YouSaid · the spoken record

Cheryl Contee

lines on the record: 20
first: 2020-10-29
most recent: 2020-10-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Investing in small businesses, especially from women, especially from minorities, especially from rural areas, in innovative startups that are rising up, because those are the businesses right now that are undervalued and are going to overperform.”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Talk to them. Don't be shy. I mean, look, I'm here to tell you being shy is not a way to be successful in business. Know if you don't look like a traditional entrepreneur, whatever that means, you're going to have to be fairly assertive and persistent. You know, one of the ways in which I was able to get that first funding was not giving up. I had to knock on an awful lot of doors, a lot of doors shut on me, but I didn't give up and eventually I was able to find those first couple of investors who said, this seems like a really good bet. You know, I know the world of venture capital and impact investing better than most just from direct and at times painful experience. And this is a great time to be an investor. And for a lot of different reasons, there are haves and have-nots in America right now. And if you are a have, there are some excellent opportunities to both make money in the near future and invest in impact companies that aim to bring something positive into the world and solve problems. And that means doubling down if you want to bring this economy back, doubling down on”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's probably an Angel network that's local in your state, and you should look them up and seek them out. But you've got to start making relationships outside of St. Louis for sure. That doesn't mean that you have to move your business or that you have to move if there's any bright light in the pandemic. There aren't very many. But one bright light is that where you live right now doesn't matter so much. So, you know, it's a question of how do you start to map out? Okay, this is my idea. Who are the funds? Who are the investors that are interested in this kind of either manufacturing or AI or this startup or food? Because funds, VCs, and angels do tend to have a focus of where they're going to put their money. They're not just looking for any startup or any black person or any woman of color or any founder. So that's the beauty of the internet. You can actually go out and Google and start to network and just”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“to find those resources, but look online. I mean, the good news is this is the power of building a network. You know, when you go to places like Angelist or FS6, there are all of these great networks. Even LinkedIn, you know, where there are investors who are looking for entrepreneurs and team members who may not have their own idea, but they want to get involved in a startup. And so build your team.”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a chance that you don't have the resources to get started and that it's going to be more difficult for you. I mean, there's no question, yes, it might take you a little bit longer to raise. It might take you a little bit longer to sell. However, things have definitely changed since I first started my startup. There's a lot more Angel networks that are focused on people of color and on female entrepreneurs in the wake of the racial justice movement that has surged forward almost every fund that I know is really looking at how can we lean in on funding people of color. And look, you know, you don't have to have your own idea. You know, the good news is that there are a lot of companies that have franchises and they're eager to bring in people of color to run those franchises. They will give you money, loans, they'll give you training. You're in a network. So there are lots of different ways.”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Venues where you can reach out. You know, there's Black Enterprise magazine, you know, there are, of course, shows that you can advertise on, blogs. There are online influencers you can look up, but it does require taking that step of doing some research to figure out who are the leaders, who are the players, and how can we start to reach out to them to help us recruit.”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ah, that is a really great question. Good for you. You know, I get it that, you know, you're trying to reach outside your network and you're not really sure how to start. And I think acknowledging that is important. You know, it happens to me all the time where colleagues reach out to me and say, who do you know, Cheryl? Can you connect me? You know, so figure out who in your network, you've got to know hopefully, at least some black and brown people. And if you don't know them personally, look them up on LinkedIn. You know, start to look in your field, start to read articles in your field and figure out, okay, who are the leaders who also happen to be black or Latinx or Asian American? reach out to them even if you don't know them and just say hey I love your work I think you're great I'd love to get to know you and hey we're also hiring you know actually you know you're gonna have to do a little more work you're gonna have to get out of your bubble and really reach out now there's also lots of”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When the content comes from those voices and they're targeting the same market, it's so much more authentic. And we try to pull in the voices of the people we're serving as much as possible. So it's not always us talking or creating the content. We're finding that we're working with the people to then put those voices back into the ether.”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is a great question because white supremacy isn't just a white people problem. It's an everybody problem, right? We see it all the time in various ways where people even diminish themselves or they say, oh, you know, I don't want that kind of person helping me. Even if they're the same color. So it's certainly something that we focus on at do big things. All of my businesses have been diverse. And that's not, again, just a nice to have. It's a strategy. In our case, we have people who have a disability. We have LGBTQ staff. We have people who live in every region of the United States, West Coast, East Coast, Midwest, South. We have people of every different ethnicity. We have people who are immigrants, you know, and people whose family like mine have been here for centuries.”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And growing it over time is really important because that's where you're going to find your team members, your clients, your partners opportunities to co-market together, and people who will have your back and vouch for you in spaces where you might be different than the norm. And that certainly has happened for me where I've had white peers say, hey, Cheryl's great. You should talk to her. You know, which has sometimes made a big difference.”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Especially for younger people, wow, what an advantage you have that I didn't have in terms of coming into your career with a network that you can keep in touch with because as you get older, a lot of your peers are going to have really interesting careers and jobs. And you can help each other. But yeah, I have found that the power of a network to be the thing that has made all the difference for me. I could not have launched my businesses without my network, definitely couldn't have kept them.”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But also, you know, use it as an advantage to stand out. And look, you are as qualified as anyone there. That's what I tell people. You're as qualified. You know, just bring your best to the table. And there are going to be people who don't get it, who don't want to work with you. I mean, that's the reality of the situation. Unfortunately, in America today, but I personally have found the tech sector to overall be relatively welcoming, especially if you have really strong technical skills, which are needed right now.”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I certainly felt that way when I first started, I was definitely the fly in the oatmeal, which in some ways I turned to an advantage, right? Because if I'm the only black woman walking into a room and there's a hundred white guys and I'm not kidding that has literally happened to me, you know, people remember me. You know, they know who I am. You know, I stand out. And so in my case, I tried to, A, fake it until I could make it and say, all right, you know, I need to embody. Being a successful technologist, and even if I don't feel that way right now, how would I act if I were that? And then it became more natural over time as I practiced and basically role-played. It felt like role-playing sometimes.”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do hope that people check out that article because we worked really closely with Harvard Business Review on it and it has a lot of practical tips in it that I think people can use right now but at least what worked for me was data data data data right and showing look you might not get this totally this isn't a problem that I'm solving for you wealthy white male investor but there's a lot of people for whom this is an issue and here's how much money we can make we can do a lot of good some investors really care about that especially right now but also you know this is a pathway to making a lot of money and creating a successful business that builds jobs”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When a woman rides a mechanical bull, people have a different response to that than a man. You know, when a man rides a mechanical bowl, they're looking at a strength, a strategy, his stamina. When a woman is riding a mechanical bowl, they're, you know,”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely, well, when you look at the field right now, there's still this socialization in our country, in our world, that an entrepreneur looks like Mark Zuckerberg. And no disrespect to Mark, but he's not the only person who's got great ideas. Entrepreneurs can come in every shade, every size, every color, and that's a thing that I think we need to work hard, especially now as our economy is rebooting to work on. So I wrote a book, Mechanical Bowl, How You Can Achieve Startup Success. It's the story of my journey, but there's also a lot of friends of mine who are investors, who are founders themselves, and it's their stories as well of, you know, what did it take to get through every part of the startup cycle, which is tough. I named it Mechanical Bull in part because it's a wild ride. I mean, it's a tech startup, no question, especially if you're a woman.”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I experienced some real discrimination despite running at the same time another digital agency that had pulled in millions of dollars in revenue. We were still seen as risky, which to me seemed very, very strange. Long story short, we rule over time, we became the dominant player in our market, and we were an impact startup that then became acquired by an impact corporation, Black Bod, which is one of the leading purveyors of nonprofit software. So it's possible to do good by doing good, and that's what we do here at Do Big Things and what we did at attentively.”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a long story of how I started attentively, but basically, we saw a gap in the market, and I think especially in this time for those people, maybe you have lost your job or your job is changing, look at the gaps around you and see if you're able to provide a solution to that problem. That's what we did. We saw in the corporate marketing segment that there were a lot of people using social listening, influencer engagement, and marketing automation in very sophisticated ways online that nonprofits didn't have access to or a lot of different reasons, price, the tools weren't really tailored to the way that they talk about their audiences. So that's why we created attentively to meet that need and fill that gap. And we had competition, of course, and we were very visible also, you know, as an all-female team with a black female co-founder. It wasn't easy to get funding. We had to work really hard.”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, people come to us for a lot of different reasons, right? You know, we are a digital full service agency, whether you need strategy, you need research on online influencers and who to target where, for what, whether you want to run ads for persuasion or for acquisition, we're building apps, we build websites. It just depends on you need to do something online to reach someone, usually not to sell anything. You know, we're not selling things, widgets, toothpastes, cars. We're helping to promote positive ideas that create social change.”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, absolutely. So do big things as a digital agency, as you mentioned, that specializes in working with the world's leading causes, campaigns, candidates, corporations with mission driven initiatives to provide the new narrative and new tech for the new era in which we all are living in today. We're working really hard on the election, but also on the pandemic. We've been working on eviction, prevention, campaigns. We're likely to start working on a campaign targeted at misinformation around vaccines. We're out here really trying hard to help people in a tough time.”
2020-10-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cheryl Contee of Do Big Things · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT