June 1, 2025 • 41 mins
Emma's journey with Inkitt has revolutionized digital publishing by creating Galatea and Candy Jar, platforms that remove traditional gatekeepers and let reader engagement determine which stories succeed. Her team launched Galatea with a "start messy" approach, challenging conventional wisdom and creating new pathways for unknown authors to reach audiences.
• Joined Inkitt eight years ago, transitioning from publishing manager to Chief Innovation Officer
• Created Galatea after finding Amazon's publishing model limited their ability to connect with readers
• Built the initial Galatea app in just two weeks using screenshots of Google Sheets
• Galatea uses data-driven story optimization including A/B testing different storylines
• Developed Candy Jar as a vertical video platform that adapts popular Galatea stories into TV series
• Designed the app as a guilt-free escape for busy women seeking 30 minutes of enjoyment
• Emma crafted her unconventional career path by saying "yes" to opportunities and advocating for a role that matches her strengths
• The platform allows authors to publish chapter by chapter and get immediate reader feedback
Download Galatea on the App Store or Google Play Store today and discover stories that will captivate you.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
no-transcript.
Joined Inket over eight yearsago, initially working hands-on
with emerging authors to helpthem navigate the publishing
world.
Her dedication to nurturingtalent and creating supportive
systems for writers laid thegroundwork for her transition
into product development, nowthe helm of Galatea.
(00:47):
Along with Candy Jar, emmabrings user-driven innovation to
life, collaborating withengineers, designers and readers
to transform storytellingthrough multimedia experiences.
Her work continues to pushboundaries in digital publishing
, making stories more engagingand accessible for all.
Emma, welcome to the podcast,thank you.
(01:07):
Thank you so much for having me, so I want you to share your
story with the listeners howGalatea came to be.
But I also think that I want togush for a second about Galatea
, because the listeners mightnot be familiar.
So for the listeners, I want tojust give a background.
Now for the guests that comeonto the show, I'll get emails
(01:29):
and I get a lot of queries and Ihave to research everybody and
I always look at people up and Igot this email and introducing
Emma to me and in the email itmentions the Galatea app.
Now, the Galatea app is like myI don't know how to I don't know
how to phrase this right.
It's like my personal little,like secret thing that I do at
(01:51):
the end of the day, when thekids are in bed and my husband's
asleep and I'm like I just wantto unwind.
What am I doing to do that?
And I found myself immersed inthis book app that I came across
on Pinterest.
Actually, now that I thinkabout it, it was like an ad that
(02:12):
popped up and it was, you know,very far from my usual day to
day, like I'm in research and Ido pharmaceuticals and
everything.
So I found Galatea and I wasjust totally hooked within like
five minutes because of thestories on there and it just
grabbed me and it held me and Icouldn't stop.
I actually had to cut myselfoff at one point.
It was like Jenny, that'senough.
So, emma, I just I wanted tosay that I I'm so grateful that
(02:36):
you guys developed this app,because it's like my little
secret, like saying at the endof the day that like just is not
anything to do with anythingelse I do, and it just brings me
a great amount of pleasurereading it.
So thank you for bringing itinto the world.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, I love to hear that too.
Like I speak to so many womenthat use Galatea, right, and
it's just so fun to understand,like the place we have in their
life and what an important placeit is, and I think it's so easy
on.
Like you know, romance fictionon this app.
It's easy for people to kind ofdiscount it and be like, oh you
know, it's just like fun, it'sjust nonsense, it's just smut or
whatever they might think, butat the end of the day, it's like
(03:10):
a really, really important partof escapism and just like
disassociation from like thehard lives that these women lead
, and it's kind of just likealmost like self-care in a lot
of ways, which I think is reallycool, right.
It's like I have a millionthings going on in my life.
I'm so stressed out.
I have, if I'm lucky, 30minutes a day to myself.
And this is how I spend those30 minutes, so they can just
like be so engrossed in thestory and it's not overly
(03:34):
complicated, it's simple, it'seasy, it's fun.
It's all the things that you'relooking for in that little
pocket of time you actually haveto yourself.
So I'm so happy that you wereable to find that pocket.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
I can't even say enough about it, I really can't.
So, emma, go ahead.
I want you to just go ahead.
Take, take lead here.
You can let the listeners knowI mean I would love for them to
hear the story of Galatea, butanything else that you want them
to know about yourself, and wecan just kind of take it from
there, cool yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
So yeah, I've been at Inkit for just over eight years
now, and so when I joined,inkit is a platform, basically
that, where anyone can upload awork of fiction and then we have
an algorithm which is analyzingreading engagement and reading
behavior.
And the whole kind of missionbehind Inkit which is, you know,
the umbrella company that thenhas Galatea and Candy Jar
beneath it is to remove, like,the bias and the subjectivity
(04:22):
that exists in traditionalpublishing and knowing that,
like at a big five publisher, inthis day and age, you kind of
need to know somebody or have anonline following or have some
kind of connection to even getthrough, kind of you know, the
pipeline.
And so we're really trying tocreate an ecosystem where
there's no judgment, there's nobias, it's just like if your
book is good and people like toread it, it gets published,
(04:44):
right.
And so when I joined Inkit, aplatform was already functioning
within that, but what we weredoing was we were taking the top
, you know, one to 2% of booksfrom Inkit and then publishing
them on Amazon, essentiallyacting as like an indie
publisher from that pointforward, but just wasn't working
for us in a way where we feltlike we were able to kind of
scale in like a significant way,in a way where we could feel
(05:06):
really comfortable and happyabout the royalties we were
passing back to authors.
It felt like we were really,really confident that we had
great stories and that Inka wasdoing its job of finding the
stories, because when we wouldpublish on Amazon, we get
amazing reviews and five starratings and the people that read
it loved it.
We were having a hard time withdiscovery and getting more
eyeballs on it, and we reallyfelt like what was blocking us
(05:29):
from that kind of growth is justthe fact that Amazon doesn't
pass by customer data.
Amazon owns those relationshipsand we wanted more control.
We're like we need a way torecommend our new stories to
these readers who we know we'dlove them, and we need a way to,
when they finish a book one, weneed to tell them that there's
a book two.
And we just felt like we didn'thave a lot of control in those
moments and we wanted to be ableto run performance marketing
(05:51):
ads, but we need to have thosecustomer insights to be able to
do so, and so just felt like wewere running into a wall a
little bit with that model.
And so Ali, who's our founder,um, came in one day.
I was like, guys, today, fullstop, we're no longer going to
publish books on Amazon and weneed to find a new way to sell
our stories.
Right, which you know.
This was like, I believe, 20ended 2017, beginning of 2018,
(06:13):
and it felt like a huge ask.
Right like, amazon is the placewhere people buy books,
especially then, like today, ifyou look at the books category
on like, the Google Play store,the apple store, um, there's
like thousands of clones ofgalatea by now.
But when we started, thiswasn't a thing right.
And so, yeah, basically, we'relike, we have to figure this out
(06:34):
.
We have to find a way to likesell our story that we feel
really confident in in analternate way.
And so, yeah, that's kind ofwas like the thought proposition
that we were given um andmyself and ali and a girl named
Lauren who she actually is mycousin.
She works on the contentmarketing team the three of us
just kind of shut ourselves in asmall little room.
We were working in Berlin atthe time.
We're like, okay, how do we dothis?
(06:55):
Right?
So I started by just doing a lotof research in how people were
comfortable consuming fictionromance fiction specifically,
right.
So I was looking a lot intolike mobile games where you have
an avatar, for example, thatyou're taking to like their
first day of college, or lookeda lot into chat.
Fiction was a really popularapp back then, or like there was
(07:16):
.
It was kind of a movement.
I don't know if you know,hooked was like the name of an
app that was really popular inlike 2018 or so.
I was talking to, you know, likea showrunner that was the lead
showrunner on the Young and theRestless for like 30 plus years.
She was helping me understandkind of the craft of
storytelling in a way that getspeople coming back every day,
right, that's repetition andretention.
So I was just like kind ofcollecting as much information
(07:37):
as I could from so manydifferent sources and then
figuring out how do we fit thisinto one product.
So if, as you know, and thenfiguring out how do we fit this
into one product.
So if, as you know, you've usedgalatea, it's gamified in a
certain way, right, like youfeel, you feel when you end on
the cliffhanger.
A lot of that is the guidancefrom young and the restless it's
very like that way.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I have to.
I have to interrupt you becausebecause there has been so many
nights where it's like oneo'clock in the morning and I'm
like, all right, jenny, justlast chapter.
And then you're going to bedand then, sure enough, at the
end of that chapter there's acliffhanger, and I'm like, oh my
God, I get so upset.
But then I'm like I know, I'mcoming back tomorrow.
Sorry, keep going.
(08:16):
I knew I was gonna gush.
I was like trying so hard tohold it.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
No, I mean, that's kind of the origin story is like
we needed a way to sell ourstories.
We felt so confident in ourstories and our authors and
we're like these are storiesthat deserve to be seen and
deserve to be read and we justdidn't have enough access.
So we're like we don't know howto create the success and like
the ecosystem that exists, solet's build our own Right.
And so we did it.
It was also just like lots ofborrowing and learning from
(08:42):
different apps and products.
So, you know, we had thiscountdown timer right that's
counting down into the nextchapter release.
That was pulled because therewas an app called Trivia HQ.
I don't know if you rememberthis back in the day.
That was just like live triviacontests and they had a
countdown timer and that app wastrending during the month.
We decided to develop this.
We're like, oh okay, we canborrow that concept.
(09:02):
This.
We're like, oh okay, we canborrow that concept.
And then it was kind of justlike mix matching things.
I was spending like seven hoursa day during those early days
just speaking to users orpotential users that I knew were
going to like the content, toreally understand what they
needed and what they wanted outof a product and kind of like
you know, like what they lovedand hated about different
products and genres andcommunities and formats and all
(09:23):
of these things that essentiallywere just like leading up to
Galatea, and we were movingreally fast.
We launched the kind of thebeta version of Galatea on the
app stores within two weeks.
We went in a lot of differentvariations.
You know the first version ofthe book.
It was just a series of GoogleSheets, screenshots.
The only function the app hadwas just tapping through
screenshot to screenshot,because we're like this is the
(09:43):
fastest way to get it out andjust see if people like it.
Um, lauren, my cousin that Imentioned, she actually flew to
australia and moved into thehouse of one of our authors just
to be there every day andencourage her to keep writing.
Because when we started thisapp, we only had one book and it
wasn't even finished yet.
Because we're like we didn'twant to wait around until we had
this perfect product or thisperfect catalog, because we just
wanted to move and learn andmake sure there was an appetite
(10:05):
for this.
So everything we were doing wasreally really kind of like
quick and fast and iterative.
We didn't have a back-end for aproduct, so we'd made more than
a million dollars.
It was just like a series ofgoogle sheets that were making
up this, this product.
So it was very chaotic but veryfun.
Um, I have so many goodmemories of those like initial
months when we were startingGalatea, of, just like you know,
(10:26):
such shared purpose of all ofus in the room and being like we
feel like we're solving aproblem here.
Everyone we're speaking toreally, really wants this.
And yeah, that there's so muchpotential and, yeah, go for it.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
You know I want to comment on something.
So I'm glad you actually toldyour story the way that you did
just now, because there's this,this concept that I had started
using, like when I started thepodcast, because I'm like I've I
professionally have done lotsof broadcast production.
I have a lot of broadcast in mybackground.
But when I decided to do thepodcast, I did I spent like
(11:00):
about six months or so trying tofigure it out at first, you
know, doing all the research,like trying to figure out the
terminology, what the platformswere like.
You know, you do you have to dothat legwork.
And then I got to a certainpoint where I was like I got all
the tech, I understand the tech, like I understand what I need
to do here.
I have to just go Like I'm not,I'm not ready by any means and
(11:21):
I don't know what I'm going tosay next week.
But in this moment, if I don'trecord right now and just post
an initial welcome episode, likewhen are you going to do it?
Like when are you ever going tobe ready?
And what I heard you say wasthat you launched the app within
two weeks.
You didn't want to wait forperfection.
That was starting messy andI've actually said this quite a
bit to other folks and I learnedit from, like I had taken this
(11:42):
online workshop like a coupleyears back and the bottom line
was basically like you're notgonna, don't wait for it to be
perfect, just don't wait forthat, just rip the bandaid off
and go for it, because you'regonna learn as you go.
If you wait for perfection, youmight not actually ever get
there, because you're alwayswaiting for this other thing to
get into place before youactually pull the trigger to do
(12:03):
something.
So the fact that you actuallyemployed this and it was
successful to me is something soimportant to hear, especially
like from the entrepreneurperspective, because the
entrepreneur life I have myson-in-law bless him starting
his own business.
I'm so proud of him and he andhe's he's going for it Like he's
(12:26):
starting messy and he's goingfor it and he's got his space
and his office space and he'sdoing his thing and I keep
encouraging him like you got tokeep going, like it's going to.
It's going to feel really scaryand it's going to feel really
uncomfortable, which I'm goingto ask you about now.
How frightening was that in thebeginning to just let's just
launch it and just see whathappens had.
I mean, I can only imagine theanxiety, but also like the
(12:52):
endorphins that you guys werelike running on to pull this
through.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Yeah, and just quickly to touch on, like the
idea of like just starting aswell, before I get into like
fears and anxieties and all ofthat, um, it's the exact same
advice we always give to authorstoo.
Right, it's just just do it.
I think so many authors theyhave this idea of okay, I need
to have a perfect structure, Ineed to have my first 30
chapters written, or I need tohave the story arc, or I need to
, I need to, I need to.
It's like all you need to do ispublish a chapter, right and on
(13:20):
ink it.
You don't need a fullmanuscript.
You can write as you go, and somany authors will write and
then get like feedback fromusers and then change the way
they write.
And so I think, like it'sreally important just to start.
And that's kind of whenever Ispeak to authors about like,
what was the hardest part, theysay, like, starting with the
hardest part, because they haveall these fears and anxieties
about like, am I going to begood enough?
Am I going to be interestingenough?
(13:40):
Are people going to hate it?
Can I really be an author?
And especially on Ink it, whereit's really encouraged for
newbies, right, like, we wantthis.
We were looking forundiscovered talent, we're
looking for people who havenever written a word before, and
so that's kind of the wholesense of the community is just
giving that kind ofcomfortability and that access
to people who are trying for thefirst time.
So I think that's really reallyimportant and really good.
(14:01):
Advice in general is just likealways, just do something.
Just do something, yeah.
But circling back to the fearsand anxieties and all those
things, definitely there was,like you know, a sense of
pressure and you know we wererunning out of money in the bank
when this happened.
Like we were like as a company,we're like okay, this is really
really important time for usand I just don't think with our
(14:22):
business model, we're going tomake it.
So we have to pivot, we have togo all in and we'll like this
is it right?
So there, so there definitelywas a sense of I don't I don't
think fear is the right word,but just a level of pressure,
right.
But also that pressure, likeyou said, it was really
intoxicating and it was likethis kind of like.
It just felt like you wereelectric, like every time we
were in this room, every time wewere brainstorming.
(14:43):
Every user we spoke to and wewere getting feedback.
It was like no-transcript, aconcept they didn't want to be a
(15:15):
part of and we felt reallyunwanted in that community.
So then, once we started havingthese conversations and seeing
that the readers did wantsomething like this and seeing
that there was a place for usand we could massively change
just like publishing and kind ofreading in general, that
feeling kind of became a lotmore powerful than any of the
doubts or any of the you know,anxieties and I think even in
(15:36):
the end, if, like, if thishadn't been such like a huge
success as it has been, we stillwould have found our pocket.
That still.
Maybe it was more niche and Ithink this blew up in a great
way.
That has been really reallymonumental to like candy jar and
other apps and all of thefollow ons.
But I think, yeah, it was justthis, this, this essence and
this feeling of we're doingsomething right and everyone was
(15:58):
telling us that we were doingsomething right, so that made it
really easy.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
I like that you you went with your gut there as what
it's really.
As you're talking, I'm liketranslating in my head, like and
it and that's what it soundslike to me and I'm translating
it also just based on, like, theexperience I've had with
developing this podcast and I'mlike it sounds a lot.
I'm sure there were dips alongthe way where you guys were like
, what are we doing?
(16:22):
Like I'm certain of it justfrom what you're saying, because
I'm like, as you're talking,I'm thinking about how this
podcast has developed.
I was just talking to somebodythe other day, a former
colleague of mine, who is awriter.
There's lots of authors thatcome on this show, like loads of
them.
So what I do want to say I loveyour platform for me personally
, because this is like my littlechocolate at the end of the day
(16:44):
, like this, literally is whatit is.
This is my treat for myself, asyou said, like it has nothing
to do with anyone else and it'sjust like my little escape from
everything else that I have todeal with.
So for me as a woman, like,love it.
As a mom, working mom, love it.
I hands down, love it From awriter's perspective.
You're opening up, as you said,a whole pathway for writers, and
(17:06):
I've interviewed quite a fewauthors on this podcast and I
always ask about that processLike what is it in the beginning
?
Like how are you publishingthese books?
A lot of folks are goingthrough Amazon, but that was one
of the things that I liked somuch about your app was that I
was reading and I remember beinglike this is an unknown.
I remember reading and be likeI feel like this is an unknown
(17:26):
person, like this is so amazingBecause, speaking from a
creative perspective, when I wasyoung, I was a creative writer
for many, many years and I gaveit up because at the time, you
know this is you're talkingabout like the 90s.
You know, before any of this wasreally like a thing, and I
remember being like there's likeno way, like you have to mail.
I'm a no name person from NewJersey.
I'm going to mail in my littlebook chapter to a publishing
(17:50):
house in New York and someone'sgoing to pick it up Like I don't
think.
So this is a.
You've busted a door open forpeople to start like fine,
tuning their craft and gettingtheir names out there.
I mean this is.
It's such an amazing service toeverybody.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I'd love to.
I'd love to share a story, ifthat's okay, but just like
exactly what we're talking about.
Right, and I think my favoritepart of this job is like being
able to have these conversationswith authors and authors be
like guess what, emma, I justquit my job, I'm a full-time
author.
Right, like when the royaltiesstart pouring in and they're
like this is my life now.
This is something I dreamed of.
I just never saw a path to getthere and I'm doing it.
And so I think a really greatstory is we have an author named
(18:29):
Manjari.
She was a reader on Galateafirst, during COVID, a lot of
people started installingGalatea.
They were stuck at home, theywere bored, they were whatever.
She's from India.
She was like I need somethingto do to occupy the time.
So she installed Galatea andwas just reading.
So she spent about six monthson the app as a reader and she's
like I feel like I could dothis, like I think I want to
take a stab at writing one ofthese books.
(18:50):
I've always enjoyed writing asa kid.
I'm going to try.
Right, so she goes on to Inkit.
She like researched and foundthe path to get them to Galatea.
The first step is to put yourbook onto Inkit.
So in 2021, she wrote her book,called Kaylee, uploaded it to
the Inkit platform Within likethree months or so.
We like decided, we like likeflagged it as being a high
potential story based onengagement and feedback and all
(19:12):
of the things, and we moved itover to galatea.
It did really well on galatea.
We were able to then be like wewere starting to develop our tv
app, candy jar.
Um, so we're like okay, this islooking really promising on
galatea as well.
Um, let's also fast track it tobe produced as a tv series.
So we wrote, wrote the script,we went into pre-production, all
while also releasing like bookstwo and three on the Galatea
(19:33):
app, which was really coolbecause then it kind of had like
a come up moment both in thebook and on video.
At the same time, we releasedit on Candy Jar and then it went
huge.
Right, it went quite viral.
Lots of people are reallyloving the TV series.
And now, as a final step,actually on June 5th, we're
having a premiere event inHollywood.
We're doing a red carpet event.
We've turned this verticalvideo into a horizontal
(19:57):
full-length feature film, andthis author literally started
writing four years ago and nowwe're having this huge premiere
event starring her.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
She's flying in from India with her brother and I
think that timeline of literallyhaving the courage to write
your first word and having afull insanely cool it's amazing,
though, too, because not justbecause of, like, the length of
time there, but because thisperson genuinely, authentically
(20:26):
put herself out there andbecause your group, because of
the people that you have at yourcompany, and because of the the
message really is everyone cando this and if you're, you know,
have the talent for it, and itcan be pulled through to tv and
movie.
Like you don't have to engagewith like shady people you don't
(20:47):
have.
It doesn't have to be anuncomfortable situation.
You don't have to put your youknow and the real and you know
where my head is going here likeyou don't have to put yourself
out there in a way that's likeyou're uncomfortable with.
Like, if you're, you have thetalent here and you're putting
it on, ink it and then it getspicked up.
I mean the it's.
It's just.
It's a truly amazing thingbecause it's also knocking down
these barriers for people inrural areas that don't have
(21:10):
access and don't you know, it'salways been something that my
cousin that used to podcast withme and I used to talk about was
it's a lot of like who you knowand you know it's, you know
everybody who's up at the top,they all know each other, so
they're all pulling from theirown pools of talent and it's not
reaching the rest of us.
You are reaching the rest of us.
(21:31):
You're giving us an opportunityto put our foot through the
door and that's such an amazingthing.
I can't believe you guys havebuilt this, but I'm like I'm
still kind of astounded that I'msitting here talking with you.
So I'm going to leave talkingwith you and go talk to my
husband and be like I can'tbelieve.
I just interviewed this personI love that.
(21:52):
It's really amazing.
It really is.
That's fantastic yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
And when I first joined, right, like I was a
publishing manager when I joinedthe company back in 2016.
And I got to be the person thatwas sending out that email,
right, and I was a person whowas like, hey, guess what?
Your story looks really good,we want to publish it.
And have no idea who is sat onthe other side of that computer,
right?
And so I would get responsesback being like, yeah, that
sounds really cool.
I want to be like I'm 14, canmy mom come?
(22:21):
You're like, oh my gosh, yeah,of course.
Or on the flip side, someonebeing like, yeah, I'm really
interested, but I've beenwriting this manuscript for 30
years.
I just decided to share it withthe world.
It's a whole never leather likekind of vulnerability.
So I think like that got me soimmediately bought into, like
our vision and our mission ofjust like completely unknowns,
like you said, and just peoplewho are just have a love for
writing and who don't have atraditional path there because
they don't know anybody to getthem there.
(22:43):
And it's just completelyunbiased, it's just strictly
based on reader engagement andit's just like if readers love
your story, you're going to havethis opportunity.
It's as simple as that.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
So if someone's listening and you know they're
feeling like inspired by thisand they're saying like I want
to get involved, I'm just notquite sure, like, what to do
here.
Do they have to have like afully developed book or
manuscript or anything Like, orcan they go?
Is it like chapter by chapter,like how would it work exactly?
And I'm kind of asking formyself to give me all the
details.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Just go to inkitcom, um, itwill walk you through an
onboarding experience.
It will ask you about yourauthor or reader or what you're
there for.
And yeah, you don't need anylike manuscript, you don't need
anything written down yet.
You just start right.
Um, I think there might be aminimum word count of 1500 words
or so before you actually hitthat publish button, just to
make sure there's somethingthere for a reader and also
because you have, give a readera little bit of time to start,
(23:36):
you know, engaging with it forit to show up on the homepage
and stuff like that, and sothere, I think there is a
minimum number of words Don'tquote me on the 1500, but, like,
once you have a certain numberof words and it's not a lot then
you can just start writing.
And so many of our authors dothis, like intentionally, where
they'll write a few chapters andask users for what they think
and what their feedback is, andthen, based on that feedback,
(23:56):
they'll keep writing, and soit's kind of like a crowdsourced
way of writing a novel, and soI think it gets people over the
hump a lot of well, what if Imake the wrong decision?
Well then, just ask, right,like you have this opportunity
to ask your readers what theythink, and I know some of our
like OG authors who have beenwith us for years, sometimes
they'll be like so sick of theirmale lead character, for
example, like I want this guygone, I think I'm going to kill
(24:18):
him off, but like I don't knowif it's a good idea.
So they'll ask the communityright, and the community be like
oh my gosh, don't, we're allstill in love with him, and so
then they have to kind of likepivot and be like okay.
So I'm gonna keep kill himmentally, but I'm gonna keep
writing because this is what Iknow my readers need.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
it's really cool, though because with that
engagement, you're almost likemaking it like a choose your own
adventure kind of thing, whereit's not just like, oh, books
are being released, like I mean,I, I have, I bought, I buy
everybody's books who come onthe podcast.
So I have like like stacks ofbooks all over the place and it
would be interesting to be ableto like read a couple chapters
(24:54):
and be like, oh, I would love tosee, like I just finished a
romance series from one of myother authors that came on.
She had a similar like she kindof.
She wrote her book while shewas in remission with cancer,
while she was gettingchemotherapy, and she did it as
part of like her therapy, justlike, oh, I'm just going to
throw this out there.
And then she was, she was ill,so she really wasn't paying
attention.
She just published it on Amazonand just like, let it, she
(25:16):
didn't think anything of it.
And then she started gettingroyalty checks and she was like
what?
And now she's published like,oh, my God, like I can't even I
know I'm going to misquote thenumber but like loads of books.
So that's, I love that.
I love that for the users forInket and for Galatea, and and
then I want to hear more aboutthe TV app so Candy Jar.
(25:40):
So Candy Jar is based off ofthe books on Galatea, exactly.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, so we have this pipeline right.
We call it like our systematicapproach to creating
blockbusters, which is it startswith Inkit, where anyone can
upload their work of fiction,and then moves to Galatea where
we're then like testing thestory and we actually like have
a team called Story Intelligencewho works with the authors to
A-B test storylines, so likewe'll test different intros and
outros and just launch them tousers and see what people
(26:05):
respond to better and whatretains people better.
And so our stories are likekind of like very, very
hyper-optimized.
On Galatea, some of our topstories have had like a hundred
plus different versions of it,just tweaking things, moving
things around, etc.
Um, then from there we'll dolike the audiobook, which also
exists on the galatea app, andnow as a final step in that
funnel is candy jar, which isnow taking the same series and
(26:26):
turning them into scripts andthen producing them as tv series
.
Um, they're kind of like short,you know episodic.
There's like an hour long, it'skind of like an episode, but
it's it's a movie like.
It's kind of like broken intolike two minute episodes for an
hour.
Um, so it's vertical.
We started shooting it verticaland that's been really well
received.
We've now started startedshooting it both ways and coming
(26:49):
very soon on candy jar we'regonna have the functionality
like turn so you can watch ithorizontal or vertical.
But while we were learning itmade sense to do it vertical
because it's a lot cheaper toshoot vertical right right, so
we can go and learn and figureout how to operate in this film
and tv industry which we don'tknow much about.
Like, I'm leading this projectand it was completely new
territory, right, I've been inpublishing for you know.
It was like seven years by thetime I started with candy jar
(27:11):
and I was like this iscompletely new, but let's go
figure it out.
So we were able to hire acouple people from production
really figure out the system tolike replicate these hits on
candy jar.
We launch a new show everysingle friday.
So every friday there's a newshow coming out on the candy jar
app and they're all based on,yeah, the books that have done
well on galatea.
Currently, we've been focusedmore on contemporary because
(27:32):
it's easier to film versus likewerewolf and paranormal and all
those things.
We do have our first werewolfchasing kiara coming out on
candy jar this summer and we'llsee if there's appetite for that
as well.
Um, in this format and so, yeah, as part of that, it's kind of
like the next step in this, thisapproach to creating
blockbusters, right, I think,for an author.
There's like kind of three bigmoments in an author's life,
(27:53):
which is like the day you getyour publishing deal, the day
you hold your book in your handsand the day you watch your
movie, and so it's really coolto be able to fulfill all of
those moments for an author.
And then, yeah, what we'redoing on June 5th is now this,
this big red carpet event.
500 people are coming.
You know we're doing lots ofactivations at the theater,
we're going to have a Q and Apanel with the director and the
actors and the author, and it'sgoing to be really, really
(28:16):
special.
So that's kind of like Is thatlive?
Speaker 1 (28:18):
or can people like virtually watch this?
Speaker 2 (28:21):
It's live currently, I think we'll yeah, it's a good
call Like, we're definitelygoing to have some footage of it
, we're going to have avideographer there, we're going
to film the Q&A, so we'll besharing snippets of it, but it's
all happening in real life well.
So the original version that weshot vertical was, you know, an
hour, was about 45 minutes ofcontent.
(28:42):
We've now fleshed out thisstory.
It's now an hour and a halffull feature length film.
Um, you know, use the samedirector and the same key actors
, but we're able to like, justlike, make it a lot more full.
We spent a lot more money on onthe second version of it, so
it's a story people will befamiliar with, but it feels a
lot fuller than the verticalversion did.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
I love that You're like really like bringing us on
the journey for the whole, likefor anything that goes on to
candy jar, like you're going toreally like close the loop and
bring the full, like the journeyfull circle.
That's very cool.
So when you started as aprofessional, did you imagine
this Like, did you picture some?
(29:20):
I have to ask that question Didyou have like a vision Like,
did you have a sense?
Like I think at some point Iwill be doing work like this?
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Not at all.
No, I think I had no idea whatI wanted or what I was going to
do, right, and I think, likewhen I graduated high school, I
didn't really I didn't know whatI wanted to do.
I don't think most people knowwhat they want to do, but you
know, you have to choose aschool and you have to kind of
like figure out your path whenyou're 18 years old.
And so I went to college and Iactually ended up they called it
jobbing out early.
I got, I was doing aninternship and I was offered a
(29:51):
job at like an agency for anadvertising agency.
When I was 19 years old, I wentto my professors and I was like
, what do I do?
Like this is a cool job offer.
And they're like this is thekind of job offer you would want
to have after you graduated.
So just take it, you don't haveto come to school, you just
have to like turn in yourassignments.
So for the next couple of yearsI had to just do my assignments
and I was working, you know,like 50 hours a week turning
(30:17):
assignments.
It was 19, um, but I have beenever since.
But I think, because I was kindof like fast-tracked like that.
I didn't really have time tothink about what I actually
wanted.
I was just kind of like throwninto situations.
I was just saying yes to a lotof things and you know, I found
myself in a situation where Iwas like 21 years old, maybe 20
years old, I had an assistantwho was 40 years old.
I was looking around at likethe people around me and being
(30:39):
like there's women who have beenhere for 30 plus years and
they're doing the same job I'mdoing, and do I really want to
have the same job in 30 years?
Just like a bigger market or abigger sense of responsibility.
But it's just kind of like howdid I get here?
You know, it was a moment oflike what am I doing?
How did I get here?
And so I think, like up untilthen, like I said, I always
thought I had to have this plan.
I always thought I had to havea roadmap to like do the next
(31:03):
thing and figure out the nextstep.
I think it got to that point.
I was like screw the roadmap.
I was like I think I just needto like kind of reset a little
bit.
So I actually left that job andI had a friend who was moving to
New Zealand and so she was like, do you want to just come with
me?
And so she had made that offerwhen I was still working at the
ad agency and I was like, no, Ican't.
That was my default, as I can't, I have this job.
I have people relying on me, Ican't.
(31:24):
And then the more I startedthinking about over the next
couple weeks, I was like whycan't I?
Like I'm 20 years old, I dohave a pretty cool opportunity
right now, like what happens ifI just blow it up right?
So, talk to my parents, talk toto some friends.
I was like I think I can dothis.
So I ended up quitting that joband then moving to New Zealand
when I was 21 for a year and aspart of that I just started
(31:45):
saying yes to everything.
I was like I think this was myfirst net.
Yes was saying yes, I want tocome to New Zealand.
And I just became a yes manRight.
So when I was in New Zealand, Iwas out for drinks with some
friends, talking to a randomgroup of strangers.
A guy offered me a job in Fiji.
I literally moved to Fiji threedays later and managed a resort
there for two months threemonths which I had no business
doing, never managed a resort,but I said, yeah, sure I'll do
(32:07):
it from there.
After I was in Fiji and I cameback to New Zealand, moved back
to Canada I'm from Canada movedback to Canada for like a year
and a half and then, yeah, movedto Toronto.
Um, so I was in Cambridge and Imoved to Toronto for like to
move into a new condo with somefriends and then was offered
this job at Inkit.
My cousin started about twomonths before I did, so she's
like, hey, I'm gonna move toBerlin.
I was like you know what?
(32:29):
Why the hell not?
Like I had to move into a newcondo like three months
previously.
But I was like, okay, I'll do itso then I moved to Berlin and
started working at Inkit, andthen then, yeah, I think that
everything within the companytoo I'm just always so excited
to learn about different partsof the business and do new
things that I say yes toeverything.
So I've worked on literallyevery single team across the
entire company.
I've led the product team, thecontent team, the engineering
(32:51):
team for a while, which I shouldnot have done, but like I was
needed there in that moment, andso I kind of just learned
through touching a lot of things.
What I really like and what I'mgood at is like these projects
that have a hybrid of contentand product and marketing.
And so that was Galatea.
Right, that was an amazing wayfor me to get to kind of stretch
all of those muscles.
And same with Candy Jar it'ssuch a fun way to get to stretch
all of those muscles.
(33:11):
So I think, like never did Ireally picture this path, but I
think, just as this not reallythinking about it too much is
what got me here.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
To be honest, you know, your, your story is very
unique in the sense that not alot of women are able to break
out of the I should be doingthis mold and including myself
Like I I'm.
I'm actually working on achapter for a book that's going
to get released later this year,but it's a, it's an anthology.
It's made up of a lot of womenlike myself just coming together
and producing a book, talkingabout our lives and how we got
to like me and podcasting, forexample.
The podcast and hearing yourstory makes me very happy
(33:53):
because I have little girls andI hope that you know, I I try to
lead a lot by example and and Italk a lot with them.
I'm very they're eight, butthey like pretty, they're very,
they're very communicative and Ihope that they see the world
like how you did that.
You didn't feel like tied to Ishould do it a certain way.
(34:14):
Um, yeah, I felt very much likeI had to go corporate.
That was the only thing that Iknew.
That was the only thing thatwas in my, my, my like, my view
was like oh, you know, this isthe only way I can make money is
.
I got to go corporate.
My, my mind was very settled,Like I need to financially, like
scale as much as I can, and soI did all these paths and and I
(34:34):
I've been successful in my workand I actually I actually very
much like what I do for a living.
But I see that there could havebeen a different path.
Now, and hearing your story, I'mlike, oh my God, that sounds a
little bit like how my pathwould have went, because there
was so many instances of, likeyou know, before I was committed
, before I was married, before Ihad kids, that there could have
(34:55):
been an alternate way to go,and I want to highlight that as
one one.
Like that's amazing that youdid this, because it is so
unique.
And I want to say, I want tohighlight it too, because for
the listeners, for anyone that'slistening that hasn't really
committed yet or findsthemselves in a situation where
you could say yes to somethingelse, it's going to feel
(35:15):
uncomfortable and scary, butthink of where it could bring
you.
Like you never pictured youwould be doing this and yet here
you are.
But this was brought to youbecause you were so open to all
these other things and tryingout all these other things,
whereas, like, if someone justgraduates high school, goes to
college, gets the nine to five,like some people love it, some
people are really happy withthat, but there's a lot of us
(35:36):
out there that are not happywith that and we want and we
like crave this, like creativepart to be able to just go and
go with our instinct, and that'swhat you're doing and it's such
an amazing thing.
So I wanted to commend you forthat, because not all of us do
that.
Many of us don't, and it'sfantastic that you did that.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Yeah, I think, too, like it definitely wasn't like
my initial gut reaction either,like I was kind of questioning
myself for the first year I wasdoing this and be like, am I
throwing it all away?
Am I crazy, all of these things?
But I was having so much fun.
I was like I think for you tobe really good at your career
and your life and yourpartnerships and all the things
you have to like what you'redoing right, and so I think,
(36:14):
like I can't imagine ever havetaken a path where I'd be like
happier in my day-to-day life,right, and I think this job
feels like it was like carvedout specifically for me.
And even within Inkit, I think,like you know, I had this idea
that to progress within thiscompany I had to become a
manager and I had to be a peoplemanager and then manage them
like these levels of hierarchy,that like that's the only way to
(36:35):
grow, and I don't get as muchjoy out of the people management
side of things, right, like Ilove getting my hands through, I
love being like an individualcontributor, and so I felt like
I would always do really well onproject and then suddenly be
looking around and have like 10direct reports and start losing
bits of what I really liked.
And so I was havingconversations with Ali, our
founder, our CEO of Inkit, andwas, just, like you know, having
(36:57):
these kind of conversationswith him, and I think he's been
really, really amazing at beinglike okay, let's find a path
then that gets you up onleadership and gets you like a
C-level position, but like that,you still get to do what you're
good at and still get to dowhat's fun.
And so now, as a chiefinnovation officer, it's kind of
like I get to put togetherthese little SWAT teams.
I'm still working with a lot ofpeople.
I still like manage them interms of like on a project level
(37:18):
, and we all have a reallyshared purpose and we're running
towards goals together.
But, you know, I'm not asbogged down with like the day to
day managerial responsibilities, and I think it was just asking
and being open about what Iliked.
I think so many womenspecifically would just be like
OK, this is what I was told todo, so I'm going to keep doing
it Right.
So I think it's really reallyimportant to be like, stay happy
(37:39):
and if you feel like you'relosing that and you're losing
what drives you and losing thatjoy also just being candid about
like, if you want me to bereally good at my job, I want to
be good at my job, you want meto be good at my job, let's make
sure I'm excited to show upevery day.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Ingot itself sounds like a fantastic organization
just from what you're saying tome, because one here I'm hearing
you felt comfortable enough toraise your hand, which that's
not a norm, by the way, like atall.
So you felt comfortable enoughto raise your hand and be like I
don't really love this, I'dlike to, I'd like to stay so I'd
(38:13):
want to grow in this other area.
And it sounds like theleadership was on board, which,
again, very unique, and not thatit's impossible for listeners
I'm not saying it's impossible,but having that combination is
important.
So, like, if you are at a placewhere you don't feel
comfortable to raise your hand,that might be a red flag to you
(38:34):
to say like, hey, maybe you wantto look at what you're doing
right now.
Like, perhaps think outside thebox a little bit, but the fact
that, emma, the fact that youraised your hand and said, like
you know, I know where mystrengths are, you have, you
have such a strong sense ofyourself, like well.
So kudos to your parents, bythe way.
By the way, tell them I gavethem a shout out because I try,
(38:55):
I'm working really hard on mykids to make sure that they have
that, because I want them toknow that, because I went
through my whole life.
I was just telling another guestthe other day I was 37 when I
started to wake up and be likeoh wait, I don't want to be a
corporate robot.
Hold on a second.
Like it took me almost myentire adult life well, majority
(39:16):
of my adult life to figure thatpoint out.
So I I just I need to commendyou for that, because of that in
itself is very difficult to do,and it's it.
I think it's scary for a lot ofus to like raise your hand and
be like, hey, I'm not reallylike happy with how this is
going.
So this is, I mean, the storyof Galatea, the story of Candy
Jar.
I mean you already know how Ifeel about it and now, like I
(39:37):
don't know where my phone isbecause my kids took my thing,
but I already was like I have todownload Candy Jar.
Now, like, where is it?
Speaker 2 (39:43):
I'll give you a subscription.
Hit me up.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
I'm so excited for this.
So you have Red Carpet event inearly June Galatea so I want
the listeners to hear this.
So Galatea app, you candownload that across your phone.
Candy jar also app right, wecan download that on our phones,
exactly yep app store, googleplay store beautiful and
listeners, I I have to reallyencourage you to to download
(40:06):
galatea.
If you're not ready for candyjar yet, like I need you to just
download galatea, becausealmost immediately you get book
recommendations and then likethen and you're like in, that's
it, like that's kind of it, andand I didn't know that I liked
stories about werewolves andvampires so much, by the way,
until I started reading thestories on the app, it was wild,
(40:26):
it really was.
The way that it sucked me inwas like tremendous.
So I really I want to thank youagain for the app itself, but I
mean bringing us through yourstory and the journey of how
this all developed and cametogether.
I us through your story and thejourney of how this all
developed and came together.
I mean it really is inspiringfor everybody.
So thank you for sharing.
Thank you, I had so much fun.
(40:49):
Listeners, I'm going to linkinformation in the episode
description.
So, emma, when we are done here, I want you to send over
everything that you want me tolink in.
Guys, again, you can, as you'relistening to this, open up the
app store and download the app,because I'm telling you you're
not going to regret it.
I'm like, and you know I won'tmake recommendations unless I'm
really like behind it, and thisis like a big deal for me.
So thank you so much forhanging out with us today.
We will catch you on the nextone, take care.
no-transcript.
Joined Inket over eight yearsago, initially working hands-on
with emerging authors to helpthem navigate the publishing
world.
Her dedication to nurturingtalent and creating supportive
systems for writers laid thegroundwork for her transition
into product development, nowthe helm of Galatea.
(00:47):
Along with Candy Jar, emmabrings user-driven innovation to
life, collaborating withengineers, designers and readers
to transform storytellingthrough multimedia experiences.
Her work continues to pushboundaries in digital publishing
, making stories more engagingand accessible for all.
Emma, welcome to the podcast,thank you.
(01:07):
Thank you so much for having me, so I want you to share your
story with the listeners howGalatea came to be.
But I also think that I want togush for a second about Galatea
, because the listeners mightnot be familiar.
So for the listeners, I want tojust give a background.
Now for the guests that comeonto the show, I'll get emails
(01:29):
and I get a lot of queries and Ihave to research everybody and
I always look at people up and Igot this email and introducing
Emma to me and in the email itmentions the Galatea app.
Now, the Galatea app is like myI don't know how to I don't know
how to phrase this right.
It's like my personal little,like secret thing that I do at
(01:51):
the end of the day, when thekids are in bed and my husband's
asleep and I'm like I just wantto unwind.
What am I doing to do that?
And I found myself immersed inthis book app that I came across
on Pinterest.
Actually, now that I thinkabout it, it was like an ad that
(02:12):
popped up and it was, you know,very far from my usual day to
day, like I'm in research and Ido pharmaceuticals and
everything.
So I found Galatea and I wasjust totally hooked within like
five minutes because of thestories on there and it just
grabbed me and it held me and Icouldn't stop.
I actually had to cut myselfoff at one point.
It was like Jenny, that'senough.
So, emma, I just I wanted tosay that I I'm so grateful that
(02:36):
you guys developed this app,because it's like my little
secret, like saying at the endof the day that like just is not
anything to do with anythingelse I do, and it just brings me
a great amount of pleasurereading it.
So thank you for bringing itinto the world.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, I love to hear that too.
Like I speak to so many womenthat use Galatea, right, and
it's just so fun to understand,like the place we have in their
life and what an important placeit is, and I think it's so easy
on.
Like you know, romance fictionon this app.
It's easy for people to kind ofdiscount it and be like, oh you
know, it's just like fun, it'sjust nonsense, it's just smut or
whatever they might think, butat the end of the day, it's like
(03:10):
a really, really important partof escapism and just like
disassociation from like thehard lives that these women lead
, and it's kind of just likealmost like self-care in a lot
of ways, which I think is reallycool, right.
It's like I have a millionthings going on in my life.
I'm so stressed out.
I have, if I'm lucky, 30minutes a day to myself.
And this is how I spend those30 minutes, so they can just
like be so engrossed in thestory and it's not overly
(03:34):
complicated, it's simple, it'seasy, it's fun.
It's all the things that you'relooking for in that little
pocket of time you actually haveto yourself.
So I'm so happy that you wereable to find that pocket.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
I can't even say enough about it, I really can't.
So, emma, go ahead.
I want you to just go ahead.
Take, take lead here.
You can let the listeners knowI mean I would love for them to
hear the story of Galatea, butanything else that you want them
to know about yourself, and wecan just kind of take it from
there, cool yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
So yeah, I've been at Inkit for just over eight years
now, and so when I joined,inkit is a platform, basically
that, where anyone can upload awork of fiction and then we have
an algorithm which is analyzingreading engagement and reading
behavior.
And the whole kind of missionbehind Inkit which is, you know,
the umbrella company that thenhas Galatea and Candy Jar
beneath it is to remove, like,the bias and the subjectivity
(04:22):
that exists in traditionalpublishing and knowing that,
like at a big five publisher, inthis day and age, you kind of
need to know somebody or have anonline following or have some
kind of connection to even getthrough, kind of you know, the
pipeline.
And so we're really trying tocreate an ecosystem where
there's no judgment, there's nobias, it's just like if your
book is good and people like toread it, it gets published,
(04:44):
right.
And so when I joined Inkit, aplatform was already functioning
within that, but what we weredoing was we were taking the top
, you know, one to 2% of booksfrom Inkit and then publishing
them on Amazon, essentiallyacting as like an indie
publisher from that pointforward, but just wasn't working
for us in a way where we feltlike we were able to kind of
scale in like a significant way,in a way where we could feel
(05:06):
really comfortable and happyabout the royalties we were
passing back to authors.
It felt like we were really,really confident that we had
great stories and that Inka wasdoing its job of finding the
stories, because when we wouldpublish on Amazon, we get
amazing reviews and five starratings and the people that read
it loved it.
We were having a hard time withdiscovery and getting more
eyeballs on it, and we reallyfelt like what was blocking us
(05:29):
from that kind of growth is justthe fact that Amazon doesn't
pass by customer data.
Amazon owns those relationshipsand we wanted more control.
We're like we need a way torecommend our new stories to
these readers who we know we'dlove them, and we need a way to,
when they finish a book one, weneed to tell them that there's
a book two.
And we just felt like we didn'thave a lot of control in those
moments and we wanted to be ableto run performance marketing
(05:51):
ads, but we need to have thosecustomer insights to be able to
do so, and so just felt like wewere running into a wall a
little bit with that model.
And so Ali, who's our founder,um, came in one day.
I was like, guys, today, fullstop, we're no longer going to
publish books on Amazon and weneed to find a new way to sell
our stories.
Right, which you know.
This was like, I believe, 20ended 2017, beginning of 2018,
(06:13):
and it felt like a huge ask.
Right like, amazon is the placewhere people buy books,
especially then, like today, ifyou look at the books category
on like, the Google Play store,the apple store, um, there's
like thousands of clones ofgalatea by now.
But when we started, thiswasn't a thing right.
And so, yeah, basically, we'relike, we have to figure this out
(06:34):
.
We have to find a way to likesell our story that we feel
really confident in in analternate way.
And so, yeah, that's kind ofwas like the thought proposition
that we were given um andmyself and ali and a girl named
Lauren who she actually is mycousin.
She works on the contentmarketing team the three of us
just kind of shut ourselves in asmall little room.
We were working in Berlin atthe time.
We're like, okay, how do we dothis?
(06:55):
Right?
So I started by just doing a lotof research in how people were
comfortable consuming fictionromance fiction specifically,
right.
So I was looking a lot intolike mobile games where you have
an avatar, for example, thatyou're taking to like their
first day of college, or lookeda lot into chat.
Fiction was a really popularapp back then, or like there was
(07:16):
.
It was kind of a movement.
I don't know if you know,hooked was like the name of an
app that was really popular inlike 2018 or so.
I was talking to, you know, likea showrunner that was the lead
showrunner on the Young and theRestless for like 30 plus years.
She was helping me understandkind of the craft of
storytelling in a way that getspeople coming back every day,
right, that's repetition andretention.
So I was just like kind ofcollecting as much information
(07:37):
as I could from so manydifferent sources and then
figuring out how do we fit thisinto one product.
So if, as you know, and thenfiguring out how do we fit this
into one product.
So if, as you know, you've usedgalatea, it's gamified in a
certain way, right, like youfeel, you feel when you end on
the cliffhanger.
A lot of that is the guidancefrom young and the restless it's
very like that way.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I have to.
I have to interrupt you becausebecause there has been so many
nights where it's like oneo'clock in the morning and I'm
like, all right, jenny, justlast chapter.
And then you're going to bedand then, sure enough, at the
end of that chapter there's acliffhanger, and I'm like, oh my
God, I get so upset.
But then I'm like I know, I'mcoming back tomorrow.
Sorry, keep going.
(08:16):
I knew I was gonna gush.
I was like trying so hard tohold it.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
No, I mean, that's kind of the origin story is like
we needed a way to sell ourstories.
We felt so confident in ourstories and our authors and
we're like these are storiesthat deserve to be seen and
deserve to be read and we justdidn't have enough access.
So we're like we don't know howto create the success and like
the ecosystem that exists, solet's build our own Right.
And so we did it.
It was also just like lots ofborrowing and learning from
(08:42):
different apps and products.
So, you know, we had thiscountdown timer right that's
counting down into the nextchapter release.
That was pulled because therewas an app called Trivia HQ.
I don't know if you rememberthis back in the day.
That was just like live triviacontests and they had a
countdown timer and that app wastrending during the month.
We decided to develop this.
We're like, oh okay, we canborrow that concept.
(09:02):
This.
We're like, oh okay, we canborrow that concept.
And then it was kind of justlike mix matching things.
I was spending like seven hoursa day during those early days
just speaking to users orpotential users that I knew were
going to like the content, toreally understand what they
needed and what they wanted outof a product and kind of like
you know, like what they lovedand hated about different
products and genres andcommunities and formats and all
(09:23):
of these things that essentiallywere just like leading up to
Galatea, and we were movingreally fast.
We launched the kind of thebeta version of Galatea on the
app stores within two weeks.
We went in a lot of differentvariations.
You know the first version ofthe book.
It was just a series of GoogleSheets, screenshots.
The only function the app hadwas just tapping through
screenshot to screenshot,because we're like this is the
(09:43):
fastest way to get it out andjust see if people like it.
Um, lauren, my cousin that Imentioned, she actually flew to
australia and moved into thehouse of one of our authors just
to be there every day andencourage her to keep writing.
Because when we started thisapp, we only had one book and it
wasn't even finished yet.
Because we're like we didn'twant to wait around until we had
this perfect product or thisperfect catalog, because we just
wanted to move and learn andmake sure there was an appetite
(10:05):
for this.
So everything we were doing wasreally really kind of like
quick and fast and iterative.
We didn't have a back-end for aproduct, so we'd made more than
a million dollars.
It was just like a series ofgoogle sheets that were making
up this, this product.
So it was very chaotic but veryfun.
Um, I have so many goodmemories of those like initial
months when we were startingGalatea, of, just like you know,
(10:26):
such shared purpose of all ofus in the room and being like we
feel like we're solving aproblem here.
Everyone we're speaking toreally, really wants this.
And yeah, that there's so muchpotential and, yeah, go for it.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
You know I want to comment on something.
So I'm glad you actually toldyour story the way that you did
just now, because there's this,this concept that I had started
using, like when I started thepodcast, because I'm like I've I
professionally have done lotsof broadcast production.
I have a lot of broadcast in mybackground.
But when I decided to do thepodcast, I did I spent like
(11:00):
about six months or so trying tofigure it out at first, you
know, doing all the research,like trying to figure out the
terminology, what the platformswere like.
You know, you do you have to dothat legwork.
And then I got to a certainpoint where I was like I got all
the tech, I understand the tech, like I understand what I need
to do here.
I have to just go Like I'm not,I'm not ready by any means and
(11:21):
I don't know what I'm going tosay next week.
But in this moment, if I don'trecord right now and just post
an initial welcome episode, likewhen are you going to do it?
Like when are you ever going tobe ready?
And what I heard you say wasthat you launched the app within
two weeks.
You didn't want to wait forperfection.
That was starting messy andI've actually said this quite a
bit to other folks and I learnedit from, like I had taken this
(11:42):
online workshop like a coupleyears back and the bottom line
was basically like you're notgonna, don't wait for it to be
perfect, just don't wait forthat, just rip the bandaid off
and go for it, because you'regonna learn as you go.
If you wait for perfection, youmight not actually ever get
there, because you're alwayswaiting for this other thing to
get into place before youactually pull the trigger to do
(12:03):
something.
So the fact that you actuallyemployed this and it was
successful to me is something soimportant to hear, especially
like from the entrepreneurperspective, because the
entrepreneur life I have myson-in-law bless him starting
his own business.
I'm so proud of him and he andhe's he's going for it Like he's
(12:26):
starting messy and he's goingfor it and he's got his space
and his office space and he'sdoing his thing and I keep
encouraging him like you got tokeep going, like it's going to.
It's going to feel really scaryand it's going to feel really
uncomfortable, which I'm goingto ask you about now.
How frightening was that in thebeginning to just let's just
launch it and just see whathappens had.
I mean, I can only imagine theanxiety, but also like the
(12:52):
endorphins that you guys werelike running on to pull this
through.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Yeah, and just quickly to touch on, like the
idea of like just starting aswell, before I get into like
fears and anxieties and all ofthat, um, it's the exact same
advice we always give to authorstoo.
Right, it's just just do it.
I think so many authors theyhave this idea of okay, I need
to have a perfect structure, Ineed to have my first 30
chapters written, or I need tohave the story arc, or I need to
, I need to, I need to.
It's like all you need to do ispublish a chapter, right and on
(13:20):
ink it.
You don't need a fullmanuscript.
You can write as you go, and somany authors will write and
then get like feedback fromusers and then change the way
they write.
And so I think, like it'sreally important just to start.
And that's kind of whenever Ispeak to authors about like,
what was the hardest part, theysay, like, starting with the
hardest part, because they haveall these fears and anxieties
about like, am I going to begood enough?
Am I going to be interestingenough?
(13:40):
Are people going to hate it?
Can I really be an author?
And especially on Ink it, whereit's really encouraged for
newbies, right, like, we wantthis.
We were looking forundiscovered talent, we're
looking for people who havenever written a word before, and
so that's kind of the wholesense of the community is just
giving that kind ofcomfortability and that access
to people who are trying for thefirst time.
So I think that's really reallyimportant and really good.
(14:01):
Advice in general is just likealways, just do something.
Just do something, yeah.
But circling back to the fearsand anxieties and all those
things, definitely there was,like you know, a sense of
pressure and you know we wererunning out of money in the bank
when this happened.
Like we were like as a company,we're like okay, this is really
really important time for usand I just don't think with our
(14:22):
business model, we're going tomake it.
So we have to pivot, we have togo all in and we'll like this
is it right?
So there, so there definitelywas a sense of I don't I don't
think fear is the right word,but just a level of pressure,
right.
But also that pressure, likeyou said, it was really
intoxicating and it was likethis kind of like.
It just felt like you wereelectric, like every time we
were in this room, every time wewere brainstorming.
(14:43):
Every user we spoke to and wewere getting feedback.
It was like no-transcript, aconcept they didn't want to be a
(15:15):
part of and we felt reallyunwanted in that community.
So then, once we started havingthese conversations and seeing
that the readers did wantsomething like this and seeing
that there was a place for usand we could massively change
just like publishing and kind ofreading in general, that
feeling kind of became a lotmore powerful than any of the
doubts or any of the you know,anxieties and I think even in
(15:36):
the end, if, like, if thishadn't been such like a huge
success as it has been, we stillwould have found our pocket.
That still.
Maybe it was more niche and Ithink this blew up in a great
way.
That has been really reallymonumental to like candy jar and
other apps and all of thefollow ons.
But I think, yeah, it was justthis, this, this essence and
this feeling of we're doingsomething right and everyone was
(15:58):
telling us that we were doingsomething right, so that made it
really easy.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
I like that you you went with your gut there as what
it's really.
As you're talking, I'm liketranslating in my head, like and
it and that's what it soundslike to me and I'm translating
it also just based on, like, theexperience I've had with
developing this podcast and I'mlike it sounds a lot.
I'm sure there were dips alongthe way where you guys were like
, what are we doing?
(16:22):
Like I'm certain of it justfrom what you're saying, because
I'm like, as you're talking,I'm thinking about how this
podcast has developed.
I was just talking to somebodythe other day, a former
colleague of mine, who is awriter.
There's lots of authors thatcome on this show, like loads of
them.
So what I do want to say I loveyour platform for me personally
, because this is like my littlechocolate at the end of the day
(16:44):
, like this, literally is whatit is.
This is my treat for myself, asyou said, like it has nothing
to do with anyone else and it'sjust like my little escape from
everything else that I have todeal with.
So for me as a woman, like,love it.
As a mom, working mom, love it.
I hands down, love it From awriter's perspective.
You're opening up, as you said,a whole pathway for writers, and
(17:06):
I've interviewed quite a fewauthors on this podcast and I
always ask about that processLike what is it in the beginning
?
Like how are you publishingthese books?
A lot of folks are goingthrough Amazon, but that was one
of the things that I liked somuch about your app was that I
was reading and I remember beinglike this is an unknown.
I remember reading and be likeI feel like this is an unknown
(17:26):
person, like this is so amazingBecause, speaking from a
creative perspective, when I wasyoung, I was a creative writer
for many, many years and I gaveit up because at the time, you
know this is you're talkingabout like the 90s.
You know, before any of this wasreally like a thing, and I
remember being like there's likeno way, like you have to mail.
I'm a no name person from NewJersey.
I'm going to mail in my littlebook chapter to a publishing
(17:50):
house in New York and someone'sgoing to pick it up Like I don't
think.
So this is a.
You've busted a door open forpeople to start like fine,
tuning their craft and gettingtheir names out there.
I mean this is.
It's such an amazing service toeverybody.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I'd love to.
I'd love to share a story, ifthat's okay, but just like
exactly what we're talking about.
Right, and I think my favoritepart of this job is like being
able to have these conversationswith authors and authors be
like guess what, emma, I justquit my job, I'm a full-time
author.
Right, like when the royaltiesstart pouring in and they're
like this is my life now.
This is something I dreamed of.
I just never saw a path to getthere and I'm doing it.
And so I think a really greatstory is we have an author named
(18:29):
Manjari.
She was a reader on Galateafirst, during COVID, a lot of
people started installingGalatea.
They were stuck at home, theywere bored, they were whatever.
She's from India.
She was like I need somethingto do to occupy the time.
So she installed Galatea andwas just reading.
So she spent about six monthson the app as a reader and she's
like I feel like I could dothis, like I think I want to
take a stab at writing one ofthese books.
(18:50):
I've always enjoyed writing asa kid.
I'm going to try.
Right, so she goes on to Inkit.
She like researched and foundthe path to get them to Galatea.
The first step is to put yourbook onto Inkit.
So in 2021, she wrote her book,called Kaylee, uploaded it to
the Inkit platform Within likethree months or so.
We like decided, we like likeflagged it as being a high
potential story based onengagement and feedback and all
(19:12):
of the things, and we moved itover to galatea.
It did really well on galatea.
We were able to then be like wewere starting to develop our tv
app, candy jar.
Um, so we're like okay, this islooking really promising on
galatea as well.
Um, let's also fast track it tobe produced as a tv series.
So we wrote, wrote the script,we went into pre-production, all
while also releasing like bookstwo and three on the Galatea
(19:33):
app, which was really coolbecause then it kind of had like
a come up moment both in thebook and on video.
At the same time, we releasedit on Candy Jar and then it went
huge.
Right, it went quite viral.
Lots of people are reallyloving the TV series.
And now, as a final step,actually on June 5th, we're
having a premiere event inHollywood.
We're doing a red carpet event.
We've turned this verticalvideo into a horizontal
(19:57):
full-length feature film, andthis author literally started
writing four years ago and nowwe're having this huge premiere
event starring her.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
She's flying in from India with her brother and I
think that timeline of literallyhaving the courage to write
your first word and having afull insanely cool it's amazing,
though, too, because not justbecause of, like, the length of
time there, but because thisperson genuinely, authentically
(20:26):
put herself out there andbecause your group, because of
the people that you have at yourcompany, and because of the the
message really is everyone cando this and if you're, you know,
have the talent for it, and itcan be pulled through to tv and
movie.
Like you don't have to engagewith like shady people you don't
(20:47):
have.
It doesn't have to be anuncomfortable situation.
You don't have to put your youknow and the real and you know
where my head is going here likeyou don't have to put yourself
out there in a way that's likeyou're uncomfortable with.
Like, if you're, you have thetalent here and you're putting
it on, ink it and then it getspicked up.
I mean the it's.
It's just.
It's a truly amazing thingbecause it's also knocking down
these barriers for people inrural areas that don't have
(21:10):
access and don't you know, it'salways been something that my
cousin that used to podcast withme and I used to talk about was
it's a lot of like who you knowand you know it's, you know
everybody who's up at the top,they all know each other, so
they're all pulling from theirown pools of talent and it's not
reaching the rest of us.
You are reaching the rest of us.
(21:31):
You're giving us an opportunityto put our foot through the
door and that's such an amazingthing.
I can't believe you guys havebuilt this, but I'm like I'm
still kind of astounded that I'msitting here talking with you.
So I'm going to leave talkingwith you and go talk to my
husband and be like I can'tbelieve.
I just interviewed this personI love that.
(21:52):
It's really amazing.
It really is.
That's fantastic yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
And when I first joined, right, like I was a
publishing manager when I joinedthe company back in 2016.
And I got to be the person thatwas sending out that email,
right, and I was a person whowas like, hey, guess what?
Your story looks really good,we want to publish it.
And have no idea who is sat onthe other side of that computer,
right?
And so I would get responsesback being like, yeah, that
sounds really cool.
I want to be like I'm 14, canmy mom come?
(22:21):
You're like, oh my gosh, yeah,of course.
Or on the flip side, someonebeing like, yeah, I'm really
interested, but I've beenwriting this manuscript for 30
years.
I just decided to share it withthe world.
It's a whole never leather likekind of vulnerability.
So I think like that got me soimmediately bought into, like
our vision and our mission ofjust like completely unknowns,
like you said, and just peoplewho are just have a love for
writing and who don't have atraditional path there because
they don't know anybody to getthem there.
(22:43):
And it's just completelyunbiased, it's just strictly
based on reader engagement andit's just like if readers love
your story, you're going to havethis opportunity.
It's as simple as that.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
So if someone's listening and you know they're
feeling like inspired by thisand they're saying like I want
to get involved, I'm just notquite sure, like, what to do
here.
Do they have to have like afully developed book or
manuscript or anything Like, orcan they go?
Is it like chapter by chapter,like how would it work exactly?
And I'm kind of asking formyself to give me all the
details.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Just go to inkitcom, um, itwill walk you through an
onboarding experience.
It will ask you about yourauthor or reader or what you're
there for.
And yeah, you don't need anylike manuscript, you don't need
anything written down yet.
You just start right.
Um, I think there might be aminimum word count of 1500 words
or so before you actually hitthat publish button, just to
make sure there's somethingthere for a reader and also
because you have, give a readera little bit of time to start,
(23:36):
you know, engaging with it forit to show up on the homepage
and stuff like that, and sothere, I think there is a
minimum number of words Don'tquote me on the 1500, but, like,
once you have a certain numberof words and it's not a lot then
you can just start writing.
And so many of our authors dothis, like intentionally, where
they'll write a few chapters andask users for what they think
and what their feedback is, andthen, based on that feedback,
(23:56):
they'll keep writing, and soit's kind of like a crowdsourced
way of writing a novel, and soI think it gets people over the
hump a lot of well, what if Imake the wrong decision?
Well then, just ask, right,like you have this opportunity
to ask your readers what theythink, and I know some of our
like OG authors who have beenwith us for years, sometimes
they'll be like so sick of theirmale lead character, for
example, like I want this guygone, I think I'm going to kill
(24:18):
him off, but like I don't knowif it's a good idea.
So they'll ask the communityright, and the community be like
oh my gosh, don't, we're allstill in love with him, and so
then they have to kind of likepivot and be like okay.
So I'm gonna keep kill himmentally, but I'm gonna keep
writing because this is what Iknow my readers need.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
it's really cool, though because with that
engagement, you're almost likemaking it like a choose your own
adventure kind of thing, whereit's not just like, oh, books
are being released, like I mean,I, I have, I bought, I buy
everybody's books who come onthe podcast.
So I have like like stacks ofbooks all over the place and it
would be interesting to be ableto like read a couple chapters
(24:54):
and be like, oh, I would love tosee, like I just finished a
romance series from one of myother authors that came on.
She had a similar like she kindof.
She wrote her book while shewas in remission with cancer,
while she was gettingchemotherapy, and she did it as
part of like her therapy, justlike, oh, I'm just going to
throw this out there.
And then she was, she was ill,so she really wasn't paying
attention.
She just published it on Amazonand just like, let it, she
(25:16):
didn't think anything of it.
And then she started gettingroyalty checks and she was like
what?
And now she's published like,oh, my God, like I can't even I
know I'm going to misquote thenumber but like loads of books.
So that's, I love that.
I love that for the users forInket and for Galatea, and and
then I want to hear more aboutthe TV app so Candy Jar.
(25:40):
So Candy Jar is based off ofthe books on Galatea, exactly.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, so we have this pipeline right.
We call it like our systematicapproach to creating
blockbusters, which is it startswith Inkit, where anyone can
upload their work of fiction,and then moves to Galatea where
we're then like testing thestory and we actually like have
a team called Story Intelligencewho works with the authors to
A-B test storylines, so likewe'll test different intros and
outros and just launch them tousers and see what people
(26:05):
respond to better and whatretains people better.
And so our stories are likekind of like very, very
hyper-optimized.
On Galatea, some of our topstories have had like a hundred
plus different versions of it,just tweaking things, moving
things around, etc.
Um, then from there we'll dolike the audiobook, which also
exists on the galatea app, andnow as a final step in that
funnel is candy jar, which isnow taking the same series and
(26:26):
turning them into scripts andthen producing them as tv series
.
Um, they're kind of like short,you know episodic.
There's like an hour long, it'skind of like an episode, but
it's it's a movie like.
It's kind of like broken intolike two minute episodes for an
hour.
Um, so it's vertical.
We started shooting it verticaland that's been really well
received.
We've now started startedshooting it both ways and coming
(26:49):
very soon on candy jar we'regonna have the functionality
like turn so you can watch ithorizontal or vertical.
But while we were learning itmade sense to do it vertical
because it's a lot cheaper toshoot vertical right right, so
we can go and learn and figureout how to operate in this film
and tv industry which we don'tknow much about.
Like, I'm leading this projectand it was completely new
territory, right, I've been inpublishing for you know.
It was like seven years by thetime I started with candy jar
(27:11):
and I was like this iscompletely new, but let's go
figure it out.
So we were able to hire acouple people from production
really figure out the system tolike replicate these hits on
candy jar.
We launch a new show everysingle friday.
So every friday there's a newshow coming out on the candy jar
app and they're all based on,yeah, the books that have done
well on galatea.
Currently, we've been focusedmore on contemporary because
(27:32):
it's easier to film versus likewerewolf and paranormal and all
those things.
We do have our first werewolfchasing kiara coming out on
candy jar this summer and we'llsee if there's appetite for that
as well.
Um, in this format and so, yeah, as part of that, it's kind of
like the next step in this, thisapproach to creating
blockbusters, right, I think,for an author.
There's like kind of three bigmoments in an author's life,
(27:53):
which is like the day you getyour publishing deal, the day
you hold your book in your handsand the day you watch your
movie, and so it's really coolto be able to fulfill all of
those moments for an author.
And then, yeah, what we'redoing on June 5th is now this,
this big red carpet event.
500 people are coming.
You know we're doing lots ofactivations at the theater,
we're going to have a Q and Apanel with the director and the
actors and the author, and it'sgoing to be really, really
(28:16):
special.
So that's kind of like Is thatlive?
Speaker 1 (28:18):
or can people like virtually watch this?
Speaker 2 (28:21):
It's live currently, I think we'll yeah, it's a good
call Like, we're definitelygoing to have some footage of it
, we're going to have avideographer there, we're going
to film the Q&A, so we'll besharing snippets of it, but it's
all happening in real life well.
So the original version that weshot vertical was, you know, an
hour, was about 45 minutes ofcontent.
(28:42):
We've now fleshed out thisstory.
It's now an hour and a halffull feature length film.
Um, you know, use the samedirector and the same key actors
, but we're able to like, justlike, make it a lot more full.
We spent a lot more money on onthe second version of it, so
it's a story people will befamiliar with, but it feels a
lot fuller than the verticalversion did.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
I love that You're like really like bringing us on
the journey for the whole, likefor anything that goes on to
candy jar, like you're going toreally like close the loop and
bring the full, like the journeyfull circle.
That's very cool.
So when you started as aprofessional, did you imagine
this Like, did you picture some?
(29:20):
I have to ask that question Didyou have like a vision Like,
did you have a sense?
Like I think at some point Iwill be doing work like this?
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Not at all.
No, I think I had no idea whatI wanted or what I was going to
do, right, and I think, likewhen I graduated high school, I
didn't really I didn't know whatI wanted to do.
I don't think most people knowwhat they want to do, but you
know, you have to choose aschool and you have to kind of
like figure out your path whenyou're 18 years old.
And so I went to college and Iactually ended up they called it
jobbing out early.
I got, I was doing aninternship and I was offered a
(29:51):
job at like an agency for anadvertising agency.
When I was 19 years old, I wentto my professors and I was like
, what do I do?
Like this is a cool job offer.
And they're like this is thekind of job offer you would want
to have after you graduated.
So just take it, you don't haveto come to school, you just
have to like turn in yourassignments.
So for the next couple of yearsI had to just do my assignments
and I was working, you know,like 50 hours a week turning
(30:17):
assignments.
It was 19, um, but I have beenever since.
But I think, because I was kindof like fast-tracked like that.
I didn't really have time tothink about what I actually
wanted.
I was just kind of like throwninto situations.
I was just saying yes to a lotof things and you know, I found
myself in a situation where Iwas like 21 years old, maybe 20
years old, I had an assistantwho was 40 years old.
I was looking around at likethe people around me and being
(30:39):
like there's women who have beenhere for 30 plus years and
they're doing the same job I'mdoing, and do I really want to
have the same job in 30 years?
Just like a bigger market or abigger sense of responsibility.
But it's just kind of like howdid I get here?
You know, it was a moment oflike what am I doing?
How did I get here?
And so I think, like up untilthen, like I said, I always
thought I had to have this plan.
I always thought I had to havea roadmap to like do the next
(31:03):
thing and figure out the nextstep.
I think it got to that point.
I was like screw the roadmap.
I was like I think I just needto like kind of reset a little
bit.
So I actually left that job andI had a friend who was moving to
New Zealand and so she was like, do you want to just come with
me?
And so she had made that offerwhen I was still working at the
ad agency and I was like, no, Ican't.
That was my default, as I can't, I have this job.
I have people relying on me, Ican't.
(31:24):
And then the more I startedthinking about over the next
couple weeks, I was like whycan't I?
Like I'm 20 years old, I dohave a pretty cool opportunity
right now, like what happens ifI just blow it up right?
So, talk to my parents, talk toto some friends.
I was like I think I can dothis.
So I ended up quitting that joband then moving to New Zealand
when I was 21 for a year and aspart of that I just started
(31:45):
saying yes to everything.
I was like I think this was myfirst net.
Yes was saying yes, I want tocome to New Zealand.
And I just became a yes manRight.
So when I was in New Zealand, Iwas out for drinks with some
friends, talking to a randomgroup of strangers.
A guy offered me a job in Fiji.
I literally moved to Fiji threedays later and managed a resort
there for two months threemonths which I had no business
doing, never managed a resort,but I said, yeah, sure I'll do
(32:07):
it from there.
After I was in Fiji and I cameback to New Zealand, moved back
to Canada I'm from Canada movedback to Canada for like a year
and a half and then, yeah, movedto Toronto.
Um, so I was in Cambridge and Imoved to Toronto for like to
move into a new condo with somefriends and then was offered
this job at Inkit.
My cousin started about twomonths before I did, so she's
like, hey, I'm gonna move toBerlin.
I was like you know what?
(32:29):
Why the hell not?
Like I had to move into a newcondo like three months
previously.
But I was like, okay, I'll do itso then I moved to Berlin and
started working at Inkit, andthen then, yeah, I think that
everything within the companytoo I'm just always so excited
to learn about different partsof the business and do new
things that I say yes toeverything.
So I've worked on literallyevery single team across the
entire company.
I've led the product team, thecontent team, the engineering
(32:51):
team for a while, which I shouldnot have done, but like I was
needed there in that moment, andso I kind of just learned
through touching a lot of things.
What I really like and what I'mgood at is like these projects
that have a hybrid of contentand product and marketing.
And so that was Galatea.
Right, that was an amazing wayfor me to get to kind of stretch
all of those muscles.
And same with Candy Jar it'ssuch a fun way to get to stretch
all of those muscles.
(33:11):
So I think, like never did Ireally picture this path, but I
think, just as this not reallythinking about it too much is
what got me here.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
To be honest, you know, your, your story is very
unique in the sense that not alot of women are able to break
out of the I should be doingthis mold and including myself
Like I I'm.
I'm actually working on achapter for a book that's going
to get released later this year,but it's a, it's an anthology.
It's made up of a lot of womenlike myself just coming together
and producing a book, talkingabout our lives and how we got
to like me and podcasting, forexample.
The podcast and hearing yourstory makes me very happy
(33:53):
because I have little girls andI hope that you know, I I try to
lead a lot by example and and Italk a lot with them.
I'm very they're eight, butthey like pretty, they're very,
they're very communicative and Ihope that they see the world
like how you did that.
You didn't feel like tied to Ishould do it a certain way.
(34:14):
Um, yeah, I felt very much likeI had to go corporate.
That was the only thing that Iknew.
That was the only thing thatwas in my, my, my like, my view
was like oh, you know, this isthe only way I can make money is
.
I got to go corporate.
My, my mind was very settled,Like I need to financially, like
scale as much as I can, and soI did all these paths and and I
(34:34):
I've been successful in my workand I actually I actually very
much like what I do for a living.
But I see that there could havebeen a different path.
Now, and hearing your story, I'mlike, oh my God, that sounds a
little bit like how my pathwould have went, because there
was so many instances of, likeyou know, before I was committed
, before I was married, before Ihad kids, that there could have
(34:55):
been an alternate way to go,and I want to highlight that as
one one.
Like that's amazing that youdid this, because it is so
unique.
And I want to say, I want tohighlight it too, because for
the listeners, for anyone that'slistening that hasn't really
committed yet or findsthemselves in a situation where
you could say yes to somethingelse, it's going to feel
(35:15):
uncomfortable and scary, butthink of where it could bring
you.
Like you never pictured youwould be doing this and yet here
you are.
But this was brought to youbecause you were so open to all
these other things and tryingout all these other things,
whereas, like, if someone justgraduates high school, goes to
college, gets the nine to five,like some people love it, some
people are really happy withthat, but there's a lot of us
(35:36):
out there that are not happywith that and we want and we
like crave this, like creativepart to be able to just go and
go with our instinct, and that'swhat you're doing and it's such
an amazing thing.
So I wanted to commend you forthat, because not all of us do
that.
Many of us don't, and it'sfantastic that you did that.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Yeah, I think, too, like it definitely wasn't like
my initial gut reaction either,like I was kind of questioning
myself for the first year I wasdoing this and be like, am I
throwing it all away?
Am I crazy, all of these things?
But I was having so much fun.
I was like I think for you tobe really good at your career
and your life and yourpartnerships and all the things
you have to like what you'redoing right, and so I think,
(36:14):
like I can't imagine ever havetaken a path where I'd be like
happier in my day-to-day life,right, and I think this job
feels like it was like carvedout specifically for me.
And even within Inkit, I think,like you know, I had this idea
that to progress within thiscompany I had to become a
manager and I had to be a peoplemanager and then manage them
like these levels of hierarchy,that like that's the only way to
(36:35):
grow, and I don't get as muchjoy out of the people management
side of things, right, like Ilove getting my hands through, I
love being like an individualcontributor, and so I felt like
I would always do really well onproject and then suddenly be
looking around and have like 10direct reports and start losing
bits of what I really liked.
And so I was havingconversations with Ali, our
founder, our CEO of Inkit, andwas, just, like you know, having
(36:57):
these kind of conversationswith him, and I think he's been
really, really amazing at beinglike okay, let's find a path
then that gets you up onleadership and gets you like a
C-level position, but like that,you still get to do what you're
good at and still get to dowhat's fun.
And so now, as a chiefinnovation officer, it's kind of
like I get to put togetherthese little SWAT teams.
I'm still working with a lot ofpeople.
I still like manage them interms of like on a project level
(37:18):
, and we all have a reallyshared purpose and we're running
towards goals together.
But, you know, I'm not asbogged down with like the day to
day managerial responsibilities, and I think it was just asking
and being open about what Iliked.
I think so many womenspecifically would just be like
OK, this is what I was told todo, so I'm going to keep doing
it Right.
So I think it's really reallyimportant to be like, stay happy
(37:39):
and if you feel like you'relosing that and you're losing
what drives you and losing thatjoy also just being candid about
like, if you want me to bereally good at my job, I want to
be good at my job, you want meto be good at my job, let's make
sure I'm excited to show upevery day.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Ingot itself sounds like a fantastic organization
just from what you're saying tome, because one here I'm hearing
you felt comfortable enough toraise your hand, which that's
not a norm, by the way, like atall.
So you felt comfortable enoughto raise your hand and be like I
don't really love this, I'dlike to, I'd like to stay so I'd
(38:13):
want to grow in this other area.
And it sounds like theleadership was on board, which,
again, very unique, and not thatit's impossible for listeners
I'm not saying it's impossible,but having that combination is
important.
So, like, if you are at a placewhere you don't feel
comfortable to raise your hand,that might be a red flag to you
(38:34):
to say like, hey, maybe you wantto look at what you're doing
right now.
Like, perhaps think outside thebox a little bit, but the fact
that, emma, the fact that youraised your hand and said, like
you know, I know where mystrengths are, you have, you
have such a strong sense ofyourself, like well.
So kudos to your parents, bythe way.
By the way, tell them I gavethem a shout out because I try,
(38:55):
I'm working really hard on mykids to make sure that they have
that, because I want them toknow that, because I went
through my whole life.
I was just telling another guestthe other day I was 37 when I
started to wake up and be likeoh wait, I don't want to be a
corporate robot.
Hold on a second.
Like it took me almost myentire adult life well, majority
(39:16):
of my adult life to figure thatpoint out.
So I I just I need to commendyou for that, because of that in
itself is very difficult to do,and it's it.
I think it's scary for a lot ofus to like raise your hand and
be like, hey, I'm not reallylike happy with how this is
going.
So this is, I mean, the storyof Galatea, the story of Candy
Jar.
I mean you already know how Ifeel about it and now, like I
(39:37):
don't know where my phone isbecause my kids took my thing,
but I already was like I have todownload Candy Jar.
Now, like, where is it?
Speaker 2 (39:43):
I'll give you a subscription.
Hit me up.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
I'm so excited for this.
So you have Red Carpet event inearly June Galatea so I want
the listeners to hear this.
So Galatea app, you candownload that across your phone.
Candy jar also app right, wecan download that on our phones,
exactly yep app store, googleplay store beautiful and
listeners, I I have to reallyencourage you to to download
(40:06):
galatea.
If you're not ready for candyjar yet, like I need you to just
download galatea, becausealmost immediately you get book
recommendations and then likethen and you're like in, that's
it, like that's kind of it, andand I didn't know that I liked
stories about werewolves andvampires so much, by the way,
until I started reading thestories on the app, it was wild,
(40:26):
it really was.
The way that it sucked me inwas like tremendous.
So I really I want to thank youagain for the app itself, but I
mean bringing us through yourstory and the journey of how
this all developed and cametogether.
I us through your story and thejourney of how this all
developed and came together.
I mean it really is inspiringfor everybody.
So thank you for sharing.
Thank you, I had so much fun.
(40:49):
Listeners, I'm going to linkinformation in the episode
description.
So, emma, when we are done here, I want you to send over
everything that you want me tolink in.
Guys, again, you can, as you'relistening to this, open up the
app store and download the app,because I'm telling you you're
not going to regret it.
I'm like, and you know I won'tmake recommendations unless I'm
really like behind it, and thisis like a big deal for me.
So thank you so much forhanging out with us today.
We will catch you on the nextone, take care.
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