You're supposed to be satisfied once you've "made it"... But what if you're not? What if you "check all the boxes" but find yourself craving a new adventure? What if you'd rather go build something new? What do you do when you have a crazy idea that you just can't let go of? How do you chase a dream when it the world wants you to settle for safety? And how do you balance your aspirations with your obligations?
Amanda Goetz is the founder of House of Wise, a luxury CBD brand for women. She's also the part-time Chief Marketing Officer for Teal. And she has a popular account with a very engaged following on Twitter. On top of all that, Amanda is a single mom with three young kids.
In this episode we discuss:
Links:
Neville Mehra:
Amanda Goetz, welcome to Never Normal.
Amanda Goetz:
Thanks for having me.
Neville Mehra:
You were living in New York, working at The Knot. The thing that struck me is that for a while, your Twitter bio was actually something like, building the next thing in, I think was it a moon emoji? Am I getting that right?
Amanda Goetz:
Yeah. Yup.
Neville Mehra:
So you had this sort of pretty public role as a marketing executive within a really big company, for anyone who doesn't know, The Knot is like basically if there's anything related to weddings in the US and internationally now, it's probably The Knot, or some company that they've bought, right? They've acquired a ton of companies over the years. And so you're in this pretty public role, and yet you were also sort of publicly building a startup. How did that go over? Did you tell them I'm going to start my own thing, because that's really unusual.
Amanda Goetz:
Yes. So I definitely told them before I made any public acclimations about building again. I had been at that company for over five years and led kind of the brand repositioning and visual identity refresh, and we got acquired and merged with Wedding Wire to become The Knot Worldwide, and I had been there for a while and had built the team and I had an amazing team under me, and with anything, when you start to feel like you're not growing as fast, growth is a big thing for me. I always want to feel like I'm doing something new, and in order for me to kind of keep that creative energy going, and that's very important for me, it was harder at a large company. You went from a less than 800 person company, which is middle size, still huge, but over 2,000 person global company with a large team.
Amanda Goetz:
So when I first started, I had a lot of influence and impact over the brand and the company and the direction, and I got to help build actual products under The Knot digital app. I had my hand in a lot of cookie jars, and as the company grows, your ability to influence a lot of things becomes smaller because you have more to manage under your umbrella. So I had a very, very honest conversation with my boss, just being like, "Hey, I need to continue to scratch that kind of creative itch, but I want to make sure that along as we're aligned on what goals I need to hit here, and that I continue to do my job and give my all when I'm here, I just want to make sure we're cool with that." And they were very open and accepting of that. Because I just don't believe that passion is a zero sum game.
Amanda Goetz:
When I had my first kid, and then I had my second kid, it didn't mean I loved my first kid any less, right? And so I think we're entering this new wave, and COVID helped us kind of push into that, where time is just this societal construct of the nine to five, and non companies are realizing that they need to be more focused on operational excellence and outcomes versus output. And I think The Knot is kind of on the forward edge of thinking that way, so it allowed me the opportunity, and House of Wise came out of something that I was just very passionate about, and I couldn't stop thinking about it, that there was this massive stigma around cannabis for women like me who are moms, executives, trying to quote unquote have it all. And we are realizing as a generation, as a society, that you can't have it all without having help.
Amanda Goetz:
So help comes in many forms. There's very privileged versions of help, and then there's less privileged versions of help via community and cannabis and things like that. So it was just something I was very, very deeply convicted on and as long as we had kind of aligned parameters around what that looked like, that was very important.
Neville Mehra:
So you mentioned a few things there I want to come back to, most importantly what you're doing now, but before we kind of dive deeper into that, I guess the reason why your Twitter bio probably seems like a weird place to start, but the reason I bring it up is just because I have a saying that you probably have more options than you realize, and I think this is true for all of us, even for me, as I say it, and that's part of the reason why so many of us have coaches, or businesses use consultants, because a lot of times it's good just to have that someone else to look at a situation and point out maybe a path that you didn't see.
Neville Mehra:
I talk to a lot of people who want to start businesses, who are interested or have a project that they're passionate about, and it always seems like there's this sort of choice, this difficult choice between staying on the career path, which obviously has certain benefits, staying in a big company you have literal benefits like in the HR sense, but just like a sense of security and all of that, and then going and doing your own thing, which is obviously rewarding in it's way but it's scary for a lot of people.
Neville Mehra:
One of the things I wanted to point out is just this idea that you didn't just, what are the metaphors, burn your bridges or boats or whatever things you're supposed to burn. You had this kind of phased transition where on the one hand you still had the corporate job, you still had the benefits that come with that, you were building something on the side, which is what I think most people do if they're smart about it. But I've never heard anyone else actually frame it that way, as in this is my day job and I've got this other thing going on, and you're sort of building in public while an employee, and now since you've left The Knot, you started House of Wise, let's talk about that. You alluded to it just now, but to those who don't know, and we'll certainly include some links and I'll talk about it in the intro, but tell us more. What is House of Wise?
Amanda Goetz:
Yeah, well I want to just comment on one of the things you just said though. There are different spheres of what building something on the side looks like, and I think because I was building a brand and a D to C company, it was different. Many executives at big companies sit on boards for other companies and get paid for it, and they can talk about those companies. Then you have junior team members who might have little side hustles or have a blog or newsletter. I found myself in this middle management area that had more stigma around it, but really I was doing the same thing that other people do, but in a different lens, and I love how you said you don't know all your options. Coming from the Midwest and I was raised in a very, very quote unquote kind of traditional house where dad worked, mom stayed home. I was really raised to think that identity comes from marriage and all of this stuff, and I got married when I was 19.
Amanda Goetz:
And so I agree that the biggest thing that I've learned since I hit my 30s has truly been that there is no preconceived way of doing things anymore. As long as you lean into your conviction on everything of why it's the right thing for you and you hold those boundaries, even fundraising for House of Wise, and I will get to your question I promise, but even fundraising for House of Wise while having a part-time CMO role, many people said no to me. They were like you have to be all in. But for me, as a single mom with three kids, I can't do that. That is just not feasible at this moment in my life. But I know I'm going to build a great company because I know women need this.
Amanda Goetz:
So I only want people who believe that I can do that and they believe in me and they believe in why I have to do it the way I'm doing it, and they're empathetic to that. Anyone who's not empathetic to the reasoning behind why I have to have a part time job while I build a company in public, I don't want them on my journey because they don't understand my life. So I just, there's no one way to do things, and you're going to run into a million people who will tell you that's false, but when you find the person that believes in you and understands your kind of new path, it only takes one person. And then that kind of gives you the validation.
Amanda Goetz:
So now to answer your question, what is House of Wise? House of Wise is helping women to take control of their sleep, sex, stress, and wealth through community, content, and CBD. That's our commerce angle, but we create high end CBD products around those three verticals, sleep, sex, stress. And our distribution strategy is through micro affiliates which we call our Wise Women. So as a marketer, there's this new wave of a micro influencer, meaning someone who's not this 100,000 followers on Instagram, and can push a lot of product, but instead you focus on someone who maybe only has 1,000 people or 500 people, but they genuinely like the product, and they want to share it with their friends and family. And so we created this notion of a Wise Woman and that's our distribution strategy right now.
Neville Mehra:
I love it. There's, again, a few things that you mentioned in there that I think are really interesting to explore. But just the strategy that you're using, I mean it almost sounds a little bit like, what is it, Mary Kay and what are the original sort of brands like that? It's a very proven strategy, but it's one that almost feels like kind of shunned by, we've got a lot of these sort of big DtC e-commerce brands, I don't want to say MLM because it's such a dirty word, but I think there is something to that that you're talking about. I going out on a limb here, but it's probably especially among women where because you've sort of niched down to a particular gender, it's not a tiny niche, it's just cutting out some people, but there is a sense of these people understand me more when you're getting a recommendation from someone you know personally. So you mention a micro influencer, so it's not Michael Jordan selling shoes, but maybe your friend or somebody who has a few hundred or a few thousand followers I'm guessing, who's recommending a product that they use, is that the idea?
Amanda Goetz:
Yeah. It stemmed from the fact that I had never touched cannabis in my life. I had been an athlete my whole life, I'm a former ACE certified personal trainer and group fitness instructor, and it was only when I was going through a divorce and I had three kids under the age of four and at kind of the height of my career that therapy wasn't enough. My anxiety and situational depression was a thing, and the physical symptoms were effecting me. And I found myself drinking more alcohol than I ever had in my entire life to try to cope with those kind of physical symptoms and needing to come down at the end of the day, and it wasn't until I started to research cannabis, understand that this is plant based, what are kind of the medicinal properties of this plant, and what has it been used for, et cetera, and really just dove into the research. But then when I was like there's still a stigma around it, I'm scared to tell my mom friends that instead of having my two, three glasses of wine last night, I micro dosed THC, and yet I felt scared to tell people that.
Amanda Goetz:
So what happened was as I became more confident and I saw how my life was getting better, I was sleeping better, my workouts were coming back because I wasn't so groggy the next day, and I saw that this was impacting my life in a very, very positive way, that I felt now validated in talking about this to people. But this category is ripe with so much misinformation and education and bad products, to be honest, that I think it's less about seeing an opportunity to build the next Mary Kay, and more about the fact that that is genuinely how I talk to people about my experience and I wanted to build a company that allowed women an avenue to learn about the product in a way that they would trust it, because we are not inundated with social ads, and I don't believe that women are going to trust a social ad for a product that you are ingesting that will inherently affect you.
Neville Mehra:
Yeah, especially when it's related to drugs. I understand the differences, but there's that stigma.
Amanda Goetz:
Yeah. Exactly. So and then yes, to answer your question about MLMs, there is such a stigma around MLMs, and rightfully so. So I'm from the Midwest, where I have a lot of friends that sell you name it and your Facebook feed is full of it. So I studied MLM mechanics and these companies for a while to understand, and I talked to my friends, I'm like why were you attracted to this? A lot of it has to do with one, the generational and societal relationship with women and money, and a lot of people would respond like I want to have money that I control and only I touch and it's mine and my husband or my partner doesn't have access to it. So to me, that led me to this larger mission, and that's why my mission statement is around sleep, sex, stress, and wealth. Because as women do make money from House of Wise by talking to their friends about it and having an affiliate link, we also add layers of education around financial literacy.
Amanda Goetz:
The other night we did a Bitcoin 101 session. So if they made $100 selling House of Wise to their friends and giving them better sleep, they now understand how to create a coin based account, and what is Bitcoin, and why is it important to think about it as a part of your portfolio. So I think that MLMs, why do they have the stigma? Well one, it's called multi level meaning it's a pyramid. The person on top makes the most money, and then they have to recruit people under to get more money, and then the people at the bottom are making a small percentage. That is a horrible mechanic, and I completely stripped all of that away. There's no recruiting, there's no joining a team. Wise Women are all Wise Women. They all have an affiliate link, they all have the same percentage, and they can choose to sell or not. They get the same benefits no matter how much they sell.
Amanda Goetz:
They get to be a part of our Slack group, they get to join Hangouts with me where I go behind the scenes and talk about what it's like to build a company. We do these Bitcoin 101 sessions, we have a sex expert coming to talk about how COVID has affected your sex life. All of these things are part of just being a part of this community. If you love the product and you want to tell people about it, great. So I think you're right, MLMs have really, really predatory parts to them, and we are stripping those. I don't even view it as a MLM, I view it as community based distribution.
Neville Mehra:
Yeah. I think you've almost sort of reinvented the model in a much better, healthier way. Going back to your own experience going through a divorce, living in New York, as you said, at the height of your career, I can only imagine the stress levels. Add in the kids who I'm sure are wonderful, but at the same time it's, we all know, a lot of stress, there's a few things there. First of all, it seems to me that you're sort of scratching your own itch, as we say in business, where you didn't sit down one day and say, "Well, Bitcoin is cool and mobile apps are hot and I want to start a new business so I'll go make a mobile app for trading Bitcoin, because that seems like a good opportunity." You started from a place where you had a need, and it seems like that was maybe a little bit unmet, just in terms of knowing that you were getting a good quality product that was out there and all of that, so at what point did you go from sort of CBD user to thinking I should start a product in this space, because that's a pretty big leap, and it's a huge mission that you're taking on, right? This is not a simple product to create or to market, as I'm sure you've run into, or even open a bank account.
Amanda Goetz:
Don't get me started on the bank account. Yeah, I picked the hardest thing to literally start a company on. Cannabis, MLM like stigma, in the middle of COVID is like the perfect storm. My entire career, I only work on things where I directly feel passionate about and feel connected to the end user. So working at The Knot for five and a half years, prior to The Knot, I actually worked for a celebrity wedding planner, managing his brand, but I planned over 150 weddings. So going to The Knot, I knew the couple's pain points because I've planned 150 weddings. I know what it's like to plan the weddings, all the problems you're going to run into, and the emotions you're going to. So I can only work on things, and even with Teal, the fact that Teal is helping people realize that your career is really, career health actually effects mental health. So meditation isn't going to help if you have a shitty job. You need to figure out what makes you happy and the thing that you spend 60% of your life doing.
Amanda Goetz:
So I can't work on something unless I'm very, very passionate about it and feel connected to the person who I'm marketing towards. So it's definitely mission driven for me, which every single time I see a testimonial from a woman who's like, we have women who are like, "I had my first G spot orgasm." Or, "I haven't slept in six months throughout the night because of the anxiety of the pandemic, and this is the first eight hours of sleep I got." Those are the things that keep me going because, this may be a big company, this may only be a small company, but at the end of the day, the fact that I'm helping real women in their everyday lives, that keeps me going.
Neville Mehra:
Yeah. And I think doing something that you care about is the ultimate way to have fulfillment in your career. Forget the money, forget everything else, because none of us are smart enough to know. None of us know which thing is going to take off, or if it's going to be successful. Obviously, you go into it as an optimist or you would never start it. You believe in the potential of the business or you would never waste time on it, but ultimately, if you're going to survive those inevitable downturns, anything you do is going to be hard. I'm sure, we made kind of a joke about how difficult it is to bank in that space, I worked with a startup, it was a legal news publisher and we would run news stories about cannabis law changes. So, I don't know, Michigan passed a bill or something. And even promoting posts that were linking to news articles, Facebook would take them down because they were violating their cannabis standards, there was no product for sale, we weren't advocating anything, and so it's a very difficult business, and I imagine to get through all of that and to just have the energy to go forward you have to believe, and I think that's true for every business, for everyone listening, you have to do something that you would be doing regardless, something that you care about.
Neville Mehra:
But going back to that moment when you started this, I'm still kind of just stuck on this idea that you're in New York, you've already sort of made it in the sense of Midwest girl, small town, sort of blue collar beginnings, amazing job, I think a lot of women would say that's their dream job. I don't know if they actually dealt with the reality of how stressful I'm sure it was if they would still say that, but on the surface, from the outside, you're working for this amazing wedding company, you are married at the time, you have three little kids, you've got this picture perfect life on the outside. You go through a divorce, I think most people's reaction would be to sort of curl up a little bit and stick with something that feels very safe. And I don't know that the timeline of all of these events but if we can dig into that a little bit, I would just love to know sort of what was the self talk?
Neville Mehra:
How are you telling yourself, I understand the idea like you're working at The Knot and its become sort of operational in a sense, where you're just kind of keeping the thing going as opposed to starting the brand new, cool adventure. But just, yeah, what was going on in your mind when it comes to this idea of I'm going to start a new venture even though I'm a single mom with three kids, you should be getting a government paycheck from the post office where they're never going to fire you according to conventional wisdom, right?
Amanda Goetz:
So it stems from a lot of shadow work of understanding what my subconscious had been leading me to think and do over many years, and with that shadow work came a lot of just freedom, just in my own sense of self, of I am rediscovering who I actually am. So what do I mean by that? A lot of my 20s was me having a checklist of things that I thought I was supposed to have in this life, and my tunnel vision was to go hit those items. Get married, have kids, get the dream job. In my 30s and a lot of this has just been a lot of analytical therapy work, is realizing that those are not what define me and I am so much more than just a mom and just a worker and just someone's wife, and what happened was stripping myself of some of those idols and identities allowed me space to explore who I really am.
Amanda Goetz:
And I still sit here today kind of five years into that journey excited because I think I'm just still at the tip of the iceberg of discovering who I am as a human, but the freedom in that exploration over the past couple of years has been so incredible that it allows me less fear to explore these new things, and I know that sounds crazy, because you're right, getting a divorce and having three kids, you would think I would want to cling to stability, but when you're stripped of all stability, you kind of are like fearless. I don't know how to fully articulate it, but I'm in this chapter of life where it's almost karmatic where I am using, I believe intuition is just our subconscious AI. We have so many data points that we've ingested over the years that intuition I think is part of our kind of central processing system.
Neville Mehra:
I think that's scientifically true, by the way. I get that you're making an analogy, and I'm curious to hear where this goes, but I think what you're saying is more or less validated this system one and system two and all that stuff.
Amanda Goetz:
Yes. Exactly. I'm just not that well read. So I'm really into leaning into that intuition and saying right now this feels right. I feel like building this company feels exactly where I'm meant to be at this point. And how I got, I know you asked this question and I have not answered it directly, but what was that point where I actually said I'm going to go build a company, there's this children's book called What Do You Do With An Idea? And it's literally the best analogy for what my experience was. It's about this little boy who gets an idea and the idea looks like a little egg, and he wants to ignore it because he's embarrassed that he has this egg that's following him everywhere. So he's embarrassed by this idea and he doesn't give it any attention, but it still follows him around everywhere. And then he gives it a little attention, and it gets a little bigger. And then he gives it a little bit more attention and it starts to turn into this beautiful creature and then it changes the world and brings colors to the town and all this stuff.
Amanda Goetz:
So anyway, long story short, I started using cannabis, realized it helped me, gave it a little attention, realized that more women could benefit from this, gave it a little bit more attention, started to talk to people, got connected to people, gave it more attention, found the most amazing hemp farmer in Denver and incredible humans and met a team of chemists that would help me formulate these products and it just kept building on it's self so naturally that I couldn't ignore it anymore, and I had to just give it all more of my attention. So there came a point where it felt like the right moment to step away and give it more of my attention, and it felt right at the time. There wasn't any sign that I was waiting for that I was like okay I need to have this much in my bank account, and this much going in the business, or these milestones, I kind of just was like now is the time I'm ready to put more of my head space on it.
Neville Mehra:
Yeah. I think there's also just something to be said for, as you said, following your intuition and just kind of opening yourself to those possibilities. When you're no longer just living on that checklist life of I've got to do all these things, then other things start to show up and maybe they're showing up regularly, but most of us just don't see them because we're just so hell bent, blinders on, going towards some life that was pre set out for us, or what we think we should be doing, or what our parents think we should be doing, or any of those kind of things. I think we're all guilty of that.
Neville Mehra:
Was there any particular, it sounds like you've done a lot of self development work, now I'm just asking for selfish reasons because I'm into all that kind of stuff myself, were there any particular activities or methods or plant medicine, therapists, was there anything in particular that helped you most to kind of shed that initial identity and open yourself and connect with your own intuition?
Amanda Goetz:
So first and foremost, it was just finding the right therapist who I could meet with twice a week and really take that seriously and come to those sessions. Many people, if they're like I need a therapist, I'm going to go check the box, do my therapy work, I talk about surface level things. But if you only talk about like, "Oh I had this weird conversation with a friend." Or, "My boss did this." And you don't get into the real shadow work, which is your childhood and why you have triggers the way that you have triggers, and making those triggers conscious, and your relationship with each of your parents, and I think people are scared to tap into it because they're scared that it denotes that there was something wrong with their childhood or wrong with their parents, and if we could strip away those two things and say it doesn't matter what kind of childhood you had, you could have the best textbook childhood, but maybe there was weird interactions or something happened that created your stuff.
Amanda Goetz:
I think people are worried to dive into that stuff because they feel like it's taking away their gratitude of their childhood. I am so gracious. My parents, given what they grew up with, my mom was one of 11 kids, and my dad was kind of an orphan and lived out of his car for a chunk of his life before he started his plumbing business. I am so thankful for how they were able to overcome what they overcame, but still there are still generational stuff and cultural stuff that bleeds into your upbringing that if you don't unpack, so lots of therapy, but it was that deeper therapy work. And then the second piece is the first time I dated someone after my divorce, I found this app, which they just got acquired by Head Space, but it was called Lasting, and it is kind of like the workout for a relationship, but it was all around self discovery and then kind of mutual self discovery under the confines of a relationship.
Amanda Goetz:
So it would ask question like how did your mom show you love? How did your dad show you love? So you did this work kind of in your own space, but then it would reveal the answers to the other person and it would create questions based on that kind of to help you guys discover your love language. So I think that there's kind of these textbook things like what are the love languages, et cetera, but that's very one dimensional, you know what I mean? So sure, you may say I feel love when you give me gifts, but unless you actually dive into I watched my dad even though we had no money growing up, he would still run to the drugstore and get my mom a cappuccino and peanut MNMs because he knew that she had been alone all day and wanted to come home with something. So diving into the why behind things is what I constantly go after and I'm insatiable on the why.
Amanda Goetz:
I think that's what did it for me is just constantly now being like we all are the way we are, I am a very weird blend of a human, and why? Why am I that way? And then that helps me to find things that pair nicely with that.
Neville Mehra:
Yeah. I didn't mean for this to be like a set up for that at all, but the most profound I think experience I've had in that kind of stuff was this childhood trauma exercise, and just saying the words childhood trauma to me would send me out the door, like I don't have any childhood trauma, my parents are amazing, I had a great childhood, I grew up in a wonderful neighborhood, there was no war outside, everything was great. And I still feel that way, don't get me wrong, but it's a heavy topic so it scares people off as you said, but doing that, but also I did it in a group setting where I saw a bunch of these grown men and there are guys who are millionaires, one was a Super Bowl champion, people are pretty connected in Hollywood and have very successful startups, and people who are very successful, and then going back and peeling off all that identity stuff and going to there and re parenting their child selves and doing that type of work.
Neville Mehra:
It's way beyond the scope of what I think we have time for today, but I just encourage anyone listening to at least open yourself up to exploring that, because it sounds super woo woo or it's only for people who suffered some kind of abuse, but it's totally not. We're talking to you here, super successful founder, career woman, ticked all the boxes, whatever, and you're saying that this was useful for you, so I'm happy to have you again, de stigmatizing something that I also believe in. But again, that wasn't intended, I didn't know you had done any of that kind of stuff. I was expecting you to say, "Oh yeah I had this one really crazy trip." No.
Neville Mehra:
There's one thing we've been sort of ignoring in all this, and that is Teal. So you didn't just leave your last job and start a startup, right? We talked about building in public and building sort of while you were still working there, but you also are a, let me see if I get this right, a part time CMO for Teal is that right?
Amanda Goetz:
Exactly.
Neville Mehra:
So what is Teal and how do you, because that seems like an ideal set up, right? You've got your startup you're working on, but you still have the security at least of a part time job. So how is that going? What is Teal? How can someone arrange something like that, let's dig in.
Amanda Goetz:
Teal is incredible. The mission, again, is something that's near and dear to my heart because it's all about making kind of the subconscious, conscious. Which is kind of the theme of what we've been talking about. But Teal helps people be in control of their careers, because every company has a HR department, but you don't have your own kind of personal HR department that's helping think about where you're going in your career, why your frustrated in your current role, and I think most people take their career and they make career decisions based on running from a pain versus running towards a goal or a need that was unmet in the last. So I met Dave in the summer of last year. He asked me to come speak to their marketing cohort of people about marketing careers and what are the different paths, and also being a woman in marketing and juggling kids with career, kind of all of those things. It was just a magical conversation.
Amanda Goetz:
I saw the community knowing details about one another and being like, "Oh, so and so, when you were at this company, remember how you did this." And it was really cool how they were in it together. They were realizing that this journey of your career is really an ongoing relationship with yourself and what your needs are. So I just started having a great conversation with Dave over the course of a couple of months and this is about the same time as I started to build House of Wise in public, and I was giving it attention and it was growing and growing, and at one point Dave texted me and was like, "Hey, would you ever be interested in being an advisor for Teal? We really need to grow top of the funnel, really double down on our brand." They were about a year old and their brand identity and strategy and kind of go to market stuff needs to really be refined. And he's like, "Would love to have you as an advisor."
Amanda Goetz:
And kind of going back to our original point of there are no predetermined paths. I was like, "Hey, do you have a second to talk?" I was like I am getting closer to needing to go more time not just nights and weekends on House of Wise, and in my head I was like okay, to make ends meet I'm going to have to take consulting jobs or whatever, because I'm a single mom and I have three kids, I'm not a 27 year old guy that has no responsibilities. I can't work 80 hours a week and I can't not have a salary. So I was like, rather than having me as an advisor, what if you hired me two and a half days a week and I actually as in it with the team, attending meetings. And now look, fractional executives are still a very new concept, so what does it take for this to actually be successful? It takes a very, very ongoing, transparent and honest evaluation conversation between me and Dave, the founder, and knowing that, like in the beginning I was managing the other marketers on the team.
Amanda Goetz:
What we learned was that's actually not the best way, because people want a full time, resentment can build, it wasn't, but we were just trying to stay ahead of what could happen. So we learned that it's better for me to kind of still act as kind of that advisor consultant, but I'm in the team meetings and feeling like a part of the team and listening to the user research and being in the Slack community, et cetera. So it's been iterative and even now, House of Wise launched, things are happening, it's needing a little bit more of my time, so I went from two and a half days to one and a half days right now, and we make very clear frameworks of what is expected of me, and what is the most impact I can have for Teal. So it's just iterative, but it takes a very different type of founder, and also a very different type of employee to be able to have this honest and very hard conversations about what each person needs.
Amanda Goetz:
And there will come a day where I raise the next round of capital for House of Wise, House of Wise now needs a full-time CEO, or Teal is cranking and they need a full-time CMO, whichever comes first, we are both prepared for that switch to happen and I move into an advisor role for Teal and I am still there supporting the mission and the brand and the company.
Neville Mehra:
I mean I think it's an ideal set up for the reasons we described. Obviously there are some potential pitfalls, it's also not something that I think probably most people consider, but I can't help but think that this option was available to you, and I mean this to be empowering for people listening, but I can't help but think that this option was available to you because you have a personal brand, and I think you have a strong personal brand, it's the reason we're having this conversation. If you had just spoken at some conference, I would have listened to you, and then if you just posted some generic corporate, Q3 numbers are up, every now and then, I would have totally forgotten about you. It's not only about me, obviously I've seen you interviewed other places, you've developed, as I said, a great following on Twitter, and I think in a way, I'm sort of sitting here wondering who's getting the better deal here? Because you're getting the ability to build your company, but there's some leverage sort of in the relationship, because Teal's getting Amanda's ideas and leadership and all this stuff and not at a full-time person, and still having that additional sort of room in the head count, especially because they're a relatively small company too, still, starting up and I know every day of an executive counts, right?
Neville Mehra:
So I think it's a non traditional model, I don't know that it's appropriate for every situation, as you said, but I think that's something that would be really cool to see more of. And again, to this idea that we all have more options than we realize, this doesn't have to be black or white, this doesn't have to be one or the other, you can do the Amanda approach, you can build a company while you're still at a full-time job, start another part time job, keep cranking up your company, and then realize that yeah, maybe those decisions aren't forever, but everybody's benefiting in the meantime. And I think that's really amazing.
Neville Mehra:
I've mentioned it a few times this personal brand that you have on Twitter, in the few minutes that we have left, I would love to get your take on how you look at sort of building your own personal brand, because it seems to me that there's a lot of House of Wise these days, but it's more than that. You're not just House of Wise, and when you were at The Knot, it wasn't just that, so sort of what's the overall brand around all of this and how do you think about that? How do all these pieces fit together in your mind?
Amanda Goetz:
Yeah. I wish I could sit here and be like I was very intentional about building a personal brand, because if I had been I would have started it years ago. But I got on Twitter, it's been a little over a year now, where I actively started tweeting and not just like post Instagram to Twitter type, it was more because I actually had preconceived notions of Twitter. I felt like it was male dominated, it was very divisive, where people were just coming in to argue, and that's not my default, so to speak. But I kept hearing these tertiary conversations around Twitter helped me grow my company, or connect me with people, and access is one of my biggest limitations, because I'm from the Midwest, I wasn't raised in a house that had any connections to anyone that can help me in my journey, and then I was at a big 10 college, I didn't go to Ivy League, and I had kids young. So I don't have the time to go to networking events all the time.
Amanda Goetz:
So access was my biggest issue, and Twitter feels like a level playing field. That when you put out quality content, you can engage with anyone. So I honestly got on Twitter and just said I'm going to give it a go, literally. There was no real intentionality. But I just was myself. If we were to go to dinner, you would know more than you probably would ever want to know about me at the end of that dinner, and I would probably ask you deeper questions than many people would feel comfortable, and I would want to understand who you are as a human. So I approach Twitter in the same way I approach all of my relationships, and I think because that was different than how other people approached Twitter, that allowed it's own sphere for me, or my own lane, and I have, yes, I talk about marketing and how I think about building a brand strategy, so I have marketers that follow me.
Amanda Goetz:
But then I talk about how hard it is to be a parent and a working parent and what trade offs I have and what I've had to let go of and where I need help and all that stuff, so I have that kind of group that follows me. And then there's people that are just there for kind of my random conversations around new social media or building and being a founder or fundraising or cannabis or whatever, so I think the multidimensional aspect of my content allowed for more people to come, and I think that I would not be where I am today without Twitter. I got invited to speak to Jack Dorsey and the executive team which was an incredible experience because they were wanting to know how I did what I did, but also how can they cultivate that experience for more women, so we talked through tactical things. For anybody listening, Twitter can be what you make it to be and it's up to you to find your own groups that work, and it's a two way street.
Amanda Goetz:
If I approach Twitter as I'm just going to tweet at people versus develop real relationships, and that was the best part. My closest friends today I didn't know two years ago. It's because of COVID and Twitter, the amount of people that I now text with, or investors in my company are there and they answer my calls when I'm going through something, it's just mind blowing that I didn't know them two years ago, but I met them through Twitter, and it's just because I was being my full self. So I don't know if that's tactical, but that's just my two cents.
Neville Mehra:
I think it's your personality, just to be open and to share what's going on, and we talked about sort of building in public, and I think that's it sounds like a default for you, not something that you put on, and I think the internet in general rewards that, social media rewards that, this idea of talking directly to people and it's not the here's the annual report that we've sort of polished for public consumption, but it's like here's what's going on in my life.
Amanda Goetz:
I'm not polished, let's just say that.
Neville Mehra:
Twitter has this reputation that I hear from other people that it's such a toxic place, and maybe political Twitter is that, or maybe as a guy I'm spared from that, I don't know, but for me it's the least toxic social network that I'm on because it's a bunch of people throwing ideas around. That's not to say that nobody says anything mean or whatever, but it's not like, "Hey, look at my perfect life." It's not, "Let's argue about Trump." It's not any of that kind of stuff. In some ways, and I'm certainly not the first one to say this, but I think Twitter is the real LinkedIn. LinkedIn for me is just a bunch of spam back and forth, but you're connecting with actual investors and actual people who want to work with you or become customers or become Wise Women through your engagement on Twitter.
Amanda Goetz:
100%. You nailed it. We say it all the time with Teal, Twitter is the better networking job finder. How do you build with the intentionality of finding your next job through Twitter, and many people do it, but I think the difference and why I think many people say it's a toxic environment is being a consumer versus a creator is a very different mentality. If you're just scrolling, you're not actually engaging in the conversations and it can easily become, "Oh those two are always talking about this." And you start to formulate narratives in your head, but the second you jump in, the whole thing changes for you, and you have a different paradigm of what this Twitter landscape is because you actually realize I have the capability of jumping into that conversation that those two people are having and injecting my thoughts. Many people that is a massive barrier for them.
Neville Mehra:
I feel like that's a microcosm of this whole episode and your whole life, like hey I have the capability of jumping in, I'm just going to go jump in. I'm not going to wait for an invitation or for somebody to tell me I'm allowed to. You have more options than you realize. It seems like we came full circle. So I think that's a perfect place to leave it. Where would you like, is Twitter the place, where would you recommend people go if they want to follow you, keep up with you, with Teal, with House of Wise?
Amanda Goetz:
Yeah. Twitter is where you're getting most of my thoughts, if you want more behind the scenes of House of Wise, Instagram is a great place to find us. I'm at Goetzam on Instagram and then you can find House of Wise there, and if you want to buy from a Wise Woman, that's a great place to do it and try the products. But yeah, that's where I am most of the time.
Neville Mehra:
Awesome. So we'll make sure we link to all of that in the show notes, and last thing really, really quickly, is becoming a Wise Woman something that's still open? Is that something people can do? Where should we send people to find out more about that?
Amanda Goetz:
Yeah, if they go to houseofwise.co they can learn more and sign up, or just come to our Instagram and DM us, we are very active, we'll send you the link to sign up, but yeah, to be a Wise Woman is just to join our community of women who want to learn more about being in control of your sleep, your sex, your stress, your wealth. It doesn't mean that you have to sell the products, you can just come for the community, stay for the great conversations, and then if you like the products and you want to tell your friends about it, you get a link and you make some money. So it's very low pressure, but we just want more women to be a part of it.
Neville Mehra:
Amazing. As I said, we'll link to all of that. Amanda, thank you for being so generous with your time. I know you've got two jobs, a company, three kids, and I'm sure a lot of other pressing priorities. So thank you again for sharing so much.
Amanda Goetz:
Yeah, this was awesome.