Episode 386: Bonus Episode - Helping Girls Overcome Barriers to Become Entrepreneurs

0:00Hey, everyone. Today, we're playing you an episode from another podcast we think you'd really like. and it's called Side Hustle to Small Business, created by Hiscox. In this episode, they talk about helping girls overcome barriers when starting a business. And today, you'll meet Ebony, who launched an online platform aimed at helping girls build ideas and developing entrepreneurial skills. Listen to the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. New episodes every Wednesday. Welcome to the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast, powered by Hiscox. I'm your host, Sanjay Parikh.

0:40Throughout my career, I've had side hustles, some of which have turned into real businesses. But first and foremost, I'm a serial technology entrepreneur. In the creator space, we hear plenty of advice on how to hustle harder and why you can sleep when you're dead. On this show, we ask new questions in hopes of getting new answers. Questions like, how can small businesses work smarter? How do you achieve balance between work and family? How can we redefine success in our businesses so that we don't burn out after year three? Every week, I sit down with business founders at various stages of their side hustle to small business journey.

1:14These entrepreneurs are pushing the envelope while keeping their values. Keep listening for conversation, context, and camaraderie.

1:28Today's guest is Ebony P.A. Ramirez, a DEI consultant and founder of Build Her World, an app designed to help girls aged 9 to 13 build their businesses. She joins us today from Seattle, Washington. Ebony, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Sanjay. Glad to be here. Yeah, so I'm excited to have you because talking to somebody else that's helping founders, even though their young founders start their companies is always exciting to me. But before we get into that, give us a little bit about your background and what got you to where you are today. Okay. Well, you said it. I'm born in Seattle, Washington.

2:04I'm born and raised here, so I'm a Pacific Northwest, a diehard fan. Seahawks, all of it. I went to the University of Washington, grew up in a family of five, and we were very, I would say, entrepreneurial inquisitive or entrepreneurial adjacent. So parents were always asking us those questions, what do we want to be? What do we want to do? What do we want to try? And so those had their support. So I went to University of Washington and actually studied dance and fell in love with, you know, performance. And so I went to New York upon graduation and went to Alvin Ailey to study by an extension program and started to choreograph as well as perform.

2:42So my favorites are hip hop and modern and or some kind of fusion of the two. And I did that for about six years. And obviously, while you're dancing, you know, it does. We didn't have TikTok at the time or YouTube. So we couldn't make money immediately by sponsorship. So, you know, you needed a place to like cushion that bank account. So we I ended up going to executive administrative route, which in New York is a career all in itself and pays extremely well. And so I was able to do that to support myself as well as audition and take on side jobs for dancing. And I ended up at Goldman Sachs, which was probably not good for my artistic career because I soon learned how much money I was missing out on.

3:20And so by that, I learned a lot about the stock market and it happened to coincide with the 2008 crash. And so I ended up moving from there, but taking all of this kind of like newfound knowledge of money as well as insight on, wow, maybe I should actually go make more money dancing. So I kind of hung up my dancing dreams at that point, ended up through a couple of different roles, Bloomberg, and then I landed at a startup. And by that time in my career, I thought, you know, I think I want to do entrepreneurship. I worked directly with the founder of the company at Conductor, and I just loved being in that seat.

3:58Every day is a new day. And I wanted to either become a venture capitalist or launch a company, but I wanted to get some Silicon Valley experience. So I popped over to Silicon Valley and I was just so lucky enough to get hired by the team at Oculus. And at that time it was their EA, but I was very, very focused on DEI really, really well from birth pretty much. And so I grabbed all the opportunities and then transitioned into a PM role there and loved it for four years. Popped into after that, taking a little break, raised a venture capital fund. And then because I wanted to see what that would feel out, you know, test out my fundraising skills.

4:35Did not too bad. And then I decided that Builder World was probably something that needed to exist. And so I started to work on that. Yeah. Just for listeners to make sure they know DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, and PM role, you said a product manager, right? That's what you're right. PM could be product manager. I was a program manager, just to be clear. Program manager. Okay. Yeah. See, Good thing I clarified. Awesome. So was this the first time, so Build Her World, is this the first time you've started your own company? Or, you know, you said you were entrepreneurial adjacent, which I love that word, when you were younger.

5:13Were you doing some hustling things when you were young? And what was the first thing? Yes, but much more socially. So like the money part didn't come until later. So I, by the time that I was, oh gosh, like 13, I was already a pretty dancer. And so a lot of people kind of would come to me and ask me to perform. So I started to perform, started my own dance group in junior high, um, and then started another one in high school in high schools when I started to get paid. Um, and then also at the university of Washington, I started the dance group there and we obviously started to get paid there too.

5:45So I would say from the dance perspective, I was very much, um, getting paid, uh, before, um, again, not as lucrative as the TikTokers, but enough to keep me, you know, energized and passionate and like, okay, I can probably fuel this career for a little bit. Yeah. I think your story there shows timing is everything when it comes down to it. Like just a few years later and TikTok, you would be the new Charlie D 'Amelio or something like that. So, okay. When you decided to go in and explain to us what Build Her World is actually before I ask you that question. So it's essentially a platform for girls to learn what entrepreneurship is.

6:26Entrepreneur is not necessarily a word that at that age and at that group actually like adapt or adopt quite quickly. So I changed it to builder because that's kind of a term that really encompasses the crafting, the building, the creative right around 10 to 12 or 10 to 13 generation alpha girls. That's what we're focusing on. Those are the ages in which parents finally kind of get it that you are kind of consistently learning a new tool or a new craft. And it's really the age where you start to get really good at building your skill set in a particular craft. And so I felt it was really important to grab at that age.

7:03It also happens to be the ages right before you start all of that insecurity that starts to mount up. Right. And, you know, 14, 15, 16, you start to question yourself and doubt yourself. So it was really important for me to get in at that intersection to start building those skills. And really, it's like it's more muscle building, in my opinion, than anything else. If a girl actually builds a company out of it, that is I mean, that's creme de la creme. That's me hitting it out of the park. But I would say more importantly, it's about inclusive collaboration. It's about understanding that a setback is just you got to change your mindset and keep going after the skill.

7:37And then the most importantly is the fundamental like entrepreneurship skill sets that a lot of boys get, but a lot of girls don't get. Yeah, yeah. I love that. And it's funny you mentioned that that nervousness or self-doubt. We hear that so many times with our guests on this podcast where I ask the question of, you know, like, you know, what would you do differently or something like that? And a lot of it is that self-doubt of like, well, I don't know all the things that I need to know. And honestly, most of us that start companies, we don't know all the things. And you're building the bicycle as you're pedaling down the street for almost everybody, even the people that you see that are successful.

8:20Exactly. They have done the exact same thing. So let me ask you this then. When you were starting this, was there something that made you nervous about doing this? And how did you overcome that for yourself? Yeah, I would say there's two main things. So if you look at the app, it's a very diverse character kind of rap, meaning the branding of it is essentially through six different characters of girls, all of various backgrounds. So from a Black American, Asian American, Southeast Asian American, Latin American. And I mean, I have everything to be represented and I'm probably missing some just because this world is so beautifully diverse.

8:56But it was really important to me to kind of create characters that girls would be able to connect with to kind of tell the story and guide them along their journey. And I am not a illustrator. So I had to figure out how to how to create these cartoon characters. And again, this is before any kind of A.I. cartoon making or, you know, a little bit before, like maybe the gig economy where you can just hire anybody. So I had to figure out how to do that. I, of course, did not draw them, which I think that's why they are beautiful, because I was able to get my hands on some extremely brilliant illustrators and trying to figure out and identify that.

9:29That was the first one that I had to really like get over and not get intimidated about. And then the second piece is I am not I can do a little bit of unity as a coder and a little bit of like HTML or CSS. But let's be real, like coding has gone way past that now. And so, I mean, it's gotten way more sophisticated and I was not about to take a class and then crash course this thing. So I had to figure out how to hire a development team and work closely with them, adopt their language and really try to come up to speed so that we can have like really great communication and and work together to build the app.

10:05You know, I have I will say that I had a benefit of being in tech for a while. So I had a little bit of introduction to a lot of those terms and processes, but it was a whole different thing doing it on my own and, of course, on my own budget. So those are the two things I had to get over. Yeah, yeah. You know, I pretend to code still to this day. I wasn't a good coder 20 years ago. And now it's like, oh, I'm probably really, really not good at this point. But we're going to avoid that subject for now. Support for this podcast comes from Hiscox, committed to helping small businesses protect their dreams since 1901.

10:43Quotes and information on customized insurance for specific risks are available at Hiscox.com. Hiscox, business insurance experts. Okay. So when you decided, what was it that made you take that leap? You're doing a venture fund, doing all these things. What made you decide like, hey, I want to go all in on this one thing? Was there an event? Was there like some aha moment that caused you to think like, I got to do this all in? I would say that when I was in venture and I would, it was just as hard being in venture as a woman in tech, specifically a woman of color in tech, as it was in being in a tech company, right and so I would talk to a lot of the women and a lot of them were having fun but some of them weren't and so it kind of like I don't know something kind of you know went off in me a little bit of like am I having fun right now um because I really do believe that you should really love what you do um you just get that much more at it out of it and so um I would work with the founders and I realized that I had just a very good way of working with founders and I was like you know this is, this is amazing.

11:53I feel like I'm getting fed just as much as I get the feedback that they're feeling, feeling like I'm adding value to them. And so that probably was it for me when I said, I need to go in all on this. And then I would say the second piece of that is, you know, sometimes frustration fuels, right. And so it motivates. And so I got very frustrated, not seeing enough younger girls having the opportunities. If you take a 13 year old kid from Silicon Valley, that's me, the boy, oftentimes you're going to find that that kid has either launched something, his mother or father has launched something, they're about to launch.

12:25And, you know, they had the terminology, the vocabulary. And I was frustrated by that. But if you took a girl, not necessarily you were going to get that. Not that they couldn't do it because they're obviously brilliant, but it wasn't any targeted or geared focus to that. And so that really made me mad. So I was like, it's time. It's just time. And I think I waited a couple of years thinking another group would do it. And I still see that it's not done. And I was like, yeah, It's time. Let's just go. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's funny. I do the same thing. I've got a long list of ideas and I'm very happy when other people do them because that's one less thing that I have to do.

13:00All right. Cause the list is already wrong. I'm not going to get them all done anyways. But sometimes people just don't, don't do some of these. What is wrong with you people? Okay, fine. I'll do it. And, and it's nice to hear that you're the same way. Yeah. Okay. So, So the company, is it just you? Is it more people? How big is the company right now? So I would say from a technical standpoint, the company's technically like three, but 1099 are contractors. I haven't hired any full-time yet. I'm on track to do that probably in about another year. I'm probably going to be here by myself and with a couple of contractors, but I'll probably onboard maybe one or two contractors.

13:39As we've just kind of hit one of our major clients, will need a little bit more support in the kind of organization of stuff. So I think that will be growing a little bit more this year faster than I anticipated. Yeah, so you got a couple of people and then basically flex up with a development team and all of these ad hoc illustrators and folks like that. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, so let's switch gears a little bit. Even though you're helping girls with their businesses, running your own business is stressful. And so how do you manage the stress of owning a business and everything else that happens in life?

14:21How do you balance these things for yourself? Gosh, what a great question that one is. I would say, and do I have a one point answer? Like, I don't, you know what I mean? There's like not just one answer. No, it's a great question. I so balance is not is not quite the word that I embrace. Let's start there. I think that you always. Is it juggling? It is juggling. Yeah. Yeah. It's not. It's not a balance. It's not. It's not. There's some things require your attention at different times. Right. And so I think that when I'm able to kind of shortchange a little bit on the DEI consulting, I can beef up more of the focus on the builder world.

14:58and then knowing when it's the right time to beef up and then when it's okay to get back to what's truly paying my mortgage and all my other bills, right? So also I would say that I happen to have a pretty good like support team, meaning I've built some amazing relationships and network with people that have been founders that I can go to that keep the stress down, other entrepreneurs and other ways like real estate that I've built relationships with that can always remind me like, hey, what's the focus point here? I have an incredibly amazing husband who's completely supportive, 100 % sister, family.

15:36I mean, they're just all very supportive. And so they know when I need a moment to like pause and I'm not like overly burdened with things, you know, say, for instance, like if we're going to have a big cookout, don't expect me to cook something. Maybe I'll supply the, you know, the supplies of the meat or, you know, the sides. So it's really just like adjusting within every day, but knowing what's the most important to spend your time on. That's kind of how I balance. Yeah. So I'm not sure I realized this until now when you said this, but you're balancing between being a DEI consultant as well as Build Her World.

16:11Yes. What's your split between these two in terms of time? So I would say in the beginning of last year, it was more of like a 80-20 kind of. And I should say that in the DEI space, I'm also a coach for two other accelerators. So I have my hands in a lot of things, but that also keeps me really sharp to be able to, right, to bring those learnings to my business for Builder World. So I would say now the split is probably about a 60-40, 60 on Builder World and 40 on the DEI. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so your plan eventually is to go 100 % on Builder World. Yeah. Right. Okay. So that's great. So then let's talk about then the boundaries, because the consulting side is presumably the thing that pays the bills right now.

16:58How do you manage these things and make sure that you've got those guide rails and that you're able to spend the time on Builder World? Because that's where your passion is. Right. And that's where your hopefully future income and all that comes from. But right now, the moneymaker is the other thing. Right. How do you set the boundaries between these two? And then more broadly, how do you set the boundaries between, you know, business and personal life? Because you're doing two things. You've got a side hustle and a full-time, or maybe it's two side hustles. I don't know how you consider it. You're just hustling a lot.

17:32How do you make sure this doesn't eat up 24-7, you know, every day, every week, all the time? Oh, man. Can I say that it doesn't eat up? It eats up at least one weekend a month, for sure. But I'm working on it every day. I would say that time blocking is probably the best boundary that I put in place. And I'm pretty efficient now with my DEI practice. It's something that I've been doing for 10 years and officially, but I mean, like I've been doing DEI since high school and college, like the University of Washington, I was on their diversity advisory board. I mean, I've been doing it for a while, volunteering at various places as soon as I went to New York.

18:09So like I kind of live an ecosystem of the DEI. So for me, it's actually not quite hard. Um, that said, you know, obviously there's time that's required to my clients. Um, so I would say it's, it's time blocking is probably the most, um, to constantly checking in on my clients, making sure they feel that they've been, that they get, they're getting the value that I've committed to. Um, and if there's an issue, which luckily for me, thank the Lord, hasn't been an issue, um, you know, then I'm able to, you know, put a couple hours in, into Builder World. And then I would say constant communication, you know, with the family, you know, if I need a late night or an early morning communicating that, you know, hey, I'm not going to be available as soon as possible.

18:52So scheduling, I'm a pretty good scheduler. As I said before, I had experience as an EA, so I know how to schedule pretty well. So so that's where I would say. Also, I would say as far as the boundary goes, I don't subscribe to like I hustle is definitely like part of part of it. There's no way you can't do some of it, but I don't subscribe to like overly hustling. If something feels like it's getting to a place like good, great, perfection is not a place I ever live in. And so good and great is kind of what I go back into. One of the you asked about boundaries. So I think this is important to say.

19:27I don't I don't ever go to perfectionism. And and maybe like, you know, somebody will get hired later in the brand. And they're like, oh, this needs to be a little bit more perfect. Maybe I'll let them handle the perfection. But I think that good and great will get it there. Almost like, no, 98 % of the time. And so that's kind of the boundary that I do put for myself. It keeps me from being overly stressed. Yeah. That's an interesting insight because I tend to be more on the perfection side sometimes. And I'm very detail oriented. Like I like things to be right. And I'm a strong believer in when you're doing things, even the things that people don't see, they should be right as well.

20:10Because that one person that does see it will then appreciate all the effort in the whole thing. But I do recognize that sometimes that's not helpful in trying to accomplish things. So that is definitely a balance for me. You mentioned time blocking. Is there something that you do in terms of a tool or is it just using the calendar and just using it effectively? Or is there something that you do to to make that effective for yourself? No, it's very simple. It's color coding calendar and just using the calendar very effectively and and really putting in breaks for myself. Like, say, for instance, if you if I looked at my calendar, every minute of the day is probably pretty organized.

20:50Like the lunch is put in the break to take a walk is put in. And those are the kind of things that I kind of live and die by. I also have, I would say, another one that I do. I used to take a lot of kind of interruptive calls or emails. I don't do that anymore. And that has probably increased my efficiency quite a bit. Really thinking about why I'm using my time and what it's designated for and staying very close to that is probably one of the most important things that I've learned as far as allowing kind of those interruptive, oh, let me get back to this person. This person just pinged me. I really hold truth to my calendar in that sense.

21:22Yeah. And that's a hard thing because it's only gotten worse over time, hasn't it? Cell phones, and then we have email, and now you have things like Slack and Discord, and all of these things where it's constant notification that you feel like you're on somebody else's time and not your own. So that's an interesting insight. So in kind of your daily and weekly calendar, you mentioned lunch and going out, taking walks. What else is like constant that is like pre-planned in there that doesn't vary? Well, I was a dancer, so obviously a dance session is happening every day, just so you know. Nice.

21:57Every day it's happening. So, you know, that's a requirement for me. It's a way that I express and get it all out. So that's happening. Easier to do now that I'm working from home versus when I was in the office, obviously. I'm just having an image of you, Ebony, at Goldman Sachs, dancing in the office. And they're all like, why is she doing that? What is she doing exactly? is she have something good happen we don't know about what is happening um yeah goleman not so much maybe another company the startups you know they'll join in but yeah goleman not so much but it happened so a dance session every day that's that's good that's a good lesson for everybody like whatever your hobby is uh maybe schedule it in every day yeah you gotta keep it close um i do little photography so oftentimes on the walk i would take the 20 minute walk and just take pictures as well.

22:49So, um, and I feel like that keeps me creatively like motivated as well. Um, it also keeps me very humble, right? Cause I'm not great at it. So it keeps, keeps my humility intact. It's like, yeah, you got some learning to do. So it reminds me of that. What's your, uh, camera of choice. Are you just using your cell phone or is it an actual camera? It's an actual camera. Um, it's a Leica SL. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So nice camera. yeah uh we're a canon family ourselves but i started with canon i started with canon yeah yeah i started with canon canon's a great brand i love it yeah well like it makes some real and some of their newer uh cameras are really beautiful yeah oh my goodness not to mention performance but yes they also look good too so um which you know it's it's funny how much uh everything has changed in terms of how we view products you know if you think back 20 years ago So it just had to work.

23:43Yeah, absolutely true. And now it also has to look good. That's right. Because if something that works better than and doesn't look as good, it's just not going to sell. Yeah. And I think I'm happy about that being the place that we're in personally. I am as well. I have a high aesthetic for things. So, yeah, I would agree with that. I love, matter of fact, probably Leica, I mean, it's a beautiful product, period. Like as it, you know, it produces these beautiful pictures. but it's one of the most beautiful like pieces of technology made in the cameras. So like, I'm very attracted to that. So yeah, I'm, I'm the same.

24:16Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's switch gears a little bit and think about going back in time. You've had kind of a long career, spinning back to New York and being an EA and all these things, you know, if you could go back in time and do something differently, well, what is that thing that you do differently and why? Oh my gosh. Oh, that's an, I think that's an easy one for me. Um, I would probably have gone into science research. Um, and you know, when the COVID situation happened, that might've been the moment where I was like, shoot, did I miss my calling? Um, you know, to go and, uh, study sciences, um, particularly in, you know, uh, epidemiology or, or, um, oncology, those are the two that I would probably would have had the calling for.

25:02Um, I tried to go that direction in the beginning, but I was too much of a talker. So it did not work out for me. I did well with the grades, but I just talked a little too much. So I think that I wouldn't have focused for long hours. I worked in labs. It just, you know, they were like, get this girl out of here. They were not, yeah, it wasn't good. That's what I probably would have done, you know, maybe a different kind of impact to society that I think I would have wanted to aspire to. Yeah. I can see that as a necessary skill for somebody who's working a lab. My dad was actually a microbiologist for many, many years.