We get super nerdy with fellow marketer and fractional CMO, Shauna Armitage. Shauna has a podcast called Startup Renegades and at the time of recording this episode had recently joined as a co-founder of a FinTech company named Odo. We chat a lot about specific marketing tactics that are needed to see high growth. We talk about sales funnels, recurring revenue, and how to think about increasing your customer’s lifetime value. We also dive into her personal story of how she became an entrepreneur after being fired from an agency. She talks about how being a working mom and professional there is never any true balance. In fact, she is dedicated to unbalance and we are here for it! Tune in to this super fun and marketing filled conversation you won’t want to miss.

Listen in on a wonderful conversation we have with Suze Dowling who is an Aussie and the Co Founder and Chief Business Officer at Pattern Brands. We don’t want to spoil a lot for you all, but we are obsessed with their mission and business model! Suze has an incredible background, having co-founded a branding and marketing agency in New York City, where she and her co-founders particularly focused on disrupting the direct to consumer space. In that vein, we talk a lot about how to create a brand with connection. How does a founder who is selling a toothbrush, for example, create a brand story that will transcend the actual product? This is what branding is really about, connection. Suze also gives solid advice on the unpredictability of business. While it's important to create personal boundaries, and how as a recovering perfectionist, vulnerability has become her business superpower. We know you're going to learn a ton in this episode. So let's dive in!

Mari and Jess chat with Lindsey Wilson, Senior Manager of Partnerships at Lean In. Yes, you read that right, the Lean In, the one created by Sheryl Sandberg. We knew Lindsey’s courageous life and various acts of bravery would not only be inspirational to our listeners, but we knew she could also provide specific insights into how she has leveraged her innate qualities, like being a dreamer, a doer, a curious minded go getter and to help bring marriage equality to the entire southeastern United States. This is one of the many things she's used her space and her voice for. In this episode, we hope you leave feeling really inspired. We also hope you can learn more about how you can use your own gifts with grit and determination, along with a big ol’ slice of humbleness, to create the change you want to see in the world. Many entrepreneurs start companies because they want something to improve or they want something to change. How do we listen across differences and get back to our why to really distill down the things that we care about the most, so that we can build lives that we really love? These are the things that we tackle in this episode, and we know that you're just going to absolutely love it.

We’re really excited to welcome our very first ever interview with a Lucy lab graduate! Her name is Brenda Chilstrom. She's a 30 year Pediatric Occupational Therapist with a focus on food therapy with her company, That Makes Sense OT. You’ll hear from a founder who is in the day-to-day transformation of the natural evolution of her business. She is along for the ride as she is growing her business based on her market demand and also her personal growth strategy. We get an up, close and personal view of what we like to call “the muddy middle.” Brenda and Jess chat about her natural evolution of niching down to a specific service type and how she chose to do that. We also chat about the many problems that exist in the traditional occupational therapy practice model. Brenda shares how after 15 years of being in private practice where she never needed or had a website and how that has all changed because she is pivoting her business. She's changing the game for families who cannot access traditional feeding therapy for their children. Specifically, what we love about Brenda is her humbleness, and her dedication to this evolution. Her business has changed a lot in 30 years and she's evolved right along with it step by step! We know you're really going to enjoy this episode.