Is It Too Late to Build Something Big After 40? Is there an expiration date on ambition?

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed on the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W four WN Radio It's employees or affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsement for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W four WN Radio It's employees or affiliates. Any questions or common should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W four WN Radio. This is Beyond Confidence with your host d W. Park. Do you want to live a more fulfilling life? Do you want to live your legacy and achieve your personal, professional, and financial goals? Well? Coming up on ZVO parks Beyond Confidence, you will hear real stories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and achievers who have stepped into discomfort, shattered their status quo, and are living the life they want. You will learn how relationships are the key to achieving your aspirations and financial goals.

0:52 Moving your career business forward does not have to happen at the expense of your personal or family life or vice versa. Learn more at www Don't divpork dot com and you can connect with div ats, contact dants dvpark dot com. This is beyond confidence and now here's your host, div Park. Good morning, listeners, It's Tuesday morning and I'm here with you all super excited to be with you. And I'm sure that each and every one of you is hearing about AI because AI is everywhere. It is a disruption, just like we had with social media, with the advent of Internet, with the event of computers, and so many times what happens is that you're lost and you're scratching your head what is next. So if that's the case, the most of Weighted my book is here as you can see it in the bag the AI Agency. Hop onto Amazon, Bums and Noble anywhere where the books are available and get a copy and get ready for that next phase and talking about different phases of life. We have absent flows, ups and downs, and that's what today's guest is going to be sharing with us. Welcome, Lindsay, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here.

2:14 Oh I'm so looking forward to our conversation. So Lindsey, tell us if you recall. A moment from your childhood or youth, when there was a moment or a person or an event that left to post to mark on you. Oh my god, so many. That's that's a very big question. Huh. I would say a moment from my youth. I'm going to really go back to like my youth or Okay, So you know, my grandfather played a really big role in my life, a huge role. And I guess this wasn't my youth, but it was in my younger days and he he basically he encouraged me to do everything in anything that I wanted to do. And you know, he was a very soft spoken veteran and you would look at him and think he was, you know, this guy's guy, which I guess to some degree he was.

3:16 But he had such a big heart and such a soft spot for all the women in his life, his wife, my mom, me, my aunt, my kids when they were born. They were so lucky that they got to meet him. And you know, I think I don't think there was necessarily one instance, but I want to just point this out because he was really the person who one pointed out that I could do anything, and two supported me and every single thing that I did, and really gave me the courage to go for what I believed in. And I think that in saying that out loud, a lot of I don't think a lot of people would necessarily say that about their grandfather, and it might a little unsuspecting. And you know, I really I owe a lot of what I've achieved to him and his encouragement.

4:07 And even when he was like dying and I went to say goodbye to him, he was still asking me about my business, and he was asking me about what I have on tap and encouraging me to go for it. And so I you know, he is. He just played such a positive role in my life and left such a positive mark on everything that I do. That is beautiful. It just kind of refreshed his memory of my grandparents. I didn't have much time with to my grandfather. But they're so special, so special, so special, and you know, these are the moments, right, These are the these are the memories that live in.

4:52 Our hard forever. And yeah, thank you for sharing that. So as he grew up, did you do you have any specific direction you wanted to take in life. You know, I wanted to be a journalist when I grew up, and I actually didn't realize that until I was in high school. I started writing. I took a journalism class in high school, and I ended up becoming the editor in chief of our high school news magazine. We didn't have like a like a flimsy newspaper. We actually had like a fifty page per month glossy news magazine at my high school. And I was really proud to have been the editor in chief of that magazine. And I won many awards for the writing that I contributed to that publication. And so I thought I wanted to be a journalist, but I ended up when I applied to college. I applied. I lived in Michigan, and I applied to Michigan and Michigan State, and Michigan State had the journalism program in Michigan didn't. But Michigan was really the school that I wanted to go to, and I ended up getting in and I ended up going.

5:54 And you know, it's interesting because I always tell younger kids in high school and college and even after, like it doesn't really matter what you major in, right, And so I went to Michigan and I majored in first communications and then I which to sports, sports management and communications and you know, I really learned like the ins and outs of marketing and advertising and business as it pertained to sports. And when I left college. When I graduated college, I came to Chicago and I was I was supposed to work for an ad agency. It was the summer of two thousand and one. The economic downturn was upon us, and my job pushed back, and so I had to find a new job. And I ended up landing a job because of my major and because of my internships. I had interned at Cosmopolitan Magazine, I had interned at Fox News in Detroit, the affiliate in Detroit, other news outlets. I ended up landing a job in ad sales at Sports Illustrated for Kids, and it really opened my eyes to the business side of journalism. And I ended up working in publishing, magazine publishing, which I loved magazines for ten years. And so even though I wasn't necessarily being a journalist and I wasn't writing I do, I was working exactly where I wanted to work. I worked at Time Ink, and then I ended up moving over to Hearst Magazines, where I worked for read Book and Good Housekeeping. I was working for Women's publications. It was like a dream job, and it was far more

7:26 lucrative than being a journalist, to be very honest with you, like I mean, I was really doing very well for myself. And it's interesting because I wanted to be a journalist so many years ago and today in a way I am like you, I'm sure we're going to get into a little bit more of my journey. But now I have a podcast where I interview the biggest female founders of our time, and in a way, that's journalism, that's sharing stories. I might not be breaking news, but I certainly am sharing the stories of other individuals. And it's kind of full circle because it's exactly what I wanted to be doing in high school. It just, I guess took a little bit of work to get. Here absolutely and where I sit. And of course, you know, people can have different definitions.

8:12 To me. You define your life, you define what you want to do and work through it. You've got one life to live and why not make the most out of it. So why you were in the ad agency and you were doing the marketing and learning all the marketing side of the business. You said something that a lot of my young clients will say that that they. Want to have. Meaningful work along with lucrative compensation. So tell us a little bit about that, Like, you know, how did you find both, because you know, you definitely were, from what it sounds like, had a good compensation, But what was the meaning that you connected with in your job?

8:59 You know, I don't know that the work I was doing, to be very honest, was so meaningful. However, however, I think it's really important to point out I really liked what I did, and what I was doing was based on relationships and connection. I mean, I was I was selling. I was selling a product that I believed in, So let's start there. You know, I think it would be very hard to sell advertising space for a publication or a website, or you know, for any entity that you don't believe in, and I was working for publications that I wholeheartedly believed in and ended up becoming readers of even you know, in my mid twenties, I was reading Good Housekeeping and I felt like it was like the best thing, the best magazine ever, because I knew what was going on behind the scenes. But what I was doing was really rooted in relationship and connections, and I loved the environment in which I worked, and so to me, it was it didn't always feel like work. It was fun to go the office every day. I had amazing friends in the office, I had amazing clients. I was traveling all over the country to put together strategies for my other clients because I had a lot of clients outside of the Chicago area where I live. And I was really happy, like I wasn't looking for anything else, to be very honest with you, and I also felt very lucky that I wasn't, you know, working from seven in the morning until ten at night. I was. I

10:30 really had nine to five hours, and you know, a couple of times a week, I would entertain clients after work. But again, entertaining clients when you're in your twenties. I was taking them to concerts to dinners to get manicures, and the company was paying for it. So, I mean, it was really an incredible job, you know. So was the work very meaningful? I don't know about that. But I had a really awesome experience, and I really loved what I did, and I loved the people I was with, and really and truly that is so important and a lot of the people that I built connections with during those ten years are still in my life. There's still people that I reach out to, both personally and professionally.

11:13 And you know, and I think it just goes back to relationships being the key to all of your success, truly. Absolutely, and from what you're sharing with me, I'm hearing that your work was rooted and anchored and meaningful relationships. You were challenged, you were traveling, so you've fond fulfillment. And that's beautiful because so many times what happens is that we get so caught up in woods versus saying, like, you know, are you enjoying? Are you energized by doing what you like? So having those relationships even now, that is such a meaningful connection itself, because it's people that end reach our lives. It's people and connections and relationships.

12:03 That just you know, filled our cup. So as you moved forward, like you know, you mentioned that you did not continue with your journey completely, So. Tell us, like, you know, what changed. So what ended up happening was I was working in good housekeeping. I loved my job, and I ended up we were starting a family, my husband and I and we were living in Chicago, and I didn't have family here, and at the time, none of my friends were pregnant. I was the first one. Amongst my core group of friends. We all have ninth graders, so I was just the first, the first one. But I became pregnant, and I said to my husband, I like, I need to find a community.

12:45 I need to find some people to connect with who are also pregnant. And there really was nothing. My friends were in New York and they were going to these events with this company, Big City Moms, who later became my comp They became my company's biggest competitor and also my friends. But and so, and I was like, I want that, Like I want to have a place to go where I can be pregnant and meet other pregnant women. And so I started hosting events for expectant moms. We started hosting prenatal workouts. We started hosting shopping nights. We started hosting educational dinners where I would bring in experts to teach us what we needed to know. And those things were all very important, but really at the root of it all was the community and was the people.

13:31 And you have to remember this. It was in twenty ten. This was before Instagram, this was before you know, this was before social media really like Facebook had just kind of come off of being an education only platform or school based platform, and so you know, it was a very different world that we were living in and everything that we did. My company was called Bump Club and Beyond really was rooted in word of mouth marketing at first. And so I told people I was hosting events, and I said, if you have any pregnant friends, send them my way, and they did. I mean, the first event, I think we had fifty people that showed up. In the second we had seventy five. And then people started paying to come to my dinners. And really it was rooted in community. And I'm not one to, you know, to go halfway with anything that I do, I guess, and so you know, I was using my advertising relationships and my skills to get sponsorships and to have to reach out to brands to be a part of what I was building. I had a very engaged community of expectant moms, and brands and businesses really only have a six month window to capture those women because they're not publicly pregnant for the first three months, and so you know, I created this very engaged community that over the next decade became three million people per month. We were reaching we were working with brands like Nordstrum and Target and all of the baby brands and a lot of the CPGs,

15:01 and we were hosting events in thirty cities across the country. I mean, eventually, obviously I grew the business. I had a team, and as social media became a thing, we became a player on social media and we started sharing content online. And so I grew the business to a seven figure entity. And you have to remember when I, as I'm explaining this to you, there was no product. The product was the community. And so really it followed the media model that I was so used to in magazines, and that was, you know, my subscribers were the people that were coming, and my advertisers were the sponsors. I did end up leaving my corporate career, and we can talk about that if you want to talk about that.

15:45 But I did end up leaving my corporate career a year into starting Bump Club. So so many women are there right like the professionals, whether it's men or women, and sometimes they're in that machine you just keep on going one year after another. Okay, you get your promotion, you get your performance reviews, and you have done excellent. But the key is that, Okay, even if you have got exceeds expectations, the next year, not only you have to maintain that, but you have to exceed even that. And some people thrive on it. Because I have some clients who literally like enjoy doing that, and yet there are some who are questioning and saying, as you mentioned that working seven to seven or even sometimes you know, from the time they wake up to the time they go to sleep, they're completely working. So how did you make that decision? Or when people are making that decision, how can they go about it?

16:46 You know, it's interesting because that decision I really wanted to do both. I really wanted to just host these events kind of on the side for me and for the community that I would building in Chicago. And it wasn't that decision wasn't necessarily made for me. I wasn't let go. But I had a female boss who was not a mother, and when I came back from maternity leave, she she actually was horrible to me, and she said, if I find out that you're working on this side, hustle that I hear you have. You know there's going to be repercussions. And it was kind of ironic because I worked at a company at the time. I worked at Hurst Magazines, and everyone at Hurst Magazines, even the highest of executives, had side hustles. They were writing books, they were using their their connections within the industry to host book parties. I mean, everyone was doing something else, and this boss of mine did not like that I had something else on the side. And you know what ended up happening was I said to my husband, you know, I think I think she's going to make my life miserable.

17:53 I think that I should just get I should give this a try. What is the worst that happens? And can I live with that? And the worst that could have happened was the business didn't go anywhere, And could I live with having to go back and get another job? And the answer was yes, And so I ended up. I went back to work after maternity leave for maybe like three weeks, and then I gave my notice and I just I was really scared, to be honest, because, like I shared with you, I had a great job and I had very lucrative compensation, and you know, we were all of a sudden going to have to kind of just make some changes in our lifestyle. However, I also wanted to be present for my daughter, and so that was a very important thing for me as well.

18:40 And really and truly my goal the first year was to pay the nanny, the part time nanny that I had, and I far I more than exceeded that goal. And you know, and I never looked back. Now, had it not worked out, I would have looked for another job. And actually I was called for about a year. I was called for a job in the ad industry after I left Bump Club, and then I think people realized, Okay, she's not coming back ever. But you know, it is a really hard decision. But I think that if you're able to do it, then it is worthwhile to explore. You know, I didn't just like cut the cord right when I started this company. I had income coming in.

19:23 Was it the income that I was used to know, but it allowed by leaving. It allowed me to free up the time to get to a place where I was eventually paying myself a paycheck. And I like one of the things I like to share about Bump Club is that bum Club was a life stage business, not just for the millions of people that were involved, but it was a life stage business for me. And I was a young mom when I started it. And in addition to me paying myself, every single baby brand on the planet was sending me products. And so I never paid for anything for my children, not diapers, not formula, not car seats, nut strollers, not crib mattresses. Both of my kids had their had their nurseries done by professionals for you know, online content. We family photographs, I mean classes for my kids. You know, it was I wasn't I will say I was kind of like an influencer of that time in the parenting space. Influencers weren't a thing yet, but and and so you know, I was blogging about these experiences. And even though I wasn't necessarily creating the compensation for the monetary compensation for myself that I left, I was more than making up for it through this life stage business and I was it was allowing me to spend time with my daughter, which was very important for me.

20:44 Yeah, now that's powerful. So definitely you talked about that. You know, you had done organic marketing before and then you also adapted to the event of social media. So, whether we are talking about marketing in the corporate foold or marketing for the entrepreneurs, what are some of the key elements that you would share are crucial for getting a brand out there. You know, it's interesting because this is what I teach in my mentorship and a lot of small business owners when they come to me, are so overwhelmed by just all the stuff that they see online that they should be doing or that they're supposed to be doing, and a lot of them when they come to me, are not doing the basics. And I always say to my clients, you cannot run ads, you cannot create funnels, you cannot do all of these fancy things unless you start with the basics, and you start with a foundation and you build upon that. And that's how I've built both of my businesses was really by laying a foundation for my business through really organic marketing. And when I say really organic marketing, I mean going back to the base when when I left bump Club. Eventually i sold bump Club and I started Dear Founder, which is my new company.

22:08 And when I did that, I looked back on what I built a bump club, and I said, what was it that I did that made this so successful? And I ended up creating a framework that I now teach. It's called SWEEP and it stands for social media, website, emails, events, partnerships, and publicity. And it is about taking one message and sweeping it across all of those strategies in a very basic way. And it's interesting because a lot of people will come to me and be like, who's your marketing team? You know who is pulling the strings? And I'm like, you're looking at her like it's me. I have a couple of vas and it's really me. But I've created a system and a process where I know what I need to do to make it look like I am everywhere, and I am everywhere because of these processes that I've put in place. So to answer your question to get started, Number one, to show up is yourself, really and truly.

23:10 I have built two businesses with my face on it by showing up and sharing and talking about my experiences. If you even think you're going to start a business, just start showing up and talking, start laying the groundwork. Number two, share your story once you start your business, share your story, Who are you, what do you do, how do you do it? And why? It is the most powerful piece of content that a small business owner can share and without fail. When I tell my clients to do that and they're like, very hesitantly, I don't know, I don't know if I want to put myself out there like that, they do and they come back to me and they say, oh my god, that was my most engaged piece of content that I've ever shared. So share your story. Number Three, be consistent and whatever it is that you're doing in your social media and your email marketing and your partnerships, be consistent, show up consistently, and be consistent in the message that you're sharing. It is very important that you really share the same messages over and over so you become known for something. People know me for saying share your story. What I just said to you. People stop me on the street and they say, I shared my story, and oh my god.

24:23 So you want to be known for something, really and truly, those three or four things that I just said are the foundation of everything that you build on with your business. And I would say, if there's one tactic or one strategy to use to get yourself out there. It's partnerships. It's reaching out to your network and it's partnering with other entities. And I'm not talking about paid ads or sponsorships those kind of partnerships. I'm talking about reaching out to people who reach the same community as you and borrowing each other's communities. You can do it through content that you collec elaborate on. You can do it like on social media. You could do it through a workshop or a webinar. You could do it through a live event.

25:07 You could do it through a giveaway. If you want to do a giveaway, you can do an email swap. There are so many different ways that you can partner with other entities to share each other's communities. And that's how I built bump Club, and that's really how I built your founder as well. That's very powerful. So you have. Basically designed and tested and tried it not only once, but a couple of times, well not. Even a couple of times. This is the framework I use with thousands of clients on a daily basis. So it's not just me who's benefited from it, it's you know, there are many small business owners who have as well. Absolutely, and it's good that you're sharing because it's helping them.

25:50 So you mentioned something powerful that like you built a business and then you sold it. So there are a lot of business owners who maybe thinking that, oh, you know, I want to be successful and then I want to sustain that success. And yet what I'm hearing is about the exit strategy. Do the entrepreneurs or even small companies and I need to start thinking about exit strategy from the time they're building. And if yes, what does that look like? I you know, I can only speak to my own experience. Okay, So like you know, which I want a caveat, because I think there are a lot of different ways to build a business. There are a lot of different businesses to be built. My business was very unique in that it was a community and I was the face of it.

26:40 And one of the things that I would say and I do say often to business owners, is you want to make your business and build your business in a way that it can function without you. And I didn't do that. That was like my biggest mistake. I was the business and you know, I think that it's it's really and when I left, when I when I sold the company and I said to the new company all right, now you need to get some other faces, some other moms, to really be the faces of this business. They didn't want to because I had built the trust and the equity with the millions of people who are now following us, and it was a very it became very hard to leave.

27:26 And I mean it was very hard to leave, both personally and like I mean, from a personal standpoint, I didn't want to leave my team high and dry. I didn't want to leave my community high and dry. But I was also being corporately abused by these people who bought my company and did not we're not living up to their contractual obligations. And so it was a really tough situation. And so I would say, you always do want to think about what is this going to look like when you leave? And you know, for me now, like in terms of this second business of mine, like I don't have intention of leaving. I don't have intentions of selling, to be very honest with you, but you know, I split my time very evenly between consulting clients and between my mentorship clients, and I have built a community for small business owners that really and truly, if I wanted to turn it over to someone else tomorrow. The community piece of it, I absolutely could, and with my consulting clients, if I wanted to stop tomorrow, I absolutely could.

28:29 And you know, I'm not necessarily indebted in a way that I was previously, and that is built by design. A lot of people ask me, now, are you going to hire employees? And I don't want employees. I don't want employees because I don't want to be indebted to those people. I mean, I am still very close with the employees of bump Club, the people who worked with me. Bump Club doesn't exist anymore, but we are all still very close. And yes, that was an amazing experience, but like, I don't want that again. I don't want to. I'm I'm the happiest I've been in a long long time with my current business and my current structure, because I have set it up in a way where like people are not like relying on me, and I'm not literally laying awake at night wondering how I'm going to pay people or how I'm going to meet obligations. And it's a very different level of pressure. It's more for me than it is for anyone.

29:21 Yeah, and that is very critical because when we're in relationships doesn't matter. Like so, for example, I work with my website expert. It's been thirteen fourteen years so and there are a lot of people on my team that I've worked with and then they become family and when their family are not just going to abandon them. And it's important to have that structure and think about that as you're planning and growing your business because the exit strategy is going to come someday and why not think about it. So thank you for sharing your journey with us. And could you tell our audience if there was like, you know, one or two things that they could use from your experience. And you're helping out so many clients what they could get started with now in the marketing or mindset you know.

30:18 Like I said earlier, I think it's very important that if you have an idea for a business, or if you think you want to start a business, start talking to your ideal customer online. That doesn't mean you have to be selling to them. That's literally you you building your authority, building your expertise. It doesn't have to be on social media. It could be it could be on Instagram or LinkedIn or TikTok or whatever. But you could also be writing a substack. You could also, you know, be sharing on a blog. There are so many different ways. Just start talking to them and start solving the problem for them. Eventually your idea will likely be shaped by the response is that you're getting from that content that you're putting out. And so that's what I would say number one in terms of getting started. In number two, I would say, don't hesitate. It's never going to be a right time. Everything's you know, there's never going to be like this perfect time where everything's aligned and you can just get started, and it's going to be messy, and that's okay. One of the things that I you know that I that I talk about a lot because my community is really for women business owners over forty and a lot of the women who come to this community are very hesitant, and they have imposter syndrome and they think they don't belong there, and and I don't know about all the technology, it doesn't matter, It really doesn't matter. What these women have is experience. So tap into your experience, no matter what it is, and use it to propel yourself forward. Don't look at it as

31:48 a Hindrance. Yeah, very powerful. Don't hesitate, take that step, take that step towards the life. And where can they connect with you? Where can they find you? The best place to find me is on Instagram at Dear found Her or at www Dot dearfound her dot com and everything is linked there, my podcast, my newsletter, my email, et cetera. It was a lovely having you, Lindsey. Any last thoughts that you'd like to share. It was lovely being here, and I just one of the things that I want to share is I think it's so important that women support women and that women share each other's stories because we are better together. And that is something that you are doing obviously on a daily basis, and I am as well, and so I appreciate you having me here and helping to share my story.

32:40 Oh absolutely, because we learned from each other's jonies, and think about it, we are compounding. So all the lessons you have learned and all the successes you have had, and now you're sharing you're helping other women or men. You're helping our audience to live a better life. And as a community, that's what our desire is and what our impact is. So thank you for sharing from your heart. It was a joy having you and thank you wonderful audience for being part of her show because without you, the show would not be possible. Reach out as you always do, let us know who we can bring, how can we support you to live the best life.

33:23 You can and. Just let us know and thank you on for making the show technically possible. Be Valuni care until next time. Thank you for being part of Beyond Confidence with your host d v Park, we hope you have learned more about how to start living the life you want. Each week on Beyond Confidence, you hear stories of real people who've experienced growth by overcoming their fears and building meaningful relationships. During Beyond Confidence, Vpark shares what happened to her when she stepped out of her comfort zone to work directly with people across the globe. She not only coaches people how to form hert connections, but also transform relationships to mutually beneficial partnerships as they strive to live the life they want. If you are ready to live the life you want and leverage your strengths, learn more at www dot Wpark dot com and you can connect with WT contact at Dvpark dot com We look forward to you're joining us next week.