How do you build a brand that resonates deeply with millions of customers? In this episode of Not Another CEO Podcast, David Politis sits down with Nadia Boujarwah, Co-Founder and Former CEO of Dia&Co, to discuss her journey in revolutionizing plus-size fashion.
Nadia shares the challenges of building an inclusive brand, navigating venture funding, and leading a mission-driven company through rapid growth and industry shifts. She also reflects on the power of community, hiring the right team, and the lessons she learned stepping down as CEO after a decade at the helm.
Takeaways:
The Power of a Co-Founder Relationship: Nadia emphasizes that choosing the right Co-Founder is one of the most critical decisions in a startup journey. She shares how this played a pivotal role in shaping Dia&Co and why equal economics from day one helped maintain a strong partnership.
Building a Business from the Ground Up: Before developing a scalable platform, Nadia and her Co-Founder personally shopped for thousands of customers to deeply understand their needs. She explains why doing things manually in the early days was key to creating a product-market fit.
Fundraising Challenges & Breakthroughs: Raising Dia&Co’s first million dollars took nearly a year, yet within 18 months, they secured over $100 million in funding. Nadia shares insights on what changed, how she navigated investor skepticism, and why the right investors can make all the difference.
Scaling from Startup to Major Brand: At its peak, Dia&Co hired 600 people in a single year. Nadia discusses the challenges of leading a fast-growing organization, maintaining company culture, and evolving her leadership style to keep up with the business’s rapid expansion.
The Role of Community in Brand Building: The Dia&Co customer base formed organic Facebook groups that grew into a passionate and engaged community. Nadia shares how customers turned into brand ambassadors, planned meetups, and even got tattoos to represent the brand’s impact.
Navigating Major Business Shifts & the Pandemic: From industry-wide changes to the unpredictability of COVID-19, Nadia reflects on leading through uncertainty, making tough calls, and staying resilient in the face of evolving challenges.
Stepping Down as CEO & What’s Next: After a decade of building Dia&Co, Nadia made the difficult decision to transition out of the CEO role. She opens up about that process, how she adjusted to life post-CEO, and what she’s exploring next.
Quote of the Show:
“ There's a fundamental attribute of being an immigrant that you think that the locus of control in your life is inside of you” - Nadia Boujarwah
Links:
Company Website: https://www.dia.com/
Ways to Tune In:
Spotify:
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Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7c6328f0-9b42-41db-8fe2-d263b4fbb261
Transistor: https://podcast.notanotherceo.com/
#NotAnotherCEO #BusinessSuccess #Dia&Co
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:40 What You’d Do Again As CEO
08:06 Starting Dia&Co: From Idea to Execution
14:38 Building a Community and Raising Funds
22:52 Navigating Investor Relationships
27:45 Transitioning Leadership at Dia&Co
33:29 Biggest Challenge Faced at Dia&Co
36:53 Growing Up in an Immigrant Family
41:02 The Value of an MBA
49:33 Future of AI in Apparel
52:07 Advice to Younger Self
55:47 Outro
Episode Transcipt:
[00:00:00] Nadia: Once a business hits any amount of scale, the reality of what actually happens and how things actually work and what it actually means to be running a business in an executive team and a product and scaling and all the rest of it, um. It is a pretty critical set of experiences that I think are important to have.
[00:00:21] David: Welcome to not another CEO podcast. I'm your host, David Politis. Every week we talk to inspiring leaders and get the true stories, the ups and downs, the lessons learned, and come away with actionable advice. For our own journeys,
[00:00:45] today's guest is a trailblazer in the world of fashion and e-commerce dedicated to making personal style accessible to every woman regardless of size. As the co-founder and former CEO of Dia&Co, she built a brand that became the leading personal [00:01:00] styling service for plus-sized women, creating a community and business that served millions.
[00:01:05] Under her leadership Dia&Co raised over $120 million, partnered with top fashion brands, and led a movement towards more inclusive fashion. She's an advocate for diversity and entrepreneurship, a thought leader in retail innovation, and a role model for founders building mission-driven companies. Please welcome co-founder and former CEO of Dia&Co na, Nadia Boujarwah.
[00:01:28] Thanks David. Thrilled to be here. I'm so excited. This is my first in-person episode, so I really am, as I told you, really excited for this thing for doing. I think we're all
[00:01:36] Nadia: ready to be
[00:01:36] David: back
[00:01:37] Nadia: in person.
[00:01:38] David: Um, alright. First question right off the bat, what is the one thing you did big or small at Dia&Co that made the biggest impact?
[00:01:47] And you'd absolutely do. Again, if you're CEO of another company in the future, which I think you will be,
[00:01:51] Nadia: you know, I'd say like there are tons of tactical things that you do every day and certainly like. A million things that I would do differently and that I would do again. [00:02:00] I think in the end, like over the course of a 10 year journey, the thing that really stands out is the people.
[00:02:05] And there's some people within a business, a venture backed business, a you know, a business that starting from scratch that have unique relationships and therefore, um, unique impacts on how the business is built. And I'd say for me, in my journey, my co-founder relationship was probably the most important one.
[00:02:23] Um. I had amazing co-founders, um, one that started at the beginning, one that joined us a little bit later. And I think that it, it would be hard to imagine going through that tenure journey, um, if we'd made a different set of decisions around that kind of founding relationship. Who we were, like what the founding team ended up looking like, um, and how we managed that team over the course of the 10 years.
[00:02:49] David: How did you meet your co-founders?
[00:02:52] Nadia: So my, my primary cofounder met at business school. Uh, we were friends, we had very different professional backgrounds, so there was nothing really, [00:03:00] um, kind of professionally that brought us together. But I think our personalities just always really meshed, which like over the course of a long, difficult entrepreneurial journey, I think is like actually the most important.
[00:03:15] Um, I think people focus a lot on. Founder skill sets and you know, kind of bringing mutually exclusive things to the table. And I think all those things can be super important. But if you have success and you're able to build a team like skill sets and capabilities and expertise or things that can come from many different places over time, certainly in an executive team, on a board, within a team, you know, whatever it ends up being.
[00:03:43] Um. But I think the founder journey can be so difficult and is like a default for a founder journey is lonely. It's like there's, because there's nobody else who's like fully like in the place that you are in terms [00:04:00] of your responsibilities. And the only thing that can change that I think as a co-founder.
[00:04:05] David: So did you, like how long did it take from. Starting to talk about starting the company to actually deciding to start the company. 'cause I've talked to people about this where they're like, yep, I met my co-founder and we just, we just started the company, you know? And then some people said, no, we dated for a long time.
[00:04:25] You know, we, we went through that whole process and we went back and forth and we had challenges deciding on who's gonna be the CEO. Like how was that, that journey for you?
[00:04:34] Nadia: I think we were definitely in the former category. It was very organic. Um, this was like. A, a problem set an industry, a customer that we were both very committed to and interested in for different reasons.
[00:04:46] Um, and it was very organic. Like, you know, we both had other jobs for a short period of time, individually came to the decision that kind of stepping outside of what were otherwise exciting career paths was the right thing to do. And to kind of [00:05:00] really go in, you know, wholeheartedly in this kind of crazy entrepreneurial journey from scratch was.
[00:05:07] Things that you decide when you're 27 and like, probably hard to make that decision again ever again. Um, but I think for us it was very organic. Um, I think that's how you know that it's like actually a good fit. Mm-hmm. You know, like I think it's not that we didn't have honest, difficult conversations around like roles and economics and like all the things that you have to talk about, but, um, I think that there was just like a kind of like.
[00:05:35] A neat fit that made,
[00:05:38] David: made it work. And you stayed, but everyone stayed involved in the business to the very, the whole time. Mm-hmm. That's also kind of, kind of rare. I know. Wow. I know. Um, as you think about, like if you, if you had to give people one piece of advice, I, I, I feel I've never had a co-founder.[00:06:00]
[00:06:00] For me, um, I think it is actually very important, like you said, I think having another person who's in the exact same boat as you, otherwise, it is extremely, extremely lonely. But what's the one, if you just give people one piece of advice, like is it that organic relationship? Is it complimentary skillset?
[00:06:23] I've heard a variety of these kinds of things. What, what do you think is the one thing.
[00:06:27] Nadia: Um, I mean, I think most things about a co-founder relationship probably fall the same logic as any relationship in terms of like trust and communication, like all that kinda stuff is obvious. I think one thing, because we did all have different roles, like one thing that was very important for me and my co-founder was that we had equal economics from the beginning to the end.
[00:06:51] Every dimension of economics were equal. We had different roles, we had different responsibilities, we had different things in the business over time. But to me, it felt [00:07:00] very important that if we were really gonna be partners on the most important dimensions of partnership, we should be partners. And I think that that really helped because the truth is that like, I mean, there's so many ups and downs in these journeys, and they're so hard that having multiple people commit to.
[00:07:22] Being kind of irrationally committed to the cause, even when things are really hard, takes something else. Mm-hmm. And takes really feeling like you're in something in a way that's different really than any other job. Um, and I think equal economics is a, is like tactically that's very good.
[00:07:41] David: Then there's never a feeling from one side or the other.
[00:07:44] This person's getting paid more, this person has more upside. It's just. We're in this literally together.
[00:07:49] Nadia: Yeah. And I mean, I think you gotta be realistic about human nature. Like any differences in economics just like has an impact over time.
[00:07:55] David: That's right.
[00:07:55] Nadia: Like you can have different titles, you can have different jobs.
[00:07:58] Like those things can change, [00:08:00] but you know, I, I think you just gotta be realistic about the fact that
[00:08:03] David: either you're equal partners or you're not.
[00:08:05] Nadia: Hmm.
[00:08:06] David: So when you were getting off the ground and getting started, you decided to build the company, did you start. Manufacturing clothes right away. Did you, like how, how did you get into this business?
[00:08:19] Like as scrappy as
[00:08:20] Nadia: possible? Like we, I guess technically bootstrapped for a year. We didn't have, like, we just paid for things ourselves because we needed to figure out, like we, so the story of DIA was the plus size market overall was something that was deeply fascinating to us. I had been a plus size consumer for most of my life.
[00:08:39] I, you know, had been an investment banker. We'd just graduated from Harvard Business School. We had a lot of resources. I had a lot of resources, but I could never really shop in the way that I wanted to. And that was just so bizarre to me, just as an industry kind of construct. And the more time I spent in it, the more fascinating it got.
[00:08:54] Because the reality is that today, 10 years ago, 30 years ago, probably 50 [00:09:00] years ago, this was true too. The vast majority of women shopped in sizes that are outside the norm of mainstream retail.
[00:09:06] David: Hmm. Majority. I.
[00:09:08] Nadia: Majority, like 60 to 70%. Wow. Like, I'm not talking like 51%. Like the vast majority of women shop above a size 14 in the us The average woman in the US wears a size 16, 18.
[00:09:20] Um, and yet retail, like the supply and demand here just seemed structurally imbalanced in a way that like, I don't know, I'm like, I was like a classically trained like business person, like. This locations don't last that long. There's no actual, like arbitrage opportunities are like fairly rare things kind of correct pretty quickly.
[00:09:44] Everyone goes after opportunities and there was something very fascinating about the fact that it just seemed like supply and demand were disconnected and you know, like all hard problems. There were a ton of reasons why that was the case, but like, just thinking about that problem, like why is supply and demand so disconnected in this category was just [00:10:00] fascinating to me.
[00:10:01] Um, and so we started with that problem. But we really didn't know what the answer was. And so we had to go out and test a bunch of stuff and talk to a bunch of people. And so we kind of like, you know, test and iterated into a styling service because we thought the thing that's unique about this market is that it's actually not a coastal market.
[00:10:23] It's not a unique, like, it's not a niche. It's, there's really women in every zip code of the country who fall into this category. And so if we. Talk to and try to shop for women in as many zip codes in this country as possible. Like what would, what problems would emerge. And so that's what we did. Like we, this was like the early days of social media.
[00:10:44] This was 2014. And so a bunch of bloggers put up surveys for us for free, and a bunch of people had said that they wanted to talk to us, like a thousand people, which is kind of crazy. And we basically talked to a thousand women and personally eventually shopped for all of [00:11:00] them.
[00:11:00] David: Personally, meaning two of you?
[00:11:02] Nadia: The two of us. Lydia was living. I know, it's crazy. Lydia was living in San Francisco at the time I was living here. What does
[00:11:07] David: that mean? Shop for like actually go shop like we are
[00:11:10] Nadia: sitting on 37th Street right now on 34th Street is Harold Square. Yeah. And I spent eight hours a day in Macy's, JC Penny at that time.
[00:11:19] There's a Lord and Taylor. Like literally I would talk to these women. I would say, what are you looking for? Like if you could, you know. If you could find anything you wanted to buy, what would it be? And she would say, you know, like a a 30 5-year-old teacher in Nashville would say like, you know, I love Librarian Chic and you know, I'm looking for like great fitting jeans and like sweaters and blouses that I can mix and match.
[00:11:44] And I'd say, okay, I'm gonna go try to find that for you. And like literally in the greatest shopping city in the world, it was really hard. We would shop online, we would shop in stores. We would like try to put together what these people were looking for. And the thing that was really clear was that [00:12:00] the shopping experience itself was just really hard.
[00:12:02] Like we were working full time. We're like fairly resourceful people like, and that's how much it took for these women to actually find what they're looking for. And so we thought, I think a service is valuable here. I think, you know, actually figuring out how. If somebody knows what they're looking for, has an idea of what they want their style to be, could we provide a service at scale that actually enables her to get that and kind of focus on like the service layer of the experience?
[00:12:31] And so that's where we started. How long was that
[00:12:34] David: like period? That
[00:12:35] Nadia: was like a year.
[00:12:36] David: A year.
[00:12:37] Nadia: And because we were doing things like deeply un scalably, right? We were like, people were answering Google Doc surveys and we were like on a Squarespace site and we like. Everything's fine. Like, you know, nothing bad ever happened, but like people were giving us their credit card information over the phone.
[00:12:54] We were like manually processing stripe transaction. Like, it was like, you know, it was like deeply, [00:13:00] deeply unscalable. But eventually, but you
[00:13:03] David: know, I think that that unscalable piece, that's what I've been telling so many founders when I meet with them is they're like, no, I'm finding the scalable, repeatable.
[00:13:12] I'm like, you can't, you're you, you literally just started. You're not. You just don't know what to scale. You don't know what to scale almost. You have to do the unscalable and you don't get to do the unscalable when you're much bigger. 'cause then you can't really do the unscalable, you know? And, uh, so I, I love that.
[00:13:28] And, and so when did you kind of, when was the first like, fundraise and So that was a year of that.
[00:13:36] Nadia: So it took us basically a year to raise a million dollars at the end of that year. And that million dollars came from. Friends, family. Oh not, not investors. Not investors, not venture. It was like an angel round.
[00:13:48] We raised an angel round. Um, did
[00:13:50] David: you want a raise from venture at that point?
[00:13:52] Nadia: Yeah, we were trying to raise from everybody. It was like the hardest. I mean, the fundraising Georgia was fascinating because the first million dollars [00:14:00] literally took us a year. We scraped it together with like some of the incredible people that I'd worked with on Wall Street, which was amazing.
[00:14:09] Friends, family, literally our parents, our class, like, it was really like, you know, wow. A, a true angel round. Um, and then that amount of capital allowed things to take off in a pretty dramatic way. And in the 18 months that followed, we raised a hundred million dollars. Like, it, it, the, the, the tide flipped so quickly.
[00:14:34] It was, you know,
[00:14:37] David: it was wild. Wow. So now I want to hear more about the product kind of evolution. When did you know to kind of evolve, you know, this is something I've been actually recently trying to dig in on these episodes is like, how do you know? 'cause it's dangerous. Like, meaning if you're doing a service and it's working, even if it's unscalable, it's dangerous to go to the next thing, right?
[00:14:59] [00:15:00] Because you don't know that that's gonna work. It usually costs money. Like how can you talk through that?
[00:15:04] Nadia: Yeah, I honestly, I think that that's like particularly hard for consumer businesses too. Because consumers tend to be more different than businesses are. And so I think that like, good point. Yeah, I, I think that like really thinking about like who your early adopters are, what the next kind of cohort of customers may need and what that looks like differently is something that I think is probably pretty hard to get right out, like from the outset and you kind of have to like iterate into, but.
[00:15:32] Again, like it goes back to this idea that how much do you wanna build around early insights versus like, how flexible can you stay and how you're thinking about the product, such that as you go into those bigger cohorts of customers and you're starting to get that feedback, you're not, you know, like unnecessarily burdened by certain features that you've built or an amount of technical that you just really shouldn't have that early in a business.
[00:15:57] Um, and so [00:16:00] staying light, which means. At that time. Now, you know, who knows how different things can be in the world of ai, but at that time it meant that we still did a lot of things manually. Like we did things manually. We built technology as, uh, leanly as we could, and ultimately we built a massive amount of tech because the business, you know, to actually scale the types of human interactions that we were, you know, kind of creating at scale.
[00:16:28] We needed to, but. We really like, we were hands on for a long time. Um, and I think it, it ma it worked because, I mean, we certainly still ran into all kinds of challenges once we realized that the first, I don't know, the first 200,000 customers that you have are not the same as the next 500,000 customers that you have potentially on like many important dimensions.
[00:16:57] Um, and so. [00:17:00] I think we tried to stay lean, but nonetheless that kind of scaling function was still pretty tough. So
[00:17:07] David: interesting that the consumer verse business thing is, I never actually, like, consumers have so many different attributes, you know, compared to businesses that generally so
[00:17:18] Nadia: many of them, right?
[00:17:19] Like
[00:17:19] David: right,
[00:17:20] Nadia: you know, in, in, in world of consumer you need hundreds of thousands, if not millions of customers. In the world of B2B. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's true. Some, some, you know, massive B2B businesses have that many customers. Sure, sure. But it's just the number, uh, you know, it's just a very different kind of shape of, of a customer base.
[00:17:39] David: So one of the things that I, from what I've read and from what you've told me and from what I've heard, your community like, that was the secret sauce, or I don't know, either the moat or the, the, the fuel for the business can. Can you talk about how that community, maybe just talk about what the community looked [00:18:00] like, you know, the form, and then how did you start that community?
[00:18:04] Nadia: Yeah. I mean, I think, I think that, I don't know how much of this is like unique to building a very mission driven business, but there was something about DIA that always meant that like the walls between our team and our customers was kind of fluid, right? Like most of the people who worked at Dia. Also saw themselves in the customer, or were our customers.
[00:18:27] Um, and that meant that like our customers were always in the room, so to speak. Yeah. In like a really powerful way. And I think that that led us to an orientation where the customers were just kind of core to the product from the beginning. Um, the actual community that ended up forming most dramatically at DIA formed organically.
[00:18:49] Which I think is really, you didn't
[00:18:51] David: start the community.
[00:18:52] Nadia: This was an era again, like the world has changed. This probably couldn't happen now, but it was really a Facebook groups [00:19:00] driven community. 'cause people were, that a customer started, that. Customers started and they would start groups because they were like buy, sell, trade groups and people would wanna like swap what they'd gotten with somebody else.
[00:19:12] And I think there was something very powerful about the shared experience that most of these women had. Which was a negative shared experience, right? It was like how hard it was to shop in this category, like how amazing it was to get great clothes and to have a brand that was, you know, just about her and all that kind of stuff.
[00:19:31] That these, what started, I think as like fairly transactional Facebook groups of people wanting to buy seller trade turned into like these groups. I, I'm still in a lot of these groups and I still watch. What's happening and these women are lifelong friends. Like we started seeing women like subsets of like 10 to 12 women from all over the country because these were all national groups, would literally plan vacations to meet each [00:20:00] other in different places.
[00:20:01] Like they would rent a house and it would be like one per and and, and we were like watching this and we're like, holy cow. Like this is, I think it's very hard. If we were to have sat down and said, let's build a bunch of features that are really gonna empower people to meet. No one, I don't think anyone would've used that, but I, there was just like something organic, so organic that took off.
[00:20:24] And
[00:20:25] David: how big were these? Like just direction, are we talking
[00:20:28] Nadia: about thousands of people? There were thousands of people in the Facebook groups. Thousands of people did not go on vacation together. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think there were a subset of, you know, probably a few hundred that ended up like being part of this like travel team.
[00:20:41] That's still amazing. But I mean, they would come to New York and they'd all come visit our office. Like they would reach out to our social media managers and say like, can we come to the office? And we had customers coming to the office all the time. Um, it was crazy. And we had customers, we had both customers and [00:21:00] team members who.
[00:21:02] It got DIA tattoos, permanent tattoos on their body. Yeah, it was wild.
[00:21:08] David: I mean, the thing is, I think the lesson for whether it's consumer or B2B enterprise software, if you find that underserved group and that that persona is clear, even though the consumers were very different, they had the same, no,
[00:21:24] Nadia: the shared experience was super strong.
[00:21:26] Shared
[00:21:26] David: experience.
[00:21:27] Nadia: Yeah.
[00:21:27] David: And if you can tap into that, you know. It's not like tapping into the, in your case, the person who all the clothes fit them perfectly and all. Like, that group doesn't need the community. Right. You know, the, the, the CEOs of, I mean maybe CEOs, but the CMOs of companies have a hundred different communities that they can be in.
[00:21:48] But when you find these kind of niche roles or niche kind of communities that, that are underserved. That's ama for that to happen organically is kind of I know,
[00:21:58] Nadia: and the thing that like [00:22:00] always amazed me about the plus-size market is I would classify myself as a very rational, like logical person. The thing that always amazed me was that this was a community that had niche characteristics and mainstream scale.
[00:22:14] Because usually if you have like niche characteristics, you also have niche scale, right? And the idea that there could be a large population, a majority population. That operated with niche characteristics is something that like continues to amaze me about this market. Yeah. Um, it's just, it's a fascinating category.
[00:22:34] It's
[00:22:34] David: amazing.
[00:22:34] Nadia: Yeah.
[00:22:35] David: Um, I love the people coming to your office. I, I love that. Um, what, as you think about, so you did raise, you raised a lot of money, um, and you raised a lot in a short period of time. How did you think about. Who you were bringing on as an investor? Like, did they have to be on board with the mi, you know, were they also mission driven to fit into all of this?
[00:22:59] Was it [00:23:00] more, um, someone told me the other day on an episode the money was green. You know, like, you know what, what, what, how did you think about that?
[00:23:09] Nadia: Yeah. Um, all money is definitely green, but I don't think that, that, like, I think who you raise money from in the end matters a lot. Um, we got exceptionally lucky going back to this, you know, original conversation around people and who are, you know, who's around your business that has an impact.
[00:23:30] In the beginning we had a very small group of investors and they were extraordinary. Um, the same investors that were a part of our series A basically we're a part of our Series B and our series C. We had a very, very small group of people around Dia and I think that. Um, through all the ups and downs, having the depth of those relationships and, you know, the longevity of those [00:24:00] relationships was actually a, an incredible help.
[00:24:04] David: What, where would you, um, I'm gonna lead you with the question, but it's one important one for me is did each investor add a lot of value in a bunch of different places? Or was it like, this investor helped us with this, this investor helped us with this? You know what I'm trying to say? Like,
[00:24:24] Nadia: I mean, I think that they, I, I think that one of the things that they did a really good job of doing is letting us tell them like where we needed the most help.
[00:24:35] Um, I mean, our investors generally speaking were previous operators, so they, they brought a ton of previous operators
[00:24:43] David: at venture funds. Like
[00:24:46] Nadia: currently, currently venture investors? Yeah. Previously, yeah. Wow. Okay. Operators. Um, that,
[00:24:51] David: that's semi rare.
[00:24:52] Nadia: I, I really cannot tell you. I think it, we had, we had people who were exceptions to this [00:25:00] rule for sure.
[00:25:01] But I think that the idea of deploying massive amounts of capital without ever having run a business yourself is. A little risky to me to put it lightly. I just think that the reality, like once a business hits any amount of scale, the reality of what actually happens and how things actually work and what it actually means to be running a business at an executive team and a product and scaling and all the rest of it, um, is a pretty critical set of experiences that I think are important to have.
[00:25:35] If you have a seat at a board mm-hmm.
[00:25:38] David: Table. Mm-hmm.
[00:25:38] Nadia: Um, but they helped
[00:25:41] David: you. I mean, they, they moved the needle.
[00:25:42] Nadia: Yeah. We had an amazing board. We had an amazing board. We had amazing investors. Um, and I mean, it was definitely, it was our responsibility, right? Like it wasn't, it was ultimately we got advice from them.
[00:25:58] We got a ton of [00:26:00] help from them. They were amazing sounding board and some of the difficult decisions, but at the end of the day, like every decision was ours. Yep. And every outcome, therefore was ours to be accountable to.
[00:26:09] David: Um, I like that. Every decision was ours and every outcome was ours. Yeah. That's a And that's, I think that's the way it has to be.
[00:26:16] You're right. Like a lot of time investors, they, they, they make recommendations. They do, but if you do what they suggest and it doesn't work, you're still the one responsible for the outcome.
[00:26:26] Nadia: I'm yeah, for sure. Um, look, I think that like in every profession there's a wide spectrum of investors. I've certainly heard from other founders all kinds of, you know, less positive experiences with board members and investors.
[00:26:48] Um, but I think that's that part of, you know, someone said this to me when we first started raising money and it was true. You can divorce your husband before you can divorce your investor. That's true. Right? And so [00:27:00] that's true. You should, people, when people say all money is green, I mean that's true, but you're not just taking their money, you're taking their expectations.
[00:27:09] You're taking their decision making, you're taking their presence as a part of your company. And the earlier you bring them on, the longer they're gonna have a presence in your business. Um, and so I think that's
[00:27:20] David: a good reminder.
[00:27:21] Nadia: Yeah. I think it's like kind of ironic because people think that.
[00:27:25] David: It's a really good reminder,
[00:27:26] Nadia: you know, early investors, it's
[00:27:28] David: like a co-founder.
[00:27:29] I mean, the early investors are kind of another,
[00:27:32] Nadia: they're another form of co-founders for sure. And if you're lucky, you're doing this for a while. Right. Which means that you're working with them for a while. Right. Um, and I just think that who the people are really matters. Hmm.
[00:27:46] David: So you're no longer the CEO.
[00:27:47] Um, can you talk through what that, that I, I went through that process. I've talked to many people so far as guests. It's a, it's not a easy process. Um, can you maybe talk through [00:28:00] your journey stepping down?
[00:28:02] Nadia: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, 10 years into the business, we started thinking about like what it made the most sense to do next.
[00:28:09] And it was clear to us that. Thinking about the business in some different strategic construct was gonna be important. And we ran a very, um, we had a very open mind about what those outcomes could be. So there were some versions of it where we could acquire another company and kind of change the shape and trajectory of our business by doing that.
[00:28:31] There were some paths that were mergers where there were businesses that it just made sense for us to partner with in a deeper way. And to change kind of the next step function that we could achieve together in a way that was more than what was possible for each to the businesses alone. And then there's a traditional acquisition path where, you know, if there was a fit of a much larger company buying Diaz and as a kind of whole acquisition, we explored that too.
[00:28:58] And I think in each of those scenarios, [00:29:00] the role that any of us played in the business going forward was different. Um, like the role that, the responsibility that I felt was to make sure that whatever path DIA took, it was ultimately the best possible path for the business. Hmm. Um, and the full acquisition is what ended up being the best path for the business.
[00:29:18] And in the construct of the acquisition that made the most sense. The team was in really good hands with me, not necessarily being part of the business long term after that. And so there was kind of a, a very natural. Outcome of that, like pretty broad process into the best outcome. Um, and
[00:29:41] David: who's the CEO now?
[00:29:42] Nadia: My co-founder. So, and that was the best outcome for her too, you know, and so I think it was again, like a fairly organic, um, transition where as long as DIA was a standalone business [00:30:00] or. You know, in a merger situation or a situation where we were acquiring a business or like any of the other permutations that we explored, my commitment was to be there in a 100% capacity until the moment that there was a different outcome for data that could be better.
[00:30:17] And I think that that's like one of the things that's truly unique about being a founder, or I think what you would expect to see in most founders is the idea that like. When it's your responsibility, it's not 50% your responsibility. It's not 80% your responsibility. It's like 250000% your responsibility.
[00:30:37] And I certainly felt that until the day that I was not the CEO of dia. So
[00:30:43] David: how long did it take? How, when did you step down? Um, almost exactly a year ago. How long did it take from stepping down? To actually not having all the stress that comes with, uh, I have my answer, but I'm curious. I
[00:30:59] Nadia: like, [00:31:00] I think that, um, I like, I think your body's like remarkable at letting you keep going.
[00:31:08] Hmm. Even when, like, if you actually, it's like the adrenaline or like whatever it is that like lets people lift cars off their children kind of thing. Like you have an ability to do things for, I think longer than. You actually physically can. Mm-hmm. And that was definitely like, we were like, go, go, go, go, go, go, go until
[00:31:29] David: for a decade.
[00:31:30] Nadia: For a decade through the entire kind of m and a permutation process through the transaction actually closing, et cetera, et cetera. And then it was like as soon as everything stopped, I was like, holy shit. I am ex Like, it was just like a type of exhaustion that I think it would've been hard for me to imagine that I was actually that tired before.
[00:31:50] Because I think that like adrenaline and like, you know, kind of irrational founder optimism and commitment gets you like way farther than like [00:32:00] the human body tends to go. Um, and so like it took me a while to even realize like how tired I was. Um, and it was like, then it was like this huge flip where it was like I didn't even wanna like open my inbox.
[00:32:14] Like I couldn't even answer emails. It was like. I'm not doing anything. I'm gonna totally disconnect. Hmm. And I tried to do that. Um, but I feel like it's taken a good, and other things have happened in life, obviously, during that time. So it's not like it was only about Yeah. You know, kind of decompressing and, uh, getting past it.
[00:32:34] But I feel like it took a good nine months to really feel like, okay, like I think I can, like my brain's working again. I, I don't like. Feel like I don't wanna think about anything anymore. Mm-hmm. Like I can re-engage and now I feel pretty good. It does pass.
[00:32:55] David: It does. It does. But it's in the beginning, you know, my wife was telling me, you're so [00:33:00] stressed, you're so tired.
[00:33:01] I'm like, I'm not. I'm not. And then when I stepped down from operating, I'm still involved in the business. But step down from being CEO.
[00:33:07] Nadia: Yeah.
[00:33:09] David: You, I think I had like a two week period where I actually didn't wanna do any, like actually anything. Like I, my, and to your point, it's like this, this adrenaline dump that just is like, whoa, I have been running on fumes, but you don't realize that you're doing it while you're doing it, you know?
[00:33:26] Um, so, um, let me ask you, I wanna transition to you in a second, but I want, last question is, what is the biggest challenge you ever faced at dia? How did you overcome that challenge?
[00:33:41] Nadia: Whew. We had a lot of challenges. Um, I think, I dunno, there's like something very interesting about being a young first time founder.
[00:33:52] So we found a deal when I was 27 years old and I mean, I just didn't have [00:34:00] any experience organizationally, managerially like. I'd done interesting jobs I'd like, thought about interesting problems, but like building and scaling a team I think was just like something that was completely foreign to me. And if you have any amount of success, particularly in a venture-backed business where things can, like timelines are just very unique and things can scale really fast.
[00:34:24] And there was a year that we hired 600 people at the. 600 people mm-hmm. Like 2018 or 2019 where there's a, it was just things can change that, that's what happens.
[00:34:34] David: Like
[00:34:35] Nadia: in, um,
[00:34:37] David: in one year you hired 600 people. Wow.
[00:34:39] Nadia: Yeah. And things can change really fast. And it, like, it was clear to me pretty early that, especially in, in a world where there's a lot of capital, businesses can change a lot faster than most human skill sets can.
[00:34:54] Right. And so. Like me figuring out how I could continue to be a CEO [00:35:00] that could lead a larger and larger organization with many more internal, um, kind of organizational requirements and responsibilities and what were originally very customer and product driven responsibilities. Um, I think was really tough.
[00:35:16] And then honestly, then the pandemic happened, right? And then there was like a whole. Different type of leadership that was required as we figured out
[00:35:26] David: that no one's ever had to deal with before.
[00:35:27] Nadia: No one had ever had to deal with. And you know, there was the beginning of Covid when we didn't know if every business online was gonna die and then every business online was gonna thrive.
[00:35:37] And then, you know, there was a very distinct social environment right around businesses like ours that was also hugely challenging to navigate, or bank failed, like just all these things happened. And I realized that. Like, it was kind of like the pandemic and like really going through all those challenges that actually when I finally felt like I'm the CEO of this business [00:36:00] and, you know, like I, I understand the leadership requirements of me and, and that I kind of like really stepped into that role I think in a bigger way.
[00:36:09] Um, but yeah, I mean, I think evolving as a founder, CEO, if your business is evolving quickly. Is just very, very challenging. Mm-hmm.
[00:36:21] David: Your role
[00:36:22] Nadia: changes
[00:36:22] David: so fast, so
[00:36:23] Nadia: quickly, and it's faster than, you know, uh, certainly we have amazing examples of founders that have scaled with businesses dramatically. Right. Um, and I think there's always something very unique, not necessarily about the skillset of those founders, but about the mindset of those founders.
[00:36:41] Yes, yes. Um,
[00:36:43] David: I agree with that and
[00:36:44] Nadia: I. Certainly want it to be in that category. I just think it's hard. 'cause your business can change way faster than you can. Yeah. It's the truth.
[00:36:52] David: Um, so I wanna talk about a little bit about your background. Did you, did you grow up [00:37:00] around entrepreneurs? Did I, was it somewhere in your DNA that or No,
[00:37:06] Nadia: not at all.
[00:37:07] Um, I grew up, uh, in like a fairly. I would say like a fairly typical immigrant type family. Um, my parents were both academics, professors, teachers, um, and so definitely not entrepreneurs. Not entrepreneurial at all? Not, not even business. Yeah. Right. Not, not even like I, I don't think, I mean, maybe my father spent a couple of years in a corporate job, like very, very early, but otherwise, my parents had never.
[00:37:40] Never worked in corporations, like not much less entrepreneurship. But I actually don't think that that mattered. 'cause I think that like, I would credit my parents for being the biggest impact on me. Um, and I think it's the mindset thing. Like I think ultimately we all like innately understand the power of things that can [00:38:00] compound over the course of time.
[00:38:02] And like as a person, a professional, a leader, an entrepreneur, like whatever it ends up being. I don't think that there's anything as impactful as how your mindset compounds over the course of time. Right. And you know, at this point, that mindset has compounded many over many decades. Right. Um, and I think my parents just gave us, like me and my two siblings, just like a incredibly powerful mindset around mostly like classical immigrant type mentalities around.
[00:38:37] You know, like there are no shortcuts. You have to work hard, you're capable of solving any problem, um, you know, kind of resilience and being able to kind of navigate calmly through challenges because you just believe eventually I'll figure out what the answer is here. Um, I think are just things that made all the difference.[00:39:00]
[00:39:00] David: It's interesting that one of the, um, guests that I had was Adam Bryan. He used to write for the New York Times. He had a column called the, the. Corner office and he's interviewed a thousand CEOs. And actually it was a big inspiration for the way I, I try to do this podcast and I asked him on the, I said, what are the profiles of the best and most successful CEOs An immigrant was one of the, was one of the four.
[00:39:23] And he said, it just every, you just see it over and over, and I think it's exactly what you're talking about, which is there's just a, there's a mindset you have to have as an immigrant. To be successful and to make it through all the challenges. And if you pass that on to your children, you know, it's, um, it, it's actually one of my, I my parents are also both immigrants and I got that same thing.
[00:39:48] And I worry that you start to lose that as it goes through generations. I know if you like,
[00:39:52] Nadia: think about like an immigrant mindset is like the opposite end of the spectrum of like nepotism. Yeah, yeah. Right. And like I think about that all the time [00:40:00] too, but I, I think like fundamentally, I. There's a fundamental attribute of being an immigrant that you think that the locus of control in your life is inside of you, and whether or not you succeed is, is you have agency, not like you can make decisions that allow you to be successful because you don't, you like fundamentally believe that you're, you have fewer resources or you have, it's not something on the outside that's gonna help you.
[00:40:27] It's like your ability to do that. And that's like. The most extraordinary gift you can give somebody is tell them like, Hey, at the end of the day you get to decide, like you can decide what your potential is or like how far you go. It's not gonna be because you know your dad wasn't the CEO of right, right.
[00:40:47] X, Y, or Z, or because you were unlucky or whatever it ends up being. And I think like deeply feeling like at the end of the day it was up to me to decide.
[00:40:57] David: It's a good description of the,
[00:40:59] Nadia: it is [00:41:00] like, I think that's what it comes down to.
[00:41:02] David: Uh, Harvard Business School you mentioned. Where'd you go to undergrad?
[00:41:07] I went to Penn. So very good schools. Um, I did not get an MBA. Do you think that your MBA helped you, it helped you find your co-founder? Did it help you build dia?
[00:41:22] Nadia: I think it, it did help me and I think it can be helpful. But I think that, um, like ultimately, I mean, HBS is a extraordinary institution that attracts extraordinary people.
[00:41:35] Yeah. And that honestly was the thing that like made the biggest impact on my life. Like the friends that I left with, the relationships that came outta that experience were things that have just shaped me. I'm now 12 years af like postgraduation and still like, these are some of the most impactful relationships that I have in my life.
[00:41:57] Um, I think that that's very different from going to business [00:42:00] school thinking that it's gonna make you a better business person.
[00:42:03] David: That's my que that's exactly my question. Yeah. And there, there,
[00:42:06] Nadia: there are, um, for some people that could be true. Like for someone who truly, you know, at the classical example, or we had many, many classmates who came from military service or like other places were truly.
[00:42:18] Being introduced to the world of business for the first time was very valuable. Interesting. So like real, like real career pivots. I think it matters, but I, I think for most schools and most people, I don't think that business school really gives you that much of an advantage in thinking about how to build a business, at least
[00:42:37] David: as a founder.
[00:42:37] I, I just, I think what you said before, which is sticking with me, is the speed that you have to evolve, by the way, the speed, the world is evolving. I don't know how any school could, how do you even keep up with, you know, you can't keep up with it 'cause you can't even build curriculum fast enough to teach people.
[00:42:55] But I, but I do, I do think that the foundational thing, if you're making a pivot, [00:43:00] I mean, there are foundation, of course there's foundational knowledge that helps you, you know, but, but the network, right. But yeah, most of
[00:43:05] Nadia: that foundational knowledge, like, doesn't actually matter. Like, I, I mean, I, I don't know, like I, I happen to have had undergraduate degrees in finance and accounting.
[00:43:16] Which maybe was helpful to me at some point in building my business, but as soon as we were real business, we had accountants and we, you know what I mean? Like, it's not, like those are not the things that are gonna make you or break you. Yeah. I think it's more like, can you figure out how to get to the next goalpost?
[00:43:34] David: But, but the network for, I mean the network, from what I understand, I mean people are extraordinary. That's what it, these are, and I. You probably don't even know the power of the network for another 20 years, you know?
[00:43:46] Nadia: A hundred percent. But these are some of my, my closest friends, obviously my co-founder.
[00:43:51] I think everybody on our board was connected to Harvard in some way. Really? Yeah. Like I, I mean, for sure the network is exceptionally strong. Yeah. Yeah. Um, [00:44:00] I actually think like one place, very tactically where HBS made a difference was being a female founder. We. Kind of, you know, we're in the fundraising world at a time when there were actually a lot of very successful female founders coming out of HBS, and especially in the early stages when the business is not really a business, I think.
[00:44:22] Pattern recognition is like over relied on. Yeah. And the fact that there were other examples of women who'd built very successful careers coming out of HBS, I think was actually a big advantage.
[00:44:31] David: Interesting.
[00:44:32] Nadia: Um, in the earliest fundraising, eventually, like your business has to stand on its own and either you have a business that's fundable or it's not.
[00:44:38] But I think in the beginning, um, there was some positive pattern of recognition that came out of, um. Specifically being a female founder out of HBS, that was helpful.
[00:44:49] David: Did you have a role model or a mentor or something, you know, outside of the investor, you know Yeah. Did you have a, or do you have a person that [00:45:00] kind of, you look at?
[00:45:02] Nadia: Yeah, I think that one of the things that I have been the most lucky in my career as having amazing mentors and role models. Um, and I mean, even my earliest mentors and role models from when I was like an analyst on Wall Street at 21. Are still people who I talk to and call all the time for advice. Um, and I, I don't know, like I've been asked a bunch of times, like, how do you find a mentor?
[00:45:24] Yeah, yeah. It's like kind of like community. Like I don't know exactly how to do that. Like there's something very, like, you know. Putting yourself in a situation where you're doing really good work for somebody who you wanna learn from, who may also feel like they could be invested in your success, is like, you know, there's some things that you can control in there, but there's all other things that are just like, you know, kind of luck.
[00:45:47] Mm-hmm. Um, but mm-hmm. I think even all of our investors, I would count as, as mentors and, and people who I just learned a ton from. Um, so I think having [00:46:00] powerful mentors, investing in those relationships. Um, is also
[00:46:05] David: incredibly important. What do you think is what's next for you? You think you're gonna, well, what, what's, what's immediately next?
[00:46:15] Nadia: Um, immediately next is that I'm having a baby in two weeks. Um, but I don't know. I mean, I think I'm really enjoying this moment of being able to think broadly, um, the reality of being a founder. Probably for anything more than like five or seven years, certainly 10 years, is that you go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper into like your customer, the challenges of your business, like specifically the things that you're thinking about.
[00:46:46] And you know, being able to think about any problem in any category, in any customer has kind of been exhilarating. And so. I think I, I'm, I'm very [00:47:00] much enjoying a broad spectrum, uh, exploration right now. And we'll see. I mean, there's like no doubt in my mind that being close to young businesses, founders, the magic of entrepreneurship, um, is something that I wanna stay close to.
[00:47:22] But I think exactly in what form that takes. I'm still kind of enjoying figuring out.
[00:47:28] David: Yeah, it's, it. So for me, I that going deeper and deeper and deeper, when I took that step back, I realized how deep I had gone so deep that I actually didn't see all the other things that are going on, all the new things, all the, and that's been for me, the most interesting part of this last, call it 18 months where I'm.
[00:47:51] I'm learning so much and you are like, wow, there's so endless. I mean, literally things that I never do anything about. You know? And, [00:48:00] and, um, it's, it's super interesting to have that opportunity. 'cause you have different context to look at those spaces. Right. You know,
[00:48:10] Nadia: and some things translate and some things don't.
[00:48:12] Right. Right. Like there's some things where the experience at Dia. It gives me like a very obvious perspective on a new context, and there's some things where I'm like, wow, that's so fascinating. Yeah. This is just a totally new thought. Yeah, it's very cool. I mean, I, look, I, I think when you commit to being a founder, CEO of a business, your commitment is to be all in, all times True, true.
[00:48:39] Like fully deep. Yeah.
[00:48:40] David: Yep. And, and actually though, that's when you're great at it. I mean that. Yeah.
[00:48:45] Nadia: Yeah. I mean, I think it's, I don't know how to do that job really without doing that. Yeah. Um, and so demanding, right? Like I, I tried to do all kinds of things. Like I Angel invested, I was like a part of groups.
[00:48:58] Like I tried to [00:49:00] make sure that I was hearing other perspectives, but at the end of the day, there's just no time for that stuff.
[00:49:04] David: I don't think I read a book for legit. I, I think, not exaggerate. I think for nine years I didn't read a book like.
[00:49:11] Nadia: Audio books become helpful because there, there are moments where you're like literally in transit and can't be doing other things.
[00:49:16] Yeah. Um, but yeah, I agree. It's like, it's a, it is a distinct lifestyle choice and I think that, you know, if you wanna do it well, you really gotta commit to the lifestyle. Yeah.
[00:49:31] David: I don't know, uh, if you'll have an answer for this. I'm, I'm very curious about this. Uh, what, how do you think AI is going to change?
[00:49:41] The apparel fashion, like e-commerce? Like how, how do you think, what, what do you think the biggest change is gonna be?
[00:49:51] Nadia: Yeah. I mean, I think that it's probably different than where people innately expect, because I mean, clothing at [00:50:00] the end of the day is still like very much like an analog product. Like, yeah, right.
[00:50:06] Like physically you chose that sweatshirt, you put it on this morning, like it actually has to cover your body. Like it's warm or it's not like, you know, it is a physical world experience, but I think how businesses are organized in delivering that sweatshirt to you are always gonna change a lot. Got it.
[00:50:22] And so like, do I think that in the next five years, like the actual product or shopping experience, like AI try ons and like all that kind of stuff is really gonna change. I'm not sure, like I'm probably less bullish on that, but do I think that apparel businesses will fundamentally become more efficient because of ai?
[00:50:44] I do apparel. Interesting. Very inefficient category, right? It's a category where massive amounts of inventory are created. It's historically impossible to create the right amount of inventory and the right quantities and the right sizes and the right colors, and so there's just like a [00:51:00] massive amount of like inefficiency that's built into the system.
[00:51:02] Right. Like all the economics of the industry are built around the amount of inefficiency that exists in the industry. I think as some of those inefficiencies start to come out, there could be pretty dramatic structural changes in how apparel, you know, as a cost structure, value chain supply chain operates.
[00:51:17] And we can already see that, right? Like the, you know, most successful apparel businesses today are businesses that look nothing like traditional businesses. It's the sheen and the teams of the world, right, that operate in a fundamentally different way. And they operate in a different way. That means their cost structures are fundamentally different.
[00:51:35] So even though they're still delivering a sweatshirt that needs to fit on your body, something like the price can change, for example.
[00:51:40] David: And the speed. And And the speed, right? And
[00:51:42] Nadia: other things like that. So I think it's really in kind of the organization and efficiency of those businesses and what that means about the attributes of your experience that can actually change, which is probably less around whether or not that sweatshirt's still made out of cotton 10 years and more about like how much you paid [00:52:00] for it.
[00:52:01] How quickly you got it. Um, things like that.
[00:52:03] David: Interesting. Okay. Uh, last question for you. So knowing everything you know today, your entire experience at DIA and everything, what is the one piece of advice you would go back and give yourself, literally the be before you started investment banking, like, you know, all the way to the beginning of your career?
[00:52:21] Nadia: I mean, I think we've probably like hit on some of this in the course of this conversation, but I feel like there's. A way to try to live your life and plan your career where you are expanding your option set at every stage instead of restricting it. And I think early in your career, that to me looks like hard work and hard jobs, right?
[00:52:45] Like, you know, the harder you work early in your career, I believe, and again, this is probably like. I am more in my parents immigrant mindset than I would like to admit Sometimes, like the harder you work and the harder the [00:53:00] things that you do early, the more options you have to do other things later, and nothing is impossible.
[00:53:04] Like, you know, I think people can change paths and do extraordinary things all the time, but I think if you're actually trying to be in the best possible, average outcome for what you're doing, doing hard things early and trying to do them really well, such that you have the opportunity to do. More things in the next step, um, I think is really important.
[00:53:25] And it's not that different from what we were talking about in terms of product building. Like was it hard to manually shop for a thousand people at the beginning? Yeah. It was like, I didn't wear an Apple watch then, but I kind of wish I did. I was probably walking like, I don't know, 30,000 steps a day, but at the end of the day, like it gave us more options at the end of, and so I think.
[00:53:46] Good advice, especially early advice. That's unique.
[00:53:47] David: No one's said this yet. That's good advice.
[00:53:49] Nadia: Good. Um, I just, you gotta put in the work at the beginning, I think you, you always have to put in the work, but it's like kind of funny because I feel like [00:54:00] in some ways people think that the first job you take outta college is not that important.
[00:54:03] And I kind of think the opposite. I think it's actually incredibly important because everything in life ends up being path dependent and so. You know, is it like do or die? Like you're never gonna be able to get on a different path if you make the wrong decision at the beginning. No, of course not. I think you can get on other paths for sure.
[00:54:21] But on average, will you have a better outcome if you, you know, based on what job you have first outta college? Yeah. Mm-hmm. I think. The reality of the world is that the answer is yes. Yeah. And so, like actually doing hard things early I think is important. And you, you, it's easier to
[00:54:37] David: do hard things early for
[00:54:39] Nadia: sure, for a lot of reasons.
[00:54:40] You know, for sure. I like, I don't wanna sound like the elder millennial that I am, but like we were, like, I worked so hard at the beginning of my career, I was an investment banking analyst, which is like a unique form of like, at that time, um, you know, this is 2008, 2009. Now people are dying from. Working.
[00:54:57] I know, but there's also a lot more [00:55:00] protections in the workplace now than there were even 10 years or 15 years ago, or however long ago that was. But like, we worked so hard and it was like a badge of honor, you know? And I'm not saying that's for everybody, but
[00:55:13] David: like, but you can do that. You know, you can do, you don't have a family, you don't have, you know, you don't have.
[00:55:19] Really any re you don't have kids, you don't have the responsibilities. You haveli not unlimited, but a lot more energy. You have a lot of energy
[00:55:27] Nadia: you can learn. Like, there's just an opportunity. Like IIII just think that like working hard early is
[00:55:36] David: That's good advice
[00:55:37] Nadia: you, that you're never gonna regret that.
[00:55:39] David: Yep. Like
[00:55:40] Nadia: the worst thing is that things are easier for you Lee. Yeah. Like everyone likes going downhill. It's much harder going uphill.
[00:55:46] David: Love it. Um. Thank you very much for doing this. This was really fun. Thank you for coming in person to do this. Um, I love this. I didn't feel like I'm doing a podcast, you know?
[00:55:56] Um, so thank you for doing this and I, I think there was a lot of really [00:56:00] good learnings for people from this, so I appreciate it. Awesome. It was a fun conversation. Great. Hope everyone enjoyed and, uh, we'll see you for the next episode of not another co podcast. That's a wrap for this week's episode of not another CEO podcast.
[00:56:15] Thanks for joining. For show notes and more, please visit not another ceo podcast.com. We'll see you next week.
