#152 - Allison Whalen | Balancing Parenthood and Career, The Journey to Founding Parentaly

[00:00:03] This is the Let's Grab Coffee Podcast and I'm your host, Allison George Khalife. Thank you for doing this. I was just telling you, this is the first episode of Let's Grab Coffee in almost over a year now. So it's been on our notice.

[00:00:16] I feel so sure now. I'm like, I gotta really slow up. We're delivering an amazing one, you know, to kick off not only 2024 but the comeback of the podcast. I really appreciate you being here. A fellow the Midwest.

[00:00:28] We were just saying a fellow of Northwestern. There's a lot of crossovers between us and you're building something super exciting with Parentaly. So really excited to chat. I'm really excited to be here. I always love to start with kind of your background, write the story.

[00:00:44] What led you to to the seat now as CEO and co-founder and we're going to get into the business in a bit here. But one of the things that stood out to me the most is you're a fellow kind of sales slash business development connoisseur.

[00:00:57] You love the adrenaline, the rush of sort of transacting and deal making. Why sales early on in your career? What was it about sales that made you fall in love? That's a great question. I fell into it.

[00:01:09] So I actually didn't really start doing sales until my whole background is like all over the place. I did a little bit of everything, went to business school and then realized I wanted to learn how to actually run a company

[00:01:20] and somehow convinced a startup to hire me as general manager of Chicago, which involves everything. It's like you're sort of like the mini, mini, mini CEO. And what I discovered very quickly was at the end of the day, sales is a lifeblood to almost every organization.

[00:01:37] And that if I wasn't going to get that figured out then like who cares about everything else? And so I kind of it was a little bit of like trial by fire where I realized you have to learn sales if you want to run a successful business.

[00:01:49] And from there I was at that startup for four years, the startup ended up getting bought by WeWork. But while I was there, I really forced myself into the sales side.

[00:01:58] Like I went from general manager, I helped launch our enterprise initiative like moving up market into other customers. And then realized I was really good at sales, started to study it and then built up the enterprise sales team.

[00:02:10] And I honestly think that it is like I shouldn't say this publicly. It is my secret weapon in building frontally because sales is really, really, really important for everyone. But it is especially critical when you're starting your own business.

[00:02:23] So I don't know, I kind of like fell into it, discovered that I loved it. But you're right, there is nothing better than signing a deal and the adrenaline of like, and I think a lot of people have a misconception about sales that it's tactics.

[00:02:37] And you're learning how to do these things. I view it as I am an expert and my job is to make sure that I am helping people. And so I just, I absolutely love it. Yeah. And that's, well, thank you for that.

[00:02:51] And that's kind of the second parlay that I wanted to bring up with you is because sometimes I felt that connotation, the negative connotation of being placed in the sales business development category.

[00:03:02] And obviously it's on us as professionals in our trade to make sure that it's always about the customer, the client, the prospect, being of value, being supportive, going above and beyond. It's interesting how that has a connotation of sort of being kind of the greasy insurance salesperson.

[00:03:17] You know, and it's always been tied to that for some reason. And people sometimes honestly, I think underrate how difficult it could be as a function. Yeah. You know? Totally. And I would even ask you have you, and how far along are you in your MBA right now?

[00:03:31] Because I, sales was never brought up in my MBA program ever. And since I graduated 10 years ago, I've since there are several folks in my graduating class that have gone into sales and been very successful.

[00:03:44] And we all talk about this, how isn't that so odd that there isn't a bigger emphasis on sales in an MBA program? And I don't know what the disconnect is there because I do think it is so incredibly important. And it's not about tactics.

[00:03:59] I mean, of course there are tactics you use, but it is about learning how to tell a good story and teach people and help them understand a better way to do things. And to tell people when you're not a good fit because not everyone is a good customer.

[00:04:16] You know? And so I think the really good salespeople get really good at being honest and also walking away from certain situations where there just isn't a good fit. Yeah, two quick things on this.

[00:04:30] So in the executive MBA at Kellogg, the one thing I also realized true there isn't a specific at least that I've come across. There isn't like a sales one-on-one course.

[00:04:38] What there are though is courses like selling yourself and your ideas or yeah, like a venture discovery course where we've been to the programming, you're naturally going to be pitching kind of selling. But is it the one-on-one?

[00:04:54] I haven't come across it and it is a good question as to why that is because to your point, one of the things that I found the most interesting and challenging to learn in sales and biz dev is and you can really only get this from experiences.

[00:05:06] All the nuances in between. You might be a prospect. We got on a call in the morning. I feel that you don't even want to talk about the product. You know, you almost want to talk about something you might be going through something on the self development side.

[00:05:19] We weave that in for 25 minutes. I'm not going to end the last five minutes pushing the product or service on you. I'm going to say, Allison, thanks for that conversation. Listen, five minutes. I'd love to sort of end it just on a personal conversation.

[00:05:31] I'll follow up next time and we'll pick this back up on the other category for us. I'm just glad we got closer like good connection between us and now I know something new. Right?

[00:05:42] A bit of a nuance though that's my like and you only pick that up over time. I also tend to gravitate towards enterprise sales because it's never straightforward. So it's never show up, you pitch your product, you close a deal. It's always a partnership. It's back and forth.

[00:05:59] It's discovery. You know, and so it doesn't feel the way that we see on TV. It does feel very much like we're here to figure this out together and to build this together with the buyer really. Now the interesting thing also about your career.

[00:06:12] We kind of uncovered the sales, sales leadership genius behind parentally. But when you were, you were already in a sales world, right? Very demanding. Also the one thing people don't realize it's very great. I mean, sort of to me it's a gray area in terms of objective.

[00:06:28] There is metrics and it's always your last sort of best quarter. That's the thing in sales. It's not really the duration isn't for two, three years and while Allison has a massive runway. It's like basically what Allison did last month, last week, yesterday.

[00:06:43] And you have to sort of refresh that every single day and reproof or revalidate that execution and the performance. You have those two stressors while managing a team.

[00:06:53] And then you have your first child walk me through as someone who's like a high performer in a high functioning role. What is your experience at that point? I mean it was in hindsight.

[00:07:05] There's so many things I should have done better, which are things that we now tell people in our parental program.

[00:07:11] But the second that I became pregnant after of course the joy, we had been trying to get pregnant for some time and the second after that joy sort of like that feeling washed over me.

[00:07:23] The next feeling was fear about my career because I think for anyone who has put a lot of time and effort into building a career. You start to think well wait a minute. I can barely step out for a one week vacation.

[00:07:38] How in the world am I going to step away for three months and especially in a sales role to your point.

[00:07:43] And at the time it was even more complicated because I was in a player coach role so I was still selling a little bit while also managing a team. And because you know nothing is ever easy.

[00:07:53] I had a direct report a sales rep who was also pregnant and she was due three months before me.

[00:07:58] And so I was looking at this situation going oh my gosh I've got one out of my I think I had like three or four sales reps at the time is pregnant.

[00:08:05] I'm still selling I'm going to be going out how do you handle this and there are a lot of things that I thought about both like how do we keep sales going while we are both out.

[00:08:14] But also like what about my team's goals and what about my commission and I did not handle it correctly basically the way and I don't think it was my my employer's fault I think they had no idea too they were just like.

[00:08:27] I don't know what do we do we've never had really anyone go on parental leave here were a startup that you know the average age is probably like 24 much less a sales leader and a sales rep what do you do about their commission and so.

[00:08:39] It was super complicated especially from a pay perspective then of course we return from our parental leaves and we have no pipeline. And that's really hard so it's like we weren't selling we also weren't building pipeline so it's incredibly difficult to return to work and be successful.

[00:08:57] And I was switching roles when I came back I mean it was just sort of like this big mess of what do we do with this it was incredibly disruptive to the business and I think.

[00:09:06] That experience the only reason I ended up staying an additional two years afterwards is I just felt so much lack of confidence like I was so insecure coming back because my whole world had turned around and I didn't know maybe I'm.

[00:09:20] Just not going to cut it now maybe I'm soft now that I have a kid and that drove me and I feel bad for that version of me when I look back I wish that I would have had.

[00:09:32] Like the confidence to sort of slow down you know take a step back and say OK wait a minute I'm not set up for success here.

[00:09:39] My company wanted to support me and I think they didn't know what to do and had I just asked them for the things that I needed.

[00:09:46] I think it would have been a better transition instead I basically just worked around the clock while breastfeeding and you know like waking up every three hours overnight and somehow dug myself out but I realized.

[00:09:58] Everyone wants the same end goal we all want business to do well we all want to support new parents it's just nobody knows what to do. Yeah I mean there's so many ways we can go from here.

[00:10:07] I think what I'm most curious about here is that you know you're spending two years basically and I totally. Obviously not even close to that experience but I can resonate in terms of you coming back and kind of having to prove yourself again.

[00:10:22] It's unfortunate because also this is like a very different version number one number two you've gone through this emotional physical maybe even spiritual transformation with you your child your partner.

[00:10:33] There's a lot of changes you know and so to be expected in a matter of weeks let alone days to just come back and be the Allison that was here four months ago is almost insane.

[00:10:44] Yet I feel like that's kind of what what has been expected previously and to your point it's a lack of resources and I wonder why is that though like why hasn't someone questioned it.

[00:10:53] What do you think the root cause this is kind of what I'm getting to what is the root cause of why there was a lack of resource awareness information.

[00:10:59] I think oh my gosh I mean like how much time do you have to go through this I think we have a big societal and cultural issue here where because we don't have a national paid leave entity policy funding.

[00:11:14] It puts 100% of the onus on private companies to pay for this and to support this and it's really hard.

[00:11:21] And so I think what happens in like this capitalistic society is of like you know we're not the government won't provide support and so the companies figured out well they're under a lot of pressure to get you back as fast as possible because it's hard for them it's hard for them to pay for your leave it's hard for them to pay for a backfill and so companies are trying to be supportive but I think that there's just this like.

[00:11:43] Well we've given you three months.

[00:11:45] Now let's get back in and I think the disconnect there what we have found in our program is slowing down to speed up is the most powerful thing you can do so there are a lot of companies that have part time return months with full time pay so the first month that you're back after print to leave

[00:12:01] is only working 20 hours per week and that does two things one it gives the new parent like a better you know your like entry back into the workplace from an emotional perspective but the second thing that I think is almost more important is the manager then can't coast like they can't just be like okay cool

[00:12:20] you know like pick up your old role and go know the manager now is forced to say ooh finally get 50% of their time how are we going to structure this and what almost always happens and what we encourage managers to do is say first two weeks is just learning

[00:12:35] because I think that the big miss like issue that managers have as they think well it's Allison she's been here for two years she knows exactly what's going on.

[00:12:42] Well, the everything has changed in the three months that I was out on leave and so you need to carve out time for people to understand what's different about the business to meet one and one to reconnect with people to like figure out their home systems.

[00:12:56] And when you give people that space, then they come back and then they build like a 90 day plan that is informed realistic challenging because a lot of new parents do really want to be challenged but in the right ways and it's just so much better for everyone.

[00:13:10] So I, I just personally think it's like there's a combination of lack of federal paid leave also just a lot. I don't know why companies have not focused on this problem when I was starting my business.

[00:13:23] That was my biggest fear of like starting this business because I couldn't believe it didn't exist. Why, like it was can it was crazy to me it's like why are all these companies giving really long paid parental leave policies and nobody has a program in place

[00:13:39] nobody's thought about this it didn't make any sense to me and I thought well there must be something wrong and that's why this doesn't exist. So I think there's just like we're early. A lot of companies have just rolled out these paid leave policies and maybe haven't felt the pain yet but I don't know I think there's probably a lot.

[00:13:52] Yeah, it almost feels like I came across yesterday that's kind of scrolling through through Instagram and I see this post by Bloomberg and hopefully I'm not sort of misinforming the data but it was something like the loss of productivity by employees is costing companies.

[00:14:09] A massive amount I think it was like 1.9 billion or it was a massive amount right and just out of curiosity I always have to do this for data I'm like, let me open the comments section and see what people think.

[00:14:19] And all the comments were, well why is it why is this positioned as you know, sorry for the corporations but not on the employee side.

[00:14:28] Like well if we were better compensated if we were allowed maybe remote work or hybrid, you know better packages or whatever the case is that was maybe 90% of the consensus.

[00:14:38] And so it sometimes begs the question like how much how much of the listening is happening back and forth. You know and also do you have a voice do you have a voice like if you were to go through this without creating parental leave.

[00:14:50] You know let's say you were back like is there a voice to kind of carve out ways to make this better. I think that's kind of the challenge sometimes maybe not everybody does have a voice to do that, I don't know.

[00:15:03] Well and you're raising an important point which is when I returned and had a bad return to work experience, never once did it occur to me to talk to HR.

[00:15:11] That's what I lost my mind. Why would I go talk to them. I talked to my manager. I also had a lot of fear that the problem was me, and it wasn't the system.

[00:15:20] So I think that's part of the problem too is that HR is tasked with, I mean they own this right, but if nobody is providing this feedback and it's not being escalated as a problem at an organization, then why are they going to prioritize it and what I have found in selling

[00:15:36] this, and it's not just so many companies is it oftentimes does come down to HR themselves having gone through an experience this pain point, and then they're like shocked at the experience now not always of course, and I would actually say large organizations

[00:15:52] tend to be a little bit better about knowing about the problem and you know they have consensus around they want to solve it.

[00:15:58] It's fascinating how often it takes an individual experience to see it because I think there's a little bit of secrecy and fear of sharing when you go through a negative experience like this, because I really thought like maybe this is just me. Maybe I just can't cut it.

[00:16:12] What was the first thing you did. Not at all. What was the first thing you so you realize this right you're almost two years back into into the startup crime.

[00:16:22] Yeah, what's the first thing you do. Okay now you have this epiphany and you're like all right tipping point. Great. Now what.

[00:16:28] Yeah, honestly I wish I could remember exactly what it was at the time I've been talking to my co founder about this problem. And just more broadly how do you support new parents, but it took us a while I want to say about a year after I had my first child that's when we really got serious about this

[00:16:46] problem and the first thing we did is we went around and we talked to a bunch of others she also has an MBA actually from Kellogg and so we kind of reached out to our two networks of women, we went to the women first and we said, Is this what's happening to you.

[00:17:01] You know, is this like just us and she comes from consulting from one of the big companies is you know the big I don't know how many there are three or four when she had her first two kids.

[00:17:10] And so I thought this is interesting I was at a startup she was at a huge company and we're both dealing with problems, slightly different in nature. She was not in sales obviously, but we started to hear. Yes, like everyone had varying degrees of the story, and that from there we developed

[00:17:28] a new version we were like all right well, if we want to test this let's put together just like an MVP and put it out into the world and so she and I both while working full time, basically like built an MVP version of what is now our career coaching program.

[00:17:43] And we went, I don't know if I don't know we didn't put on LinkedIn we sent an email to a few people and we said, We're just going to run a pilot like here's the concept. If any if you know anyone who's pregnant, send this to them, you know we've got 10 free spots and like 40 people signed up within like two days so

[00:18:00] we were shocked at the interest we ran the coaching pilot it went really well, but we told them this is not a company like we didn't even have an LLC. So we were like, This isn't real don't tell anyone.

[00:18:13] Well, one of them did tell HR who then called me who tried to buy it, and I thought, Okay, this is really interesting so it's a funny story in the sense that we weren't even working weekends on it because we both had kids.

[00:18:26] And the idea of nights and weekends working on this is like, No, we literally worked on this during the week from like, I don't know, 8pm to 10pm here and there over very long period of time.

[00:18:37] But then once we had that proof of concept that we created value, and the HR was coming to us to buy it. To me those were like the two biggest things to prove that this was possibly there was possible interest out there. So personal pain point.

[00:18:55] Obviously, you went through this yourself, but you also validated that there was a decent enough market at that point I didn't know how large it was but you're like let me validate. Let me make sure this is not just something I went through because of maybe the, you know my situation or the company or the role.

[00:19:10] So that checks, you obviously spoke to a co-founder who has complimentary features and then you get rolling especially I feel like the cool part about this is you had someone who was willing to buy the product even before the company was formalized.

[00:19:23] What a great way to validate what you're building. Right. And we didn't get too far in those conversations because I was like, we don't even have anything to sell. Like we were not set up but I did take intro call to understand from her.

[00:19:36] Why do you want to buy this and you know if the price point is X like what do you think you know so it was enough of like putting something out there to get information.

[00:19:47] And that was the most exciting for me because coming from sales. I know how hard it is to sell particularly B2B it's just so hard. I always expected that the users would want this because who doesn't like career coaching I mean it's an amazing experience.

[00:20:04] What I always was unsure of is can you sell this to a box to the end buyer because we did not want to sell this to the parents for a variety of reasons.

[00:20:13] I think number one, the value is really for the business and you know they should be paying for this and two individuals will never like they the amount that they would pay for a coaching program wouldn't even cover our costs because they're going through the most expensive transformation in their lives

[00:20:32] and they're not going to be welcoming a new human they're gonna have to pay for childcare and etc etc. So we always knew from day one we wanted to sell B2B and I was very unsure if we would be able to sell for many reasons and so that was it was exciting but also as I'm sure you can

[00:20:50] appreciate a lot of people say they'll buy when they won't actually so I still didn't know that when I actually went in full time and started the business because I hadn't actually sold it yet.

[00:21:01] So when you fast forward like you're basically now experts right in parental leave employee experiences you help them form these policies how to facilitate the training making sure it's a good experience on both ends.

[00:21:13] One of the things I really wanted to ask is what has been your biggest takeaway, both being in kind of the opposing side, but now on the side that's actually delivering this kind of service to companies and employees.

[00:21:24] What's been the biggest like aha moment that that was kind of the coolest part of building this startup focus on this specific, you know, service let's say the biggest aha you mean in terms of like the parental leave space not starting a business right.

[00:21:39] Yeah, just even like as you're building this right you're talking to so many companies. You're helping them with what was what was the nicest part about maybe even the most revealing.

[00:21:47] You're talking to a company and you're like wow that was surprising I didn't even know this was even a problem or a pain point and we help them with it on the employee side.

[00:21:54] This was the most critical the most recurring kind of thing that keep kept coming up with employees is this segment. Yeah, there are a few things that I've been surprised to learn once we put our coaching program and manager training out into the world.

[00:22:08] One is I have been very pleasantly surprised at how many fathers go through our program and find tremendous value from it so when we first started we thought. We always wanted fathers to use it so we built it intentionally to be gender neutral but I always suspected like.

[00:22:22] I don't know if fathers will want this because many of them don't take really long leaves and so if you're only going to take like three or four weeks are you really going to want to go through this program.

[00:22:32] And I just wasn't sure if the same problems would resonate with fathers and the answer has been a resounding absolutely 40% of the people who go through our program today and we have thousands going through it every year, our fathers.

[00:22:45] Which is really exciting to me the other things that have been really pleasantly like surprising to me is the utilization numbers are a lot higher than I expected that people are using this program.

[00:23:00] I thought, honestly when we first built it we very much built it for like a senior person who has a really complicated role and is navigating parental leave.

[00:23:10] And then over time we expanded it to be much more inclusive. And I've just constantly been very pleasantly surprised at how many different people with so many different challenges and concerns get so much value out of it and then the last thing very specific

[00:23:26] I would say there's one thing we do in our coaching program that I thought was really important, but I didn't think people would like it was a little bit of like yes it's important but it's not like the thing that people constantly point back to and that's documenting their communication preferences before they would go on leave.

[00:23:43] And what I mean by that is, we have people think about while I'm on leave, what are the things that I would want my manager to reach out to me about.

[00:23:53] And that I cannot believe how often people say that was the most helpful exercise that we forced them to do.

[00:24:02] And the reason for that is they'll say things like there's this promotion that I have been hoping to get or this new role in this other part of the business that I've been waiting to get.

[00:24:10] And luckily I told my manager hey if something comes up and this is usually in larger companies, if something comes up that you think I would be a good fit for send it to me while I'm on leave.

[00:24:19] You know things like that where it's like if you're not gonna be my manager anymore, let me know.

[00:24:23] I want to know that right in the moment. I don't want to come back and add that to my plate of you know be stressed about that, or I don't want to hear through the grapevine.

[00:24:32] So the communication preferences thing to me was really surprising how important that turned out to be for so many people. So on that is what I want to double down on the last point because that is very helpful, making me think.

[00:24:46] And I shared with you, I don't have kids yet. We don't have kids yet. We're close to planning having kids.

[00:24:54] One of the questions I personally had selfishly wanted to ask you is what can someone and who someone who's listening who is close to having kids but maybe what's the first thing that they should do with their employer.

[00:25:05] You know what are some of the top things they should think about if they're planning to so they haven't they're not fully there yet but is it maybe learning about their policies drafting thinking about these lists.

[00:25:15] Curious. Yeah, I don't know that there's so much that you can do now other than this is going to be kind of like a funny answer.

[00:25:24] One is I would say don't worry. I think a lot of people who have not gone through this process who haven't had kids who haven't been pregnant or expecting.

[00:25:32] They see what society tells them that it's a career killer especially for women they see all these things and they get really worried.

[00:25:38] That is not the case. And so I would say don't worry. I also believe that there is no good time and so I hear a lot of people say should I try to plan, you know, expanding my family around certain career milestones my personal opinion on that is absolutely

[00:25:52] not because there's never a good time, which means there's never bad time so that is my advice is just like don't worry about it. I've seen a lot of people feel more powerful advocating for a better paid parental leave policy when they are not expecting.

[00:26:05] So once you are and this is especially I would say for women who are pregnant. There's a lot of insecurity you don't feel like you can advocate when you're pregnant oftentimes for a better policy and you feel much better when you're not yet pregnant right and so like I don't know why but there's

[00:26:21] just like some psychology around that and so I've seen a lot of people advocate for better parental leave policies before they actually need it because it feels easier and more comfortable to them in that moment so that's maybe the only thing that I would say yes that's like a fair thing to be

[00:26:34] about is understand your company's policy and if you are new at your company and you are trying to get pregnant right now make sure you understand their tenure requirement because I think a lot of people are shocked when they find out that you have to be at your

[00:26:49] parent's office and you're not going to be at your parent's office. So that's a good thing to know. So that's a good thing to know. So if you are a woman, oftentimes for a full year before you qualify for paid parental leave so if you are a woman

[00:27:06] you're not going to be adopting or the birthday like when you give birth. So for example for you, you know if your partner has a baby and you say well that's fine I'm 11 months in I'll just wait to start until after I've hit my 12 month mark. That's not how it works.

[00:27:21] So you've lost all paid parental leave because the baby was born at your 11 month point into your tenure. So I'm getting a little bit in the weeds here but I think like checking out the tenure requirement is also something to understand because many people wait and they'll say okay we're going to wait three months until we

[00:27:36] start trying because we don't want to risk not qualifying for paid leave.

[00:27:40] No see that is very, very helpful. I mean even stuff like this what I really want is for myself and for people listening I think the most important is actually do a bit of the legwork in knowing the policies, knowing the intricacies of the company that you work at

[00:27:54] generally and also sometimes it's country specific. I moved to Chicago from Toronto right? Canada has a very different... Very different in Canada.

[00:28:04] There are big differences. Federally there's differences provincially so I think it is important to know and it's better to do that before you are kind of in the midst of having kids right like the nine months kind of process leading up to

[00:28:16] I feel like you have more time maybe more energy to come into it and you're just proactive that's basically what I'm trying to get at.

[00:28:22] And a lot of people who come from outside of the United States and then they come here they are horrified when they find out what they actually get because it's so bad compared to other

[00:28:33] that I was meeting the other day with a woman who is from the UK and she got four months paid leave from her company here and she was like I know I'm not supposed to complain about that because that's so much better than most people but she's like this is just in

[00:28:48] humane. It's just so different than in Canada at a year up and whatnot. There could be six months to a year right? Like they're easily. I wanted to we're going to get to more so like lessons learned for emerging founders.

[00:29:02] The one last thing I wanted to ask you about this from the startup perspective again very hopefully very interesting to everyone listening who is in the process of building or wants to the intricate piece in what you've built and what you continue to build is that you're

[00:29:15] serving a new category. I've heard you say this on previous interviews right one of the biggest challenges you have which you're excited about as a salesperson is that you're selling into a very new vertical.

[00:29:26] It's not like you're going in your pitching a company that's already that has a budget carved out for a different vendor and you're kind of just asking for the switch because we're better. It's more about convincing educating and pioneering something that they may have never thought of.

[00:29:41] Yep. What are some things you can share in terms of lessons learned from selling into a new vertical? So hard.

[00:29:47] It's so hard. I feel you. It's hard but it's also probably a little bit of a competitive moat in that like if anyone's going to be able to do it.

[00:29:56] It's me but it's really difficult and most of actually like most of our sale has nothing to do with what we do like we don't even really when we hold an intro meeting with a prospect.

[00:30:09] We're spending 80% of the time educating them on the problem and seeing if they recognize that they have the problem.

[00:30:15] And then it's almost like an afterthought of what we actually do to solve the problem. Everything is around do you do you agree that this is a problem? Yes or no.

[00:30:24] And if yes, is this a big enough problem for you to want to try and solve it? Sometimes the answer is no, you know, and if that's the case like we're here for whenever they change their mind.

[00:30:35] But it's really hard to convince people that they have a problem that they don't see. It does happen, but I would say there are sort of different paths.

[00:30:44] There's like the people who know that they have a problem and then we go through a different sort of sales process and there's the people that are like flabbergasted at the way that we describe the problem.

[00:30:54] But get it. You know, they're like, wow, I have never thought of it this way and you're exactly right. Well, then we have a different process with them because oftentimes it's them going back and speaking to the ERG's employee resource groups talking to the caregivers at their company.

[00:31:08] Oftentimes companies will send out surveys to working parents asking them about their pain points throughout, you know, expanding their family. So it's a much longer process to understand and validate that the problem we said exists does exist.

[00:31:22] And then there are some companies where either the person just, you know, they don't feel that it's their responsibility to focus on this or they don't really see this as a problem.

[00:31:32] I mean, we're told oftentimes like this does not happen at this company. This is not a problem here, which is not true. And I know it's not true, but there are, you know, sometimes people think that and they think this isn't a problem here.

[00:31:46] People kind of fall into different buckets and depending on where they fall will take a different sort of sales process at that point. But it's hard, but I like that kind of a sale.

[00:31:54] But I guess I certainly wish, you know, we talk a lot about like competition and, you know, if we had more competition, it would make my life a lot easier because it is really hard to be basically like the only one out there talking about this problem.

[00:32:08] And I think the more that people are loud about the fact that it is incredibly difficult to go on parental leave and do not have business fall apart and not have their careers hurt, the better for us if we have more people sharing their personal experiences basically.

[00:32:22] Yeah. And I think it gets probably easier as time progresses. Like I'm resonating from a different vantage point even with what I'm doing forward, you know, with the Toronto Stock Exchange like came kind of as a newer individual to the Midwest and really positioning

[00:32:37] public capital in Canada as one of the options for companies to raise capital on their menu. But something they probably never thought about before for earlier stage companies, right?

[00:32:46] And in the beginning it was difficult because people are like what go public in Canada, like I'm too early. This doesn't make sense. It's complicated. Why would I do this? I can just raise venture and I found one of the easiest ways to kind of softly introduce it is speaking their narrative.

[00:33:00] So I knew founders and CEOs knew most about venture capital venture debt. Like that's something they were most familiar with. So instead of saying, Hey, like this is the option you're going to take. I actually sometimes will open by saying this is not for every founder.

[00:33:12] In fact, like this is probably not even gonna like your this is a one, two, three year, you know timeline. All I'm trying to do is make sure you know about this so that when you're evaluating your options, which every good company should have, you just make the best bet.

[00:33:25] That's it. And I think if you was what happened was like introducing it that way initially was like, Yeah, I'll give you 30 minutes. I'll give you an hour.

[00:33:33] Just tell me more about this. And if it's not right for them, they would sort of promote it to someone in their network that they're like, you know what I think we should talk to George that there might be something there. Yeah, I don't know if that means to you but that's

[00:33:45] You're making me think also one of the things that we thought about is like because oftentimes what happens with us is people will say, Oh, you're a benefit to support parents will we already have a benefit for parents.

[00:33:59] Well, that's not really what we do. I mean, we're a very specific thing that isn't even really a benefit. I mean, we are called a benefit and we use benefits budget but like it's more like learning and development. It's like a business critical program that you set up.

[00:34:15] And so I think there's also like some thinking that we continue to do around how do we position ourselves. And how do we explain how we fit into the whole ecosystem. And if what you're looking for is like, you know, to support all parents at the organization that's

[00:34:33] So it's a good point and it's something that we continue to struggle with of like, how do we position ourselves within so that people actually understand what this is so that they understand the problem. And we're also very comfortable with it being a long sale cycle.

[00:34:45] And so I love meeting with people and if they don't feel the time is right. That's totally fine. And hopefully they follow me at LinkedIn and then I'm in their face every day talking about you know on their feed talking about this problem and eventually

[00:34:58] they'll get to the point where they understand it. And so I think like I'm a very patient person as competitive and you know, as I can be very, very waiting until they're ready.

[00:35:08] Very, very important to I mean patients in our world is the biggest currency. It's the hardest because we're all driving towards a result and in many cases it seems short term but I think what you're doing is definitely the right approach. You don't need me to tell you that but I can definitely vouch.

[00:35:23] I wanted to end on one last piece and I was thinking about how to position this towards the end. Usually I ask for for lessons learned for emerging founders right up and coming founders. What I specifically wanted to ask you is what advice would you give to a founder who's also a newly, I don't know how you say this like a mother who just gave birth

[00:35:40] to someone who has a child that's let's say a couple months old a year old basically how Allison was a couple of years back when she was still starting out rentally and she has a child or two. What advice would you give to that specific founder because that's different advice than the general

[00:35:56] I actually don't know if I would give different advice so I was pregnant when I was that right that I was pregnant when I started. Yes, I was pregnant when I started the company or I got pregnant a month after I started the company I had one child I got pregnant a month after I started

[00:36:10] I was pregnant when I was a child I was actually a parentally full time I should say and then I was also pregnant with my third when I raised our seed round two years later so I've sort of done everything that you're not supposed to do started a company had a baby

[00:36:26] I mean it's just me because I'm like around pregnancy and motherhood all the time but to me it feels very normal and the hardest part was being out of work for parental leave I mean ironically given what I do. But other than that, I think maybe like the only thing to consider

[00:36:43] The reality is when you have children, it's more just like a financial decision but I don't know that that's that different if you're a parent or you're not I mean at least I can speak to our decision my husband and I when we talked about me doing this full time.

[00:36:56] It was not at all about family building it was entirely about money.

[00:37:01] Like, can we afford for me to be not making any money for a year. And at the time we like ran all the numbers we had advice from other entrepreneurs who said, you need to pick a timeframe that you can make no money and not hurt your lifestyle.

[00:37:19] So I took the advice that I got from everyone and I thought that was great advice so we like mapped it out. And we said okay six months, I can go six months without making any money. We can go a year without being like really bad.

[00:37:31] Well, of course, I didn't pay myself for a year and a half. So it got very stressful and that was in the midst of like having a child and I mean it was really really really stressful.

[00:37:42] So I took the advice and then what always happens is like you always feel like you're real close, you know, we're so close we're so close I'm not going to give up and luckily I didn't give up because now we're doing much better of course.

[00:37:52] But I don't know that like the children part really like to me, I was always gonna have three kids always I'm gonna I just have to live my life and make these decisions regardless of the timing of that and I know that this is going to sound so like, I'm just saying this because of our brand.

[00:38:09] Honestly, I was better at my job because I was pregnant all that time, because I had this ticking time bomb in my stomach that was like, we have to hit these milestones because I'm literally going to be out for three months and so it just really drove me to make really smart decisions to use my resources efficiently

[00:38:28] So I think that like, I know I'm giving you a non answer, but I just don't know that like the having baby part of my journey was really entering my decision making so much.

[00:38:43] Nice. I think either way someone hopefully to someone hearing this is a bit relieving, I would say in many ways that that it's stay the course one thing actually I will end on with which is quoting you.

[00:38:55] And I think that from a different interview which which really resonated is just have a biased action, you know bring great things down to small steps do them get feedback make mistakes, learn and move on right and I think that's a great way to kind of end it and say thank you to you for giving me a bias to act and bring this podcast back to life.

[00:39:14] So thanks Alison. I love that. Thank you so much.