Hi.
Welcome to The Founder’s Mind! I’m your host Adam. Thanks for checking out the show and following along.
Welcome to The Founder’s Mind! I’m your host Adam. Thanks for checking out the show and following along.
Full Episode Notes Available Here
Adam Mutschler [00:00:00] Welcome to The Founder's Mind. This is your host Adam Mutschler and we have Yemi on the show. Thank you so much for being here, Yemi.
Yemi [00:00:07] Hey, Adam. How are you?
Adam Mutschler [00:00:08] I am good. I'm super psyched to have you. I was thinking about when we first started engaging and I think it was like about a year ago, January, maybe 2019. Yeah. And I did like this. I did a bunch of outreach on linked in to backstage capitals, portfolio companies and you were one of them. And you responded because you're the DC area and I can't believe it's just been a year.
Yemi [00:00:32] Yeah. Yeah. I had just moved to the city to D.C. so I was equally excited to meet new people in the startup space.
Adam Mutschler [00:00:40] Nice. Well, I could tell your story, but I won't do it justice. So I would love to hear and I'm sure listeners would love to hear, you know? What are you up to? What is Civic Eagle. And we'll go from there.
Yemi [00:00:53] Yeah. So my name is Yemi Adewunmi. I'm a co-founder of Civic Eagle. And I also serve as our chief product officer. At Civic Eagle what we do is we build software. We're a B2B SAAS company. We build software for organizations that have government affairs teams and public policy departments. And our software helps these teams with legislative tracking and public policy management. So it's been an exciting journey. We started our company in 2015 and our mission has always been around increasing access to information and transparency in government. And, we actually started the company back in 2015 with a different product. The product was a mobile app for B2C for everyday consumers to help them with tracking policy, with understanding who represents them in government, and then also a place for them to share their opinions about policy issues and policy topics. And when we started the company back in 2015, I was actually working in a different industry. My industry, my previous career was in politics, I studied political science. I received my Master's in Public Administration and I started my career working for the New York State Legislature as a policy analyst. And at that time is when the ideas for Civic Eagle started percolating.
Adam Mutschler [00:02:19] Nice. Now, you preempted my next question, which is how do you get into something that specific? And it sounds like through academia and work?
Yemi [00:02:27] Yeah and a bit of like serendipity, I guess you could say. I mean, my business partners always talk about how blessed we are to have gotten to the point we are today, but a lot of it we could not have predicted. So, for example, my business partner, our CEO Demola, he and I met back in 2009. This is when we were both in undergrad. I went to the University of Pittsburgh and he was at the University of Minnesota.
Adam Mutschler [00:02:57] Those are not close.
Yemi [00:03:00] Not close to each other. We met actually even further apart than those cities we met in London. We both studied abroad in the same program. And 2009 we were just two college students studying abroad with maybe a group of 50 people. We were two of the only like Nigerians and, Black Greek folks on the trip. And so, we hung out a lot. Our friends that summer we bonded a lot and we kept in touch from then on using social media.
Adam Mutschler [00:03:33] That's wild. And so from 2009 to 2015.
Yemi [00:03:37] Yeah. So then in around 2014, 2013, 2014, Demola was thinking about opportunities with technology and policy. He was working on a health committee. And he had a need, a desire to understand how politics and policy was impacting his career and his job as an I.T. consultant. And at the time, I was working at the legislature. I was also exploring some of my creative interests. So during that time, I was actually operating a small business on my own as a photographer and graphic designer.
Adam Mutschler [00:04:18] Was that your first business?
Yemi [00:04:20] Yeah, I guess you could say that's my first business outside of babysitting when I was like twelve years old. So I started that business as an independent business owner, as a side hustle. And so when Demola had the idea around using technology for understanding policy, he reached out to his network, people he knew that worked in politics and who could build technology. He reached out to me as someone who could give him insight into how the policy process works, how a bill becomes a law, just how does this process work? How can anyone have more access to this information, and so his best friend at the time, his best friend was our first CTO. And they played football together in college. And he's a great engineer. And so he helped us put the first MVP of our app together. And then I stumbled into UX design. We would have these meetings around like what we're building and what the app would look like. And I merged my interests in the creative side of things, photography and design to put together some of our initial mockups of the app. And that just, I didn't realize it, but it put me into a whole new career. I dug deep into teaching myself what UX design was. Again, this is back in 2015. So there were a couple of boot camps. There were a couple things popping up around teaching user experience and user interface design. It wasn't like a formalized industry I guess at the time. And I really relied on free resources like YouTube, blogs to really understand how to design an app.
Adam Mutschler [00:06:20] This is wild. I love this.
Yemi [00:06:22] It has been a journey. I really found that it was my calling because I found a lot of synergies between working in policy and working as someone who analyzes policy and analyzes solutions to problems. It was a good blend of that, plus being able to use my creative skills and design and stuff. So I totally, kind of dug deep in that and decided to pivot careers after I graduated from my master's program.
Adam Mutschler [00:06:55] I love that. And I think one of the things that more people are talking about and thinking about and I think about this a lot. What are your transferable skills like? What are the things that you know and love and are sort of at your core? And how can you take those and use them? And it sounds like you did that. I mean, you had obviously the academic background and professional background for the content of the business that you're in with Civic Eagle. And there was an interest, including the side hustle that you monetized right around that creative side. But now full blown chief product officer working at having co-founded a tech company. Right. So I want to zoom back to an earlier part of your story with Civic Eagle, because I think this is a question that comes up a lot. Finding your co-founders, building a team. And that's something that you all have done, both the co-founder part and building a team. Can you pull back in your memories some of those initial conversations? Demola was like, I want to do something in tech that's policy related. And you obviously have this policy background. How did it go from that conversation to let's form an entity, let's do something and then we'll get to fundraising and all that stuff?
Yemi [00:08:16] Yeah, we were pretty regimented in the beginning from the beginning. We set up standing meetings. So it was every Monday night because we all had full time jobs. We all live in different cities. At the time I was living in Albany, he was between L.A. and Minneapolis. And we had two team members in Minneapolis, two of the co-founders...
Adam Mutschler [00:08:44] Four co-founders total?
Yemi [00:08:45] So four co-founders total. So we had those kinds of systems in place where every Monday, we had a call and talk strategy like what would it take to build an app?
Adam Mutschler [00:09:01] There's no company at that point right? This is just like brainstorming. right? But structured brainstorming, like you said the standing meetings.
Yemi [00:09:09] Yeah, Demola had done a little bit of pre-work where he looked at what the costs of getting a dev shop and outsource dev shop to puts together a little bit of a prototype. But it was when we were able to bring together when he was able to bring, four of us together to think about. Okay, I guess is the kind of beginnings of like what UX that UX part of it. What else can this app do? He was one mind. And then, together we were four minds working on this on this app. And, for me, my role. I really started digging into the visual components of it. So the UI design and also the branding, we knew we were doing a mobile app that we wanted to put in the hands of everyone that we knew, friends and family, people that, we thought were like us millennials who cared about policy and politics and wanted to be more engaged. This is before the 2016 election. And so we were... there was lot of momentum around I guess executing or, extending the impact that Barack Obama, President Obama had in the digital space. He had a great and strong digital campaign. We wanted to there was a couple of different civic tech apps that were popping up, doing different things. We wanted a piece of that, too. We wanted to pretty much create a social network for politics. We saw a lot of conversation happening on Facebook, a lot of kind of infighting and kind of, taking away from the actual fun parts of Facebook. And we wanted to kind of create a space where people could have political discourse in an organized way in a mobile app.
Adam Mutschler [00:11:04] So this is this is what, on 2015. And this is when it was still sort of B2C where you would be selling to consumers to do exactly what you said, the social elements. When did this start in 2015, these conversations?
Yemi [00:11:21] I was actually rolling from 2014, 2015, very end of 2014.
Adam Mutschler [00:11:26] So was there already a company?
Yemi [00:11:28] Yeah, I guess you could say then we had.
Adam Mutschler [00:11:30] When? So when did it go from the year 2014. Over drinks or coffee or phone calls or Skype. You're talking about 2015. You start your standing meetings and then who's like when does it become a OK, we're doing a thing. Let's start it?
Yemi [00:11:46] Mm hmm. We put down July 2015, as our like start date. But I can't really tell you. I can't remember how how it kind of rolled. And we're all kind of invested we're all contributing and meeting. I was designing. Ken was developing. we were all brainstorming. And we really wanted real outcomes real downloads. And so we did have, the app in the app store.
Adam Mutschler [00:12:19] In July?
Yemi [00:12:20] Yes. The app was in the app store at least by July. .
Adam Mutschler [00:12:24] So work was happening.
Yemi [00:12:26] Yeah. Yeah. Work was happening like nights and weekends for sure.
Adam Mutschler [00:12:31] So like six or eight months of preamble slash production and then things kind of went live and you started really like communicating to the world that you were doing this thing.
Yemi [00:12:45] Yes. Yeah. So you know it really came out of because it was a lot of it was like about civic engagement and get out the vote. And we were sharing, I was creating social media posts and like graphics to share on our Facebook pages and on Twitter and stuff like that. We were getting a lot of interest from our friends and family. People downloaded the app in support of us and in support of the mission and what we're doing. Well, we saw some stagnation. We weren't getting that viral loop that required some sort of referral and network effects. Right. Friends weren't necessarily entering their friends. Users weren't as entering their friends, email addresses, their phone numbers to download and share. So we did campaigns like the GoPro to try to inspire more activity.
Yemi [00:13:36] And I really can't tell you. I can't remember what my mindset was about this becoming a full time company. I still personally didn't know what that entailed for the startup space. I was coming from the public sector. Working for state governments and in non-profits and.... But, Demola had the foresight to realize that we weren't growing and he needed to figure out why. And so he invested his own personal time and finances to go to San Francisco for about a summer. I think he was there for about six months or so.
Adam Mutschler [00:14:16] So this is still 2015.
Yemi [00:14:17] This is like twenty six 2016/2017.
Adam Mutschler [00:14:22] So 2015, when there's an app in the app store, everyone's still has full time jobs. So everyone has full time jobs for at least sounds like at least a year minimum.
Yemi [00:14:31] Yeah. We all had full times. I just went full time in 2018 so for three years. We were moonlighting and you know had some buzz in Minneapolis, some press we were able to... Demola was able to apply for a fellowship with CODE2040 and that's a civic tech nonprofit, civic organization. They were working on an entrepreneurs in residence program in partnership with Google. So Demola became an EIR in 2017 with Google for Entrepreneurs, which is now called Google for Startup.
Yemi [00:15:11] And so through that fellowship he got a stipend to be able to work in the Minneapolis community, in the Twin Cities community while also working on Civic Eagle. And we just really, started to rethink some of the business. Like the business.. Learning more about... He was learning more and he was sharing that information. And we're all just, growing in our industries in space.
Adam Mutschler [00:15:33] I think this is like this is so important, in my opinion, is this idea of 2014. There's chatter at the end of the year with the co-founders. 2015, the stand up meeting starts to happen and it's still like heavy ideation. What is this gonna be? App goes up summer 2015. Everyone's still working full time. 2016/2017 people of the co-founder crew. You start to look at in putting your full time efforts to it and you were already putting full time effort to it, I'm sure, just like two full time jobs, but like leaving a full time job and then you didn't go all in. No other full time job until 2018. And we're gonna talk a lot about where the company is today. But I think it's so important to emphasize this, because everyone, not everyone, but so many people look at startups or look at their idea and say, if I don't if I can't do this full time, I can't do it, or if I can't raise money, I can't do it. And I think that that's such a misnomer. And I think that this is a great example of the effort and energy and time and commitment outside of your full time jobs that it took in. You recently closed a round of funding. Right. And not like a couple hundred thousand.
Yemi [00:16:57] Yes. A couple of million. And, I think it's really about, pursuing your idea, pursuing something novel and new and disruptive as startups, are meant to be. That's risky enough. And it's my personal philosophy. And I'm just so blessed and fortunate that my business partners also are aligned on this matter. But where we still, try to build in safety pads around us our risk.
Adam Mutschler [00:17:34] So what does that look like?
Yemi [00:17:35] Yeah, and I think, part of it I think I'll just say is I think it's where we're used to it. So my business partners,if folks who are saying don't know, we're an all black cofounding team and two women and two men comprise the cofounding team. And so we're naturally, I think, prone to future safing ourselves. Trying to, I guess hedge your bets in a way. We're definitely innovative and we're risk takers. But what that looks like is like, I knew I wanted to become a designer. I think I knew I wanted to become a designer about 60 percent of the way through my graduate degree pursuing nonprofit management. So I suffered through that 40 percent of my degree just kind of like I don't want to be doing this. So that is one thing I made. I finished my degree, It was also something for me to be able to say that if I become a designer full time or if actually I think that the time I was considering like photography full time at that time, I had done wedding photography and portraiture as my side business, it grew quite a bit between like 2012 and 2014. So I actually thought I would do like full time photography and just be my own boss.
Adam Mutschler [00:18:59] You can tell by your Instagram.
Yemi [00:19:02] Yes, photography is still my passion. And so I thought, if I got my degree, if the photography failed, a design failed or my creative interests failed, I could always fall back on that. Right. Other things I knew that I needed. I wanted to learn a lot about UX design and product design. And so I was living in Albany, New York, and I did not find the opportunities I wanted there. So I moved to New York City and I may try out a job on the way there. I was fortunate to work at, I had the opportunity to work at a small boutique web development shop that I had, built my own portfolio. I didn't have no previous experience as a U.S. designer, a junior designer at an agency.
Yemi [00:19:46] So I spent time developing a portfolio and got the job they offered me. I think I believe I was getting like $2000 a month to live in New York City. So in that job, that's crazy.
Adam Mutschler [00:20:01] We're not talking about the early 90s.
Yemi [00:20:03] Yeah, this is like a couple years ago. This is 2016. I was living in Washington Heights. I had like very little money coming in from that full time job. So I took a bet on myself and started, doing design work. As a freelancer, I leveraged that portfolio into working at another startup in New York City. So while I was working on Civic Eagle. So while we were trying to figure out what was happening with our app, why it wasn't growing, we slowed down a bit. This was also post 2016 election. And we had really I mean, like everyone, we had bet on Hillary winning and just like a flood of opportunities for civic technology. And that actually still happened after the outcome. Yeah. But we really had this timeline in our head. I can remember what exactly. But we had this timeline for November 2016 and so we kind of slowed down after the election just a bit. And at the time I was working at a different start up as my full time job, to pay the bills as a product designer. And so I was learning the skills that eventually are super useful for me now as a products officer of my own startup.
Yemi [00:21:28] That's what I'm saying about hedging bets is like I wanted to do this thing, change careers. I've been in the right position taking up the right opportunities that have aligned with that goal. Right. Going back to self awareness. I often, every year typically it is around the new year. Typically it's, around my birthday in December. So December and January like are my planning months where I think about, I try to think about and be super mindful all the time. And that's been part of my practice more recently, I guess, in this transition.
Adam Mutschler [00:22:06] What's coming to my mind is like intense levels of intentionality. And this this is something that I've heard from other founders, especially founders of color and of a variety of shades, depending on where you're from and how you identify that there are much less margins for error or just like flippant decision making. And just listening to you, it's very clear. And not just betting on yourself, but like leveling yourself up into new areas for your career. And this really cuts to the core of something I articulated on the phone yesterday. Someone who sources podcasts, guests and like, what are you looking for? And I said, no hustle porn. Just hard work. Like, that's what I want. I don't want people that are just like talking about working. I want people on the show who are doing the work and sometimes doing the work in three different ways. Right. Like teaching yourself new skills, getting a job that pays you those new skills, teaching yourself more new skills to get another job all while you are building Civic Eagle.
Yemi [00:23:18] It does not stop. It's kind of like I mean, I guess the one way I started thinking about it is like if you are a lawyer, you matriculate through the structure of becoming a lawyer, LSAT, law school. All of that. And then there's like continuing education.
Yemi [00:23:40] Look at doctors. And you're expected to check in and level up. Hopefully you do. I mean, if you're like a professional that cares about their practice and entrepreneurship is the same way it's not just about having a good idea. It's not just about wanting to be your own boss, but you literally have to learn a bit of everything. Like one of my favorite things I like to do, or one of my favorite things about what I get to do is that I'm a huge part of my job description is to always be learning and to try something new and to learn something new, because as a company, we're not in a financial position to hire an expert per say. And so in the mean time that we are trying to get from that 0 to 1 or to get from, having nothing to something, I have to know I have to have an awareness of what we need before we go out and look for it. And I take pride in that. Some people like to just outsource things, I guess. But for example, right now, we don't have a chief marketing officer. And I am taking on those responsibilities of learning the best way to be marketing our early stage startup, B2B SAS products in the landscape that we're in to the point where then I could feel comfortable knowing what we need next and who we need to hire next.
Adam Mutschler [00:25:08] This is such a good point. I have to jump in because this is what comes up with coaching clients. And then when I'm doing mentoring and advising, know what you're good at. Lean into it. Know what you're not good at. Ask yourself, do you need to hire someone? Can you learn some of the things? But at the very least, and you do said this and this is what came to my mind. Educate yourself enough so that you can have the conversations with the people you want to hire and know what they're talking about. Do they know what they're talking about? Or are they just saying things? And I have to emphasize. Can you just humor me. What's the total raised so far?
Yemi [00:25:43] So we've raised two point one million again all together.
Adam Mutschler [00:25:47] That's amazing. Huge. Congratulations, raising millions, which is what that is, is not a common feat. And then the stats get even more abysmal if you have if you're a founder of color. If you're a woman of color and all sorts of things, the stats get real, real bad. It is unfortunate and you all have done an incredible job. But where I'm going with this is you've raised literally millions of dollars and you're not just randomly hiring people to fill positions. Back to what you've done and what your co-founders have done from day one. You're doing the work. You're saying let's do the internal due diligence. Let's leverage our own skills. We will hire someone. We need to hire someone. But we're not just going to hire someone. Yeah, that's right.
Yemi [00:26:33] Yes. We have to be super diligent stewards of our money and our opportunities. And because it took us since 2013, that 2.1 is starting from 2018. But given the amount of work we put into it. Yeah. You know we have a responsibility to make sure that we put it to good use not only for our investors but for us as a team. We just we know that this is a long game and that there's no point in having tons of resources and money and not knowing what to do with it. And not using it effectively or efficiently. So we're very we're very careful about that.
Adam Mutschler [00:27:23] Yeah, that's awesome. So existing investors, if you're listening. You must love this, future investors, when they're ready, take notice. Now, though, where they are super responsible and productive, let's change subjects real quick because I want to be cognizant of time. You mentioned in the beginning when you founded the company, all four co-founders were in different cities. And through conversations that you and I have had, I know that you have a remote team. You don't have just four people now you have eleven or twelve. Yet what has it been like to hire, manage, keep the culture, create the culture with a remote team?
Yemi [00:28:03] Yeah, it's been exciting to continue to grow distributed-ly, with the intention of learning from the experience as we go. As a leadership team, we are very much aligned with experimenting and trying new things. So let's see if we can start with our company values. And one of our values is that we are audacious thinkers and doers. I think I love it is my favorite. Our other two values are we put people first and we believe in transparency. So it's transparency, people first and audaciousness being audacious.
Yemi [00:28:48] And so we we actually implement that in everything that we do so in operations, we are open to trying things that we believe are the right thing to do when it comes to managing people, setting up policies and procedures and setting expectations for the team in the company. And we're very eager and excited to challenge a status quo like we all have had those, previous job experiences that we dislike. And we're very cautious to think about what it felt like to be an employee at that time to someone else. And we really take a lot of time to think about company culture. So now we're a team of eleven. Our raise that we closed at the end of last year, helped us bring on five new people around the same time. And so it was a pretty big shift. We doubled the team. And so, for example, we do quarterly retreats. We've been doing them since about 2013. So even though we're a distributed team, we understand the value of coming together every few months. So at the beginning of every quarter, we have a retreat. So we went from having a retreat that had five people in it to a retreat that had eleven people in it. And that was really challenging but exciting. We're really excited to create a company culture that everyone and you said that at this stage of the company can contribute to.
Yemi [00:30:29] We're all about the open sourcing of ideas to this company.
Adam Mutschler [00:30:32] So it sounds like you do a lot of things right now.
Yemi [00:30:37] I hope so. So I think it's the best thing we could do. It's just like knowing that we're using good intentions. I think that's why I believe that comes through and through our leadership. And to our new employees that I believe fully that they trust us because we are very transparent with them. I'm looking at and reading content around empathetic leadership.
Yemi [00:31:07] And you know what it means to lead. But also let your people know that we're figuring out together, we're on this journey together. That I'm equally as unsure, I may be equally unsure about solving a problem as you are. And just having that space to have those conversations, which I think is, we'll eventually set a grander culture for us. And then we know that like as we scale, it's gonna be different. And it's just being flexible to those opportunities and options.
Adam Mutschler [00:31:42] That's that's amazing. And I think that willingness to have the conversation and creating the space for those conversations, because you also don't know what conversations need to be had sometimes. So just making that space. That's really incredible. So I'm working with a sponsor this year and talking about remote teams. Super hyped Upside Business Travel. You'll hear more about them. But I've got travel on my mind and I travel for other reasons. And you travel a lot. What's a memorable travel moment for you?
Yemi [00:32:18] Wait. Ever?
Adam Mutschler [00:32:19] Yeah. Just in general, period. Could be about business, doesn't have to be.
Yemi [00:32:23] Oh, man. I mean, the most memorable ones are actually the ones that are the most like traumatic. Missing flights. Being stranded.
Yemi [00:32:41] I travel a lot because, probably why I like to travel. It's like to have a diversity of experiences and memories. So the things that are popping out tend to be around me just walking around cities with beautiful architecture. And I was recently in Rome, Italy, for the holidays last year. And that sticking out in my mind. Probably because the most recent but also just it was just a beautiful trip around my favorite time of the year. And the architecture there is just like mind blowing, so I had always wanted to be in that city.
Adam Mutschler [00:33:18] And you work when you travel?
Yemi [00:33:22] Yes. So I have a really bad habit of being accessible all the time for work. And it's I don't know. It's. I love it. It's like a love hate thing. It's a love thing because I again, I can't sit still sometimes. I need to do work or like keep myself thinking about something, I guess. But yeah, I definitely have grown to love the like digital nomad lifestyle of all I really need is my laptop and Wi-Fi.
Adam Mutschler [00:33:55] And a good meal.
Yemi [00:33:58] Yes, a good meal. It's for the the food shots. So, yeah, I've been in cities where I can pop in to a We Work easily and and be connected to my team. But I am trying to take a couple more intentional vacations this year.
Adam Mutschler [00:34:18] When you say intentional vacations, you mean like being one hundred percent inaccessible?
Yemi [00:34:22] So we actually have a company we have a policy, a vacation policy, is called Your Time Off. So instead of paid time off PTO. You have your time off because naturally as can happen naturally as a remote team is the flexibility of the hours, allows you to be online when you want.
Yemi [00:34:46] And compensate for time during untraditional hours, I guess you could say. So your time off for our company means you take three consecutive days off or you're not available on Slack or your meetings. It has to be three consecutive days, three consecutive business days.
Adam Mutschler [00:35:07] Nice your time off.
Yemi [00:35:09] Your time off because paid time off is I guess like if you have, for example, like a doctor's appointment you want to take one day. You tend to just be available anyway and you work anyway.
Adam Mutschler [00:35:19] I love this. So there's three consecutive days. Your time off. That sounds amazing.
Yemi [00:35:25] I'm trying to take my own. I mean, whether or not I mean, I will take I have to get it.
Adam Mutschler [00:35:32] So now you've got 11 people. Maybe within this year you have more people? You have to start modeling in a way that you didn't have to before. Because, when you get a co-founder out and maybe one layer below, there's a level of friendship, or maybe like. I knew this person that knew this person. So we kind of always knew each other. When you start to grow like you are, people start looking at other people within the company and co-founders and say you're an executive.
Yemi [00:35:59] Yes. That's trippy sometimes to be honest.
Adam Mutschler [00:36:03] And they may never be able to bridge that beyond you're an executive, a really approachable executive. But if I don't see them doing something, I'm not going to do it myself, even if they say I can do something. Which is something interesting.
Yemi [00:36:17] It's very interesting. Interesting is the right word. What we're learning is there's so many things that we do not know about what we're building. What we do know is like why we're building it and who we're building it for. And everything else we get. That's the fun part. We get to figure it out. We get to figure out together. I think that's what also keeps it fine, is that the team really does enjoy one another. .
Yemi [00:36:46] And yeah, and then we just have a really great network of like mentors and people around us that can help point us in the right direction. So we don't feel like we're just swimming in the dark so that the people management, the people ops, the hiring is definitely one of the biggest opportunities for our team to grow in. Because none of us are really HR professionals. Actually, one of our co-founders, one of my co-founders is our resident in-house H.R. Resource because she has an experience with that. But yeah, overall, it's a lot of new lessons that we're learning. And this is the exciting part of it. It's like the part we have to really enjoy is like learning something new.
Adam Mutschler [00:37:28] Yeah. And you you said it earlier, always be learning. And I always kind of had this acronym ABL. But I think it's such an important part of being a founder. And something we talk about in coaching is allowing yourself to be a beginner.
Yemi [00:37:43] And coachable.
Adam Mutschler [00:37:44] Yeah, coachable. Obviously, that's very good. But I think, yeah, it sounds like you and a lot of your team are living that in their results. Right. Like growing your team, shifting from B2C to B2B raising money, seeing that money, being a steward of that money. Not that being the goal, but now how do you put it to work and how to use it responsibly? And these are all new things. Right. And I always tell founders, if you achieve what you hope to achieve, you will be challenged with new things all the time.
[00:38:17] And you have to love that. That's like the only constant.They say the only thing that's constant is change. And it's not for everybody. So I know there are entrepreneurs out there that really want to be their own boss because they're frustrated with their status quo.
Yemi [00:38:33] They really want to start a business because they have a specific need or they have an idea that they think they can make money off. But what it really comes down to is you have to have a natural love for character and curiosity to learn. Because that is the only thing that is constant in this industry, is that you're going to have to leverage your network, use opportunities, effectively research and read and read and read.
Yemi [00:39:04] At a certain point, and I get into this kind of habit to where you get stuck with like what you called analysis paralysis, where I dig deep in learning something and then I don't actually move sometimes. But I also know it's like part of my process where I need to, like, dig deep in something like buy the books, read the blog posts and then experiment. But you have to love that iterative process of trying something new. Experimenting. Evaluating the outcomes and then doing something about that. Taking action and pivoting or iterating on it again or reproducing it. Right. Like that's just like the scientific method is super relevant in this journey.
Adam Mutschler [00:39:52] I love this. Oh, my goodness. Love the change. I think we're going to leave it there. This is so good. Thank you so much for coming on the show. The last thing is where should people look to follow along? What's the best link, social handles to point them to if they want to say what's going on?
Yemi [00:40:09] Yeah. So if you work in policy and you're interested in new, innovative, easy to use user friendly software that helps you with tracking legislation specially at the state level. And managing like your public policy efforts with your organization, you can visit Enview.io.
Yemi [00:40:32] Oh, that's e n v i e w dot io we're @Civic_ Eagle on Twitter, Instagram. We have a bit of a presence there, but not much. And then me myself personally. As you mentioned, I'm on Instagram a lot. I prefer Instagram over all the networks @yemi.adewunmi Or you can probably find me off of Adam page.
Adam Mutschler [00:41:09] Yeah on The Founders Mind and in the show notes and all that. Good stuff. Yemi, I have learned a lot. And I'm sure others have as well. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Yemi [00:41:18] Thanks for having me.
