Nadya Okamoto: IRL business ideas and how to make a creator your cofounder

0:00Nadya Okamoto:Hey Chicago, class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast. So why wait to find your new fave footwear? Step into a local Crocs store and step into your new look. Try it. Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up, it shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest Crocs store today. Nadia Okamoto, welcome to Female Founder World. Thank you for having me. I can't believe we've got you in Sydney. When I saw you, one of the girls on my team sent me your TikTok and she was like, what is it, Sydney? Get her on the show.

0:40Oh my gosh. No, it's so crazy. I didn't even realize that you had fully moved back, but I think it's so exciting. It's been like a quiet move. And also, I'm back in the US all the time. Yeah. I mean, I don't blame you. It's gorgeous here. It is so beautiful. Completely idyllic. We haven't spoken to you in so long, but now you are co-founder and CMO of Pi, which is a, how do we explain it? real life social media yeah we basically say your real life social networking app because it kind of is a mixture of like community groups and community chats and then events are a part of it but i think a lot of people first see our app and they're like oh you're an events app and we're like but we're so much more than that you know it's like events are kind of like a product of like your overall community okay i'm gonna i want to talk a little bit more about that but first let's bridle off some of your achievements and who you are and what you've done oh my gosh you started a period care nonprofit when you're a teen called period you have about four and a half million tiktok followers more than 600 000 on instagram you co-founded august a period care company in 2020 2020 yeah launch 2021 yeah yeah um that brand is in target whole foods everywhere now walmart wow okay you are incredible you also work with uh cherub an investment platform that is now moving into bringing in creators as equity partners for brands and so that's very much an area of expertise there's a lot of things that I want to talk about okay but the first thing I want to talk about is pie great because I love you know like I love the in real life stuff yeah like a community girly like I love all of this space and I'm really interested about what pie is doing and I imagine you're someone who has a lot of opportunities presented to you and so when you pick something it's probably because you like really believe in it and it's the right partnership why this like why is this the space now I mean I fell in love with Pi in the most like unexpected career way you know I think for me I spent the last six years of my career focused on building a CPG business right and sort of accidentally found success with the content creation thing you know like when I first started August I wasn't like I'm going to be a tiktoker it was like oh I'm going to use content to drive the business.

2:51And then, wait, I'm actually really loving this. This is actually kind of fun. Wait, it can turn into like this whole other career and I'm making more money from it. And so I think that for me over the last few years, as the CPG business has been able to build way beyond me and like honestly not need me anymore, I started to really dive into my creator side of the business. And I think what I was craving was like IRL community, right? Because it's one thing to have millions of followers, but I've never thought of being a social media creator is like having a community because I don't know anybody's names.

3:22Yeah. I couldn't identify them. It's like that's why people say like parasocial relationship. Yeah. And to be honest, like I love the community once I meet them in person. I just don't really get the chance to. And then I also at the same time fell in love with running, started a run club with my sisters. Zoomies. Zoomies. And that became like this hobby and thing that we were doing weekly that I just loved creating and I loved hosting in real life. and I stumbled on Pi because actually my now co-founder described it as like swivel chair dynamics where like you run a community and it is so much fucking admin work to manage the emails the communications hosting the event designing it staying in touch with everybody coordinating sponsors like it is this sort of swivel chair of you have like eight different admin consoles and you're having to put together an event and I feel like I was on the search for my own thing of like I love events.

4:14I love Run Club. I like host I've hosted conferences in the past and loved them. But it's an admin. It's an admin challenge. Right. And so I sort of started falling in love with Pi because I saw that there was this incredible opportunity for it to be sort of the tech platform that enables community builders to just be able to focus on what they love doing, which is being super connectors and having tech really enable the work behind it. OK, I have so many questions about this. The first one I'll talk about. So the timing of this I think is really interesting for two reasons one is like AI and I feel like you know building businesses and spaces where AI isn't going to or tech isn't going to be able to take over and that's in real life and so from the position of yes actually like being the platform that facilitates that is really smart but also for the people building businesses yeah building events businesses it's a really interesting time to do that and then the second piece is like you and I I think first connected all that you got me onto Geneva back in the day and that used to be like a really great platform for this kind of thing they sold to Bumble became Bumble BFF and I feel like a lot of those communities just left and died and there was like this real like space to do something better and more intentional and I really missed it and then I saw what you were doing at Pi and I was like oh this feels like a really perfect timing for this kind of platform Well, I mean, I think for me, I mean, I've always been really passionate about community and what that actually means.

5:45You know, I think that community is such a buzzword that in many industries is sort of used to explain what an audience is. It's like they're not your social media followers. Exactly. But I think a lot of brands and influencers say, like, my community, but they're talking about the number of followers they have. But I've always felt really strongly and I've always like been very vocal about this for the last seven years. Like that is not a community. That's an audience. You have to take it a step further to foster that community and to like hear from the people who are in your community. I mean, I remember tools like Geneva and even looking at Discord and, you know, Facebook groups.

6:22And I think that for me, what is missing from platforms like Geneva and Discord is that they're very online. Right. And so, like, how do you create a platform that is a tech enabled AI? you know it might be ai powered in some ways but like it preserves that the end goal is human connection and fostering it and then how do you kind of create irl events to be something that inspires more irl moments you know and i think that's kind of a part that i really loved about pi is that for example with run club it's not like you come to run club and then that's it but like you come to run club and then you have this tech platform that allows you to like see who else is there see what they're going to and so it all kind of coexist co-exists with your online and your IRL life I love that I yeah I love events and I think a lot of people because they see female founder world summit will be in my dms asking about how to do events and what the opportunities are let's say someone is listening and they want to start something in this space what are the opportunities to actually make money or build a business around experiential yeah I mean what's crazy is that I think brands I mean we're seeing so much money go into IRL at the moment too yeah because hiring like everyone's hiring event managers and stuff now exactly I'm trying to hide one and I can't compete with like anthropic yeah but I think a lot of it is that you know the whole when you're online you know I forget what the number is but people say like advertisers are like you have to see a product seven times before you actually like pick it up right but I think in the context of IRL like you directly hand someone a product or you're directly introducing it to them.

7:55And that is immediately such a more intimate, more intimate experience. And I think especially on the CPG side, right, like content of people interacting with and using the product is so important, right? And I even think about like running a period brand before, where it's one thing for me to make content saying like, this is the softest pad ever. But it's another thing for someone to be like, holding it and you know, feeling it. And even getting someone to interact with a period product is so different than like, let's say a chocolate brand, right? I'm obsessed with this chocolate brand called Whims recently.

8:26But like an example, working in the food and bev space, right? It's one thing for them to be like, this is the most delicious product. It's another to be like, here's a free sample. And then you try it and you love it. Right. And so I think that it's essentially taking the demo, like that's kind of the business term for it, demo and sampling and doing it at scale. Yeah. I think that's a huge part of it. I think the other thing brands realize is that it's in many ways more affordable for them to lean into events than to like large scale performance marketing campaigns. Right. And so I think that as we live in an attention economy and the economy is having its own challenges, like brands are getting more creative.

9:04I will say the other part of this is that there's a really interesting intersection between IRL events and the creator economy, because what's beautiful about the creator economy is that like every anyone can kind of be a creator, Right. Like you pick up your phone and you start making content. And so it's kind of a UGC content generation thing to have an event. Right. Like if you think about we like I think about Zoomies, our run club, like it's not a run club for content creators. But like we love that all these people come to run club. And then we sit there in the afternoon a few hours later watching people post content and videos.

9:38And they're posting about all the things and the goodies at the event. So I think that brands are seeing that it's a marketing channel. It's sampling. It builds this deeper relationship. It's probably saving them dollars and the potential eyeballs that they're able to get from the content generated at that event. is also valuable. So you're seeing a lot of brands actually moving onto the platform to host their like in real life community there. Well, it's that, but also like ever since I announced, you know, now focusing on Pi, like my inbox is flooded with brands who are like, how do we gift to your creators?

10:09Right. And I think that where there's an interesting opportunity for Pi and like, this is not a separate business model we're going to do is like, I have been like, Hey brands, like I have all these creators. I want to incentivize them to keep hosting and I want to reward them with free things. And the brands are like, wait, you're not going to charge us a fee for that? Because there are agencies that make money by facilitating these sponsorships. And like, that's not our business model. I'm not trying to start an agency, but I'm like, we'll help gifting because like, we want to support the creators that are on the platform.

10:41And in our, in our world of pie, creators aren't necessarily social media influencers. They're people who are like creating events and experiences and then using the platform to build community interesting yeah okay but this is such a different world like i mean we've known each other for i mean closer to a decade and like i mean every major chapter of my career before this was in like menstrual health right and i would have never thought that like my new startup focus when i saw when i saw this news and like when you announced it immediately i thought that makes perfect sense yeah immediately no and i've heard that like I think my closest friends, I was so nervous to share, I'm going to make this cream move because I was like, I feel like I'm just known as the period girl.

11:27Is this going to work? But I think that it's been really refreshing that I think, especially the people who are closest to me are like, no, it just seems obvious. No one better than I. Yeah, and also you started in that space when you were, what, like 14? 16, yeah. I think you're allowed to evolve. Grow up. Yeah. I think we're allowed to pick a different thing for a little while. For sure. And I think maybe it wouldn't have made sense to like jump straight into like a different random CPG thing. But this actually feels perfectly aligned. I think it's really smart. I also love that you're doing the Run Club too.

11:59Like we have – and what you said about the content creation at the event because that's so true. We do a co-work cafe. We're like different, you know, self-employed, female finalists, whatever. And we'll just like pick a cafe and we'll all go and like co-work together, which is really cute. And the content out of it is like really fun as well. And it's not for that. I know there is a creator, but I feel like so many people who are entrepreneurial now are just documenting their lives anyway. Yeah. So you just end up with content from stuff like that. Yeah. I recently hosted my first co-working on Pi.

12:28I was like, I'm going to go. And I think only like eight people showed up. But I was like, I'm just going to go work at this cafe. We should like collab and do one together on Pi. I loved it. Like I thought it was just and people kept saying like, this is so amazing. And I got so much work done. Yes. And there's this term in like ADHD world. Body doubling. Body doubling. Yes. And I was like, no, so it literally is body doubling with energy around you. And yeah, I like love the co-working angle. And we're seeing a lot of that happen on Pi, too. It's like we can see it's so interesting to be on the back end of it where we can see like, oh, run clubs are having a moment.

13:01But so are like craft nights, mahjong and co-working. Yeah. Tell me more about like the spaces that you're seeing. Yeah. Like the hobbies or, you know, the things that people want to be doing in real life. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's two camps, which is like hobbies and meeting people around hobbies that have like honestly nothing to do with business. Like one of our top creators in New York is the Prospect Park Knitting Club. And the organizer, Belle, gathers hundreds of people at a time to like knit in the park. So do people pay for tickets? Like how does she monetize? My goal this month is to get every single one of you to switch your email marketing platform to OmniSend because you could save thousands of dollars a year on email marketing.

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14:59You've got all of your flows, all of your segmentation built. And I understand. but if you move to OmniSend today, they have agreed that the team will migrate you onto OmniSend for free when you get your paid plan. So you could be up and running in just five days, saving 35 % on the platform. It is an absolute no-brainer. Make the smart swap to OmniSend today. Use the code FFW35 to make sure that you get that 35 % discount. If email marketing is just quietly chewing up all of your budget check out omnisend.com forward slash female found world use that discount code or go and head to the link in the show notes it's a free event she's I think she's experimenting with some ticketing yeah and then there are some of co-working that are ticketed right where it's like you come you get a coffee you get you know maybe a little workshop so there are there are ticketing opportunities I will say like I think what pie really works uh pie really works for like free public big events right because like the people the users of the app are going on trying to find like low pressure things to go to yeah so less like i'm gonna pay 40 bucks and i don't really know what i'm getting and more like oh i'm free on saturday and i see 300 other people are going to this that could be cool right so like it is in that way it's like very much a gen z behavior of like seeing an event with 300 like the pop-up culture yes of being like oh that sounds good yes which is interesting because i think it's an intergenerational difference of like yeah sometimes i talk to you know older users and i'm like so what do you like just out of curiosity what do you think like you see something with 300 users and they're like that's not my thing right like how will i know anybody and so it's so interesting overwhelming overwhelming i will say i think what works on pi is like these large free accessible events and then of course there are some like smaller ticketed um things as well but i would say the buckets really are like of course there's all the networking events of you know people ambitious people who want to like you know meet other ambitious people and then it's like hobbies like whether that be knitting crafts games or run clubs so you've joined this business they've been around for what six years yes but i would say that like pie as many tech companies do like have many different stages i would say it's really only been in the last two years that like pie is what we see yeah and the the co-founder your partner in this now is andy dunn yes that his name and he was the founder of bonobos yeah which is the menswear brand and i actually met andy years ago he invested in my last company august and he at the time had like just published his book burn rate which was about um you know building bonobos while also having bipolar uh and not talking about it publicly and i think i always looked up to him as like a forward-facing founder who was like public about his mental health and i'm very public about having borderline personality disorder and so we just stayed in contact and I think it meant a lot to me that he came in as an angel investor into August and then I mean obviously like I've always been building community and in some way through different chapters of my career and actually interestingly enough I originally reached out to him because I was like I'm going to start a new company and the new company is going to be this community admin one-stop shop for run clubs and like I had this like pitch I was talking to my friend Aaron about like this is going to be like the most you were That's how you're in tech style.

18:20Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then honestly, like I had actually done some consulting gigs on the side in tech because I wanted to test out, like, is this an industry I want to be at? Like, am I ready to be a solo founder in tech when I have, like, no tech experience? And I learned real quick that I did not want to be a solo founder. Like, I mean, I have so much respect for Pi's co-founder and CTO, Hunter, and, like, running a team of engineers. But I think it I very much I think rightfully did not feel like I was cut out to run a team of engineers as someone who has like no engineering background. Very different zone of genius.

18:55And it's also incredibly valuable. And like that has nothing to do with that. But that would like like really detract from the business if you're spending all your time doing that when you should be doing what you what you're doing now. So when you join now that you've joined, like how you what are you going to be changing about the brand? like how are you going to be growing it what's the what's working like what's your vision i mean so when all of us who are like also trying to build things yeah so when i officially joined pi at 300 000 users now we're like 340 000 yeah but half of that is in chicago right and so like oh yeah interesting right because andy is from chicago he started the company because he had moved to chicago like it is and the whole team except for me is chicago five days a week in office.

19:39And so part of me coming on was like, this app has been around for a couple years, incredible product, incredible team, incredible foundation. And my role is like, how do we then take the world of pie and introduce it to more people? Right. So they've, they've launched, you know, New York, LA, San Francisco, um, Austin. And I was, I honestly organically became a super user of the app in New York and then an overly involved advisor and then was talking to Andy constantly and just got very, very obsessed with what they were building. Okay. So what are you, um, what's the strategy in New York? Are you going to be, is it like, okay, I need to find more posts.

20:20I need to be building out the users on the app. Like, are you going to be content? We have to do both. What do you do? It's like, honestly, what's crazy is I'm so happy to be back in this, like, year one through three of the startup you know i think because it's just so you know this there's like a founder yourself it's like i thrive in this like chaotic yeah like throwing me in throat like terrifying like we have a product and we have to like prove that it works yes so i feel like i'm back in the kind of like early days grind but like so to answer your question i think it's all of it right it's like we need amazing hosts and we need great users and we need a lot of them on both sides How are you going to get them?

21:00So basically, like, we really lead with, like, having the best creators and hosts on the platform. So I run what we call our Pi Creator Club, which is basically our creator rewards program. So we have creators who are making upwards of$3 ,500 a month. Oh, wow. And we're rewarding them for hosting on app, driving new accounts. Some people earn that, like, in one event, right, if they have, like, 500 people coming. And then, again, like, we put our money directly into the creators rather than, like, spending it on. performance marketing, like this is our performance marketing. And we're using the model of the how it's monetized to really incentivize like getting lots of people and then keeping those people engaged, right?

21:41So I think for us, it's like investing in those creators and like building those relationships. And then beyond capital, like something I'm really passionate about is like, how do we then also support those creators and event hosts by giving them other amplification, brand partnership opportunities so which is why i've been like so excited to have brands working with me on the platform to gift to our creators for events freebies for their guests and then also really building out like a robust social media engine that's all about highlighting like how communities are being built and then i think on the joiners side it's like the creators are really bringing in that magic in the audience yeah and then what our engineers at pyre are really working on is like, how do you then create a product where a joiner joins and the experience of being on the app, you immediately see like, there's so much to do.

22:31There are so many things to go to. So you're not joining and only going to the one thing that you signed up for, but like that you, it becomes part of your life as you're building out the rest of your social life. How does pie make money? Well, how will that's the exciting part of being in consumer tech is that we are pre monetization and it's right now we're like pure, we're just focused eye on the prize. of like users yeah get people on the platform yeah i love okay which is so refreshing yeah and exciting yeah you're like also like that's that's what you're a genius at as well okay so for us female founder world let's say we used pi like is there a community hub in there like what does it look like well that's what is so exciting is like we launched something new you know yeah community home so um it's the best way to describe it is that it's like next gen facebook groups with with like a really robust chat function using kajabi well so basically like community homes actually came from like andy and i just talking a lot um earlier this year about like i needed one place to put all of my events for run club and i wanted people who were at run club to be able to join and be like oh i met this person this is kind of what they look like i want to be able to get in touch with them yeah so essentially like what community um homes is is that it is that one-stop shop for running the community organizing it and then communicating with your community members so it has like the bulletin board sort of feed of posts of different community members can post then you can see everybody who's in that community yeah um so like my run club now has like a thousand the largest community home on pi i think is at 13 000 okay people who are interested in music and then you have the plan section which is like all of the different irl plans and with pi each plan also is a group chat and that's been a huge unlock for me as an organizer of like I mean you see going to events there's so many questions beforehand and what's so heartwarming is that I see a lot before of these events like people are going in and chatting I'm feeling nervous or I'm feeling excited like anybody else coming from this area and want to carpool but you really see community being built through these chat functions before IRL during IRL and then after IRL and I think that's kind of where community homes is that like you know build for irl but then irl coming back into the home and then kind of like continuing to compound and build on each other this is one of those tools or like platforms that i just really want to work because i just think it makes it's just something that we need yeah we really need people to get offline yeah so i'm yeah i i just think it's i'm glad that someone like you is working on it but you know what's interesting is something that I have felt really strongly about since I joined Pi was the messaging and the brand of Pi used to be a lot more anti-phone and it was about get off your phone go be in real life and something like I feel strongly about is that like I'm a content creator and I love I like I'm not I should do digital detox but like I actually don't have an interest in locking my phone away yeah like yes there's a time and a place but like I I think that it is it would be hypocritical for us to be like a digital tool and app that's telling people to like put their phones away yeah we'll also try to build like good digital tools yeah and I think about the same thing in the world like I think that with AI there's obviously a lot of tension around like tech and AI how does it come into your life so I think part of why I have become so passionate about this space is that like I do think it's like here right like we live in a tech enabled world and these social platforms are not going anywhere and there's so much opportunity to lean into it and so I think something I'm passionate about with Pi is like how do you build a digital tool that empowers you to get off your phone but like can continue to basically be like your side kick in like reminding you to have those real life experiences and like build community without also like being like anti-tech.

26:33That makes sense. There's been a lot of just chatter lately about creative equity partnerships and coming on board as co-founders and chief creative officers and these kind of roles that didn't used to exist even like three years ago. You have done that with Cherub, which is an investment platform that basically connects brands with angel investors and then has kind of gone heavily into connecting brands with creators as investors or equity partners. You came aboard as to support them in doing that. You are obviously a creator yourself and now you've joined as CMO at, at Pi, which is, I feel like a little bit of a different thing because you are also operating up like, and you have the business experience, but I want to know what you think about this space.

27:18And from the perspective of someone who is listening and is a brand founder and he's thinking yeah I want to work more deeply with a creator and I don't have that skill and I know that I don't have that skill yeah how do I bring someone on board what do those deals look like and how should founders be thinking about it I mean so this is like one of my favorite topics to talk about right now and has been for like the last year but like I think I was sort of early in adopting the founder strategy of like becoming an influencer right Like, again, I raised the pre-seed round with my co-founder of August.

27:53We raised$2 million. I was not a TikToker. I think I had, you know, a few, I think maybe I had 30 ,000 on Instagram. I don't really remember. But, like, I wasn't even on TikTok. Now I have$6 million across socials. And the majority of my income is as an influencer. But I do think, like, my career was, like, right place, right time. 2021 social media forward founder. And it, like, did benefit the business so much in the early days. Right. Where especially as a CPG brand, where you're trying to build brand awareness to be able to have someone who's like making content at scale and consistently going viral.

28:27The amount of capital that saves you from having to spend on advertising to spend on influencers to spend on creative is crazy. Right. Like we I think August, like especially in the early days, like we were making waves by being able to say, like, we're growing organically. Right. We're not heavily dependent on paid. The creative is like made in house for zero dollars on my iPhone and is real time. And I'm not involved in the business at all. And I think the business is in a very different place now. I'm still on the board. But in the early days, it was like forward facing founder stuff. Right.

29:02And I when that started becoming a thing, I started getting hit up by a lot of other founders who are like, help me do that. how do I also do that and I think they always expected me to be like oh you should also make content right like pull out your phone make content and I'm like I do believe that if it's right for you but like you have your zones of genius I've seen friends who like are not meant for content do not like the camera will spend hours trying to make one video like I make a video in like 30 seconds right it's natural for me it's like you don't even notice no I'm not I'm a perfectionist about it i don't overthink it like it does not drain me and there are things that drain me right like i'm not your financial model person right but like i think that like i don't believe every founder should be forward-facing on on a content side that being said if they can and they want to and they're good at it it's a huge opportunity because you can potentially save so much capital which is a finite scarce resource in the early days of a startup up so if if you can great but for most it's not that's not the case so then i think before i had started that my last company august i knew nothing about like equity right like my experience before this was like non-profits or like working in in on an agency side you were also very young yeah very young so so like coming go going into august like raising capital and like learning all the language of like convertible notes and safes and how do you think about vesting schedules and like what does it actually mean to have equity and like I think I got a crash course and like the value of equity right and you know could be especially as a founder you're not paid a ton of money as a founder like you that the money you raise the millions of dollars you raise goes into the company that's not yours yes so like your value is equity so I think I got this big crash course on like the value of equity but what's so interesting is that I felt that there was no conversation about equity in my creator life, right?

31:01Like in talking to my agents and my managers and the brand deals, like equity was just equity wasn't even a word brought up. And maybe that's because like, I'm not a celebrity. And I'm not at that point. But like, I kind of felt like, okay, creators are trying to differentiate themselves. And I see that in this world, try to differentiate themselves, they all want a brand, they all want to kind of like be co founder of something, but they don't really want to start the business, right. And then founders need attention they're thinking about running you know paid through influencers but especially early stage they can't spend fifty thousand dollars on one tiktok video and like fifty thousand dollars is not a higher end of what it costs yeah right for a big creator yeah so like i think that that's where like it's this is an area of interest that i'm super in i've just been so fascinated by because it's like there's this gap of like founders need founders need credibility and impressions and conversion and you know whatever helps to build the business creators are because the creator economy has become so saturated because anyone can be a fucking content creator are looking for opportunities to diversify and to be able to like set themselves up and generate wealth in different ways so it's just like this beautiful i think space that there is a lot of activity but like i became really excited about what cherub was building because they're really focused on like bridging that gap of like creators to building ownership.

32:28Now, I will say, again, I loved raising capital from creators in my experience like now and in past businesses. But it is really hard because there's a huge education gap, right? Like when working with creators and even with those agents and managers, like you have to explain what equity is, what vesting is, what stock options are, because a lot of advisor creator deals are in stock options. Like there's so much terminology that I think has been gatekept and hasn't allowed, you know, to democratize that opportunity. And so I think that's what I'm really eager, honestly, to still figure out how to use my platform for is that there's like so much education needed.

33:09Okay. If someone is a founder and they want to bring on a creator in that kind of way to their business, how do they incentivize? how do they find the right person like what's one piece of advice that you have for someone who's thinking I want to do this but like yeah I dm'd someone and they didn't respond you know what I mean like how do you how do you actually do that I mean I think first of all like not every content creator is like a content creator isn't like good because they have a lot of followers right there's so much more to consider whether it be the the type of engagement and also like their niche right Like I think a lot about how like now I run.

33:47I'm obviously passionate about running. I talk a lot about it. So like I am the right person to work with a lot of fitness brands. But like as an example, like I'm honestly not the right person to be talking about like a cake brand because I am gluten free. And like I shouldn't be the face of like a cake, you know, just as an example. Not a fit. So I think you have to find the right fit. And then in terms of how you pursue it, like it's not from a founder side, there's so much you can do on the legal side to protect your equity and to incentivize performance. Right. It doesn't have to just be here's 30 percent of the company.

34:23It's often, by the way, advisor agreements are like standard, a quarter of a percent, point to five percent of equity, which, by the way, means that you have to educate the creator that they hear a quarter of the percent and they think that's nothing. Yeah. But in the world of especially VC backed companies like point to five percent, like that is standard equity, especially if you're not doing that much. Right. But I think there's a lot you can do in terms of like a cliff, which is you don't get anything before, you know, one year. If you if you aren't active by this point, you don't get any equity like the access to the equity.

34:57you can tie to deliverables you can tie it to a vesting schedule and so even when i am working with companies to build out my own potential ownership stake like i'm all about like hey protect your business if you're a founder like protect your business i don't deserve any equity off the bat i don't believe that i do if you feel most comfortable tying it to like one hour of phone call a month right or like maybe it's three posts a year great and then i'm not gonna get five percent up front maybe it's five percent over the course of the next 10 years if i'm still involved and if you're not involved in three years your vesting stops right but again i think like there's so clearly there's so much education and there's no right answer yeah but i think that's really helpful to explain to people like what your options are and how you should be thinking about that and how you should be protecting yourself as well yeah well and and when it comes to like equity and negotiating this like there's no right answer and it's kind of whatever you make of it right like And that's where I think having education is so important because like, you know, founders can kind of carve out their own lane and then so can creators.

36:00And then you just kind of have to like meld expectations, you know, together. I want to talk a little bit more about like content and platforms. And I don't know, I just I feel like every year things have just shifted so much. And I'm sure that you see it and you're very much like at the pointy end of it as someone who is creating content for brands for yourself. And this is the world that you live in. what are you seeing working or what do you think is like coming up now? If you were someone that was trying to build a brand on a platform, like where would you be looking and what would you be doing?

36:30Like now we've got like Substack. It's now a whole other thing. And I'm just like, okay, cool. Now I need a Substack, you know? Yeah. But how do you think about what platforms to invest your time? What kind of content is resonating, especially with like all of this AI generated content that now we're seeing on Instagram and TikTok? It's really interesting. Yeah. um i don't have a right answer to this like i just want to be inside your brain like it doesn't have to be right okay my honest answer is that like i'm so stressed all the time about how many new platforms there are and like because you feel stressed about it oh yeah even with an existing like six million i think i feel even more stressed about it because you have something to lose and you have an opportunity to like transfer like i feel in some ways like i don't really have an excuse you know oh my god you're so hard on yourself no i'm like i'm definitely very hard on myself but like for but so for me like that's my honest answer is like i very much feel stressed about like like i have i'm actually the two platforms i'm really leaning into right now are substack and linkedin but it's because social like short form video is fully integrated into my life like you don't have to remind me i make content about everything i'm obviously in sydney Australia right now I'm posting like five to ten times a day that is integrated into my life I don't have a to-do list on it it is just like fully integrated in my life Substack and LinkedIn are not integrated into my life so I now have a content a calendar invite every single day every afternoon that says post on LinkedIn yeah and then post what are you posting like who who is Nadia on LinkedIn I don't know I'm still figuring it out like honestly like I've been I think that I should be leaning into video I'm I really nerd out yeah I really nerd out on the analytics on on socials so like I I am really looking at like what's resonating what works and then I'm curious about that what are some of the metrics that you look at in your content to say that worked or this didn't work I don't look at engagement I or I don't look at views and impressions I look at engagement because and I talk a lot to Andy about this with Pi because it's like obviously I'm really focused on growing pies channels as well but for me like when I look at like a TikTok if something has like half a million views but it has 2 ,000 likes I consider that a flop because I'm like it might have been seen and it might have like gotten a chance on a for you page or like one person shared it but like people aren't engaging with it and like engagement meaning someone likes shared comment that's what you want to see on Instagram I'm like particularly interested in like the share count, like what people, what we're posting that's resonating so much that someone is like sharing it with their audience, posting it on their stories.