Sky's the Limit 14 Nov 2023

Importance of User Research for Brand Success with Michelle Parsons

 

Michelle Parsons is a Product Executive in Residence at Product School, the global leader in product training with a growing community of 2 million product professionals. Michelle has leveraged her 15 years in the industry to develop product management certification programs to help product creators achieve their career goals. As a product leader knowledgeable in search, discovery, and personalization, Michelle has implemented solutions and created user-centric products for leading consumer tech companies, including Netflix, Spotify, and Hinge, a mobile dating app. She is also a board member for Sky’s the Limit.


 

 


 

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • How Michelle Parsons earliest entrepreneurial experience influenced her professional background
  • Michelle divulges how her improvements to Hinge’s user experience affected the brand’s growth
  • The value of authenticity when establishing personal and professional relationships   
  • How aspiring entrepreneurs can use their products to connect with consumers 
  • The criteria Michelle considers when interviewing candidates 
  • Michelle advises entrepreneurs to prioritize solidifying a balanced schedule

In this episode…

A business' main objective is to convince consumers why their product is a necessity, and many entities will go to any length to attract as many patrons as possible. Conducting business that is strictly transactional causes missed opportunities. These missed opportunities include the ability to provide a personalized customer experience. Neglecting the user experience can cause your audience to become disinterested and disengaged from your brand. What can you do to avoid this oversight and ensure maximum consumer engagement? 

Small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs without a seasoned reputation must strategize ways to build personal connections with customers. Michelle Parsons, a product advisor, believes business owners severely underestimate the impact of user research on brand success. Understanding who your audience is and why they resonate with your brand encourages personalized relationships, helping you gain loyal customers. 

On this episode of The First Buck Podcast, Nicolas Cary welcomes Michelle Parsons, a Product Executive in Residence at Product School, to discuss how establishing a personalized connection with customers fosters a thriving company. An anecdote divulging how Michelle improved Hinge’s user experience and its effect on brand growth highlights how a personalized user experience bolsters brand engagement. Get inspired by her story and the wisdom she shares with fellow entrepreneurs.

Sponsor for this episode:

This episode is brought to you by Sky’s The Limit, one of the largest nonprofit programs for underrepresented young adult entrepreneurs in the US. Sky’s The Limit is a quick-growing digital platform that connects entrepreneurs with their peers, volunteer business mentors, training resources, and funding.

Our goal is to develop the social capital that founders need to chase their business dreams.

To learn more, please visit www.skysthelimit.org today.

Episode transcript

Intro  0:04  

Welcome to The First Buck Podcast, where we feature stories about entrepreneurs and the people who support them. Now, let's get started with the show.

Nicolas Cary  0:14  

Hello, and welcome to The First Buck Podcast brought to you by Skysthelimit.org. We feature stories about entrepreneurs and the people who support them. Today we're joined by Michelle Parsons, former chief product officer at Hinge, where she led the product design and research organization across growth, core experience and trust and safety. She was also the lead product innovation at Netflix product lead at Spotify and head of product and hotels at Kayak. So we've got someone with a lot of experience with us. Today, she serves as the Product Executive in Residence at Product School, where she is leveraging her 15 years of experience to build best in class product management certification programs to help aspiring and seasoned product leaders to unlock more success in their product careers. Michelle also serves on the board of Skysthelimit.org. Michelle, we're so happy to have you with us today. Tell us how did you earn your first buck.

Michelle Parsons  1:11  

And Nick and I'm excited to be here. So my first buck, and I'll have to go back to it as a kid, I honestly was always looking at how to make money. So a bit about me is I come from a single mom background. And so my mom worked a lot of jobs on her own, she would I think, you know, had this entrepreneurial mindset that I just observed growing up. And so the way that I earn my first buck is actually twofold. So one is my sister and I would go around back in the day collecting pin Kandra aluminum cans, we were just fine. You know, we would save them after like sodas he drank or whatever the case may be when you're a kid when he asked me every single a neighbor's house and collect their cans. And so there was like, this was before recycling was, you know, the thing to do. And so you could basically take big aluminum soda cans, to this recycling spot that was like, in this like, really like sketchy part of town, like by the railroad tracks, etc. When my mom would drive us there, we would take these bags of cans, and I think you know, we could get a couple of bucks for them. But back in the day, we would use that to buy you know other candy or snacks or whatever the case may be convenience store around the corner from our house. We also loved to sell I think my sister and I we are always just like trying to figure out like how to kind of make a buck and you know how to make make sure we had money for the movies or whatever he wants it to do. And so we also got really into her like garage sales and flea markets specifically, again, before flea markets were kind of like the indie thing to do in order, eBay, etc. Yeah, well before kind of, you know, personal computing, etc. But we, we would basically take it back to our old clothes or older toys, whatever the case may be. And we were to have our mom, you know, Sign us up for the flea market or, you know, we would hold up signs all across your neighborhood for garage sales. And we'd basically try and almost like market this to the extent right, we'd make great signs with great slogans and put them everywhere with arrows to come to our place. And sometimes he would take turns like standing in a corner to like, usher people into kind of our driveway. And then a flea markets were great, because then we would haggle with people, you know, we create, like bundles and deals, you know, buy a pair of jeans and get a t-shirt for, you know, half off, etc. So we're always looking at ways to just like kind of like take the things that we already had it available to us, and then repurpose those so that we you know, we can a like, help people who want it that that stuff and then also make some money.

Nicolas Cary  3:45  

I love that those stories, especially imagining you and your sister, you know, running a two sided marketplace on the front lawn selling barely used toys, or whatever that is actually, it's such a great question. Because everyone starts off as an entrepreneur, and they use the resources around them. You know, they're the skills or the time they have to fill a small gap or a small need locally. And then the small lessons can teach us a lot about how to scale up those experiences. And so, let's talk a bit about your professional career. I mean, you've been so accomplished. How did that kind of get started? And what were maybe the sort of like pivotal moments that helped you evolve and grow into more responsibility.

Michelle Parsons  4:30  

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, again, I'm I would consider myself someone who's a self starter and he's constantly looking outward at people who have, who I admire who have success, who I think have something to teach me in trying to, like consume and learn anything I possibly can from these people who are experts in their field or who could potentially mentor me so the way I got started in my career was actually pretty unique. Do you actually want to become a doctor when I was growing up, I think I spent every single waking moment thinking about that like, to the point where I was even like nursing. So my teddy bears and things of that nature, right? You're just constantly just like wanted to be in that particular field. It wasn't until I spent about a semester living in El Salvador, my senior year of college and I kind of made the decision to be going to pivot just a little bit, I was reading some public health, education and an onside Medical Brigades in rural communities across El Salvador, with a group of other students. And I was the I was the program kind of lead for the healthcare portion of this, of this semester abroad. And I just realized, I don't know what I'm doing here, I'm kind of organizing and operationalizing, a bunch of these kind of on demand Medical Brigades. And I didn't know what this what this job was called. But I was like, I know, I know that I'm, what I'm not doing is sitting in the room at the doctor, which I really want to do. I'm talking to patients, but I was getting a lot of energy from it. And so I ended up going at the time into teaching just because I had spent most of my time in internships for you know, medicine, healthcare, space, etc. And so I didn't really have anything else that I was good at. But I knew I could teach science. And so I said, I could teach high school science. So I joined Teach For America taught in Dallas. And then through that, I discovered the power of technology and just like the inequities in such a very personal way, in the education system, so I ended up trans transitioning into a technology role within the ad tech space. And then very, very quickly realized that I loved the fast paced nature of kind of the consumer landscape, there's a lot more psychology there. It also just like way, we're open to a lot of testing, right, whether that be testing things with your users directly, or AV testing, kind of on your websites and apps and the speed of development is also just so quick. So I am this very rapidly, again, like a growth mindset learners mindset, grasped onto a lot of these concepts, always like pushing myself with the things that I did not know, right. And I think that's one of the things that I think was able to help me accelerate my career is one saying, like, I don't know this stuff, but I'm not going to be scared to go and just put myself out there and try and learn it. I think this was a really a big moment. For me, when I moved from Ed Tech to consumer tech, I had never written a B test, I didn't even know what AV testing was. So you can hang on to products. I didn't know what a product manager was. But I knew that there were pieces of this particular job or career or function that really aligned with me that really drove a lot of energy and passion in me. And because of that, it fueled me to want to just like learn and dig in and roll my sleeves up. And there were some pivotal moments in my career, you know, going from Kayak to Spotify, where I realized the power of personalization recommendation was going to be critical to deeply understand in order to produce and build experiences that people loved, that people wanted to pay for, that people want to spend time on. And I experienced a moment at Kayak where we walked in one day, and we had lost like 20% of our traffic. And we thought there was a huge bug. But in reality there, you know, there wasn't a bug, but there was a lot of chocolate to lose. The reality is that Google had basically created their own travel product and put the top of the search page. And because Kayak was so reliant on search traffic, as kind of their acquisition tool. We felt it pretty immediately. And of course, you know, we singled that out, you know, you pay a little more and Google wins, and we lose, and they win no matter what. So for me, that's kind of the aha moment of, well, what can you actually do to build a product that people want to go to no matter how easy any of these other competitors may be able to copy you and how easy they may be to access. And so that was really the moment where I would Spotify had never worked with the machine learning engineer in my life, I don't even know that I don't even know what that was. I had spent most of my career in the front end, right, I was not trained in in computer science or anything of that nature. But I dug in and I wanted to learn I think the team that I was working with, you know, really value that and they want to learn from me, they want to like learn from my perspective, well, how could we think more but user first right? about something they were doing. So just little moments like these where I saw opportunities, I grasp them, and then I leaned in. And I really tried to learn as much as possible. And I really tried to bring people along with me as well. So we could all experience success together.

Nicolas Cary  9:26  

So from the early days, you know, hustling with your sister to working in the health space in El Salvador and volunteering there at becoming a teacher to Ed Tech to consumer tech, talk a little bit about, you know, maybe a moment where you took a risk, either, you know, with a product design decision or even with a budget and you know, how you evaluated that and what the return on investment was and you know, anything from your, your stories would be really helpful to understand the context for

Michelle Parsons  9:57  

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think one of the biggest You know, a couple of things, I think I think my my role at Hinge was honestly a big a big jump for me as well. And I went for a place where I had been at these really big tech organizations, kind of one of the ICS, or one of many people kind of building and really, of course, leading teams and whatnot, but not having been the person to really orchestrate and lead an organization. And so that was a big transition moment for me. And I think one of the first things when I walked into Hinge the team wasn't at 75 people. So it was a really small company, which is, I think, really shocking for most people, because the brand is so big, and because when you do use it and know it, so I've known that, you know, only two and a half years ago, the whole company was 75 people, and the whole company was really trying to figure out like, what do we do. And so when I got there in the team was really broken up into was, was transitioning into a modality of, like two big groups and growth group and our courts experience grew, but we had no strategy, really any the team had been focused purely on monetization efforts, right? Like, you know, how are we gonna monetize this thing? You have an audience, but we're not you don't have any monetization features. So they had to build and all that out. And I think, you know, the team there realized like, well, we can't just keep on monetizing, improving the core experience. And so that became the big question. How do we improve the core experience? And how do we really differentiate it? Because if you think about the big competitors are out there, Bumble and Tinder like they're number one, number two, by leaps and bounds, right? And so they're big, they have bigger marketing budgets, they have bigger brand awareness. And hinge number three, trying to figure out how do you cross that chasm? How do you really accelerate growth rapidly when you have when you're up against a lot of constraints, and you're up against a really big competitors? And so one of the things that we did you know, we lean into research at the the team, like was structuring kind of build that muscle here to really understand what are our users coming to us for what their biggest pain points and one of the things that we oriented around? And all that a system context is what the middle of a pandemic, as well, right? So people are using dating apps more, but there's also like, it's really difficult time to think about, you know, how do you actually create on a cell phone on a 2d surface, something that's going to actually get people to showcase more of their personality more thereby, in a dynamic way that mirrors what it's like to meet somebody in real life. Right. And so we found enough of our research that people were struggling with this pretty dramatically, and it was causing a lot of burnout was causing a lot of people to not have success on the app and the cyclical nature, basically, of people getting to a date, realizing this person is not for them, feeling burnt out, leaving the app couple months later coming back as there's no other option, and then having a cycle repeat over and over and over again. And so we realize that people want to figure out like chemistry, what's chemistry vibe, what's vibe personality are all these things that are so hard to put into a phone because sometimes I don't even know what that mean chemistry that spark right? What we started to lean into was well the phone does have a lot more features out that we're not taking advantage of like there's audio and then there's video for example. So how might we leverage these different modalities these different these different you know, technology kind of opportunities to help our business jet to help bring people to life in a bit in a bit better way in a better way rather and so we basically oriented with to do videos shouldn't be do boys here there's a lot of ideas around you know, how we might integrate those into the products. But one of the big risks that we took was and we actually went down to voice route versus video route one video was gonna be unique enough like everyone was there was a lot of comfort with with video and so that was a risk right like not going down a pathway that people are comfortable with you have tick tock it's pure video and that was a really popular thing and only growing in popularity during that moment and as well and people had videos on our phones you'll think videos all the time, but people don't have it like audio clips on their phone and themselves. But one of the things out that there's like two things that really kind of stood out one was at the time I was potentially going to go through some kind of fertility fertility thing and so my partner my ex partner and I are looking at donor donor sperm basically for for our needs and one of the things you can unlock there was an audio recording like a 10 minute audio recording of this individual because you don't get any other information and sounds like oh that's very interesting like they're either use caseworkers and like what I'm looking for here is exactly that I'm looking for home personality I'm looking for like mental health. And you know, I'm gonna sleeper by essentially to kind of see who was this person I cannot see. They have no other information at them, no photos, nothing. And so that was one piece and the other thing that we realize is that the barrier to entry for voice is so much lower because I don't have to have my room in order. I don't have to be dressed up to the nines, etc. And so I can record that almost anywhere, right? I can record it when I'm walking out your recording on the train or record recording, I'm laying in my bed. And the barrier to entry is much lower. But when we talk to users, we had this gap pointing out to users. And I think the common trope is like, I hate the sound of my own voice, right? Every single person, it's a common thing that we all say, I never want to hear my voice.

Nicolas Cary  15:18  

I need it. You're obviously that after this podcast?

Michelle Parsons  15:22  

Exactly. And, you know, that was a big constraint. Because basically, like, the majority of our new said, I will never do this, I literally will never record an audio recording from a dating profile. Like that just seems way too trihard. That does seem like outside the ordinary, no one's doing that. Like, why would I do that? But you know, I think because of their because we had a lot of research because we understood what the the opportunity around voice could be. And he's like, had this just experience in a completely different realm, because believe the different space that just I just like, there's something here, you know, I needed Exactly, we doubled down. I said, let's, let's do it, let's try it. But let's take into consideration all those potential pitfalls, right? Like, the people don't want me to try hard. So how might you get around that? So how am I even lowered the barrier to entry to get and feel really safe and comfortable for people to add their voice, you know, how to get examples to help people understand what kinds of thing they could add, you know, and so we did all those things. And I think all of those different components together, made this feature. So powerful, so powerful, that it really helps Hinge I think, really opened up a brand new part of their of their journey and their story. We grew. I think in that time, we saw that 30% user growth from that particular feature from launch, it blew up on Tik Tok, that he Edwin at the time had been trying to try to nail voice to the Thailand clubhouse had just launched as well. You remember clubhouse back in the day, Twitter spaces had opened up everyone and do some audio, you know, thing. And so it was funny. I remember this one headline it was it was a dating app, but not, you know, not Facebook or anything else, like nailed voice, like we are the ones who are able to kind of really nail that it shouldn't. So it just it really, really were able to speak to users in a real way that they were taking this content and putting it everywhere. And because of that we were able to you'll acquisition and growth in a very organic way that costs us nothing. And so that was a really awesome, you know, and not only that, but we were able to acquire a new generation. So the app at a time was primarily millennial based, right? A lot of millennial users, we actually shifted that completely and to a primary Gen Z kind of focused and targeted ad app, which everyone wanted to figure out how to break into, right so it all it it would go on

Nicolas Cary  17:39  

downstream to fill up the pipeline. Right. Nice. That's a cool story. I mean, the and obvious sometimes is where all the opportunity is. And I think in an era where you're seeing obviously, proliferation of video, you know, Mark Zuckerberg was freaking out about not having a video watching Tik Tok and to actually head back almost into like, and histologic connection to voice the way we know when we were growing up, you actually had to call, you know, or attentional dates, you might talk on the phone before you met. And that was a whole technique for you know, knows a tone of voice and all of that. And so, it's really interesting, I'd love to ask you a follow up to that, you know, people find true love now, you know, swiping on their phones, you know, how important is a first impression in your research? And what have been the implications? You know, you know, in the product design over at Hinge, but do you think they'll ever be like a Hinge for finding a job? Like, is it possible we get to that level? Where you could do it in sort of a almost a quicker way?

Michelle Parsons  18:41  

Yeah, I mean, look, I think first impressions are always important, because that kind of gives that kind of sets the foundation, or you know, how people are going to observe you now. Do I think that first impressions should be the end all be all? No, I think that people have that day sometimes. And we will make Miss judgments about people as well. But I think what what I oftentimes, personally try and do and I always advocate for and always trying to, like make people feel comfortable is you learn to be yourself. Because at the end of the day, like you can go and you can put on a mask and you can put on a facade, but who you are is going to always shine through over time. And you don't want to have to sit in a position or a place where you curating crafted diversions and stuff that you thought someone wanted to see. And then that like crumbles over time, you can't maintain that you either get super stressed out or you don't show up in a way that you know is aligned with the expectation and then long term that has negative consequences both for you and for you know the person that you're dating the employer that you are working with. So I do think first impressions are important but you know, lead with authenticity and you know, that's something I've learned also my career over time like I used to always show up and I was like, rear to go is putting on a perfect like version of what I thought people wanted and realize Like, I cannot maintain that I get way cheaper down over time. And so I have to you have to live with authenticity so that you're able to just maintain who you are and, and, you know, help your, your, your superpowers showcase themselves that everyone has something unique about them that is additive.

Nicolas Cary  20:17  

You can draw on those personal reservoirs. Those are deep, and you can really kind of fulfill your potential when you're not pretending to do something or be somebody you're not. Yeah,

Michelle Parsons  20:28  

so we're gonna ask you

Nicolas Cary  20:29  

this question about you just have so much product experience. What What advice would you give to early stage entrepreneurs about how to use your product to make connections with people like, in not just in a technical software, product service experience, but maybe just generally, like, how should early stage entrepreneurs, you know, use their product to make connections with customers?

Michelle Parsons  20:53  

Yeah, I mean, look like it doesn't even have to be like in the app, like, every time if somebody downloads your app, or sign up for your website, like, that's an opportunity to get to know that individual, especially in the early days, right? When you have people who are coming to your service or your site, there's opportunities and reach out to that person. Like, I think people underestimate the power of user research the power of like, trying to understand why people are coming to your service or site or your app, how people are using it, are they finding value? What roadblocks are they are they encountering, right? What ideas have they had, and again, I'm not saying take all the things that but it there's an opportunity there to lean in a little bit and get to know that other human on the other side of that street, or the other side of that transaction? Because I think we can get to a point where everything feels so transactional, or you're like, you're, you're fueling some growth that you see early on, you start to ask yourself, well, there's real human on the other side, real emotion, real behaviors, real mindsets, that can be very valuable, and also be champion long term, right? I mean, imagine if you had an early stage company, they reached out to you to get your feedback, well, I'm going to tell a bunch other people about that, too, right? Didn't so and so now you might even remember three, three, or four and five more people who you know, now know about your, your, your company, your brand. And I saw this thing that that she did, and they've been around for a long time. But there's a story online where you know, someone wants to return their dog food because their dog passed away. And they are either asking whether or not the refund and customer service agent said, though, don't donate this to a local shelter, and we're gonna also refund you, and then also send her flowers right for her loss. And I didn't know just little moments like that to remember that everybody is a shoo in. And we're all going places do you they have specific needs and goals and wants. But at the end of the day, we need to move beyond that transaction, and make things about community to kind of get back there and make things about building connection in love with that particular brand or service or product. That's great

Nicolas Cary  22:51  

feedback. And it's sort of like that surprise and delight type of thing. But it starts with just being a good listener, and bringing customer problems. So you've heard a lot of people across your career, you know, maybe what's your favorite interview question? And what have you learned about, you know, building teams?

Michelle Parsons  23:08  

Yeah, I mean, I think my favorite interview question to ask is, give me an example of a time that you had a major disagreement or a major failure on your team? And who was responsible and why. And how did you all overcome that, as a team, I think when we have this, the the thing that this does it to me, it helps people, it helps me understand that people are self reflective, that the that self reflection is really important when thinking about anything, whether they're successes or failures, is having a moment to stop and be introspective. Taking accountability, I think is also another area you'd be happy to answer. It's like, it's always their problem, somebody else's problem. And you know, there's like, not an accountability mindset there. Not a growth mindset there. But I think is a factor, someone is able to take the time and say, yeah, here's a challenge or a failure that, you know, I overcame it XYZ project, were very specific, shows that they actually did something, right, because they're gonna fail all the time, you're gonna fail more often, you're going to be successful, if I've learned anything. And so what you also don't want is your people who get hung up and then failures and who can't move forward because you need to when you're failing or something goes wrong, you need a plan B. And so oftentimes, it comes from understanding you're not going in the right direction aligned with your team on well, why? Why are we here? You know, that that decision that you made, and you know, don't miss something, or whatever the case may be, and you may not have enough context upfront, you know, whatever the case, and then all right, how are we going to mitigate what's going to happen next? Right. But so there's a lot, a lot of things I can pull out of that question there accountability, growth, mindset, introspection, reflection, and then forward momentum ability to actually overcome challenges. As the hiring trends, you know, I look for people who have grit to Google have who are oriented towards a growth mindset who are curious. Like, like Fans have passion, I think that goes with this a thing that you cannot teach, I think hard skills you can teach. Like, if you don't have every single product principle on fundamental downs and tea, that's okay. I am happy to help you with that. Because I actually think I'm a great teacher and stuff. I've done this for Yeah, but you know what, you can't sometimes he just people's willingness and in to show up, to be curious to take in feedback to apply that right? To take the feedback and modify that in a way that you're like, oh, that's even better. And I think that that is I've made some bad hires my time use. And again, it's like, it's something you cannot always sometimes people show up in those interviews. You're like, wow, this is gonna be great. And man that facade jobs a little bit, you're like, Dan, how do I? How do I get singled for that? Really worrying about

Nicolas Cary  25:47  

that so that I don't, you know, become a victim of the same problem again, it's

Michelle Parsons  25:52  

exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Nicolas Cary  25:55  

All right. So a couple quick ones. You know, for anyone who's interested in product management, what's the best place for them to keep up with changing trends changes in the space? Where Where do you? Where do you keep up with trends?

Michelle Parsons  26:07  

Yeah, I mean, I honestly like LinkedIn as my as my source of truth. For right now for content creation. I think it's the best right now, in out there. If you're thinking about product, there are a lot of creators out there in the space. So linear Cesky had an amazing podcast, I think is one of the best cost goop dot Jaeger newsletter that does some really great deep dives. Casey winters as well. So those are the kind of people that I that I follow right now. But there's also Product School, I can plug them as well, but they have a blog and even conference out there. And then industry is another great product conference that I really, really, really love. So there's sort of spaces that I tend to kind of Occupy just so that I'm following the right creators, and they're constantly popping up. And they all tend to, to interact with each other as well. So my feed is just always filled with like, interesting case studies, or, or concepts or new approaches or new frameworks. And so I love that. So I'm just sort of loves consume content, you can follow me as well, I tend to post content as well. So yeah, always great. We'd love to share those

Nicolas Cary  27:15  

those resources, why it's steps to pursue entrepreneurship can can be quite intimidating or scary, you know, what tips can you give our listeners for how to manage some of the stress that comes with maybe taking that leap and running your own business?

Michelle Parsons  27:27  

Yeah, I mean, I think I think one is, is you have to know what your limits are, right? You can just put everything and I think when you're an entrepreneur, you're going to be starting out, like, everything becomes about work. And even just like, in my own career, as I've been trying to, like, climb that corporate ladder and kind of level up, it's always about career career career, you know, and you can forget that you are a human too. And I'm, you're always gonna hear me say like, we are people, we are humans, we are multifaceted, multi dimensional. So you have to take time to speak your mind and your body. You know, in line and balance, so that is getting some form of exercise, whether it's going out for a walk, whether it's talking to a friend, or just like keeping things balanced, extending that energy, getting some good sleep, and then going back and kind of setting a plan. I think the other thing I love to do, to create that balance is literally create those to do lists, create that plan map out your week at this on a Sunday, say, alright, Monday through Friday, what am I going to do? How can you utilize these hours, right, I'm going to build in time for personal stuff, and a built in time for work stuff, that again, now you have an idea for or a roadmap, right? Even if just one week for how you're going to spend your time and things will change. Of course, I'm gonna go get canceled, you'll you might get sick, you know, my dog might get sick. And so, you know, you have to be flexible to obviously adapting but I think that adaptability mindset. Obviously, a lot of entrepreneurs have that anyway. And so it's figuring out how to kind of high enough to create as a superpower, right? So some pre planning always helps. And

Nicolas Cary  28:55  

I love that so plan relentlessly prioritize, adapt, and then make some space to to recharge, and find that balance. So well. Thank you so much for sharing these pearls of wisdom with us. So at Skysthelimit.org We connect underrepresented entrepreneurs with volunteer business professionals for free one on one mentoring. We also provide business guides to all our members and monthly funding opportunities so you can sign up for free today. And if you like what you heard, please subscribe and share a special thank you to Michelle. For all of her amazing feedback today. We appreciate it. Makes sense.

Outro  29:31  

Thanks for listening to The First Buck Podcast. Don't forget to join the community of underrepresented entrepreneurs and their supporters by signing up at Skysthelimit.org CLICK subscribe and we'll see you next time.