, but since you're
here, I have to pick your brainFor a woman out there who has
an idea for an AI app or aproduct, you know, based on AI
and what.
What should she have as far aslike a pitch and starting to get
(21:04):
funding and like taking herplan from an idea in her you
know room to actually and I knowthis is a loaded question but
at a high level, like, what coreadvice do you have for someone
like that?
I?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
think it's a really good question because there's a
lot of misinformation andconfusion out there and I've had
girlfriends who've gone downthat path.
One it is going to cost youmore than you actually think it
is.
Number two, coming out of MIT,there's a concept there called
(21:41):
MMP a minimum marketable product, which is a product that your
minimum product that people willpay for.
So, unlike a beta version or anMVP, this is something someone
will pay you, whatever thatnumber is, in exchange for what
you built.
The third thing isoff-the-shelf tooling.
So we now see AI platforms thatcan be customized to be part of
(22:06):
the tech stack and even I wouldsay, you know, three, four
years ago people had to buildtheir own AI.
Now, even as an angel investor,I'm not deploying capital this
year because I'm investing in myown company, but the you know,
even Mary, seeing companies nowthat can get to market faster
because of the greatoff-the-shelf tools, right, and
(22:29):
so a lot of people will spendmillions and millions of dollars
to be able to get a product outto the market.
We made a decision we were notgoing to do a free version.
Every VC I've spoken to hassaid that is a genius idea
because the churn is so high,especially in apps.
(22:50):
So still, you know you're goingto spend a lot of money.
The other thing I would say ismy you know two really big
pieces of advice.
One put together a group ofadvisors I am an advisor on two
companies that have experiencebecause what's going to happen?
Let's say you're a nutritionistand you're like, oh, I want to
(23:12):
do this.
You're going to talk todifferent dev shops and they're
going to quote you a price andyou'll think, oh, you know, for
$250,000, I'll get this thingout in the market.
Then you do not have anarchitecture diagram, you don't
know, there's broken code,there's all this tech debt.
Then you go to another dev shopand then you spend another
$250,000 and you're still notout in the market.
(23:33):
And the list goes on and on andon.
So surrounding yourself withpeople who've actually done it
before and who can ask thequestions, I think is key.
Make them advisors.
You may give away some equityto do that.
And then the second thing islook at your partners.
Whether it's Microsoft forstartups, amazon for startups,
(23:53):
google for startups, they allhave startup programs and your
cloud costs are going to soarvery quickly even when you're
building and you don't want tobe in that place where you don't
even have a product and you'redown $3 million and that happens
all the time.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
So yeah, that's just so much gold in there.
All right, let's talk aboutnetworking.
And before I guess, before Italk about networking, I want to
back up, because you've been inrooms that have been dominated
by men, just for the sheerreality of you know women in the
space that you're in.
(24:31):
How have you gone in with suchconfidence and how, when the
confidence seems to be dwindling, do you pump it back up?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yeah, yeah, and we're living in a very interesting
time.
I don't know which if it waswired or I can't remember and
(25:04):
it's suddenly permission tothese guys who were portraying
themselves as so sensitive arenow like wakeboarding with no
shirt on and like going huntingand doing all this crap that
they never showed they wereprobably doing but they just
never were flexing about it.
So we're living in a veryinteresting time to be a woman
(25:30):
and I have personally observedthat the conversations are
changing, and I'll just be verycandid to the women listening
You're going to have to proveyourself in a lot of the rooms.
So for me, I was raised by asingle dad, so I do have an
advantage of that.
I was raised more, like wewould have said, when we were
little, tomboy right.
(25:50):
So it was football.
On Sundays it was church, itwas football, it was politics,
it was, you know, growing upwith Walter Cronkite.
We watched the news every night, my dad and I, and he was an
engineer.
So for me, I'm very comfortablewith men.
You know, if I'm on a Zoom andI see you've got like the Eagles
in the background or some,whatever it is we're going to
have a conversation.
(26:11):
I know what's going on and Ican very much get to that point
where there's some form ofcommon ground, much like it
would be with a couple of guys,and I don't care if anyone wants
to criticize me I mean,everyone's got an opinion but
it's just who I am.
It's not who I'm trying to be.
And I want to pause with thisstatement because girls
listening, just be who you areright, it's just who I am.
(26:35):
I was not raised with dolls andyou know princess parties and
things I wish God willing I was,but you know my mom was not
part of my life, so that's how Iwas raised and so I'm very
comfortable talking about a lotof those things that guys would
normally talk about Going into aroom where I remember once I
was going into a room, it wasmyself, all guys and there were
(26:57):
all these servers on aconference table and it's like,
okay, you've got to know yourstuff.
I had completely memorized theNVIDIA GPU catalog for Edge.
I started to get very clear onwhat Edge is a form for, as
people don't know, it's when youprocess data at the source.
(27:21):
So, like in a hospital example,there's a lot of Edge servers
because they're processing allthis data.
It's cheaper than sending datato the cloud, processing it and
bring it back down.
So I knew the edge servers,edge architecture.
I started to learn what werethe questions I needed to ask,
and I think for me that myadvice would be to any woman if
(27:45):
that is the case.
I see a lot of women out thereright now because of federal
funding for women-led startupsand women's initiatives.
And women are, you know, onsocial media.
They're, you know, they'recomplaining.
And girls, you know what.
You can complain about thingsif you feel you can make a
change.
(28:05):
But you know, just complainingon social media isn't going to
do it.
You know, reach out to yourcongressperson, your senator,
whoever it is, but at the end ofthe day, you're going to have
to prove yourself.
And I think I was saying youknow you had to be 30 percent
better.
I think in this currentenvironment, you've got to be 90
percent better and that's whatit's going to take.
(28:26):
I know when I go to pitch a VCand that's what it's going to
take.
I know, when I go to pitch a VCespecially when you've got a
product that's for menopausemost of the people they're men.
They're never going to gothrough menopause, they're not
going to get the problemstatement.
So I've had to become betterpitching, like all of those
things, and you can say, mary,it sucks and it does, but it is
(28:47):
what it is, so we just have toadapt to that terrain.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah, no, I'm kind of like that.
You cannot spend time worryingabout something you can't
control.
You just have to do what's inyour control and if that's doing
the extra work, you do theextra work.
Let's talk about networking.
How have you been able tosurround yourself with support
throughout your career and anytips for other women in building
(29:13):
their supportive network?
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Networking is huge and you know this right.
Like you know, it's all aboutthat who you know.
But how do you end up knowingwho you know?
What most people would besurprised to know, if you look
at my LinkedIn or Instagram orany of the social media
platforms, is I'm a naturalintrovert and it is a lot of
(29:36):
effort for me to network.
I find cocktail partiesexhausting, but I go right.
I to give you an example.
I was this past week tuesdaynight I was invited by jp morgan
and shouts out to them for thisgathering they had in
scottsdale to bring togetherlike seven founders and ask our
(29:56):
opinions and things like that,and it was a great event and it
was lovely.
Yesterday morning I was sotired, like it's a lot and and
people say, susan, you know youcan speak in front of 20 000
people, or you can have.
You know you could speak infront of 20,000 people, or you
can have a YouTube channel.
You could do shows like this.
Yes, but I know, as a naturalintrovert, that I have to be a
(30:21):
situational extrovert in orderto do it.
So I love podcasts because Ilove to be able to have a
conversation, like you and Icould be having a cocktail, we
could be having a coffee, wecould be having lunch and
sitting down.
When I'm at an event and I'mphysically networking, I'm like,
oh, and I have the LEFO policylast in first up.
That being said, the reason Ishared that is even on my show.
(30:44):
I have a lot of people that comeon, even men who've, you know,
had exits and successful youknow rounds and so forth, who
are natural introverts.
And we talk about it a lotbecause most people make the
incorrect assumption thatsomeone is an extrovert.
And here's the thing, mary, youknow you're an extrovert when
you leave that cocktail partyand you're energized.
(31:05):
You know you're an introvertwhen you leave that party and
you're like, I just need to sitand watch friends for, like you
know, two hours.
So the networking piece knowyour strengths.
And so one of my strengths isreally I do genuinely care about
people and I am very interestedand curious about people.
(31:26):
So I make myself go tonetworking events.
I network on LinkedIn.
Usually every week I have myCalendly.
One of the events is a 15minute and people will reach out
to me on LinkedIn and, hey, youknow, as long as they're not
selling me something, you know,can we meet, and I I will do,
you know one or two of those aweek just to meet people.
(31:48):
I go to a lot of those a weekjust to meet people.
I go to a lot of networkingevents and I speak at events and
when I speak at events, Ialways make sure that I attend
at least one of the networkingevents to get to know people and
, as part of that strategy,that's where investors have come
from in my company.
That's where some amazingopportunities and I would say to
(32:09):
anyone listening is just bereally clear Going into an event
with what can I get?
I'll tell a quick story.
So I was asked to speak at anevent called AI Salon, which was
cool, and there are a lot ofyoung founders there and they
know I'm an angel investor.
So they've looked at myLinkedIn and stuff and they come
(32:31):
up to me, not like, oh,something I learned from your
talk, or I have a question aboutthis.
It's like, oh, I have a startupand we're raising $2 million
and I'm like that's notnetworking, that's vomiting all
over someone.
Networking is when you thinkabout what can I offer this
person in value without keepingscore right, 100% agree.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
What I love about you is that you're the face of the
company and you represent thecompany so well because you can
speak to it as a person whowould be using it.
I think I'm trying to lead youdown a path about talking about
personal branding and howimportant it is for companies to
(33:17):
realize that people don't wantto connect so much with the
title of the brand.
They want to connect withleaders.
So what have you done aroundbuilding your personal brand?
I know you talk about.
You know some.
I guess I assume you're beingvery intentional because you're
very successful at it.
What advice do you have forwomen and how important is
(33:41):
personal brand building?
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Sure, let's, let's step back, because you know, you
and I will remember life, lifebefore social media, right?
So I want to talk about thecelebrity founder, and this is
one of my favorite topics,because when people start to
think about it, they're like, oh, okay.
So let's think about Apple fora minute, right?
So Steve jobs was that originaland it doesn't matter.
(34:05):
I'm going to name a fewexamples that it doesn't matter
how people feel about them,we're just using them.
If I was teaching a universityclass, these would be case
studies.
So Steve Jobs had his look right, his turtleneck, you know, and
he had his quirks about him andhe was known to have these fits
and things, but this becamelegend.
(34:26):
He was like the OG celebrityinfluencer in that tech space.
Bill Gates was never the samekind of persona in terms of
being influential and, again,this was all legend.
This was all old schoolinterviews on 60 Minutes and
(34:46):
things like that, views on 60minutes and things like that.
So then we get into fast forwardtime to this group of people in
you know technology who arecelebrity founders, and the
thing I want everyone to know,if you're taking notes, is that
a celebrity founder can make orbreak a company and if it is
(35:07):
done well, people will be veryforgiving.
So I'm going to use a verycontentious name right now,
because why not?
The thing I love about yourshow is and whenever I'm on a
show, what you see is what youget.
This is the conversation Iwould have had with you at 350
in the morning when I woke up,mary so it's the same station
and I know you do.
(35:27):
I know you appreciate that.
So let's look at Elon Musk.
So Elon is this you know thispersona and, prior to what's
going on currently with thestuff with Tesla, he was this
person that he was idolized,especially by all these young
men, and they would go and buy aTesla and they would.
(35:50):
You know, everyone loved theirTesla and he was this you know,
demagogue of a persona and abrand.
So even when Tesla almost wentbankrupt, he had so many orders
for Teslas because it becamethis cult culture, right.
And there's another example.
Zuckerberg is another example,Bezos is another example.
(36:14):
These people who are iconicaround their brands and outside
of technology.
I'll use Sarah Blakely.
Sarah was like one of us, right, she had her cellulite.
She's pouring herself into herSpanx and I had her husband,
jesse Itzler, on my show andlike they're just real people.
So Sarah was another one.
(36:35):
So the question is, when youlook at some of these big brands
, can you have a successfulbrand without a brand icon,
without that person who is theface of the brand?
And I would say it gets you sofar?
But the biggest brands in theworld, they have some kind of
(36:56):
person at the helm?
Who is that spokesperson?
And it isn't easy, becauseyou're also going to take the
arrows.
And so what I found for myselfis I'm willing to be vulnerable.
I've even spoken on Instagramabout issues I've had with my
husband, um I, you know it's.
I don't want to be that personwho's always trying to be
perfect, but I'd rather, asOprah said, I'd rather be
(37:17):
respected than liked Um, and Iwould also, you know, just
rather, just put everything outthere and not care, at the risk
of knowing that some investors,you know, might not, you know,
think that's.
That's great, but the numberone value in our company is
trust, and how are you going totrust someone who's being
inauthentic?
So guess what girls?
Yes, you need to brand yourself, there's no question.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
What does to be bolder mean to you?
Speaker 2 (37:42):
I just think it's having the courage to speak your
truth.
And you know, we we wentthrough a culture in a Sheryl
Sandberg started with let's LeanIn and then we went to this
imposter syndrome Girls, it'senough, is enough is enough.
Like, stop caring.
You know, we're at 8 billionpeople in the world.
You'll find your people.
(38:02):
I just don't care anymore.
Just don't care anymore, LikeI'm.
Just.
I'm at 52 years old, I'm justgoing to be who I am and I'm on
a path.
I still do personal growth.
I read four books a month, Ilisten to podcasts every morning
.
You know, as I said, I do allthis stuff.
I don't intend to be the sameiteration of me a year from now,
(38:23):
but I'm bold enough to justspeak my truth and and really
just not marry care what anyonethinks.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
That made me curious.
What are your podcasts thatyou're listening to and some of
your favorite books?
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Oh well, I listened to um a lot of Lewis house um,
especially when he has founderson, because Lewis has um his
personal coach, chris Lee.
I know Chris um, he's anamazing human.
Lewis ask questions that aredifferent than the standard.
(39:01):
Like you know, how did you getinto entrepreneurship?
And you know that kind of thing.
And it's like more like let'stalk and which is what I do on
my show run realentrepreneurship, like let's get
to the heart of it, theconsciousness of it.
Like did you ever feel like youwant to quit?
Did you ever get depressed?
You know all of that stuff.
So I really love his interviewstyle and it's it's evolved Um,
(39:24):
I, when I'm in, you know, sortof nerdy mode, I'll listen to
acquired um is another one thatI really enjoy.
Um, because I want to listen tothe business tactics for sure.
Um books I am reading so manybooks at one time.
So Gabby Bernstein self-help sheand I have some people we know
(39:46):
in common and her new book.
Her last book was reallyvulnerable when she talks about
being sexually abused and she'salways been vulnerable about her
journeys.
So this one is is really a veryfocused type of therapy.
So I love that I'm audioreading Lewis's new book Make
Money Easy.
(40:07):
I am also when I like dependson how much time I have it's.
There's a book I'm audioreading about populating Mars
and how, like the, you know whatit's physically going to take
from an engineering standpointto do that, because Elon is
working very aggressively onthat and I actually know people
(40:28):
who are working on title rightsto land in Mars and things.
I mean crazy stuff, and sothose are kind of what I'm
reading and I do read Mary is.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
As a founder, when you're hiring someone, do you
look at where they went toschool and what like boxes
they've checked off, or is theresomething more intrinsic that
you're looking at from them?
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Oh, this process has grown for me because I used to.
You know, I my husband wouldalways say my biggest strength
is I believe in people.
My greatest weakness is Ibelieve in people, you know.
And so we have a process nowwhere everyone gets a 30 day
contract and you have to gothrough three interviews.
So the first interview is, ifwe're hiring engineers, it's
(41:23):
going to be technical interview.
Then you're going to go througha cultural interview.
It's always three peopleinterviewing and they the
technical interview.
You have two tech people, onenon-technical, the cultural.
You have two non-technical, onetechnical, and then there's a
third final interview.
Then you get a 30 day trial andyou jump right in.
(41:43):
I don't care if you went toStanford, if you went to MIT or
you have a certificate fromGoogle.
That doesn't tell me anythingabout your technical skills.
It really doesn't.
I've had all of those.
I've had PhDs I've had, youknow, it doesn't tell me
anything because, at the end ofthe day, my philosophy is anyone
can learn a skill, but I can'tteach them integrity.
(42:04):
And so we only have two corevalues trust and wow.
And if you can't deliver trustand wow, in 30 days you're out.
So you know people, some of thepartners we have are like,
where's Bob?
I'm just making that name upand I'm like, oh no, bob's gone,
didn't pass the 30 day.
Like you know, love Bob.
I'm like, oh no, bob's gone,didn't pass the 30 day, like you
know, love Bob.
But it's, you know, it did itcandidly from a consciousness
(42:25):
perspective, mary.
It doesn't serve the person tobe in an environment where they
are not going to get to growrelated to the consciousness of
the CEO.
(42:52):
So, even when I'm having 50 wallkicking moments and I'm like,
oh my gosh, really, I show up inthe dev standup, I show up in.
You know, I'm like icebreaker,I've got a smile on my face,
let's go.
But I also, with our team thathas come through those 30 days,
I tell them everything.
They know where we're at withfundraising.
They know what's going on in mypersonal life.
They know everything and I'mlike, if you have equity in this
company, you're now a co-ownerof the company and we're in it
(43:13):
together and I expect for you tobe transparent.
If you've got a whole bunch ofcrap happening in your life,
tell me, we'll figure it outtogether.
But that's how I operate thecompany, which is very different
and unexpected, but that's whatwe do.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
That's really refreshing Cause I can tell you
you get into some of thesecorporations and the leadership
is so many ladders above youthat you know people are
terrified when they come in theroom.
Versus like sharing whatproblems are where they matter
and where they're getting done,it's such a disconnect sometimes
I see.
(43:48):
As a leader, what advice do youhave for women leaders out
there to become better leaders?
Speaker 2 (44:00):
leaders.
So I have a.
The way I work on myself is Ilook at my life in chapters,
because think about Mary, thinkabout the last sort of epic book
you read or the last epic movieyou watched right.
So think what.
What's one that comes to mindfor you?
(44:21):
Brene Brown, dare to Lead Right, exactly.
Or think about a fiction bookright.
Or a fiction movie Girl on aTrain yeah, exactly.
Or I'll use this one becauseit's just top of mind.
I was telling my sister-in-lawshe hadn't seen the Book Club,
right.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
With.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Candice Berger.
It's like so funny, right, justdarling.
And so if we think about afiction book or a movie and how
each chapter moves so quickly insomething different, if I think
about my life as a leader inchapters, then I do not get as
stressed and concerned because Iget to write the next chapter.
(45:03):
So the chapter we're in it'slike oh okay, this is the
chapter, but what's going tocome in the next chapter?
Because, just like a fictionbook, I'm setting up my next
chapter, whatever that is.
And, girls, some chapters areshorter, some are longer.
So that's the first thing I do,number one.
Number two is I believe Icontrol my own destiny.
(45:24):
And so when we look at I'vestudied I grew up in a Christian
, buddhist, jewish household.
I've also studied Kabbalah.
So when we look at things andwe're saying our goals, mary,
like oh, I want to make moremoney or I want to attract my
perfect partner or whatever itis, then we're essentially
(45:46):
asking our creator to expand ourvessel.
If you've ever been pregnantand you've had pains from
growing that child in your body,you stretched out your skin
right Like every pregnancy.
I gave 47 pounds, no matter howclean I ate, I was like what?
But you stretched until it wasso painful and you know, you
(46:06):
produce this baby.
And it's the same thing whenwe're saying to our creator hey,
you know, I want my vessel toexpand, which is what I did at
the beginning of this year, and,oh my gosh, I've had a lot, a
lot of wall kicking moments, butthe expansiveness that comes
from growth.
So my piece around it is ifwe're going to say we want to
(46:26):
lead, we have to be prepared forexpansiveness, which ultimately
our creator wants us to behappy, fulfilled, successful.
But it means it can probably bepainful and suddenly your
relationship unravels andsuddenly you you know this
happened Mel Robbins, she had,like a cybersecurity scam hit
(46:48):
and, you know, lost at least$100,000.
Like Mary Ruth's organics theyhad something similar happen a
million dollars.
And it's like all of thisexpansiveness, it was like, oh,
all the things I was holding onto so tight apparently don't
matter, but I get to write mynext chapter.
The third thing I will say isit's really, really important to
(47:09):
decide who you want to be as aleader and look for evidence in
reality, because if you'retrying to have something
evidence-based that is, you haveno, you know, reference point
to marry, you're never going toget it and a little strategy.
(47:31):
So let's say, someone says I'lluse one of mine.
So Whitney Wolf Hurd was afounder of Bumble.
She left her previous startup.
There was lawsuit, you know,toxic.
Whatever.
She goes and starts Bumble andher first year what she did is
she went all around the countrywhile they were trying to figure
out the product and she wouldhave cocktails and get
(47:51):
conversations going, and sothat's what I did last year
before we launched the productwas I had cocktails and
conversations Atlanta,scottsdale, like you know, all
over the place to get thefeedback from women.
That was you know one.
And then she starts to buildthe product and just, you know,
iterative software and it's like, okay, I'm going to push a
feature, get feedback and so onand so forth.
And the day she went public Ibelieve it was Friday February
(48:13):
13th and I'm like who goespublic on a Friday the 13th?
But she did, and I think it wasduring a Mercury retrograde and
you know all kinds of crazylike, as girls were like what,
seven billion dollars in one daywas the valuation she went to
and she never, you know.
She has been just incrediblythoughtful in how she
(48:36):
re-envisioned that platform andit was a red ocean.
There were other dating apps inthat space, so I think about
what you will have heard.
For me as a leader, so havingthat reference point and really
thinking how do I model afterthat person is key.
But anyone who's listening?
If you are ready for yourvessel to be expanded, be
prepared.
You are probably going to havea challenging chapter.
(49:00):
How important are systems tosuccess, how important are
systems to success Only asimportant as your ability to be
flexible and not rigid.
And I'm sure you have too, mary, with your background
corporately had systems thatwere so rigid that innovation
was impossible and people beingexpansive were not possible.
(49:22):
You know, you and I both, I'msure have colleagues at these
large companies and they'regoing along rigidly with all
these systems and the next thing, the whole division is laid off
right and they're laid offbecause they weren't innovative
enough, but the people are likewe weren't allowed to innovate.
So I think systems are lovely.
You know, I'm grateful.
I'm grateful there's a systemin place that says if you drink
(49:45):
too much alcohol, you shouldn'tbe driving.
I think that's fantastic.
In building a startup, you haveto be nimble with your systems
and you have to be willing totry new things.
And, especially if you've comefrom a big company, at your
first startup, some of thesystems you had are not going to
work in startup life.
They just won't, and so youwant to ask yourself if your
(50:11):
systems are there because you'reafraid to take risks, or are
your systems actually therebecause you want to have some
form of healthy guardrails?
Speaker 1 (50:18):
Okay, last question what would you tell your younger
self?
Speaker 2 (50:23):
last question what would you tell your younger self
?
I don't swear, but if I did itwould be like stop giving so
many f's honestly.
Um, mel Robbins again.
You know her new book is calledlet them, and I think, mary,
you know there.
There are a lot of momentswhere I just really care too
much about what people thought,and there is a saying that I've
(50:48):
said for many years, which is onaverage, only four people cry
at any funeral, and if you'renot going to cry at my funeral,
you don't earn an opinion aboutmy life.
And so I wish Mel had writtenthe book earlier and I wish I
had read it or it would be.
(51:08):
Let them would be the first one.
And and the second one is, youknow, looking back, even as an
investor, looking at trusting mygut, and you know to the point,
where had I trusted my gut?
I'll just tell a super quickstory.
I had a financial advisor onceand I want to invest in the
Facebook IPO and he talked meout of it and I could just see
(51:30):
what it could be, and he's likeit's never going to make any
money because it's a freeplatform.
Now you and I might not behaving this conversation, so the
creator, god, had a bigger planfor me.
I wasn't supposed to makemillions of dollars from the
Facebook IPO, but you know it's.
It's things like that nottrusting myself and caring too
much about what people thought,yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
That is so amazing.
Okay, so where can people getin touch with you, learn more
about your company?
And for the younger ones, whatshould they be helping their
moms or other women in theirlives?
You know, go get this app.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
Sure.
Thank you.
New research shows that womenas young as 30 are going into
perimenopause 30.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
And the symptoms start, mary, neurologically, and
if you and I both looked back,so what I mean by that is things
like anxiety, depression.
That doesn't make sense.
Um, worry, the you know, brainfatigue, that kind of thing.
Now research is showing thatthose can actually be related to
perimenopause.
So initially we thought our appwas more for women 40 plus, and
(52:40):
now we're saying anyone 30 plusis definitely going to benefit,
and so they can just go intothe app store they can download
it.
And now we're saying anyone 30plus is definitely going to
benefit, and so they can just gointo the app store they can
download it.
We'll be in the play store veryshortly and we need more beta
testers.
And, yes, it is $3.99 a monthor $29 for the year, but we need
your help, girls, because thisis a female founded, female
funded company and we need moresubscribers to help to shape the
(53:04):
future of women's health.
So you can go to wwwthepauseaiand if you want to find out more
about me, you can go tosusanslycom.
But, mary, I love what you'redoing and I'm so grateful that
you and women like us are outthere in the world sharing our
wisdom, sharing our network withother women and helping women
(53:25):
grow and succeed.
Speaker 1 (53:27):
Thank you so much.
It's been awesome talking withyou.
I really enjoyed it.
Thanks for listening to theepisode today.
It was really fun chatting withmy guest.
If you liked our show, pleaselike it and share it with your
friends.
If you want to learn what we'reup to, please go check out our
website at 2BBouldercom.
(53:47):
That's the number 2, little b,bouldercom.
Hi there, my name is Mary Kiloalea.
Welcome to the To Be Bolderpodcast providing career
insights for the next generationof women in business and tech.
To Be Bolder was created out ofmy love for technology and
marketing, my desire to bringtogether like-minded women and
my hope to be a great role modeland source of inspiration for
my two girls and other youngwomen like you, Encouraging you
(00:22):
guys to show up and to be bolderand to know that anything you
guys dream of it's totallypossible.
So sit back, relax and enjoythe conversation.
Hey there, Today's show is forall women.
Menopause is finally getting theattention it deserves, and it's
about time.
Millions of women go through it.
Yet the solutions and supporthave lagged behind until now.
(00:45):
Today's guest is on a missionto change that.
Susan Sly is a powerhouseentrepreneur and tech visionary
who's using the power of AI toreshape how women experience
menopause.
She's the founder and CEO ofPause AI, a groundbreaking
platform that's bringingpersonalized, real-time support
to the space.
(01:06):
That's been ignored far toolong, and this isn't her first
bout with technology and solvingproblems.
Before launching Paws AI, sheco-founded Radius AI, an
award-winning company in thevisual intelligence space.
Susan's passion for solvingproblems that matter to women
using cutting edge technology tolead with purpose makes her the
(01:27):
standout leader in AI, and I'mso honored to have you here
joining us today.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Thank you so much Well thanks, mary, and to all of
our listeners, I think you know.
First and foremost, I want toacknowledge you.
I mean, as a podcast hostmyself, I always start my day
with a podcast and I justcommend all of your listeners
and everyone here because I knowwe're going to have a great
conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Fantastic.
Okay, so let's start with yourorigin story.
What's your background?
Let's start there, since you'reobviously in the tech space now
and you've had an interestingbackground eclectic, so tell
everyone about it.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah, sure, I've been on the bleeding edge of
artificial intelligence since2018, but I haven't written a
line of code since 1992.
And part of, I think, the bigpiece for women to understand is
we are going to have anywherefrom seven to nine I think is
the latest statistic Mary careeriterations.
(02:26):
And for me, when I was inuniversity I was working on
early facial recognitionalgorithms from 90, 91, 92.
And then I really wanted to beJodie Foster from Silence of the
Lambs and I thought I would usethis technology to go catch
criminals, and you know thatthat would be it.
But I went into that world offederal law enforcement right
(02:50):
out of college and realized veryquickly that, to be candid, it
wasn't conducive torehabilitation.
What, especially for seriousoffenders?
What the modalities being usedthen and nothing has changed in
30 years really only supportedrecidivism, and by that I mean,
(03:11):
like you know, offenders wouldgo into the prison and they'd
have a drug problem and they'dhave a worse drug problem.
And so I became very easilyjaded in my early 20s with that
and I decided to pursue apassion in the holistic side of
health and I went into the salesand marketing side of the house
and built sales teams thatgenerated over 2 billion in
(03:33):
sales.
But in 2016, I've had manynear-death experiences.
But in 2016, I've been toAfrica many times.
I've been to Cambodia, I'vegone undercover, rescued girls
from sex trafficking and I wentto Africa.
But this time came back verysick and I was misdiagnosed and
I was gaslit by severalphysicians.
(03:54):
One told me it was all in myhead and gave me a personal
development book and I saidlisten, I do speaking events
with people like Tony Robbinsand I've written seven books.
So no, it's not all in my head.
Swipe left and then anotherdoctor said it was just PMS and
it wasn't.
And I had an amoeba, mary, andit was shutting down my organs
(04:16):
and I was dying and so inhaleMary.
A friend of mine said there's adoctor who specializes in
tropical diseases in New Yorkand he's in his eighties and I
flew to see him and he hadworked in over 30 UN camps for
Doctors Without Borders,diagnosed me.
I went on two years ofantibiotics, holistic modalities
(04:39):
, and came out the other sideand said you know what?
I was given a second chance atlife.
What do I want to do?
And I wanted to go back intotechnology and so I ended up
co-founding a company with fourguys and they were looking for
someone with my skillset raisingmoney, sales.
And because I hadn't writtencode in so long, I went back to
(05:00):
school.
I went to MIT, sloan, and thenlast year I graduated from
executive education, theengineering department.
So there's a lot more to thestory.
Being homeless I'm sure youread about my background.
You know turning things around,but those are.
You know that's some of thecareer highlights.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
That's fascinating and so life-changing.
I mean just being working withthe traffic, you know, rescuing
young girls or women intrafficking.
I can't even imagine what thatdoes to you and how it shifts
your perspective on life.
But I guess in all that youhave an incredible drive.
What derives you personally?
Speaker 2 (05:40):
That's a great question.
You know, as women, especiallyin our age cohort and I did a
post in our private Facebookgroup today for the company, for
all of the women.
You know, at this stage of thegame, we either have aging
parents or we've lost parents.
(06:00):
But my father passed lastsummer.
We may still have kids at home,we are navigating career, we
may be one of my friends hasthree months to live, which is
heartbreaking we might be goingthrough separation, divorce, I
mean the list goes on and on andthe.
(06:21):
You know, some days it takesmore energy than others and I
think it's very different forwomen than it is for men.
We have more cause and effect.
I mean, back in 2000, I thinknine, I was doing a big
television show in Australia andyou know, I, you know women
have more synapses between theleft and right hemisphere of our
(06:41):
brain and I was explaining tothe host I'm like, look, my new
book, the have it All Women hadcome out at that time.
And I'm like, listen, we, youknow, we're thinking about so
many things at one time.
I mean, you know, what isso-and-so going to wear to
school, what are we going towear?
What is for lunch?
What is for dinner?
Do we have enough groceries inthe house?
Do I need to go to the drycleaner?
The list goes on and on.
(07:01):
And it's not to diminish howmen's minds work, but the
reality is and there's newresearch, even in terms of how
different cultural groups marry,navigate menopause and
perimenopause.
There's something calledweathering and what that is.
It's years and years and yearsof stress, and it could be
socioeconomic stress, it couldbe physical stress that
(07:24):
literally begins to degradeourselves.
So by this time in our lifethere are days when you know
you've had, maybe you're youknow on HRT and you've had a
decent night's sleep and you'refeeling amazing and you can be
motivated.
And there's other days when ittakes work.
I was a professional athlete anda lot of my background in being
(07:45):
able to self-motivate.
Not every day that I went onthat start line did I feel like,
yes, I'm going to be a podiumfinisher today.
So what motivates me right now?
And I think the root of thequestion is what is my?
In French we say the raisond'etre, or what is my why?
My why right now is there aresoon to be 1.1 billion women in
(08:06):
menopause in the world and weknow McKinsey is doing a lot of
research and some studies showup to 41% of women in this age
cohort want to quit their jobsdue to lack of support.
And these women are managers,directors, heads, vps, c-suite
and so forth, and we're notbeing supported.
And the number one periodtracking app out there is
(08:29):
actually created by two guys,and kudos to them.
They have had a tremendous run.
But who better to solve women'shealth than women?
And?
And so what keeps me up atnight?
What gets me up in the morning,is how are we going to solve
this?
How are we going to createprecision recommendations?
Because perimenopause andmenopause is not a one size fits
all, and we're seeing blackwomen, asian women, mixed women
(08:50):
like myself.
So many different groups arehaving different symptoms.
No one is addressing that, andso that's what keeps me going.
But some days, you knowcandidly, it's easy and some
days it's.
I need a little more.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah, it was funny was funny because, like you said
, I'm in that demographic.
So it was.
I was on some chat with somewomen friends of mine and
they're all like are you goingto watch the Oprah show tonight?
You know, because it wastalking about menopause.
It was something that hadn'tgone on prime time.
So of course, we all tune inand compare, but what I loved
(09:26):
about it, honestly, was justbringing the conversation to the
masses.
So talk to me about real-timeAI I want to say real-time
analytics, but real-time AI andthen also about your business
Paws AI and how they can use itpause AI and what women can, how
(09:50):
they can use it.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So there's a there's an Intel origin story, so I'll,
I'll.
I'll start with that, becauseit's going to frame in why do
this right?
So it's September of 2023, andthere's a event that happens
every year called Women in AI,and it's 32 women are invited
and these are women who are fromthe top tech companies Intel
and NVIDIA, hpe, amd andfounders like myself and what
(10:13):
happens is you spend the morningfor a couple hours to talk
about AI, have brunch, and thenyou go to a fashion show, so you
drink mimosas and it'sfantastic, and it's like if I'm
in, I've been two years in a row, like if I'm invited, it's Mary
, it's an instant, yeah.
So I had been going throughmenopause and it was getting
more and more severe, even tothe point where I said I'm going
(10:34):
to get my breast implantsremoved, which I did.
I was like, desperate to doanything.
I was on HRT, I was not feelinggood and I'm co-CEO of a
growing company and we have fouroffices, 100 employees globally
, and my days are long and Iloved what I was doing, but I
kept thinking why am I suffering?
(10:56):
I have a background in holistichealth, I know what to do, I
eat the right things, I do allof the right things.
This is not right and I kept onthinking how do we solve for
this?
So we're at the event and we'reon the party bus to go to the
Badgley Mishka fashion show andone of the girls says Susan, you
know, can you solve this withAI?
Because we're not talking aboutAI, we're talking about how
(11:19):
much sleep did you get and doyou have hot flashes?
And so a few months after that,I decided to walk away from my
previous company and step outwith no salary, just my savings,
and start to build this companyand start to bootstrap it and
bring in investors.
And that road is not easy andfor everyone listening I would
(11:42):
say you know, we have to startas women, which is the majority
of this listening audience.
We have to start as womensupporting women-led companies.
Like, as I said, the LeadingPeriod app is started by two
guys, not that you know great,but women need to support women.
So I said how do we do this insuch a way where we do something
different?
And because of my background,last year I was voted one of the
(12:03):
top women in the world inreal-time AI.
Along with Mira Murthy fromOpenAI and a group of us by an
independent party, I said how dowe take real time?
So what that means is, mary, ifyou are not sleeping, how do
you get supported to in themorning Not like I'm going to
talk to my menopause coach thenext day or I'm going to talk to
(12:23):
someone.
How do you if your heart rateis weird or something's going on
and you're not feeling good?
How do you get a recommendationin real time that says hey,
this isn't a day to go for a run, this is a day, like you know,
you need to maybe go for an easywalk here's a meditation, do a
breathing exercise, because thatplatform is taking the input
(12:48):
that you're giving it and makinga recommendation based on that.
To build it is insanelychallenging and most people
would look at it and go, oh,that's a fun problem to solve,
but it's a very difficult one tosolve.
So that's how the companystarted and that's what we're
(13:08):
aiming to build, and we alsothis is so critical Mary say you
know, a woman has never hadchildren and she ends up having
a surgical menopause.
As an example, she's 34 yearsold.
Why is she getting the samerecommendations as a 54 year old
who's had four children andnever had a hysterectomy.
(13:30):
Like this is the stuff that'shappening, and so, just like
when my girls were little, they,the American girls, had the.
Just like you, doll, this ishow we're looking at
perimenopause and menopause.
It's just like you.
There were some very consistentrecommendations that are
evidence-based, and thoseinclude things like sleep,
alcohol, exercise and so forth,but then there are other things
(13:53):
like nutrition that really andtruly, we need to look at your
culture of origin, right, weneed to look at your activity
level.
So that's what we're buildingand the product is out there in
flight in its initial version,and I'm going to tell every
single woman.
Of course, we'd love downloadthe app.
We want to be supported.
It's not as pretty as it'sgoing to be, but I have a friend
(14:17):
who has an app-based company,mary, and they are four years in
and they're just now bringingon customers.
As a female-led founder, lessthan 2.5% of women-led pitches
to VCs get funded.
Women raise more money, but ourcompanies are 68% more
profitable.
I said we're going to put theapp out there at a discount $29
a year.
We know it's going to be ugly,but we're going to get feedback,
(14:39):
we're going to refine it andthat's what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
That's amazing find it, and that's what we're doing.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
That's amazing.
So how does the data get inputinto the system?
I love that question.
So when a subscriber comes ontoour platform, she is anonymized
.
We actually don't know who sheis because Apple doesn't.
Your email could be ABC123,hotmailmail, for example.
We don't know who you are andyou can't put a picture in that.
We don't allow it.
So you have like a carousel ofum different avatars you can
(15:13):
choose from.
You choose a username, um.
We always suggest you don't useyour actual name, so just
choose whatever you want, um.
And so then we now are um.
You have the ability to sharehow you're feeling.
We have a symptom tracker, butagain, we don't know who you are
, which is the thing that wasreally important to me, really,
(15:36):
and and that poses itschallenges, because some of our
competitors want to know yourname, all of your medical
information, your exact date ofbirth.
We only ask for your month andyear, and you know I'm not going
to give my information to aplatform, especially medical
information, when theyphysically know who I am, right.
So that's how we begin thejourney.
(15:58):
We are in the process ofintegrating with Oura, ring,
fitbit, garmin, all of thewearables.
Right now we have Apple Watch,and so if you do choose to
connect a wearable, we also getwhat we call a resilience score,
which is pulling from differentbiometric feedback.
So I'll give you a real worldexample.
(16:20):
So I've been going through afew things in my personal life.
As I said, one of mygirlfriends has three months to
live, going through a move, I'mrenovating a house, I'm building
a company, I mean, the listgoes on and on, and my
resilience score was 76yesterday and for me, normally
(16:41):
I'm in the high 80s, but becauseof that score, I know that
today I'm in the high eighties,but because of that score, I
know that today I didn't go foran interval run, I got on the
elliptical, I took it easy, Idid weight training, I will go
to bed early tonight, and that'sjust one of many examples of
how were the.
The data is there, but it'sanonymized and you're still able
(17:05):
to get precisionrecommendations.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Okay, oh gosh, there's just so much I want to
talk to you about.
Let's back up, because you'rein a room with these women who
are some of the brightest mindsaround talking about AI.
What words of encouragement oropportunities do you see for
other women who want to stepinto the arena of AI and where
(17:31):
they can build their careersfrom not having a ton of skills
to being really skilled?
And it seems like seamlessintegration, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Yeah, ai is shifting so quickly and the first thing
I'm going to say, step one iseducate yourself.
Ai is a buzzword that really,within AI, I liken it to let's
use the pie analogy technology.
(18:12):
So computer vision, where Icame out of, is one form of ai,
and someone I was at a like atech meetup and someone's like
explain computer vision, and so,for those of you don't know,
computer vision is when you'retaking security cameras and the
ai essentially is lookingthrough the security camera and
doing what we call motioninterpretation.
So what is a human, a machine,whatever, an airplane doing, and
24-7.
(18:33):
So those are big data payloads.
It is a lot of complexity, alot of elegance, a lot of use
cases to keep humans safe even.
However, that's just one form ofAI.
Then, a couple of years ago,chow Chibiti everyone starts
talking about generative AI.
So what that is is when you putyou know type or your voice or
(18:56):
something goes into the AI,mostly a machine learning
algorithm, and then it has anoutput.
It could be more text, it couldbe voice, like you know your
Siri or Alexa.
It could also be an image or itcould be a video, like with
Sora.
That's another form.
Now everyone's talking aboutagentic AI.
So an AI agent to perform asimple task that is a repetitive
(19:20):
task, but eventually you trainthat AI agent so it can have its
own logic.
And to give an example becauseI love when I do talks is to do
a talk just like this on whatare these different types of AI,
when we think about autonomousvehicles so I'm based in Phoenix
and Waymo is allowed to go tothe airport and pick up people
(19:41):
and it was so Mary startling thefirst time I pulled up next to
a Waymo and I look over andthere's no one in that passenger
seat.
So there's a lot of AI agentsworking in tandem to interpret
what is going on for thatvehicle.
So there's an example ofagentic AI.
So we look at all thesedifferent forms of AI and there
(20:04):
are others and first thing isfirst is that's knowing the
difference.
And number two is deciding howwould you like to be involved.
So there's the ethics component, if you come from any kind of
policy.
Then there's the sales andmarketing side.
Then there is the businessdevelopment side, which is, you
know, where you're looking athow do we implement AI and how
(20:27):
do we scale it, where you'relooking at how do we implement
AI and how do we scale it?
I'm one of the only women womenwho've actually scaled
artificial intelligence in theUnited States, and so there's a
there's a seat for everyone atthe table, and I didn't pivot my
career until I was 45.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
So someone who's listening and this isn't
something I usually talk abouton the podcast, but since you're
here, I have to pick your brainFor a woman out there who has
an idea for an AI app or aproduct, you know, based on AI
and what.
What should she have as far aslike a pitch and starting to get
(21:04):
funding and like taking herplan from an idea in her you
know room to actually and I knowthis is a loaded question but
at a high level, like, what coreadvice do you have for someone
like that?
I?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
think it's a really good question because there's a
lot of misinformation andconfusion out there and I've had
girlfriends who've gone downthat path.
One it is going to cost youmore than you actually think it
is.
Number two, coming out of MIT,there's a concept there called
(21:41):
MMP a minimum marketable product, which is a product that your
minimum product that people willpay for.
So, unlike a beta version or anMVP, this is something someone
will pay you, whatever thatnumber is, in exchange for what
you built.
The third thing isoff-the-shelf tooling.
So we now see AI platforms thatcan be customized to be part of
(22:06):
the tech stack and even I wouldsay, you know, three, four
years ago people had to buildtheir own AI.
Now, even as an angel investor,I'm not deploying capital this
year because I'm investing in myown company, but the you know,
even Mary, seeing companies nowthat can get to market faster
because of the greatoff-the-shelf tools, right, and
(22:29):
so a lot of people will spendmillions and millions of dollars
to be able to get a product outto the market.
We made a decision we were notgoing to do a free version.
Every VC I've spoken to hassaid that is a genius idea
because the churn is so high,especially in apps.
(22:50):
So still, you know you're goingto spend a lot of money.
The other thing I would say ismy you know two really big
pieces of advice.
One put together a group ofadvisors I am an advisor on two
companies that have experiencebecause what's going to happen?
Let's say you're a nutritionistand you're like, oh, I want to
(23:12):
do this.
You're going to talk todifferent dev shops and they're
going to quote you a price andyou'll think, oh, you know, for
$250,000, I'll get this thingout in the market.
Then you do not have anarchitecture diagram, you don't
know, there's broken code,there's all this tech debt.
Then you go to another dev shopand then you spend another
$250,000 and you're still notout in the market.
(23:33):
And the list goes on and on andon.
So surrounding yourself withpeople who've actually done it
before and who can ask thequestions, I think is key.
Make them advisors.
You may give away some equityto do that.
And then the second thing islook at your partners.
Whether it's Microsoft forstartups, amazon for startups,
(23:53):
google for startups, they allhave startup programs and your
cloud costs are going to soarvery quickly even when you're
building and you don't want tobe in that place where you don't
even have a product and you'redown $3 million and that happens
all the time.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
So yeah, that's just so much gold in there.
All right, let's talk aboutnetworking.
And before I guess, before Italk about networking, I want to
back up, because you've been inrooms that have been dominated
by men, just for the sheerreality of you know women in the
space that you're in.
(24:31):
How have you gone in with suchconfidence and how, when the
confidence seems to be dwindling, do you pump it back up?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yeah, yeah, and we're living in a very interesting
time.
I don't know which if it waswired or I can't remember and
(25:04):
it's suddenly permission tothese guys who were portraying
themselves as so sensitive arenow like wakeboarding with no
shirt on and like going huntingand doing all this crap that
they never showed they wereprobably doing but they just
never were flexing about it.
So we're living in a veryinteresting time to be a woman
(25:30):
and I have personally observedthat the conversations are
changing, and I'll just be verycandid to the women listening
You're going to have to proveyourself in a lot of the rooms.
So for me, I was raised by asingle dad, so I do have an
advantage of that.
I was raised more, like wewould have said, when we were
little, tomboy right.
(25:50):
So it was football.
On Sundays it was church, itwas football, it was politics,
it was, you know, growing upwith Walter Cronkite.
We watched the news every night, my dad and I, and he was an
engineer.
So for me, I'm very comfortablewith men.
You know, if I'm on a Zoom andI see you've got like the Eagles
in the background or some,whatever it is we're going to
have a conversation.
(26:11):
I know what's going on and Ican very much get to that point
where there's some form ofcommon ground, much like it
would be with a couple of guys,and I don't care if anyone wants
to criticize me I mean,everyone's got an opinion but
it's just who I am.
It's not who I'm trying to be.
And I want to pause with thisstatement because girls
listening, just be who you areright, it's just who I am.
(26:35):
I was not raised with dolls andyou know princess parties and
things I wish God willing I was,but you know my mom was not
part of my life, so that's how Iwas raised and so I'm very
comfortable talking about a lotof those things that guys would
normally talk about Going into aroom where I remember once I
was going into a room, it wasmyself, all guys and there were
(26:57):
all these servers on aconference table and it's like,
okay, you've got to know yourstuff.
I had completely memorized theNVIDIA GPU catalog for Edge.
I started to get very clear onwhat Edge is a form for, as
people don't know, it's when youprocess data at the source.
(27:21):
So, like in a hospital example,there's a lot of Edge servers
because they're processing allthis data.
It's cheaper than sending datato the cloud, processing it and
bring it back down.
So I knew the edge servers,edge architecture.
I started to learn what werethe questions I needed to ask,
and I think for me that myadvice would be to any woman if
(27:45):
that is the case.
I see a lot of women out thereright now because of federal
funding for women-led startupsand women's initiatives.
And women are, you know, onsocial media.
They're, you know, they'recomplaining.
And girls, you know what.
You can complain about thingsif you feel you can make a
change.
(28:05):
But you know, just complainingon social media isn't going to
do it.
You know, reach out to yourcongressperson, your senator,
whoever it is, but at the end ofthe day, you're going to have
to prove yourself.
And I think I was saying youknow you had to be 30 percent
better.
I think in this currentenvironment, you've got to be 90
percent better and that's whatit's going to take.
(28:26):
I know when I go to pitch a VCand that's what it's going to
take.
I know, when I go to pitch a VCespecially when you've got a
product that's for menopausemost of the people they're men.
They're never going to gothrough menopause, they're not
going to get the problemstatement.
So I've had to become betterpitching, like all of those
things, and you can say, mary,it sucks and it does, but it is
(28:47):
what it is, so we just have toadapt to that terrain.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah, no, I'm kind of like that.
You cannot spend time worryingabout something you can't
control.
You just have to do what's inyour control and if that's doing
the extra work, you do theextra work.
Let's talk about networking.
How have you been able tosurround yourself with support
throughout your career and anytips for other women in building
(29:13):
their supportive network?
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Networking is huge and you know this right.
Like you know, it's all aboutthat who you know.
But how do you end up knowingwho you know?
What most people would besurprised to know, if you look
at my LinkedIn or Instagram orany of the social media
platforms, is I'm a naturalintrovert and it is a lot of
(29:36):
effort for me to network.
I find cocktail partiesexhausting, but I go right.
I to give you an example.
I was this past week tuesdaynight I was invited by jp morgan
and shouts out to them for thisgathering they had in
scottsdale to bring togetherlike seven founders and ask our
(29:56):
opinions and things like that,and it was a great event and it
was lovely.
Yesterday morning I was sotired, like it's a lot and and
people say, susan, you know youcan speak in front of 20 000
people, or you can have.
You know you could speak infront of 20,000 people, or you
can have a YouTube channel.
You could do shows like this.
Yes, but I know, as a naturalintrovert, that I have to be a
(30:21):
situational extrovert in orderto do it.
So I love podcasts because Ilove to be able to have a
conversation, like you and Icould be having a cocktail, we
could be having a coffee, wecould be having lunch and
sitting down.
When I'm at an event and I'mphysically networking, I'm like,
oh, and I have the LEFO policylast in first up.
That being said, the reason Ishared that is even on my show.
(30:44):
I have a lot of people that comeon, even men who've, you know,
had exits and successful youknow rounds and so forth, who
are natural introverts.
And we talk about it a lotbecause most people make the
incorrect assumption thatsomeone is an extrovert.
And here's the thing, mary, youknow you're an extrovert when
you leave that cocktail partyand you're energized.
(31:05):
You know you're an introvertwhen you leave that party and
you're like, I just need to sitand watch friends for, like you
know, two hours.
So the networking piece knowyour strengths.
And so one of my strengths isreally I do genuinely care about
people and I am very interestedand curious about people.
(31:26):
So I make myself go tonetworking events.
I network on LinkedIn.
Usually every week I have myCalendly.
One of the events is a 15minute and people will reach out
to me on LinkedIn and, hey, youknow, as long as they're not
selling me something, you know,can we meet, and I I will do,
you know one or two of those aweek just to meet people.
(31:48):
I go to a lot of those a weekjust to meet people.
I go to a lot of networkingevents and I speak at events and
when I speak at events, Ialways make sure that I attend
at least one of the networkingevents to get to know people and
, as part of that strategy,that's where investors have come
from in my company.
That's where some amazingopportunities and I would say to
(32:09):
anyone listening is just bereally clear Going into an event
with what can I get?
I'll tell a quick story.
So I was asked to speak at anevent called AI Salon, which was
cool, and there are a lot ofyoung founders there and they
know I'm an angel investor.
So they've looked at myLinkedIn and stuff and they come
(32:31):
up to me, not like, oh,something I learned from your
talk, or I have a question aboutthis.
It's like, oh, I have a startupand we're raising $2 million
and I'm like that's notnetworking, that's vomiting all
over someone.
Networking is when you thinkabout what can I offer this
person in value without keepingscore right, 100% agree.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
What I love about you is that you're the face of the
company and you represent thecompany so well because you can
speak to it as a person whowould be using it.
I think I'm trying to lead youdown a path about talking about
personal branding and howimportant it is for companies to
(33:17):
realize that people don't wantto connect so much with the
title of the brand.
They want to connect withleaders.
So what have you done aroundbuilding your personal brand?
I know you talk about.
You know some.
I guess I assume you're beingvery intentional because you're
very successful at it.
What advice do you have forwomen and how important is
(33:41):
personal brand building?
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Sure, let's, let's step back, because you know, you
and I will remember life, lifebefore social media, right?
So I want to talk about thecelebrity founder, and this is
one of my favorite topics,because when people start to
think about it, they're like, oh, okay.
So let's think about Apple fora minute, right?
So Steve jobs was that originaland it doesn't matter.
(34:05):
I'm going to name a fewexamples that it doesn't matter
how people feel about them,we're just using them.
If I was teaching a universityclass, these would be case
studies.
So Steve Jobs had his look right, his turtleneck, you know, and
he had his quirks about him andhe was known to have these fits
and things, but this becamelegend.
(34:26):
He was like the OG celebrityinfluencer in that tech space.
Bill Gates was never the samekind of persona in terms of
being influential and, again,this was all legend.
This was all old schoolinterviews on 60 Minutes and
(34:46):
things like that, views on 60minutes and things like that.
So then we get into fast forwardtime to this group of people in
you know technology who arecelebrity founders, and the
thing I want everyone to know,if you're taking notes, is that
a celebrity founder can make orbreak a company and if it is
(35:07):
done well, people will be veryforgiving.
So I'm going to use a verycontentious name right now,
because why not?
The thing I love about yourshow is and whenever I'm on a
show, what you see is what youget.
This is the conversation Iwould have had with you at 350
in the morning when I woke up,mary so it's the same station
and I know you do.
(35:27):
I know you appreciate that.
So let's look at Elon Musk.
So Elon is this you know thispersona and, prior to what's
going on currently with thestuff with Tesla, he was this
person that he was idolized,especially by all these young
men, and they would go and buy aTesla and they would.
(35:50):
You know, everyone loved theirTesla and he was this you know,
demagogue of a persona and abrand.
So even when Tesla almost wentbankrupt, he had so many orders
for Teslas because it becamethis cult culture, right.
And there's another example.
Zuckerberg is another example,Bezos is another example.
(36:14):
These people who are iconicaround their brands and outside
of technology.
I'll use Sarah Blakely.
Sarah was like one of us, right, she had her cellulite.
She's pouring herself into herSpanx and I had her husband,
jesse Itzler, on my show andlike they're just real people.
So Sarah was another one.
(36:35):
So the question is, when youlook at some of these big brands
, can you have a successfulbrand without a brand icon,
without that person who is theface of the brand?
And I would say it gets you sofar?
But the biggest brands in theworld, they have some kind of
(36:56):
person at the helm?
Who is that spokesperson?
And it isn't easy, becauseyou're also going to take the
arrows.
And so what I found for myselfis I'm willing to be vulnerable.
I've even spoken on Instagramabout issues I've had with my
husband, um I, you know it's.
I don't want to be that personwho's always trying to be
perfect, but I'd rather, asOprah said, I'd rather be
(37:17):
respected than liked Um, and Iwould also, you know, just
rather, just put everything outthere and not care, at the risk
of knowing that some investors,you know, might not, you know,
think that's.
That's great, but the numberone value in our company is
trust, and how are you going totrust someone who's being
inauthentic?
So guess what girls?
Yes, you need to brand yourself, there's no question.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
What does to be bolder mean to you?
Speaker 2 (37:42):
I just think it's having the courage to speak your
truth.
And you know, we we wentthrough a culture in a Sheryl
Sandberg started with let's LeanIn and then we went to this
imposter syndrome Girls, it'senough, is enough is enough.
Like, stop caring.
You know, we're at 8 billionpeople in the world.
You'll find your people.
(38:02):
I just don't care anymore.
Just don't care anymore, LikeI'm.
Just.
I'm at 52 years old, I'm justgoing to be who I am and I'm on
a path.
I still do personal growth.
I read four books a month, Ilisten to podcasts every morning
.
You know, as I said, I do allthis stuff.
I don't intend to be the sameiteration of me a year from now,
(38:23):
but I'm bold enough to justspeak my truth and and really
just not marry care what anyonethinks.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
That made me curious.
What are your podcasts thatyou're listening to and some of
your favorite books?
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Oh well, I listened to um a lot of Lewis house um,
especially when he has founderson, because Lewis has um his
personal coach, chris Lee.
I know Chris um, he's anamazing human.
Lewis ask questions that aredifferent than the standard.
(39:01):
Like you know, how did you getinto entrepreneurship?
And you know that kind of thing.
And it's like more like let'stalk and which is what I do on
my show run realentrepreneurship, like let's get
to the heart of it, theconsciousness of it.
Like did you ever feel like youwant to quit?
Did you ever get depressed?
You know all of that stuff.
So I really love his interviewstyle and it's it's evolved Um,
(39:24):
I, when I'm in, you know, sortof nerdy mode, I'll listen to
acquired um is another one thatI really enjoy.
Um, because I want to listen tothe business tactics for sure.
Um books I am reading so manybooks at one time.
So Gabby Bernstein self-help sheand I have some people we know
(39:46):
in common and her new book.
Her last book was reallyvulnerable when she talks about
being sexually abused and she'salways been vulnerable about her
journeys.
So this one is is really a veryfocused type of therapy.
So I love that I'm audioreading Lewis's new book Make
Money Easy.
(40:07):
I am also when I like dependson how much time I have it's.
There's a book I'm audioreading about populating Mars
and how, like the, you know whatit's physically going to take
from an engineering standpointto do that, because Elon is
working very aggressively onthat and I actually know people
(40:28):
who are working on title rightsto land in Mars and things.
I mean crazy stuff, and sothose are kind of what I'm
reading and I do read Mary is.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
As a founder, when you're hiring someone, do you
look at where they went toschool and what like boxes
they've checked off, or is theresomething more intrinsic that
you're looking at from them?
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Oh, this process has grown for me because I used to.
You know, I my husband wouldalways say my biggest strength
is I believe in people.
My greatest weakness is Ibelieve in people, you know.
And so we have a process nowwhere everyone gets a 30 day
contract and you have to gothrough three interviews.
So the first interview is, ifwe're hiring engineers, it's
(41:23):
going to be technical interview.
Then you're going to go througha cultural interview.
It's always three peopleinterviewing and they the
technical interview.
You have two tech people, onenon-technical, the cultural.
You have two non-technical, onetechnical, and then there's a
third final interview.
Then you get a 30 day trial andyou jump right in.
(41:43):
I don't care if you went toStanford, if you went to MIT or
you have a certificate fromGoogle.
That doesn't tell me anythingabout your technical skills.
It really doesn't.
I've had all of those.
I've had PhDs I've had, youknow, it doesn't tell me
anything because, at the end ofthe day, my philosophy is anyone
can learn a skill, but I can'tteach them integrity.
(42:04):
And so we only have two corevalues trust and wow.
And if you can't deliver trustand wow, in 30 days you're out.
So you know people, some of thepartners we have are like,
where's Bob?
I'm just making that name upand I'm like, oh no, bob's gone,
didn't pass the 30 day.
Like you know, love Bob.
I'm like, oh no, bob's gone,didn't pass the 30 day, like you
know, love Bob.
But it's, you know, it did itcandidly from a consciousness
(42:25):
perspective, mary.
It doesn't serve the person tobe in an environment where they
are not going to get to growrelated to the consciousness of
the CEO.
(42:52):
So, even when I'm having 50 wallkicking moments and I'm like,
oh my gosh, really, I show up inthe dev standup, I show up in.
You know, I'm like icebreaker,I've got a smile on my face,
let's go.
But I also, with our team thathas come through those 30 days,
I tell them everything.
They know where we're at withfundraising.
They know what's going on in mypersonal life.
They know everything and I'mlike, if you have equity in this
company, you're now a co-ownerof the company and we're in it
(43:13):
together and I expect for you tobe transparent.
If you've got a whole bunch ofcrap happening in your life,
tell me, we'll figure it outtogether.
But that's how I operate thecompany, which is very different
and unexpected, but that's whatwe do.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
That's really refreshing Cause I can tell you
you get into some of thesecorporations and the leadership
is so many ladders above youthat you know people are
terrified when they come in theroom.
Versus like sharing whatproblems are where they matter
and where they're getting done,it's such a disconnect sometimes
I see.
(43:48):
As a leader, what advice do youhave for women leaders out
there to become better leaders?
Speaker 2 (44:00):
leaders.
So I have a.
The way I work on myself is Ilook at my life in chapters,
because think about Mary, thinkabout the last sort of epic book
you read or the last epic movieyou watched right.
So think what.
What's one that comes to mindfor you?
(44:21):
Brene Brown, dare to Lead Right, exactly.
Or think about a fiction bookright.
Or a fiction movie Girl on aTrain yeah, exactly.
Or I'll use this one becauseit's just top of mind.
I was telling my sister-in-lawshe hadn't seen the Book Club,
right.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
With.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Candice Berger.
It's like so funny, right, justdarling.
And so if we think about afiction book or a movie and how
each chapter moves so quickly insomething different, if I think
about my life as a leader inchapters, then I do not get as
stressed and concerned because Iget to write the next chapter.
(45:03):
So the chapter we're in it'slike oh okay, this is the
chapter, but what's going tocome in the next chapter?
Because, just like a fictionbook, I'm setting up my next
chapter, whatever that is.
And, girls, some chapters areshorter, some are longer.
So that's the first thing I do,number one.
Number two is I believe Icontrol my own destiny.
(45:24):
And so when we look at I'vestudied I grew up in a Christian
, buddhist, jewish household.
I've also studied Kabbalah.
So when we look at things andwe're saying our goals, mary,
like oh, I want to make moremoney or I want to attract my
perfect partner or whatever itis, then we're essentially
(45:46):
asking our creator to expand ourvessel.
If you've ever been pregnantand you've had pains from
growing that child in your body,you stretched out your skin
right Like every pregnancy.
I gave 47 pounds, no matter howclean I ate, I was like what?
But you stretched until it wasso painful and you know, you
(46:06):
produce this baby.
And it's the same thing whenwe're saying to our creator hey,
you know, I want my vessel toexpand, which is what I did at
the beginning of this year, and,oh my gosh, I've had a lot, a
lot of wall kicking moments, butthe expansiveness that comes
from growth.
So my piece around it is ifwe're going to say we want to
(46:26):
lead, we have to be prepared forexpansiveness, which ultimately
our creator wants us to behappy, fulfilled, successful.
But it means it can probably bepainful and suddenly your
relationship unravels andsuddenly you you know this
happened Mel Robbins, she had,like a cybersecurity scam hit
(46:48):
and, you know, lost at least$100,000.
Like Mary Ruth's organics theyhad something similar happen a
million dollars.
And it's like all of thisexpansiveness, it was like, oh,
all the things I was holding onto so tight apparently don't
matter, but I get to write mynext chapter.
The third thing I will say isit's really, really important to
(47:09):
decide who you want to be as aleader and look for evidence in
reality, because if you'retrying to have something
evidence-based that is, you haveno, you know, reference point
to marry, you're never going toget it and a little strategy.
(47:31):
So let's say, someone says I'lluse one of mine.
So Whitney Wolf Hurd was afounder of Bumble.
She left her previous startup.
There was lawsuit, you know,toxic.
Whatever.
She goes and starts Bumble andher first year what she did is
she went all around the countrywhile they were trying to figure
out the product and she wouldhave cocktails and get
(47:51):
conversations going, and sothat's what I did last year
before we launched the productwas I had cocktails and
conversations Atlanta,scottsdale, like you know, all
over the place to get thefeedback from women.
That was you know one.
And then she starts to buildthe product and just, you know,
iterative software and it's like, okay, I'm going to push a
feature, get feedback and so onand so forth.
And the day she went public Ibelieve it was Friday February
(48:13):
13th and I'm like who goespublic on a Friday the 13th?
But she did, and I think it wasduring a Mercury retrograde and
you know all kinds of crazylike, as girls were like what,
seven billion dollars in one daywas the valuation she went to
and she never, you know.
She has been just incrediblythoughtful in how she
(48:36):
re-envisioned that platform andit was a red ocean.
There were other dating apps inthat space, so I think about
what you will have heard.
For me as a leader, so havingthat reference point and really
thinking how do I model afterthat person is key.
But anyone who's listening?
If you are ready for yourvessel to be expanded, be
prepared.
You are probably going to havea challenging chapter.
(49:00):
How important are systems tosuccess, how important are
systems to success Only asimportant as your ability to be
flexible and not rigid.
And I'm sure you have too, mary, with your background
corporately had systems thatwere so rigid that innovation
was impossible and people beingexpansive were not possible.
(49:22):
You know, you and I both, I'msure have colleagues at these
large companies and they'regoing along rigidly with all
these systems and the next thing, the whole division is laid off
right and they're laid offbecause they weren't innovative
enough, but the people are likewe weren't allowed to innovate.
So I think systems are lovely.
You know, I'm grateful.
I'm grateful there's a systemin place that says if you drink
(49:45):
too much alcohol, you shouldn'tbe driving.
I think that's fantastic.
In building a startup, you haveto be nimble with your systems
and you have to be willing totry new things.
And, especially if you've comefrom a big company, at your
first startup, some of thesystems you had are not going to
work in startup life.
They just won't, and so youwant to ask yourself if your
(50:11):
systems are there because you'reafraid to take risks, or are
your systems actually therebecause you want to have some
form of healthy guardrails?
Speaker 1 (50:18):
Okay, last question what would you tell your younger
self?
Speaker 2 (50:23):
last question what would you tell your younger self
?
I don't swear, but if I did itwould be like stop giving so
many f's honestly.
Um, mel Robbins again.
You know her new book is calledlet them, and I think, mary,
you know there.
There are a lot of momentswhere I just really care too
much about what people thought,and there is a saying that I've
(50:48):
said for many years, which is onaverage, only four people cry
at any funeral, and if you'renot going to cry at my funeral,
you don't earn an opinion aboutmy life.
And so I wish Mel had writtenthe book earlier and I wish I
had read it or it would be.
(51:08):
Let them would be the first one.
And and the second one is, youknow, looking back, even as an
investor, looking at trusting mygut, and you know to the point,
where had I trusted my gut?
I'll just tell a super quickstory.
I had a financial advisor onceand I want to invest in the
Facebook IPO and he talked meout of it and I could just see
(51:30):
what it could be, and he's likeit's never going to make any
money because it's a freeplatform.
Now you and I might not behaving this conversation, so the
creator, god, had a bigger planfor me.
I wasn't supposed to makemillions of dollars from the
Facebook IPO, but you know it's.
It's things like that nottrusting myself and caring too
much about what people thought,yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
That is so amazing.
Okay, so where can people getin touch with you, learn more
about your company?
And for the younger ones, whatshould they be helping their
moms or other women in theirlives?
You know, go get this app.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
Sure.
Thank you.
New research shows that womenas young as 30 are going into
perimenopause 30.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
And the symptoms start, mary, neurologically, and
if you and I both looked back,so what I mean by that is things
like anxiety, depression.
That doesn't make sense.
Um, worry, the you know, brainfatigue, that kind of thing.
Now research is showing thatthose can actually be related to
perimenopause.
So initially we thought our appwas more for women 40 plus, and
(52:40):
now we're saying anyone 30 plusis definitely going to benefit,
and so they can just go intothe app store they can download
it.
And now we're saying anyone 30plus is definitely going to
benefit, and so they can just gointo the app store they can
download it.
We'll be in the play store veryshortly and we need more beta
testers.
And, yes, it is $3.99 a monthor $29 for the year, but we need
your help, girls, because thisis a female founded, female
funded company and we need moresubscribers to help to shape the
(53:04):
future of women's health.
So you can go to wwwthepauseaiand if you want to find out more
about me, you can go tosusanslycom.
But, mary, I love what you'redoing and I'm so grateful that
you and women like us are outthere in the world sharing our
wisdom, sharing our network withother women and helping women
(53:25):
grow and succeed.
Speaker 1 (53:27):
Thank you so much.
It's been awesome talking withyou.
I really enjoyed it.
Thanks for listening to theepisode today.
It was really fun chatting withmy guest.
If you liked our show, pleaselike it and share it with your
friends.
If you want to learn what we'reup to, please go check out our
website at 2BBouldercom.
(53:47):
That's the number 2, little b,bouldercom.
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