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Joyful Revolution & Empowering Social Impact Change Makers: The Vision of the Founder & CEO of The Bloom
145 Plays1 year ago
Update: I recently launched my newsletter, The Sheconomist, and would love for you to subscribe: sheconomist.com - I share so many tools and resources that help young, high-achieving women with radical money and career self-advocacy.
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This week, we chat with Jasmine Anouna, a strong advocate for women's rights and intersectional social impact. After receiving a Master’s degree in Gender Studies from Oxford University, Jasmine’s path led her to the United Nations Office of Human Rights in Geneva, where "The Bloom" was born.
What initially started out as a small community of 20 friends, has since organically grown into a global network of over 40,000 social impact professionals. The Bloom's mission is to empower change-makers by providing a comprehensive resource hub and membership community featuring social impact news, interviews, uplifting stories, and job listings across areas such as climate justice and gender equality.
Jasmine has partnered with some of the most well-known organizations in this space including UNICEF, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy, Google, MIT, and many more.
In this conversation, Jasmine and Thamina talk about The Bloom’s impressive founding story and the importance of taking practical actions to uplift peers. Jasmine’s own journey from an aspiring international human rights lawyer to recognizing the power of community in social impact is both inspiring and thought-provoking.
Additionally, this discussion highlights the critical need for accessible resources in the social impact space, and the pivotal role of joy as a counterbalance to the weighty issues social impact professionals face. Jasmine also shares insights on The Bloom's monetization journey, reflecting on her evolution from reluctance to charging for services to a multifaceted approach catering to both business-to-business and business-to-consumer models.
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Transcript
Reclaiming Economic Power for Women
00:00:00
Speaker
There's this cliché, get friends that will say your name in a room full of opportunities. I don't think this is a cliché. I think this is really what the heart of women supporting women means. I'm Tamina and I'm extending a heartfelt invitation to you as we join forces in reclaiming economic power for women in a world that is often structured against us.
00:00:22
Speaker
We'll dive into the minds of accomplished female leaders, investors and entrepreneurs to equip you with the confidence and knowledge to build wealth for yourself and other women. So buckle up, get ready to learn and be inspired to take action.
00:00:37
Speaker
Welcome back, everyone. Today, you truly are in for a treat. Well, you are each week because all of my guests are so fabulous. But
Introducing Jasmine Anuna and The Bloom
00:00:48
Speaker
today, I am joined by one of my soul sisters, my dear, dear friend, the one and only Jasmine Anuna.
00:00:57
Speaker
In 2019, Jasmine graduated from Oxford University, no big deal, with a specialization at the intersection of women's rights and social media. Her dissertation explored the ways in which feminist Instagram projects are serving as countercultural spaces of education on topics to taboo for traditional schooling, such as women's reproductive health.
00:01:22
Speaker
This work brought her to the United Nations Office of Human Rights in Geneva, where she began building the bloom.
00:01:29
Speaker
The Bloom is a global community for social impact careers that has grown from 20 friends and family to over 30,000 social impact professionals around the world. The Bloom's mission is to help change makers find more diverse resources in the social impact field, offering a place of consistent perspective on all the exciting news, interviews, media, and jobs around the world across issues from climate justice to gender equality.
00:01:58
Speaker
Jasmine has partnered with the likes of UNICEF, the Malala Fund, Google, the Center for Feminist Foreign Policy, World of Women, and many more incredible organizations around the world. And
What Does 'Women Supporting Women' Mean?
00:02:11
Speaker
I just love nothing more than bragging about my fabulous female friends, so we'll be talking more about all of that in this episode.
00:02:18
Speaker
Hello, my dear. Welcome to the Give Her Dollars podcast. Thank you, Traminar. I'm so happy to be here. I'm looking forward to this conversation. As you know, this podcast is all about helping women build wealth for themselves and other women.
00:02:34
Speaker
And you've heard me say this, but I always like to say that a wealthy woman can walk out of almost every room she feels uncomfortable in and create opportunities for other women along the way. Because let's be real, financial independence equates freedom. So I'd like to always start out with the same question for all of my guests. Jasmine, what does women supporting women mean to you and how does that show up in your life?
00:03:00
Speaker
Yeah, I love this question so much. First of all, I'm a huge fan of questions and I feel this is a question that we don't directly talk about enough. So I just want to say thank you for holding space for a question like this. It means that there's this cliche, get friends that will say your name in a room full of opportunities.
00:03:18
Speaker
I don't think this is a cliche. I think this is really what the heart of women supporting women means. And even beyond gender, it's really just a human who has the interests of other people who they care about in their heart and actually takes practical action towards uplifting them. Every single time I go to an event and I meet people who are interesting, maybe not necessarily like where I don't really have much to in common, but I hear them say, oh, but I'm actually looking for
00:03:46
Speaker
this and this person, I'm hiring for
Making Support Easy and Proactive Connections
00:03:48
Speaker
this role, or I'm actually looking to speak to people in circular economy, I always try to have as many possible sort of needs in the back of my mind of people who I care about, whether that's women or men or whoever, especially though I'm biased, of course.
00:04:05
Speaker
Have them in the back of my mind and immediately connect people. I think that it means doing an immediate and not making it a big deal connecting. I think unfortunately a lot of the time people gatekeep without actually realizing that they're gatekeeping. And it's not necessarily that they don't want to share, it's that we're not really accustomed
00:04:24
Speaker
to opening up our contact list that like between you and I, we're friends, right? We're also supporting each other actively. What does that mean? Is that any single time I know that there are certain things that you need and every time I see something that kind of could mirror what you need, I want to send you links relevant to that. If I haven't found it yet, if I haven't shared it with you, it's because I haven't seen it, but the moment I see it, I'm going to share it with you.
00:04:51
Speaker
So I think on one hand it means this, like the cliche and everything, but I think it's also a mindset of making supporting other people a very easy action. Having it in the infrastructure of the way that you exist in a space is that you don't show up in a networking event as just yourself. You show up also as the people who you have in your community, in your networks that are close to your heart that you want to support and not making it a big deal. Sometimes I've seen it as simple as literally just
00:05:21
Speaker
you share the WhatsApp contact with someone's consent of another person and you connect people together. I've done it so many times of connecting women to women via WhatsApp. Just creating a group and saying, you too, I think that there's some things here as well. I'm going to exit this group right after, but in the meantime, let's see what happens. And really more often than not, this kind of worked. Again, it's very simple, but it really tastes up so much because you never know where this kind of connection can go.
00:05:49
Speaker
And it's also not up to you to always decide, but I think it's always good to hold people's needs in their heart and also actually asking, which is also a key thing that I didn't mention is before you even support, you need to ask, what kind of help do you need? And I think we also don't ask each other this as much as we should commonly. Just being really bold and saying like, hey, I mean, what do you need right now? And being brave enough to ask that to friends and also to form relationships where there is that
00:06:14
Speaker
hope as well because it's nice to have cautionary chats with people and catch up on life and everything. But when you start to realize that your relationships can actually be super multi-dimensional, it doesn't just have to be about just the personal that you can also blend in the work side as well. I feel like these are the kinds of friendships that liberate me because I don't have to be just Jasmine as an individual. I can also be Jasmine's CEO and founder of the Bloom.
00:06:37
Speaker
And when I show up in our conversations, it's hard for me to separate from both. And also that both of them have needs that are equally valid and I don't have to hide. This professional side is not icky to have also asks of friends too. We can be many different things for each other. I just think these kinds of relationships are so beautiful. And that's also what the stage of my life is doing that more and more. And that's why I really love this question.
00:07:02
Speaker
Thank you so much for sharing so, so many gems in there, but I think something that I really wanted to reiterate.
00:07:10
Speaker
supporting someone else, supporting another woman, it doesn't have to be a heavy lift. Obviously when we talk about on this podcast a lot about supporting female founders by investing in them, writing angel checks or joining a venture capital fund as a limited partner to support women financially. But that's already a pretty high bar that not everyone is capable financially, emotionally to
00:07:39
Speaker
make those calls yet, but what should be really easy for everyone is exactly what you pointed out, making those introductions between people where you feel like, okay, there could be a natural alignment there, they could be doing business together, this one could be a client for the other one. I think that's so easy and it can start with
00:08:01
Speaker
to your point, a WhatsApp introduction, or literally just tagging someone under a LinkedIn post, for example, or sharing some resources like, hey, this event is not in my city, but you live in that city. It looks like an awesome event and an awesome opportunity you should go. It's those small things that I do believe.
00:08:26
Speaker
Add up like they compound over time and you never know because at the end of the day, sometimes it just takes one opportunity meeting one new person being.
00:08:38
Speaker
in the right place at the right time. For something, a new connection, a new opportunity to completely change the trajectory of your entire life for the better. Usually when we don't go there, when we don't go the extra mile, it's going to become increasingly more difficult for women to unlock these opportunities. So thank you for sharing that and for being a role model in this space and encouraging other women to do the same.
00:09:04
Speaker
I actually want to add
Benefits of Inviting and Creating Connections
00:09:05
Speaker
one more thing too, which is that just when you were talking, I was like, actually, also, it's exactly the events that you described. Even if you're not going to an event in the city, something that I've done now, really not thinking about it, is I find going to an event, I always try to invite as many people as possible. When I was going to events with founders in New York,
00:09:24
Speaker
I would always invite my founder friends. I would never hide or just say, oh, I would always try to keep a list of people. And actually, this is a really important thing. It's hard when you start building community. It would be unkind to yourself to think, oh, okay, now I have to remember everyone else's needs above my own as well.
00:09:42
Speaker
What i would say if this device is amazing phones are great all you have to do is my hack is that you have an on your notes out you always have a needs a community needs like pile on your notes and then just right now what is she looking for i know exactly the things that you need because i've written them down.
00:10:01
Speaker
I don't need to remember them. And when I say I walk into the room and have all these things, I don't necessarily think about them proactively. In my brain, it doesn't sit everywhere, but I have it. This is actually two different points, but I do always try to invite as many people as possible when I'm going to advance. And I think that's also something that
00:10:19
Speaker
I don't see enough. I was like, if you attend something, always try to have a plus one that you also have never gone with before and you don't need to have long explanations. Just bring people along the ride of whatever it is that you're doing. And I think also when we meet people, if we tend to meet people one-to-one quite a lot, I think why limit it to just like one other person? When you are meeting for a coffee chat with someone, bring someone else into the conversation too. You never know what can happen. We don't really allow for this kind of serendipity.
00:10:48
Speaker
If you and I were having a coffee chat and I come in New York, I'm going to be back in New York in September. I'm currently in Barcelona. But let's say in September, you and I want to go share a coffee. How interesting would it be if we also bring along, I don't know, someone new to our coffee and see what happens there because it's like we don't really allow for this kind of.
00:11:07
Speaker
more random interactions. There doesn't always need to be an explanation for things. Sometimes it can just be joyfully random. And I think that's also what it means to support people. You don't need to have these long explanations. Hold the needs. Don't do anything with it. Then the time comes. You might be able to use it. You might not. But yeah.
00:11:26
Speaker
I feel like there could be a whole podcast on this topic. Yeah, absolutely. Couldn't agree more. I think you made a really excellent point there, bringing someone along. That's also not a heavy lift at all. It's so easy to just text a friend like, hey, tonight I'm going to this event. Do you want to come? In fact, I've done a bunch of times with my friends in New York and they've done a bunch of times with me and it's...
00:11:50
Speaker
It's truly incredible and oftentimes it also serves that dual purpose when someone is maybe more of an introvert, you feel a bit anxious when you're showing up in a new environment where you don't know anyone and having someone that you trust and that cares about you with you can oftentimes be reassuring and actually get you out of the door. So I love that as well.
00:12:16
Speaker
Off to a great start, love it so much. Let's
Founding Story of The Bloom
00:12:19
Speaker
pivot a little bit, Jasmine, because obviously I want to talk a lot about the Bloom. Well, I am very much familiar with your incredible journey and the Bloom's journey. Most of our listeners are not. We heard it in the intro. The Bloom started out as a very small community of around 20 people, and today there are over 30,000 of us, which is just incredible.
00:12:40
Speaker
But what we didn't hear in the interest that this growth was purely organic and what's even crazier in today's world in 2023, the bloom does in fact not have its own social media presence, at least not yet.
00:12:57
Speaker
Walk us through your founding story. Thank you. I love it. There should be an interesting, what do you see and what do you really not see? I really like this kind of question. So to backtrack a bit on my story is that I was an aspiring international human rights lawyer with a focus on gender-based violence.
00:13:16
Speaker
For the longest time in my life, I grew up in Italy. I'm Egyptian Italian. I spent most of my childhood in Italy. I both experienced domestic violence, and I also witnessed a lot of domestic violence in society. Italy at the time had one of the worst growing rates of gender-based violence in Europe, and it really showed. And so I started specializing in that, realizing that systemic violence was a thing.
00:13:39
Speaker
And I wanted to dedicate my life in service of social justice work, but I thought that there was this very strong binary in my head. It's either in social justice, you either go become a lawyer and you're able to make money and do good and change the system, or you go work for nonprofits and you go volunteer for the rest of your life. These were the two kind of
00:13:58
Speaker
I don't know, it was like this larger, and I'm speaking to friends actually around the world. It was actually quite a common trend. It's either law or you sacrifice everything. And I chose law, of course, because I wanted to take care of myself and I needed the financial support. And so I went into law and I had a 10-year glowing plan. My glowing plan, which I was very deep in, was to get my master's at a very
00:14:24
Speaker
good university and do like a gender degree and then come back to the US, go to like Harvard or Yale, study law, specialize in that, and go on to have a really amazing 10-year plan. My 10-year plan started changing when I started paying attention to what was happening around me and specifically when I started to be open to looking at social media because at the time, I didn't have any social media. My social media was still hyperpigmented, sunsets and like dogs on Instagram. This was when I was like 22.
00:14:53
Speaker
not so long ago. And I started paying attention. I was just so blown away by the creativity and the educational power of social media. And I actually pivoted my entire master's, my entire gender degree from legal work to social media. And that put me at a really interesting intersection between at the intersection of law, women's right to be in social media,
00:15:18
Speaker
And that brought me to the UN because they were like, wow, this is a really shiny niche that she's got. So I had applied. Also, I didn't know anyone at the UN. So for me, this was a huge deal. This is what I had always dreamed of doing. The UN was the pinnacle for so many of us in the social justice work. This was what it meant to do good and to also get that nice ego pat on the back, you know, the golden star of social justice work.
00:15:42
Speaker
I made it there and it was an unpaid internship. I took out a loan to do this unpaid internship. My partner at the time was paying most of everything, so I was financially dependent on him because this is also a finance podcast. We don't talk about these untold stories about how do we actually get to where we are. This is actually something that I feel super empowered to talk about, by the way, on specifically your podcast because
00:16:05
Speaker
it's something I feel really comfortable and safe talking about it with you. And so I hope that also just as a quick parentheses, like this isn't something I talk about publicly a lot, because I feel embarrassed. I feel so much shame around how finances like and depending on others, like let me do this, the work as well. But then also to have to, to sacrifice so much financially in order to
00:16:29
Speaker
and meet this expectation of what success looked like in my space. And so while I was at the UN, so much pressure, like this, this is it. I was doing really well until I started paying attention to what was happening around me. This has been the story of my life is that the best thing that I can do is listen. At who I am, at the heart, as an entrepreneur, as a community builder, and what makes me a good entrepreneur, what makes me a good community builder, what makes me a good friend is listening.
00:16:55
Speaker
I usually think conversations like this are a bit more well-balanced, I think, whereas not just me rambling. For me, I started listening. What was happening at the UN? What was happening with my friends that were working on social impact work around the world in nonprofits or philanthropy? And the main thing I was seeing was that we really lacked a place of perspective.
00:17:14
Speaker
So I asked myself, where do you go after you work in a place like the UN, but also how do people end up here? And in asking myself these questions, I started doing a lot of research online and you find that actually the main top platforms that people depend on, specifically like the 80% of Gen Z,
00:17:32
Speaker
the biggest workforce right now, depend on the main platforms that have existed for over 20 years that are run by mostly, true fact, bald white men in both the UK and the US who have run platforms like Idealist, ReliefWeb. These platforms have existed for so long and millions of people depend on them for jobs in humanitarian space and development sector and even DevEx, for example, as well. Huge platform and development space. These platforms are sharing such boring jobs.
00:18:01
Speaker
And I'm like, how about the Gen Z that just want to work? Interesting. When GiveHerDollars starts hiring, you're working at the intersection of finance, you're working in women's empowerment, you're an improper organization in many, many ways. When you start hiring, I do not want you to your jobs to just go to some large, I mean, LinkedIn is great, let's not, but because it brought us together. However,
00:18:24
Speaker
I want GiveHerDollars and platforms like yours and also all of the amazing impact organizations that you as an investor in. I want these organizations to have a beautiful platform that is specifically dedicated to social impact, that is specifically made for diverse people in social impact, and that specifically has very hard boundaries around not sharing unpaid work, for example.
00:18:49
Speaker
For me, it was really important to start. I was thinking about all these things while I was at the UN. I almost got fired because I was thinking about all these things and not showing up to my workplace. I was working from a storage closet. I was like, what does it actually look like in practice? Actually, that ended up being an email list because I didn't have social media at the time. I'm also a curator. Being a listener means that I find good resources.
00:19:12
Speaker
Basically, what I started doing was taking all of the resources and all of the jobs that I was not sharing, that I was not applying for, or that I was applying for, but that I thought were really interesting, collecting them into an email and sending them to these 20... It was a mix of lawyers, diplomats, students, just different people from different parts of my life, and just sending them to them because I would have been sending them anyway. A newsletter just made sense because I'm already sending links. This whole women supporting women is not something that
00:19:39
Speaker
Like now I have the terms for it. But a few years ago, it was just, I love sharing resources with my community. I think that one of the stupidest things about this world now, I know we'd like to have so many big conversations around like AI and stuff like this.
00:19:55
Speaker
However, I think that at the most basic level, one of the biggest problems is that we continue to generate information. The world continues to produce content and all of these things, but no one is actually ensuring that all of this amazing content actually reaches the right people and there's no platform like that in the social impact space.
00:20:12
Speaker
I never found it, so I started building it, and I started as an email list. In fact, I didn't have social media for it, because I also knew that social media was a full-time job. When I do something from the vein of Microsoft Sense, I wanted to go 110% in into what I do.
00:20:28
Speaker
And I don't want to have to ask something. And so for me, it was important to just treat social media as a job. So I cannot do that job as well. So I just focus. I dedicated myself for almost two years to only focus on curating the newsletter and delivering as much possible value as I could and just showing up.
00:20:48
Speaker
One of the things that I've learned so much in this journey is that really and why people like Steve Jobs, when you listen to them, really at the end of the day, you see that entrepreneurship is really just a game of longevity. It's like who lasts longer? It has the same passion. No, but also because people burn out, they quit. But for me, I was so connected to my problems, so connected to my why that I was not even in my, oh, should I, should I not?
00:21:12
Speaker
I just kept showing up, but there were also moments that were really tough and where I did almost quit. But luckily, I was surrounded by people that encouraged me not to, and I didn't. I'm so glad I didn't because now, yes, we're over 30,000 people. We have B2B partners. We have B2C growth unlike anything that we just exceeded our sales target of B2C actually of this month, which is our best one. We just launched our paid products, which is actually a super scrappy thing.
00:21:40
Speaker
Just a few months ago, and we're now evolving that into a tech platform and a community, a membership community for social impact. The goal is really to take lessons from like these communities chief and build a bit more of an intersectional kind of community where anyone around the world can really
00:21:57
Speaker
find the resources and find the jobs and find the people, especially the people, the connections to not just scale their impact, but really scale their joy, which is maybe something I didn't mention. And it's the most important thing to mention is that a very big part of what I do is just grounded in joy and joy and the tool for social change.
00:22:15
Speaker
And I think that you and I kind of bonded about this. This is a super random tangent, but I think a lot over fashion and just how fashion can be so joyful. It's a very radical tool for uplifting ourselves and wearing color. Right now I'm wearing black, but usually I'm not wearing black.
00:22:32
Speaker
But joy is such an inherently radical thing in this space, and it's the underlying current into everything that I was doing. Also, because while I was still at the UN, one of the things that I felt was that there was so much pacifism, so much negativity because you're working on topics like
00:22:49
Speaker
the climate crisis, like financial inequality, like racial injustice. And these are topics that are very weighty, but it was equally essential to create pockets of hope, kind of like this podcast as well, finance space. It's like really important to focus on joyous acts of well-being. And I think that just listening to people's stories also, that was a bit of the founding story, plus a few George Ola tangents.
00:23:16
Speaker
Well, first of all, thank you so much for showing up with so much vulnerability. You pointed out earlier that you usually don't talk about the fact that you experience a lot of shame around the fact that you were financially dependent on so many people and you had to take out a loan in order to work at the UN doing this unpaid internship, which
00:23:46
Speaker
Honestly, the fact that such a big organization
00:23:53
Speaker
like the UN is not paying their people. I really hope it has changed ever since. But unpaid labor should just not be a thing anymore, period. But we also know today that that was a big catalyst for you and for the blue. Without your UN internship, you probably wouldn't be where you are today. So there always are these silver linings, at least based on my experience that
00:24:21
Speaker
experiences I've made over the past couple of years there usually always is a silver lining and at that very moment in time you oftentimes aren't even aware of it and it can sometimes take weeks months or even years for you to realize oh wow I'm actually glad xy did not work out or xy did work out the way it did even though I'd initially hoped for something different because
00:24:45
Speaker
If things had gone a different direction i wouldn't have had xy opportunity i wouldn't have met xy people and it's just oftentimes virtuous. Cycle that.
00:25:00
Speaker
Really guides us in life and unlocks people's purpose at the end of the day. So yeah, thank you so, so much for sharing.
Aligning Entrepreneurship with Personal Growth
00:25:09
Speaker
And just to reiterate, you start out with 20 people and then it just grew organically. The newsletter, I mean, because people just kept forwarding it to other people because all of the incredible resources that you shared, correct?
00:25:21
Speaker
Yes, exactly. Amazing. This is up for debate. I mean, now I am sharing more actively about what I do. So I guess now the most recent growth that we've had like this year and starting last year as well is a bit more focused, but still like really not yet investing. I still never paid even one cent for an advertisement.
00:25:41
Speaker
Eventually, we will put it in social media, hopefully this year. So we're actually doing a friendly rally very soon through which one of the things I do want to do is hire someone on social media because I do want to reach more diverse audiences and looking at my own research. Of course, I know that social media can help us reach more diverse people. So for me, the next step is diversifying and also getting our message out there as much as possible.
00:26:05
Speaker
I think I'm at the phase also of my life where I just want to stream what I do from the rooftops because it's so like I'm doing what I do so much and why I do it and how I'm doing it with and who I'm doing it for. There's just so much alignment. It's like, why would I not now? So the only thing missing for us is the investment. So we're going to be on that route kind of again, but not with both seas.
00:26:26
Speaker
I don't think you and I have caught up on this, but yes. So we will start with non-organic growth now, but I still think the essence of it, the messaging, why we're saying what we're saying is still going to be very much bloom worthy.
00:26:43
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And also congratulations on record B2C month. That's incredible. It's only going to go up from here. Obviously we talked a little bit about some of your most recent wins when we had a catch up the other day. So I'm just.
00:27:00
Speaker
in awe and so proud of you and so excited about everything that is yet to come. You've already made these huge waves in this community and it's only going to get better from here. When you do something that is so deeply aligned with your values and has allowed you to find your purpose in life, it's beautiful and the success and the money will come eventually. Thank you.
00:27:23
Speaker
What's interesting is that getting to that point of alignment, I went through so much, so many periods of just being totally lost. If you were listening to a call that I would have now, for example, with someone related to work, maybe you would notice a really drastic difference between the kind of calls that I have now and how I show up now versus in the beginning. I think that
00:27:46
Speaker
I do have alignment so much now, but really like not last year, but I think in 2021, really I went through so many, so much. I didn't know how to show up as myself in this space, interestingly. So I think that my journey in entrepreneurship now where I am has just been like getting back to who I am. And I actually grateful that it didn't take me so long, like not 10 years of working on something to get to that place. But I do think that
00:28:12
Speaker
It's been the hardest part was finding my own voice in what I do, which doesn't make any sense, right? Because if you start something, why does it take so long for you to actually find yourself in it? But then I realized that building a business is like building a relationship. Things change. You change. The business changes. Times change.
00:28:32
Speaker
But you need to have the patience, you need to have the good communication, the listening, and honestly, the joy in that, in this shared commitment. And I mean, with a real business, it's a bit hard to speak in this way. So it's a bit big, forgive me, but I think it does make a lot of sense with the entrepreneurs that might be listening. I think it's very normal for your relationship to change with your business. You would expect that with any relationship that the terms of your connection.
00:28:57
Speaker
Will change but if it's meant to be then you have to have a long-term mindset and finding yourself and where you sit in with your connection of course that makes sense but in the beginning also. I didn't give myself that kindness like oh I should be showing up fully off centically as myself on every call or sales calls that I'm in but no it's like you work towards that alignment and you work towards the authenticity.
00:29:19
Speaker
because you're still exploring. Yeah, absolutely. And this goes back to what you were mentioning earlier. You thought you were going to end up going to law school in the US and continuing that work, but this just goes to show we can have our five, 10, 20 year plans. And I think it's perfectly fine to want to formulate something, put pen to paper, because that exercise in and of itself helps you kind of, you know,
00:29:46
Speaker
Feel more productive feel like you have a plan because let's be real oftentimes we're all just figuring out along the way and we're just earlier today i saw a post on linkedin that was posted by a young woman who's based in germany where i'm from and she,
00:30:01
Speaker
I was about to graduate from grad school getting her master's and she's trying to figure out, okay, I don't even know how to come up with my 10-year plan. And I commented on that post. I wrote a pretty long comment and was like, look, I've had so many 10-year plans and the number of times I've readjusted those plans, completely scrapped them are countless. It's pretty remarkable because going back to my point earlier, sometimes it just takes
00:30:30
Speaker
one academic, one professional opportunity, meeting one new person that can literally change everything. And what I found over time is it gets easier because all of the experiences, the successes that you celebrate, the incredible people that you attract, all of that compounds over time.
00:30:51
Speaker
at some point a couple of years in, you're starting to realize, okay, I'm in this tough situation right now, but honestly, I've been able to figure this out so many times in the past. Like this time will not be different. I'll be able to figure this out somehow as well. So over time you grow in self-confidence and when you grow in self-confidence, you can be a little bit more
00:31:15
Speaker
not selfish but you can be more determined about okay this is where i want to spend my time and this is where i choose not to spend time and these are the kind of people that i want in my life and those are the kind of people i do not want in my life and need to let go of in order to unlock that that next best version of myself i think that's beautiful because with each day that passes with each week that passes we're all we're all making progress and it doesn't often seem like that and in that point in time but then again
00:31:44
Speaker
If you fast forward six months and you look at the past six months, oh wow, I've actually achieved quite a bit. Or wow, what I'm capable of doing today, I wouldn't have been capable of doing just one year ago. So we all continuously evolve and it's beautiful. It's so beautiful. And I feel that's the duty of aging. I'm 27, so I can't speak that much on this. However, what I am noticing is that over time, it gets so much easier to be your own cheerleader and still
00:32:12
Speaker
I have become more impatient and really, really leaning into that and finding my own relationships and patients that I really love because I don't have the patience for relationships where even in the beginning where I feel like it's either extractivist or where it doesn't feel, it doesn't feel
00:32:33
Speaker
doesn't feel right. Like there's no explanation needed. It doesn't feel right. And I don't want to stay in these kinds of relationships. And so I feel this process of aging has me letting go of a lot of things because I know they no longer, they don't just no longer serve me, but I also don't see how, and I'm thinking about this across areas of my life. And I feel this is also what growth is about. And also in the best ways, what
00:32:57
Speaker
maturation is, is really connecting with the things that are most authentic to us and not waiting. I think what it means to continue our maturing process is, and what it means to be in alignment is really recognizing words that are authentic to you, a way of communicating that's authentic to you, a way of dressing that's authentic to you, a way of just living your life and to not be
00:33:23
Speaker
living for someone else to not be living in the shoulds, I should be doing this. And I think I spent so much of my early 20s living in that way, being in relationships that align with that, being in a career that align with what I should be doing, but also I didn't have enough troops of what actually exists, you know? So I think that's the joy of time is that you can only learn these things with time and with aging. There are certain things that you really can't
00:33:50
Speaker
You can't rush, which is interesting because I said that I'm impatient. But actually, you also have to have the patience to let things in and to let new things in.
Aging, Authenticity, and Evolution in Business
00:33:58
Speaker
And really, that can only happen with time. And so I feel like, wow, for me, it gives me a lot of hope because
00:34:05
Speaker
That just means that if we really are open to it and if we are open to growth, then 10 years from now, the people that we surround ourselves, it's going to be even more aligned. Maybe that means we go from 10 very close friends to five. With those five, you're going to treasure them so deeply. It's the same with business.
00:34:26
Speaker
Earlier, I was bragging about how you've been able to establish all of these incredible partnerships with social impact organizations such as UNICEF, the Malala Fund, and so on. And I'm sure there are listeners out there who would just dream about partnering with these types of established organizations, one day myself included. Very curious to hear how were you able to build those relationships with them? Was it networking? Did you cold-pitch them? Tell us more.
00:34:52
Speaker
I think so much about partnerships, it's really not searching for things out in the stars, but trying to start with who do you know and realizing that you're probably one degree away from connecting with the organizations that you dream of. If you really start assessing who you know and if you've been putting yourself out there for enough time, partnerships, I've had a very interesting growth over time with partnerships. In the beginning, I was
00:35:18
Speaker
Negotiating partnerships even earlier this year not that they didn't necessarily make sense but that they weren't it wasn't worth it they were long bureaucratic processes where ultimately it would have been a really nice logo to have on the website and stuff like this and probably would have given a lot of great resources.
00:35:36
Speaker
but also where there are too many other low-hanging fruits of people, smaller organizations. I think we often have this pressure in startups to immediately go after the Golden Nugget partnerships. Instead of my advisor actually said this to me in February, she was like, Jasmine, when you look at your partnerships, who would you rather have? Would you rather have four really fancy companies and logos, or would you rather
00:36:03
Speaker
focus on building a community of partners who are smaller, maybe not super well known, or they are well known, but they're not necessarily large, very financially abundant organizations. Actually, in fact, I'd rather have that, of course, a community of partners. And so I would say tips for forming meaningful partnerships and doing outreach. I would say cold messaging.
00:36:30
Speaker
I don't really know how much I believe in cold messaging, but I do believe in people-to-people messaging. So myself representing myself and then meeting someone, I just believe in relationship building. And where that leads, I don't know. But I do know that cold emailing, at least from our side, doesn't really work that well. I do think the more people-to-people approach is amazing. And what I have learned in terms of successful partnerships is that it's really about co-creation.
00:36:57
Speaker
It's about recognizing that even if there's a monetary transaction, how can I make this as authentic and meaningful as possible and true to my mission to build our own kind of partnership dynamic where it doesn't feel extractivist and or it doesn't feel like we're just trying to get you downloads or clicks, but actually where we're trying to really raise awareness and scream from the rooftops the work that you're doing.
00:37:20
Speaker
We've gotten a lot more bold in our approach to partnerships to really only align and reach out and connect with the ones that we feel are also ultimately beneficial for our community. So in the main ways that we work with partners is that we share their jobs and we also do promotions.
00:37:37
Speaker
newsletter, where we do customs with storytelling. We actually had one this week for one of our partners, which is Algebra in the UK, which is an ethical finance startup. And they are doing these amazing workshops called Chai Mama, where once a month they bring together women to create a safe space on financial wellbeing.
00:37:54
Speaker
For me, this is a no-brainer. This is exactly the kind of resource that our community wants, and it's amazing brand awareness that's in alignment. I think it's seeking alignment in all areas of the partnership, which is maybe impossible in some cases, but also in others, it's perfectly possible. It takes more time. I think that less
00:38:11
Speaker
less about the large golden nugget organizations and more about the ones that just make sense and that can deliver a lot of value to who you're actually trying to deliver value to and looking at partnerships as a conduit towards ultimately surveying your community better and also benefiting your partners, of course, because you love them as well. I call this the lion approach.
00:38:33
Speaker
Well, I love that because at the end of the day, it's all about saying your network is your net worth. And I think the more time you invest in intentionally and thoughtfully building your network. And I'm going back to what we're talking about in the very beginning, making those intros, sharing those resources.
00:38:52
Speaker
You paying it forward early on will continue to benefit you and the bloom for the rest of your life. So I think people should not underestimate the importance of building those very meaningful relationships with people and to add to my.
00:39:07
Speaker
Previous
Monetizing The Bloom through Partnerships
00:39:08
Speaker
question, we're talking about partnerships. I know partnerships are a big part of how you've been able to monetize to Bloom. I know that a few months ago you turned down an opportunity for VC funding. Can you talk just like very briefly a little bit about what your monetization journey has been like?
00:39:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's been tough because we were a newsletter. We are a newsletter driven business, but at the same time, not necessarily anymore in a very exciting way, like as far as on the business side, the monetization journey. Well, I fell into fundraising mode because in 2020.
00:39:43
Speaker
too. I thought that I needed the funds in order to essentially, I was in a very linear mindset. I was like, I have this amazing resource. It wasn't technically a product of course, because people were not necessarily, no one was paying for it. I had one off ads. So my monetization journey was that I was not really focused on monetization up until 2002. I started the bloom in 2020. And so for two years, like I was working part time jobs, I wasn't necessarily thinking like,
00:40:11
Speaker
I applied for some fellowships for the Bloom. We got rejected. There was one in NPR that I really loved. It was like how I built this fellowship. And that was one of my painful rejections. It kept me, still kept me focused, like deter from like some of the rejections that I got. But I was looking at things like accelerators and like Y Combinator and stuff like this, but also it didn't make sense as I used letter. I didn't know how, not just to sell, but the product roadmap was one that was really interesting for me in the beginning because
00:40:39
Speaker
It was when I didn't want to develop alone. My ultimate goal and my vision is to build a community, not necessarily. That's not really, it's a product, but it's also not really a product. It's kind of hard to call it that way. That feels almost disrespectful. It's like the people, like it's not, you're not a product. But when I turned to taking it more seriously,
00:40:55
Speaker
I thought that the way that I was going to be able to do it a bit faster was through VC funding, and my co-shows, she's definitely co-founder. We haven't really announced it publicly, so I'm not going to name her, but someone really amazing who is very public and outspoken on unpaid internships was an engineer. We started working on Bloom's pitch
00:41:15
Speaker
And we were doing very well. We were pitching to investors. We got a few no's. But then in November of 2022, we did get one yes for 750K from one investor who has a fund and a small community of founders. But during this call, he wanted to see a product roadmap. The one thing missing was what is the tech products that you're going to build. And I did not want to lie to this man.
00:41:38
Speaker
And even if it would have been quite easy, like my goal was not to build a new tech product, it was to build a team to then build something with pre-existing technology. And it's obviously, it was a hard sell for him because there was just not, it was just not meeting his criteria, which made a lot of sense. And so ultimately it was just, it just didn't work out and the money was there if I wanted it.
00:42:04
Speaker
I chose that moment not to because it just didn't feel in alignment and that was a journey, that was a start of the journey towards more boldness and more in alignment, not going after the things that I should want. And so instead of going down that route, I then rerouted and I actually started asking for help from my community. I started asking people for a bit of their time to share what the vision was for the room saying like, this is
00:42:29
Speaker
what the traction has been up until its point. This is the kind of support I need. This is where I want to go. Can you help me? And I did that for about two months. And organic, this was actually suggested by one of my entrepreneurial friends, just start bringing people in, having weekly meetings, just bring people in, share with them the update, and see what happens. And actually, three of those women ultimately became my team.
00:42:53
Speaker
which is exactly what I was hoping for. And how we have started more seriously on the monetization journey is I actually got help on the partnership side, which I never had before. But then the B2C side was when I wasn't thinking about building the community, I wasn't thinking about it as a paid community.
00:43:13
Speaker
But that was also because I had a lot of shame around asking for money from my community because I had this huge bias. I was like, if I'm building for two years, I had been doing something for free. So to go from that transition of free to paid was really hard.
00:43:28
Speaker
But I ultimately decided to do it because I've been and we will continue to offer so much value to our community. So why not open that up as well? And also paid communities do really well historically. And so that is the model that we chose. So it's both B2B and B2C. On the B2B side, like I said, it's that we work with mainly two main ways with partners. And in the future, we will be a bit more, especially with the platforms.
00:43:52
Speaker
But the idea is to basically build a bridge between businesses and organizations who have amazing resources, jobs, research, opportunities of ships, products, to connect those through a financial transaction to our community, which is invaluable in this space where there are so many communities online. But the reality is that a diverse community of social impact leaders at a global scale, no one else has something like the boom in this way.
00:44:21
Speaker
And so that's what really is how our monetization is really just focusing. Bullishly on people and on building the right community of people. And that is also what motivates me in the morning of the people like being connected and meeting bloomers. They are amazing. They're so cool.
00:44:41
Speaker
Like the people in my community are not just like they are a selling point, they are just magic. Like in the same community, you have people who used to be super high up at the UN and are now building a unicorn startup in like healthcare.
00:44:56
Speaker
have people who are directing some of the most amazing nonprofits, award-winning nonprofits in their local areas, you have so many startups from MIT and stuff like this from MIT Solve. We have so many people from that community because of a partnership that we used to have with MIT. And so many of their startup founders are in the community that are working on just incredible solutions to global problems. And it's just a mix of entrepreneurs, philanthropists,
00:45:23
Speaker
students, professors, it's an incredible community. And so for me now, the monetization is to actually realize that making connections between these people is extremely valuable. And so that's also what the future of monetization of the Bloom is. The community is about connection and connections in our space are invaluable and they're super missing. This is the main problem that so many people have in impact. It's really connecting with the right people and also diverse people.
00:45:51
Speaker
even between B to C, there's a lot of value there. That's also going to be really something that we lean on heavily in the coming year because it's so easy and simple, but it's also that no one is doing this and no one really attracts these kinds of people in the way that the plume is. I know that because I don't see myself in any other community.
00:46:12
Speaker
The Bloom is something that I'm building for myself in many ways as well. And I think that's kind of the joy of entrepreneurship. Those are things that you also find exciting and like joyful, like that you want to be a part of. I've been gathering so many times in person and I want to participate in this event, not just like organize because there's so many cool people. Yeah.
00:46:32
Speaker
I love everything that you just shared. And I think sometimes with entrepreneurship, specifically social impact causes that you just care about so deeply and are so strongly aligned with your values. Sometimes it takes some time for you to realize, oh, the things that come natural to me that are easy to me don't necessarily come natural or easy to other people, but they are
00:46:57
Speaker
highly valuable and I should find ways to monetize that because how great is it to be able to live off something that comes so easy to you and that brings you a lot of joy and I'm so glad you've been able to figure that out not only for yourself but with the help of your growing community and having conversations with them and really doing tons of market research. I think that's
Community-driven Monetization Strategies
00:47:23
Speaker
super super important to find that
00:47:25
Speaker
market fit by just going out there and having those really honest and genuine conversations with your community. I think that's key. Thank you. And actually, I was going to say the next step is also right now. So in terms of our revenue, we have product market fit and on the B2B side and the B2C side, the problem is that because no one in my team is full-time,
00:47:47
Speaker
Not even myself right now, I still have to have some part times. The problem is that we're all, our attention is scattered. And so we want to really make the most of this moment, the traction that we're having, the proof of concept and the proof of pay. We exceeded our targets like this year in like two, three months. And our community loves what we do. It's just that we can't keep doing it like this at this rate.
00:48:13
Speaker
if no one is full time and so what we're doing now in terms of monetization is i'm developing what i call my tender and urgent and also just like really honest approach towards fundraising building my own kind of fundraising strategy that is very
00:48:32
Speaker
To be determined, we have this conversation in five months, but it's about building a community of investors who are going to be supporting the community behind the scenes, who are going to be building a community-driven business, to have community across every single intersection of what we do, which for me is incredibly important. Like I said, alignment in all areas of life, I want to be funded by the right people, and in a way that feels not just authentic, but also very impactful. So that's what our next stage of monetization is.
00:49:01
Speaker
It's going to look like. Love that for you. Time flies when you're having fun. One final question for you, my dear, dear friend, because I don't only like to always start out with the same question, but I also like to close with the same question for each of my guests very briefly in one or two sentences. What is a financial milestone you have achieved that you are most proud of?
00:49:25
Speaker
being vulnerable, being vulnerable, specifically with you, actually. This was, you were the first person that I really laid out so many facts about me. So I would say my financial milestone is being honest about my finances right now.
00:49:42
Speaker
And yeah, choosing to be honest and also choosing to trust you because it's really, there's a lot of shame around it. And so it's easy to trust you and I love what you do and I love what you represent and the way that you are. So it was no brainer, but it was a milestone for me to be able to open up. So thank you for also allowing me to do that and for making it easy to do that. And yeah.
00:50:06
Speaker
That warms my heart. Thank you so, so much. This probably is not the favorite answer that I've ever had with this question. Obviously, I'm a little bit quiet here, but thank you so much for sponsoring me to say that. No, I could not. Thank you. Thank you for all the incredible work that you do. Thank you for showing up with such vulnerability and honesty today and cannot wait to continue the conversation. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Amina. Thank you for everyone listening.
00:50:33
Speaker
Hey there, not so fast. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you've listened in from today. Reviews are a podcaster's most important currency. It helps me create visibility for the incredible women who join me on this show. And if you've made it this far, I'd like to believe that supporting women is one of your favorite pastimes.
00:50:58
Speaker
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