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The POWER is in the Human
13 Plays5 days ago
Technology is advancing faster than ever—but are we leaving people behind?
In this episode of the Voice of Growth Podcast, Manny Teran sits down with Anne Dougherty, founder of ILLUME and expert in the human dimensions of energy and innovation.
From building a niche consulting firm from 2 to 50 people and successfully exiting, to tackling the intersection of AI, energy, and human behavior, Anne shares a powerful perspective: technology alone doesn’t solve problems—people do.
This conversation dives deep into leadership, scaling challenges, workforce disruption, and why the future of business depends on aligning human systems with technological progress. If you want to build something meaningful—and sustainable—this episode is essential.
-- Follow and Subscribe to sharpen your edge in business and give you peace of mind in life. #businessgrowth #entrepreneurship #stoicsm #megatrends #innovation ©2026 Profectory, LLC - All Rights Reserved.
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Transcript
Founding and Growth of Illum Advising
00:00:04
Speaker
The voice of growth, mastering the mind and market.
00:00:10
Speaker
Founded a company, Illumadvising, in 2013, exited in May. I got my first job in energy from a Craigslist ad in the Bay Area.
00:00:22
Speaker
So I think all businesses, whether they recognize it or not, are directly tied to the well-being of the people they serve. The survival of your business depends on your strategy and your ability to adapt to these different market conditions.
00:00:36
Speaker
The hardest thing you can do in a business is change management. Are we doing the right thing? are we making the right decisions? Are we taking care of people the way we should?
Career Advice and Human Dimensions in Energy
00:00:48
Speaker
How are we going to get that next generation up and trained when we're automating their jobs?
00:00:55
Speaker
The only conversations I've heard so far in business is this is going be really great and super efficient. And underneath the word efficient usually means fewer people. yeah Chase what you have energy for.
00:01:10
Speaker
I think I did all these things and still kept true to some of those orientations. And that's like what I kind of hold to.
00:01:19
Speaker
But I'm passionate about people. And you're a builder. I a builder. That's right. Tell us what you've built. Well, I've built many things, but I think you're asking about my company. So I founded a company, Illum Advising, in 2013, exited in May of this year. So last year, 2025. And was a research consultancy that focused on the energy industry. So our primary goal with building Illum was to bring the human dimensions of energy challenges into the center of energy solutions. So typically, you probably, you know, your way around tech, right? Yeah, of course. Typically with energy technologies, you really focus on like the utility of the technology, the technical adequacy of it. But rarely do we deal with the human systems surrounding those technologies.
00:02:14
Speaker
And in the case of like operating buildings or operating houses, um cities, you have to bring human factors into your technical
Illum Advising's Exit and Strategic Projects
00:02:25
Speaker
assessments. And so we started, just the two of us, my business partner, Sarah and I, and we grew it from two people to 50 over those 12 years of running the organization. And then decided, as one of my mentors said, we needed to wear new boots, you know, try something else on. And so we decided to exit at that point.
00:02:43
Speaker
And well give us ah an example of what a human factors in technology project is. Like what was a ah very typical project you might have worked on?
00:02:55
Speaker
Oh, gosh. Our projects vary dramatically. So we worked on issues of equity and policy translation, so who gets served with what and how, um how you measure the impacts of that funding. We did work related to the energy grid nexus. So how do you um move markets to adopt technologies that support the resiliency of the electric grid?
00:03:15
Speaker
um We also looked at micro, what I would consider sort of technologies in micro environments. So um you've installed a new thermostat. How do we get you to engage with that start thermostat in a way that reduces demand um on the electric grid and then aggregate demand? those behaviors across hundreds of thousands of households into impacts that system planners can rely on.
00:03:39
Speaker
um So highly technical work and also highly qualitative work. So we had a team of data scientists working on our projects, um looking at impacts, running sophisticated models.
00:03:51
Speaker
And um and then qualitative researchers, ethnographers and others kind of really dealing with the human elements of it. And then, of course, all these experts in between and sort of markets and energy program implementation, policy, et cetera. Super niche. It's super niche. And it was great.
00:04:08
Speaker
So how did that happen? You're like you woke up one day and you're like, are you going to make a very niche company or did it sort of accidentally sort of form? I'm kind of a niche person. i think, um no, i i got my first job in energy from a Craigslist ad in the Bay Area. So my background's in the social sciences. I started working in consumer product brand strategy, using research, um qualitative research and observational research to support our clients in merchandising and product launches. And then really found that soul sucking at some point. i was like, a can't keep doing this for computers and crayons and these different um technologies. And I wanted sort of trickier problems. So I so applied for a job on Craigslist for this, you know, um consulting role in energy.
Flexible Work Environment and Human-Centered Energy Solutions
00:04:57
Speaker
And i really literally had to call someone. i was like, so tell me how energy works. Let's talk about how this actually functions, how these systems function. And um
00:05:08
Speaker
you know, um did well, I guess, in my interview and was hired and started running projects at a time when the energy industry, particularly in California, was looking at these human challenges. So it was running evaluation projects, multimillion-dollar research projects focused on moving the California public in the market toward um greenhouse gas reduction goals and achieving those through a series of programs. And I built a reputation over the course of those five or six years that I was with that firm as an expert in the behavioral dimensions of energy and then launched my company at the back of that.
00:05:43
Speaker
Interesting. So in many ways, you know, I sort of applied my education, my training to a different challenge, a challenge a different set of challenges. Yeah. um I think that's really a brilliant move because you you basically leaped off your own strengths, your own background yeah into something brand new and you sort of like molded them together, which is yeah brilliant. Yeah. And, you know, at the time, um well thank you. um When we launched the company, we were also kind of intervening in the the business model of consulting. So one of our primary goals was to think about leveraging the flexibility of consulting for the purpose of creating a better environment and work environment for our employees. So rather than adopting like the McKinsey model, which is sort of grinds your junior people into the ground and you get as much billability out of them, ah you know, and and sort of build your business that way, we thought, how can we create sort of a humane environment for consulting? And um and one that was really...
00:06:49
Speaker
focused on honoring the lives of our employees and also women in the workplace as well. So we provided a lot of flexibility to parents and to um really brilliant folks in that really challenging period of life when sort of in peak career and peak family. Yeah. And you need the flexibility to succeed and continue to advance. And so we, in addition to sort of focusing on the human dimensions of energy, we were focusing on the human dimensions of consulting. Yeah.
00:07:18
Speaker
Yeah. Now, I want to come back to the the human dimensions of consulting, put a bookmark on that. sure But I want to talk really quickly about why tech companies, energy companies, why these companies should care about the human side.
Symbiotic Relationship Between Utilities and Public
00:07:34
Speaker
well i Well, first of all, fundamentally, you need a consumer base, period. And so I think all businesses, whether they recognize it or not, are directly tied to the well-being of the people they serve. right You need people to have lives that are um dynamic, that are flourishing, that they're able to build you know a income that essentially supports your business. Yeah.
00:07:59
Speaker
And very few companies, i think, think about their role that way. But utilities fundamentally have to. And so an energy is very place-based. Utilities are place-based. Unlike a multinational firm that can kind of pick up its operations and move to another region, they have to tend to the well-being of their public and also the way that that public's behaviors impact this infrastructure that they're responsible for and these commodities they're required to provide. And so more than anyone, I think they're in this like deeply symbiotic relationship with the public.
00:08:34
Speaker
And for years, um you know, ah electricity companies didn't have to worry about that. We had enough supply to meet demand. We had infrastructure that was relatively new and functioning well. And we are in sort of the exact opposite place right now. Demand is outpacing supply. Demand. development is growing dramatically, particularly when you're dealing with data centers and hyperscalers and all these sort of complex energy systems that we're adding to the electric grid, electric vehicles. And um you you just have to pay attention to those behaviors, those market dynamics, and those relationships. And the reality is, is you know, frankly,
00:09:14
Speaker
The public can make or break your rate case. The public can make or break your ability to cite, you know, a new development in a region. And so you need to pay attention to the well-being of the people in those regions as well.
00:09:27
Speaker
Yeah, you're not going to pick up and move my, what do you call it, my
AI and Energy Management Challenges
00:09:33
Speaker
meter over there, right? yeah It's stuck. Yeah, and this is where you are, and this is where your lights are, and this is where your life is.
00:09:40
Speaker
And, um I mean, it's fascinating. So I did an interview Illumia. We used to to do this magazine. We'd publish it once a year. And um I had this really great interview with Michael Terrell, who heads Google's um ah but of environmental investments and energy initiatives. And at the time, he completely blew my mind because he was talking about managing these data centers across a global environment. So distributing sort of the workload, if you will, technology.
00:10:09
Speaker
these data centers to um be active where energy was the cheapest and operating not only on a 24-hour horizon, which we're accustomed to in the U.S., but also on a global time horizon. and um And I thought that was really fascinating because it creates this um opportunity, if you will, to optimize both locally and globally at the same time. Now, they're one of the few companies that have both the scale and the sophistication to do that. But as we get more and more um built out in and in a AI proliferates, these kinds of sophisticated ways of managing energy are going to be increasingly important. So I think that's kind of an interesting new horizon for our for our space. Nice.
00:10:55
Speaker
Next question. yeah is I believe you are uniquely qualified to give your insights to me because not everybody understands that data centers are not just a binary decision. Yeah.
00:11:10
Speaker
Kind of pun intended there. Yeah. So give us some of the the human aspects. Give us some of the policy aspects. Just give us your take on the data centers that we all need. We're needing more and more, but communities are pushing back quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah, well, they're pushing back for a number of reasons because we haven't, I think, fundamentally resolved the question, ah nor do I think we ever will, what is the goal of AI in our society? So I think in some ways what you're seeing in community pushback around data centers is more of an accident existential pushback around, I don't know if I want this technology. I don't know if I want you in my backyard. Are you here to provide good for me or are you here to take my job?
00:11:53
Speaker
And not only are you doing all of this in my backyard, you may be increasing the cost of my electric bills and you may be using the precious water resources we have that, you know, as we all know, is not a renewable resource. So the conversation that communities are having are not...
00:12:11
Speaker
stop, I don't want it. They're what's in it for me always, right? But then I think secondarily, what are we trying to do here? What is the project that we're embarking on? And people don't say it, they don't use those terms, but when you get into conversations and you read across the anxieties It's about the future. It's about what are we really attempting to achieve? Is this technology for technology's sake or is it technology that's going to actually better my life?
00:12:42
Speaker
And if we are going to be successful in that this kind of development, this scale of development, we need to answer that question.
AI's Impact on Jobs and Community Responsibility
00:12:49
Speaker
And it's a fair and real question. there's um i was just talking to a friend. We were on a walk, and we were talking about this concept of surplus populations. Have you heard this term? No, what is it? And can't quote the the academic who who named this because I was just talking about this. It's this idea that, you know, economies, in particular um capitalism, have a tendency to create populations that can't participate in the system. i see what you mean. And the more that we consolidate um jobs and wealth, the more surplus populations we have, if you will. yeah and we are in a moment where I think people are feeling that and have seen that. And that's been going on in the United States for some time now. And we don't have a good social response to dealing with people who are not in the workforce. And so when you are a parent, like in my case, sending my child to college and wondering what job is there on the other side.
00:13:46
Speaker
And if you're lucky like me, how much money do I need to set aside just in case this kid can't get a job? Yeah. You know, and this is the best case scenario, right? Yeah.
00:13:57
Speaker
What do you think your average, you know, working class community member is thinking? And so what we need to see is AI and data centers and the communities or the companies that are trying to cite them in communities come up with a better value proposition for the public.
00:14:13
Speaker
You know, um we also have situations that are even worse for communities, like where there's actual pollution happening yeah and there's this sort of degradation of the sort of microenvironment surrounding or the community surrounding it. And there needs to be responsibility around that. And policymakers are rightly asking who's covering the cost.
00:14:32
Speaker
Should the public pay through the system, if you will, to be able to online all of this technology? And typically the answer is no, right? That's that's the general consensus. I don't think people disagree with that. But the mechanisms to recover costs are complicated and they're distributed across the grid. So um there are new and kind of innovative policy models that are emerging that are um figuring out ways to share cost.
00:15:02
Speaker
And um I like to think, you know, even though a lot of folks think about distributed generation as being this really valuable thing for these large commercial-sided projects, I think for ah the purposes of the public and um for reliability, it's better that these are all utility-connected.
00:15:21
Speaker
And you can create microgrids and do really dynamic things to make sure that they also serve the community in different ways if they're self-generating. But, um but without that sort of tether, if you will, to the responsibility of the grid and the public, we really don't have a guarantee of, you know, the sort of outcomes surrounding those developments. And I think the public's smart.
00:15:45
Speaker
They know that. We haven't figured it out. We don't have the answers.
AI's Role in Business and Workforce Development
00:15:49
Speaker
And so this is why we have all this pushback. But everyone's working on it. i mean, hopefully I'll be working on something very similar to it soon. Yeah.
00:15:58
Speaker
Yeah, there's ah we've been having lots of conversations at the podcast with people at all levels of the AI framework, yeah from people that are in security, people that are in policy, people that are coding, people that are using it. And so the data center piece of it is what people sort like sometimes don't really think about, but it's in our backyard. We've had this big discussion with Project Blue lately, and it's going to be interesting to see what happens in the next...
00:16:26
Speaker
i You normally say like five, 10 years, but I'm going to say like one, three years. Yeah, one to three easily. It's insane. It's moving so fast. And I think that's the challenge. I was talking to an investor recently and I thought he summarized it well. He goes, we just have to make sure that what we're providing isn't just a better version of our Google search. Mm-hmm. You know, that like like the general public is receiving a benefit that exceeds that, you know. But the benefits for business are obvious, right? um Will those benefits then extend outside of business is the question we have to answer.
00:17:00
Speaker
you use I do all the time, yeah. And in my previous role when I was the chief strategy officer for eSource, which is the company that acquired us, I was supporting them on an internal AI initiative and development project. And that was fun because they have a really great AI lead who is, um you know, founded and built and sold companies in the space and is really, really thoughtful. And it was fun to work with him and really get into the nerdy aspects of building models and and thinking about ensuring quality.
00:17:36
Speaker
Do you think that Illume and eSource in particular and companies like that are going to be decimated or augmented or untouched with AI? ive All of the above, I think. you know i think the reality is is that your the survival of your business depends on your strategy and your ability to adapt to these different market conditions, and some are going to absolutely be decimated. I think it depends on how commoditized your offering is.
00:18:04
Speaker
You know, um my bigger concern is not can these businesses survive? Like if they survive, what does that look like? And how do we train up a workforce behind this sort of tier of experts who are running these organizations and whose expertise is required to effectively engage with AI?
00:18:22
Speaker
How are we going to get that next generation up and trained when we're automating their jobs? And um one of the things that I've said repeatedly to people I've talked to about this is that you can't have an AI strategy without a reskilling strategy, without a workforce development strategy. It's not enough to think about your models in the abstract and what they might do to create efficiencies in your business. You have to bring people along with you or you may find yourself without the resources and the skills you need to really run those. And um and at the time, right now, we need discernment. We need expertise. We need folks who are really capable of both understanding how these models work and function and then how to apply them. And I don't think most people can do that.
00:19:11
Speaker
Right now. I had a podcast interview with Steve Zalstra, the tech counsel. I know you're on the board. And um my question for you is, how do you see the region here? they're We'll say Arizona in general, because you're sort of...
00:19:29
Speaker
area there. How do you see Arizona dealing with workforce with AI? We have already talked about the data center side. Yeah. Reskilling. How do you see the the region dealing with these sort of things? That's a good question. So in my mind, I think that comes back to what are sort of the regulatory and policy goals of investing in this, these technologies? How do we take those goals and translate them into practical programs, initiatives, and investment portfolios, you know, either in the public or private sector? And then how do we scale that?
00:20:05
Speaker
And right now, the state, for example, um and our regulators don't really have a point of view on any of this. And I think that's really critical when we talk about um the types of businesses we're trying to locate here and how we're going to really build out.
00:20:21
Speaker
um So I think in the end, what we'll probably see is more leadership come forward um through innovation, hopefully in our community colleges, innovation in our university systems, and maybe even in grassroots workforce development.
00:20:36
Speaker
And those things will be very critical, I think, to building leadership. out, um you know, a workforce that can deal with AI. The only conversations I've heard so far in business is this is going to be really great and super efficient. And underneath the word efficient usually means fewer people. Yeah.
00:20:54
Speaker
Right. So you're saying that the tech bros don't have all the answers for us? No. I heard this and I actually, I ascribed to this phrase and the more i've thought about it is, ah you know, AI is not going to replace, it's not going to take your job.
00:21:10
Speaker
Someone that knows how to use AI very well is going to take your job. Absolutely. yeah I think that's right. But I also think it's a little untrue. There is going to be a consolidation of labor. And we have to just name that and accept that. The jobs I'm most worried about being ah automated are going to be, you know, entry-level engineering, computer science, data science. These models are very sophisticated.
00:21:37
Speaker
um They have their flaws. And it they still operate like your traditional data science models. You know, garbage in is garbage out. And right now, a lot of what they're reading is garbage, you know, where the Internet is not exactly the best place to to get knowledge. And so one of the things that I think we are going to need more of are like librarians and not to manage data, curate the information that we're feeding into these models. um That might come from academia. That might come from a whole set or a whole new class of jobs that we need to create. um But then you also need, of course, folks who can really get into that learning, those machine learning you know algorithms and pull them apart. So in early days, for example, in Ellume, we would do predictive modeling um strategies to target customers to adopt different technologies.
00:22:29
Speaker
And um predictive models function based on historic information, right? So you're predicting your future population based on who was participating in the past. Right.
00:22:39
Speaker
So when you apply that to a data set of customers or um or the public, then you, of course, reproduce exactly the same population. You just find new members of it, you know.
00:22:51
Speaker
That's actually a really and inefficient way of expanding a market. What you're trying to do when you expand your market is not just to tap who you already have at the table or who has the propensity to participate or to adopt your technology. You need to find those pockets in the market that are adjacent.
00:23:09
Speaker
Or that are up and coming behind it. And so when you start working and you think about these AI models functioning in a sort of similar way, especially language learning models and others, you are going to need people who are sort of sophisticated enough to know how to open those models up to make sure that they have enough sort of breadth, if you will, to see and discern what is not um essentially a historical pattern yeah being reinterpreted.
00:23:37
Speaker
I had an interview with a buddy of mine early kind of early on in the podcast, and he is a a he's a scientist, he's an engineer. He believed back about 15 years ago, 20 years ago, he was an OG in the AI community, yeah but he was doing machine vision. yeah And he thought that machine vision was going to be the breakthrough technology and not the large language models that are, of course, prevalent now.
Emerging Energy Technologies and Business Growth
00:24:02
Speaker
yeah Do you see any technologies that are sort of nascent or on the peripher on the periphery about to jump into the market in the energy space with respect to either green energy or new ways of using existing technology? Is there something new on the horizon that maybe we don't know about? I'm sure there are. I mean, obviously, everyone's talking about fusion and trying to speed that up as much as possible, um because that would radically change the way we generate energy and deploy it and use it. ah
00:24:31
Speaker
a lot of the challenges of the energy industry right now and the technologies that are innovating around it are deeply practical, like around transmission. This is the fundamental challenge of the energy industry industry right now. Yeah.
00:24:42
Speaker
um So in some ways what we're seeing is a lot of optimization happening through these kinds of models. I think that's one area that we will see innovation.
00:24:53
Speaker
um I think we may also be able to get more sophisticated in the orchestration and aggregation of energy through distributed sources. Mm-hmm. So we have the emergence of virtual power plants. The promise of that hasn't yet paid off, but it's something that we're continuing to work at. And in many ways, the policy imperative this is so rare, was sort of out in front of the technology. you know Interesting. That doesn't often happen. Usually policy and regulation chases tech. you know um But in this case, the need is so great. and um
00:25:31
Speaker
And so we're starting to see that build out. And in order to proliferate technologies, deploy those technologies, scale those technologies, you need a nimble regulatory environment to achieve that.
00:25:44
Speaker
We don't have that right now. And that's why we have hyperscalers moving to self-generation. They're working around the system, not within the system. Yeah. They're trying to address a need that's not being dealt with. Yeah. I'm going to change gears a bit. Yeah. Because I really want to understand in your growth path, you and Sarah are growing the company yeah from just the two of you to over 50, right? Yeah.
00:26:10
Speaker
Were there times where you wanted to quit? Always. Always. Like every other week. And what were the reasons? um Well, you know, in and the early days, it's all adrenaline and you're just pushing hard. So I don't think you can even see straight enough to know if you want to quit your job, right? You're just hustling.
00:26:30
Speaker
um i think it's those middle years that are really challenging. When you're going from 15 people to 20, even 30 people is a dramatic change and it's a cultural change. And so um the hardest thing you can do in a business is change management.
00:26:46
Speaker
it It truly is the most difficult thing. You probably know this well. And the company you need at 15 and the company you need at 30 is really different. but you know And um those are the moments. Those inflection points were always like the grindiest, grittiest, hardest moments. And you would get so frustrated. And, um and I think it was because, you know, as leaders, you forget that your vision is clear, your intention feels really sort of lucid, you kind of know where you're going and what you want to achieve. And it's challenging to bring people along on that.
00:27:23
Speaker
And it's not even about individuals. Organizations just move slowly. and They just have to. People have to adapt. And your organizational change, your shift in vision is, ah you know, an additional challenge to their daily job, right? Because they're they're being asked to deliver on our projects and do all this work. so it was sort of in those moments I was ready to be done. Um, but obviously we got through it. It's just, it was always for me, but not surprisingly, the people challenges that woke me up at 3am, it was never, do we have money or not?
00:27:57
Speaker
You know, um, that never scared me. It was always like, are we, are we doing the right thing? Are we making the right decisions? Are we taking care of people the way we should? Um, how am I going to resolve this conflict that's in the business? You know, that kind of thing.
00:28:10
Speaker
Did you learn any hard lessons with respect to personality that you hired? Either that they, maybe you fired them too slowly or hired them too fast or that kind of thing? Yeah. I mean, that's, i mean, that what's that? That's the adage, right? Hire slowly, fire fast.
00:28:27
Speaker
um I think that's very true, but it's hard to do. It's really It's really hard to do. um You know, my biggest... Down's fault is that I see potential in sort of everything. And I think it comes from my tendency to be a bit of a builder.
00:28:43
Speaker
And I see that in people, too. And so what I often don't do is interview to find the flaws or the faults or the things that aren't going to work.
00:28:54
Speaker
And sometimes that works out really well because I can find like a shiny, you know, up and kind of coming star and nurture them and give them what they need. And then sometimes I'm seeing the very best of somebody and the worst is like really bad, you know, yeah I didn't know or it wasn't what I needed. And so what I found over time was I needed to find an interview partner. Or somebody who was more cynical and um pessimistic almost to run people through interviews as well. So that I had this sort of counterbalance to my personality. i also, this is going to sound strange, but I kind of like to collect people. I like to convene people. And so I get excited about the prospect of adding more people to a project. And that often doesn't work because you need to hire for compliments and you need to hire for gaps and not just strengths. Yeah, bias is is hard to get over, get, you know, move aside when you're... I'm the same way. In the hiring process, as I was growing my business years ago, i made a point that I would have the first interview on the phone only, yeah even though we had Zoom at the time, it was just barely coming online.
00:30:03
Speaker
And phone only because I wanted to understand like who they were. i didn't want to be biased by anything else. And then I would basically remove myself further and further as the process went along and have others make the the decision. Yeah. Because I'm shiny kind of guy as well. I'm like, man, this person could do this. I can really take all my energy and help build them up.
00:30:24
Speaker
100% understand. Yeah. Yeah. You have to To kind of back off and know when to back off. And that actually, you know, as a founder, it's better to you because in the end, they're not working with you in most cases. They're working with your team. And so your team has to be bought into them.
00:30:42
Speaker
And frankly, they need to be attached to your team because I think it's very easy for a new employee to get excited about working with the owner or the founder or the leader. And that isn't their reality because day in and day out, they're not working with you. They're working with everybody else.
00:30:57
Speaker
So they have to like that. Did you compete with eSource or were they it was a complimentary before the acquisition? ah ah Probably a bit of both. um they They were in a sort of an acquisitive phase, so that changed a lot, you know, over the course of the time. um You know, it where they were growing before we were acquired.
00:31:15
Speaker
um eSource was one of these companies that I sort of grew up alongside. They were in the industry and they've been in the industry, think, for 30 plus years. And so when I entered, getting a speaking engagement at the eSource was a really big deal because they have this event called the Forum, and um it's exclusive to a clients for the most part, or it was.
00:31:34
Speaker
And so when I would get invited there, it was like, oh, this is a great speaking opportunity because I always got work. And I had um folks that I would collaborate with in those spaces to run workshops and things. And so our work has always been complementary and we always had a sort of a mutual admiration um society, if you will, ah between us.
00:31:54
Speaker
And um so the the acquisition sort of felt like a natural fit. How'd that conversation go? I mean... In what sense? the The actual conversation, who opened it up, who asked who on a date, you know? Yeah. That sort of thing is is always a very...
00:32:10
Speaker
um sort of like a black box yeah for a lot of people it is from the outside, not understanding. yeah And the more I've talked to them, it's usually not that sort of a black box when you really understand that it just kind of either happens or there's like that moment where you got that email or how did it go up for you? oh Well, our space is really acquisitive right now. So there's a lot of consolidation happening. um it i Like all spaces, they tend to go through these phases, right? There's consolidation and then businesses spin off and then we reconsolidate. um So we we're kind of at the end of one of those moments. So that is to say that we were getting a lot of outreach in general. Mm-hmm.
00:32:48
Speaker
And our space is reliable when the economy is not. And so when things feel a little uncertain, you get more outreach. So during this period of time and not really understanding what the political landscape would look like, a lot of investors were knocking on our door and probably all of our competitors' doors and everyone else's, right?
00:33:05
Speaker
And so um when eSource reached out, it was really the first conversation that we were willing to entertain and because it felt like a real fit. It felt practical. And we knew their organization and had worked alongside them for a long time. And um when Sarah and I had thought about an exit, we always wanted to go with a strategic rather than an investor. I mean, of course, we had at some point like ideas about becoming a platform company ourselves, but we were too small and didn't necessarily want to govern the organization for another like five to 10 years to get there.
00:33:42
Speaker
If someone would have told you at 22, 24, 25 years old that you would have gone along this path. Yeah. Would you have said? was a nanny at 24, 25. I, while entering graduate school, I was kind of, I grew up in a community of, like a very working class community. And my dad ran a nonprofit and my mom taught third grade.
00:34:09
Speaker
And so all of my upbringing and sort priming for me was around service. Like, how do you create a better environment for the people around you? And I wouldn't say that I'd abandoned that by any means, but I never thought I'd be working in business.
Career Reflections and Learning from Experience
00:34:23
Speaker
I thought I'd maybe go into advocacy. Maybe I'd be in an NGO. But when I um went to graduate school, i really loved research as a catalyst for change and thinking about it as a way of kind of understanding strategy. But leaving undergrad, I just didn't know how to get a job.
00:34:41
Speaker
i I mean, really, i didn't have any sense of it. And I felt... Like i didn I didn't quite know how to sell my skills. My family had just gone through a major disruption. So I was also like maybe not in the best emotional place. So I think if I, looking back, i there's no way I would have never thought this was where I would be.
00:35:03
Speaker
um But I'm proud of myself. I'm proud of like the, like I don't think I, I think I did all these things and still kept true to some of those orientations. And that's like what I, what I kind of hold to.
00:35:17
Speaker
Are you a hopeful person? Oh, absolutely. think we're going to okay? I think so. Oh, i no. i ah My biggest marital fight was... Have you ever read Cormac McCarthy's The Road?
00:35:29
Speaker
No, I have not. Okay. Well, it's a devastating book, um but it's beautifully written, so it's worth reading. Okay. But just prepare yourself for it. you You're going to need downtime afterwards. But there's this scene where there's it's a nuclear holocaust, and And there's this scene where this family of three are trying to make a decision about what they're going to do. And the mom decides she doesn't want to go on. And so she kind of takes herself into the field and like take care takes care of herself. And the dad and the son sort of persist.
00:35:58
Speaker
And so my conversation with my husband was like, all right, if this happens, who are you in this relationship? And he's like, oh, I'm the wife. I'm not going to try to fight this to the end. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm the dad. I was like, it's going to be just me and my daughter and we're going to be in the nuclear holocaust alone trying to find the sea. and But I'm like that level of optimist. I'm like, we can get there. We will find the sea. It will be OK.
00:36:22
Speaker
You know, um and there's never a point to tap out. It's like not an option. And I and i mean that metaphorically, obviously. or um But i just, I really believe in people, even when people are really dark. And I feel like we're in a kind of a dark moment um of humanity. and And I said to a neighbor of mine, i was like, well, this is just our time to walk through this. Like every generation has to go through these huge changes geopolitically, socially, economically.
00:36:52
Speaker
um We are in the middle of one, and um but we're going to be okay. Yeah, I kind of agree with you that we're going to be okay. yeah um As we start to fold down the podcast here, yeah give us a an idea.
00:37:06
Speaker
if you were to have a nice dinner yeah with somebody, anyone in this world that ever lived, who would that be?
00:37:18
Speaker
I don't know. um i don't think I have an answer to that question. i'm really into perfect strangers. guy i Like I'm the person who will sit down to next next to somebody at the bar and just like hear their whole life story and learn about them. And I love that. I find that really incredible. So there aren't...
00:37:39
Speaker
Many people I sort of admire in that way, but I do kind of love everybody. And and I know that sounds like a bit of a cop-out, but no I would um really just love to connect with somebody and hear about their life. Yeah. um And it in my perfect world, it would be i would have have made dinner, we would have a great drink, and I would just hear all the things. Yeah.
00:38:03
Speaker
I would love to see that happen with Elon Musk and you. Oh, no. Maybe my no list is bigger than my yes list. Yeah, I get it. i'm very much the same way as far as talking to people, strangers. i do it all the time. yeah I really enjoy it. Yeah.
00:38:20
Speaker
um If you had to to give some life lessons yeah to, we'll say, young, entrepreneurial-minded men or women, it doesn't matter. yeah What would you tell them, especially in this time, this situation we're in right now and all that you know about business, what would you say to them?
00:38:38
Speaker
Yeah. Well, if you're starting something, I would say make sure it's something, and I can't take credit for this. Somebody else said this, but it's stuck, like something you would walk over glass for.
00:38:51
Speaker
You know, that you feel passionate about it and that you are committed enough to it that you will keep pushing because it gets ugly and it's hard and it's scary at many points in time. So if you don't have that kind of energy for the project that you're engaging in, it may not be the project you should be engaging in. And that's not to say there's not one out there, but I think that's really important. And it doesn't have to be business. It could be at any point in your life.
00:39:19
Speaker
and your passion and your talents have to be able to carry you through. i just saw um Reese Witherspoon said something that I thought was really smart, which was, you know, don't trace your chase your dreams, chase your talents.
00:39:32
Speaker
And I think I would also maybe add to that, um chase what you have energy for, you know, and that can look really differently. So for me, for example, it took me a long time to realize That I love research intellectually, but I'm passionate about convening people and change making, like building things and creating things. So if I were still working as a researcher, I'd probably be very unhappy because I'm working alone. working quietly. I'm rarely working in teams. Mm-hmm.
00:40:02
Speaker
But I'm passionate about people. So anything I can do to kind of move toward that and building things that involve sort of ecosystems of people, I get very excited. And that drove me in business.
00:40:15
Speaker
um So you have to know yourself, I think, really well to know what you what you can achieve. Not because we we can't all do something, but you don't want to get on the other side of a major investment and end up miserable. Mm-hmm. Very true. yeah Well, this has been a very fascinating conversation. was fun.
00:40:31
Speaker
And thanks for sharing your insights with us and really some unique perspectives that I believe you're uniquely qualified to give. Thanks. So thank you for time. Yeah, this was fun.
00:40:42
Speaker
Cheers. All right, cheers.