November 21, 2022

Lori Shao, CEO & Founder of Finli Inc

Lori Shao is the CEO and Founder of Finli, a simple, secure, and cost-effective digital platform that financially lifts service-based small businesses. Finli is inspired by Lori’s unique perspective as an immigrant and her desire to create a premium, yet accessible solution that allows all entrepreneurs to easily receive, manage, and grow their finances. For over two decades, Lori has built financial tech for small businesses at Wells Fargo, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), MUFG, and JPMorgan. She resides in Los Angeles with her husband Derek, two human children and almost a dozen non-human children.

Julian: Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast today we have Lori Shao, CEO and founder of Finli, a simple, secure and cost effective digital platform that financially lifts service based small businesses. Lori, thank you so much for joining joining me on the show.

I'm really excited not only because you're also based in Los Angeles and we get a chat about the, the micro environment that we have to, you know, kind of you know, work with as, as founders, but also the background experience that you come with and, and I'm always. You know, to talk to founders who are really have this focal point on small businesses because, you know, there's such interesting little intricacies of small businesses that, you know, most SaaS based companies don't have to deal with or, or kind of different ecosystems that they have to run within.

So it's always fascinating diving into the, you know, to the details of, of what your product does and who you're affecting. But before we get into all that, what were you doing before you started?  

Lori: Well, thank you so much for having me. So I've been in financial services now for, Wow, like just under 21 years

Prior to building Philly about three years ago, I spent my entire professional life in financial services, just building financial technology for FinTech and payment companies. Worked with you know, just from a person with an idea to change the world, to some of the very notable names on the global level.

Spend a portion of that time at Silicon Valley. On the payment innovation team, and then most recently an executive director at JP Morgan in a similar capacity. And prior to really focusing my career on financial technology and FinTech, yeah, I spent probably the first five to six years in my early.

Corporate life in community banking and just really understanding yeah. The pain behind small businesses, right? Yeah. Try to understand the root cause of why 70% of them fail within the first 10 years in business and just identifying a scalable solution through financial tools to truly. Scale and like target those root costs from, you know, from the get go.

Julian: Yeah. That's so fascinating coming from the community banking to working with companies who are, you know, growing and scaling, you know, whether it's life changing products or, or innovative products. What are the, do they share a lot of those? Similar you know, kind of I guess, I guess pain points that they see as businesses as they grow in skill or how are they slightly different that you've seen in your experience working with both and now obviously focusing on small business?

Lori: Yeah. You know what's interesting is I think my time working with financial technology platforms has really opened my eyes to the pipeline of innovation. , right? There's always somebody disrupting an antiquated space for XYZ market. And then I take a step back and I see just my life, right? As a, as a mom who is trying to maintain a full-time job and a spouse who is also working.

You know, we have two young kids. We have seniors who are regressing. You know, me as a woman pretty much manages the household and, and all of the, the nuances of making sure that we're functional it just mind boggles me that I still had to order a checkbook to function right. I still have to have cash ready to pay for our babysitters.

Yeah. And so forth. And, and so I just find it very ironic that, you know, I help build financial technology and architecture. My day job for everybody else, yet my personal life, you know, being supported by so many essential small business owners are just still stuck in the legacy way of running their business.

And that's when I realize, okay, I don't see a pipeline of innovation for this space through my day job. And I feel so deeply passionate about wielding change for this essential workplace that I decided to just build Finli. Yeah. And. Finli, you know, was really the genesis of Finli was really stemmed from a personal need.

You know, I tried to build Finli for myself. I tried to support all of the, the service providers that are pretty much an extension of our families, right? Whether it's the daycare center, the senior care center, those who come and clean our home and making sure. You know that the pool is, is, is clean and the, and the pests are controlled.

And at the end of the day you're like, Wow. We are supported by so many essential workers that are aspiring to do so much, you know, as small business owners, micro-business owners. Yet they've been under supported by modern day in. And, and we're to change that.  

Julian: Yeah. That's so fascinating because we think of, you know, I think maybe five years ago or so, you know, we thought about Square as being the, the truly innovative product for a lot of, whether it's, you know, small businesses or even you know, vendors at a farmer's market, you know, can, can use their product.

But where I. Not to target Square, but where, where do products like Square kind of miss in terms of reaching a broader audience of the essential workers that everyone needs? You know, and, and we have payment services like Venmo and Cash App, but all these different things that, that disperse that really need to come together because you know, for, for essential workers or small business owners that are running more service based products, even if.

It's that much easier if they can centralize their payment process and that much easier for their consumers to actually purchase their product. But where do companies like Square and others alike miss in terms of accessibility for these individuals or these, these companies?

Lori: Yeah. So first of all, everyone is doing the best they can, you know, to support the, the, the market and the market is huge and the needs are very different, which is why there is enough room for multi multiple players, right, to to, to, to, to support the customers that they're aim to support.

And so one of the things that I think is a huge differentiator with Finli is what we recognize. The smaller the business, right? So you're small business or micro business. The smaller the business, the more complex their needs are. Because I give you this example like a dog trainer, right?

A dog trainer is never just a dog trainer. A dog trainer is also a dog walker. A dog sitter. Yeah. A dog boomer and a baker of dog biscuit. And so all of these different roles, it translate to multiple different business needs, business models, right? Various conditions that they need to set and manage. How in the world would a microbusiness owner of one trying to manage all of that at scale?

Right, and bring on more customers, support their existing customers, get paid on time and effectively and affordably. It's almost impossible. And that dog trainer would just need to use Finli. So what we, Yeah, the market that we play in is for small and micro service businesses that have multiple different product lines and really want to do more with very little, right?

Mm-hmm. , And I think that's a testament to. Growing up in a household of immigrants, you know, as a first immigrant, me firsthand how my parents and, and all of our community friends and, and family members hustle, right? We make something out of nothing. We're trying to, to put it on the table, like failure is not an option and we have to just make it work because, you know, and, and in the, and then we are all aspiring to pursue this American dream and we're gonna be, you know, we're.

You know, pivoting like no one else and being as creative as no one else, and just like trying to make it, trying to make it work. Yeah. And so, so that is the customer base that we support. You know, if you aspire to have to, to work on different things, if you aspire to branch out and expand your business model, if you aspire to reach out your, to your audience and deepen those relationships like you need.

And instead of a team of people there to support you and as your back office, you just need a digital back office that handles your payments or collections. Your communications. Yeah, your invoicing, you know and, and, and just your crm. And that is essentially what Finli represents. We play very well with many other, you know, payments and service providers out there, but our customer.

Is not a customer base that can figure out Zapier, you know, and connect various technology into one and just make everything work seamlessly. Our customer base, they're on the go and they really do need a lot of support digital back office in their pocket so they can manage and run and have full visibility control on their business.

Yeah, I would like to say, I know with Finlay you can be a guitar instructor teaching out of your parent's garage and run a scalable global operations and collect payment from anyone anywhere and provide your services you know, by being on the Finlay platform. So we do have a pretty unique audience, but that audience is vast, right?

Yeah. If you take a step. Like, how are we being supported day to day? We're here today because somebody's taking care of our pets. Somebody is, you know, cleaning our home. Somebody is making sure that food is delivered. That is the essential workplace that Finlay plays in very, very well. And that's the, the, the persona that we hope to elevate, you know, and take to the next.

Julian: Yeah, it's incredible to think about the, And you're so right, the, the different possibilities that someone and different, I guess, job function someone can take on. As you know, my, my family came from Mexico and a lot of them do a lot of different things cuz they're, they have a specialty and a certain craft and they kind of expand that specialty and that skill set to other whether it's project based or, or employer.

You know, experiences and, and it's really fascinating. You're right, the, the innovative nature. Mm-hmm. What, what is the cost? I, I, you know, I don't know if you have a number, but what are the cost associated with a worker who is expanding their marketplace? That was maybe. I'm not sure if the cost was too great and then, you know, Finli's kind of the disruptor to allow them to take on that cost.

But I'm just curious about what does it cost someone to add different lines of business that now is becoming a little bit more easy and consolidated through the product. .  

Lori: Absolutely. So on average we consolidate about seven to nine different processes and Wow. Yeah. Workflows all in one. Right? So think about, you know, the example that I just mentioned.

I mean, somebody needs either a CRM or. Excel or paper or you know, a bunch of different vanilla folders with paper files and sticky notes to remind them who who, who needs to pay them, what services they're providing. Right? And then the nudging, like think about you telling your customer, Hey, your, your son is doing great in piano, by the way, you forgot to pay me last week, You know,

And to really automate and digitize the entire back office experience, not only are we able to you know, just help you Yeah. In, in an environment where it's so tough to to bring on new employees or to even keep, retain your existing employees and you are. You know reduced in terms of access to resource is concerned.

To have Finli, you know, in your back pocket to do all of these things is almost, you think about it as almost like invaluable. You can't really put a price tag on all the. Time and effort and and a potential staff that you would be, you know you know, saving from a cost perspective by using a technology tool.

And then at the same time, we also serve as the bridge to access to financial solutions. Because if you are, let's say, a landscaper, right? And your customers are like, Hey, I, I know you for five years, can you just pull money? Checking account every month because I pay you for the same amount. You hand write this invoice, you put it in my mailbox, I mail you a check every month.

Can you just make it easy for me please? What this cus what this landscaper is gonna end up doing is gonna go to his bank and be like, Hey, can I just. Pull money from my customer's account. What that is is an ACH debit origination product. What the bank would require out of you to set that up is financials underwriting, cash collateralized, operating exposure.

Think about the barrier to entry for a small business, micro-business to even like. Wrap their mind around what that entails. Of course, they're like, Oh, nope, that's not for me. Sorry. Let me just resort back to Paper and Pen. And then those other customers who are like, Hey, can I just pay you with a credit card because I pay everything with credit card, You know, I get points.

I love it. The landscaper's gonna be like, Okay, well let me go and look for a provider. And that requires multi-year contract. Now you're on the hook for disputes and chargebacks. Like again, how in the world does this like landscape are able to. Yeah. Have access to all of those tools that are expected of them from their customer base, but don't have the access to do that.

Right. But by using Finli, we again bridge the access to things that they otherwise wouldn't easily have access to. Yeah. And so, and so to really quantify on a monetary basis the value add that we deliver, not only. You know, helping them increase their revenue by accelerating their days receivables outstanding.

We're also able to give them access to tools that they can't even buy with money, Right. Being the size that they are. So there's a definitely a, a significant value there. .  

Julian: Yeah. It's in, it's incredible to, you know, talk about access, because that's where I think there's a, there's a huge gap between mm-hmm.

you know, small businesses and like midsize businesses. It's that access and also the capital or, or the, you know, you talk about underwriting and financial statements, the not the confidence or clarity, but almost like the history of those statements to be able to even get this access and keep track of it.

Is that where you see a lot of. You know, a lot of small businesses, is it just access or is it something else that, that hinders them from moving forward?  

Lori: It's access is, it's such a it's a bigger problem than just access, what access is telling us. It's just a signal that they are playing in an environment that was not establi.

With them in mind, right? Because I mean, it was very telling during the, the PPP fiasco where small micro businesses weren't even eligible for many of it. Are you here to say that this landscaper, who has a hundred customers, that, that they're paying him on a recurring monthly basis and they're loyal customers?

Right. This is, he's running an amazing business that is like almost recession proof, has long-term customers and have a recurring, a recurring revenue business model. This is a darn good business, but this landscape when being presented to a financial institution for. You know, PPP or even traditional lending or you know, ACH lines to do you know, some ach, debit origination, he's not going to be looked upon as a high quality customer or credit worthy customer.

Right. And we've seen that time and time again. So who is this? Who is to say that this landscaper is a good customer or not a good customer? You know? Yeah. And but the reality is very much telling that that the infrastructure that's set up to evaluate and assess the credit worthiness of this landscaper is flawed because it wasn't.

We're established with this landscaper in mind, and that's again, what we're trying to shift because there is a reason why, you know, so many of our businesses come from pen and paper is because they, they have evaluated what's outside. They have, you know, the. Sign up for a demo and seeing if there's any alternative solutions that they can leverage.

Like they run their business on their mobile phone. So of course they have a relationship with technology, so to say that, oh, they're, you know they're not savvy with technology, so that's why they're resorting dependent paper. I think it is just not true. Yeah. There's a. A deep degree of unconscious bias that's really stemmed from our lack of understanding to how this huge, vast you know, market of business owners are running their business.

And I think And, you know, I think it is, it is our obligation, right? And our responsibility to change that. And we do that first by empowering these small businesses with the tools to, one, have the access so they can, they can be in a relative, even playing ground, right? A starting point so that they can, you know, continue to thrive like every other type of.

Julian: Yeah. What, in, in your experience building Finli, what's been the biggest hurdles that you face having to create a system that underwrites and, and really tracks all this information for small businesses that, you know, just other products didn't have either the capability or, or maybe that wasn't their primary focus on What are some of the whether it's regulatory hurdles or just technology from technology standpoint.

Integrating and, and going through different processes around, you know, building what was kind of the, the, you know, the challenges you faced building a product that, that focuses on an underrepresented you know, i I form of business? Yeah,  

Lori: absolutely. So I guess it's twofold. One is more product related, right?

Because we have to build out our own KYC, K Y B transaction monitoring infrastructure, because if we just. You know, buy from a third party, the algorithm doesn't really accommodate. Yeah, the persona right, that we are working with, and therefore the accuracy is pretty much very flawed. You know, when it comes to us leveraging that data to make a decision.

So we have to bring a lot of these decision making and infrastructure in house, right, in order for us to truly serve the, served the clientele that we set out to serve. And then I think the the, the other issue that we face, Definitely fundraising because we're not one of those type of companies that can be profitable overnight.

We are a tech company, right? So there is an initial investment in our space and one of the things that was I would say naively caught me off guard was how difficult it was to raise capital. Yeah. Focusing our solution in this space, because I've been told many times by potential investors, Hey, Lori, you have a great underlying technology.

Why don't you go off market? Why don't you go after folks with money? You know, why don't. You know, just, just maybe explore venture back startups as you're a small business, you know, and , and to me, I'm just like, you know, I, I wouldn't have left my corporate job if that's what I wanted to pursue, right?

I'm here because. You know, it's, it's in our DNAs in our names Thinly stands for Financial Lifts. I'm here to support the undersupported and so it was really tough and, and initially I naively thought there would be a great amount of empathy that would lead to action. Mm-hmm. and I was wrong. Because I was, I was thinking that while all of these, you know, venture capitalists with deep pockets that can really fund us, they're all supported by community based service providers.

So we should all, you know, experience the the, the, you know, the, the kind of, the common denominator here is that it's very difficult. To function and scale. And we as payers, you know, we have a tough time figuring out, have we been invoice, have we paid, you know, what is, what is going on here? Yeah. And so of course they're gonna struggle as well and thinking that that is something that we all are aligned with and that the money is gonna just like flood to Finli to build a solution.

I was terribly wrong. Yeah. Because, This is not a space that traditional VCs are comfortable with, nor have you know, a history of investing in mm-hmm. . That's why small micro-business platforms, a solution for, for, for this audience is very far in between. But that also opposes a great opportunity for us, right?

Because if we can really tap into this, this market and acquire customer. Scale, then we could become the defacto in this space. Yeah, more sooner than, you know, if we were to target any other market where there's more competition. .  

Julian: Yeah. What, what would, what advice would you give another founder who, you know, has a product in a similar space that isn't maybe traditionally backed by, you know, com, Venture capital?

What ways can you, you know, create a compelling reason to, to raise funding or ways to either strategize or formulate a. You know, a structured pitch to, to really capture what you're trying to get at. And, and, and it's also like communicate the long term vision and that the product can have. It seems like, you know, that that's probably one of the bigger hurdles is, you know, creating a kind of financial plan, you know, pitching on the potential of the product, but also the efficacy and, and also the, the tam, right?

That the mm-hmm. , how, how big the market is for you to, to capture. What advice would you give another founder who's in a similar position. .

Lori: Well, so first of all, there's a lot going for us, right? If you think about the, the market is, is huge, whether it's documented, undocumented, those are, you know the inflow of customers or opportunities to this space is is, is, is very.

Mm. Compelling. Mm-hmm. at the same time. If we were to demonstrate value, this market really sells for itself because, you know, it, it, I mean, no offense by this, but it's absolutely true. The landscaper who supports 50 households, his wife most likely cleans home for 50 others. Their cousin is a handyman for his community for 20 years.

And their friends and families are other, you know, service providers in their community. Yeah. So if you are able to demonstrate value you should expect that they will talk about your solution to each other. Yeah. And amplify the good work that you do in the community, right? So if you do good by this community, you will be able to reap the benefit of the network effect.

And then at the same time be very, very mindful on. You know, customer acquisition because unit economics is extremely important for this space. I feel like investors are, maybe they have been burned before, or, and or, you know, they just feel like this is extremely hard market to, to acquire, which is absolutely true because it's a fragmented space.

You know, these business owners are not easily influenced by digital. You know, impressions and so therefore how do you acquire them at scale cheaply, effectively, and you know, and, and just quickly. And so once you are able to figure that out, I think the conversation becomes a lot easier. And so for Finli you know, we were very fortunate to.

Acquire you know, acquire our customers in a very scalable way. So we launched in 2020 with five businesses, and to date, we have over 5,000 businesses using our platform. We have business accounts. Yeah, yeah. standing across the us so we're very proud of that. But at the same time, yeah none of this would be possible without the support of our earlier investors, and I would say, yeah.

Pitched to probably hundreds of investors and received. Just a lot of nos. And and my advice would be this is a numbers game. You know, you just have to talk to as many as you can to refine your pitch, to figure out what works for you, and really talk about the value prop that you're able to deliver and what, what differentiates you from the market.

But most importantly, more than anything is my conversations got a lot easier once I was able to identify the investors that truly understand my space. Because you can either spend 20 minutes out of the 30 minute pitch convincing this investor that there is a market because he's never invested in this space before and he doesn't know that there are like landscapers out there that needs to get.

Or you can go after those VCs that have a, you know, history of investing in SMB tech and impact investing. Like, they get the tam, they understand the opportunity. They understand the persona. So really the conversation is like, how are you able to do it? And that conversation is a lot more fun than being like, No, no, no.

There are people out there that needs this, you know, .  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. What, what's you know, you talk about this in terms of this customer acquisition and you know, this whole funnel is, is so fascinating and a lot of founders talking to another founder of a company called Alinea that creates playlists for investing.

And it was, it, you know, Talking about the different ways that they, you know, had to launch or relaunch their features or pivot to acquire customers in a, in a strategic way, because it wasn't, you know, they were they were viral on TikTok, but it didn't necessarily lead, you know, into the results that they were expecting in terms of client acquisition.

But how did you, I guess, go through the different evolution of acquiring customers to, you know, create. Scalable way to do so. I, I'm so fascinated on, on that process and how you're able to, you know, pitch a product and, and get people onboarded and, and using, and then creating, creating this network to effect.

Was it, you know, your first hypothesis, was it, was it your 20th? What was the process like to really identifying the way that you can onboard customers?  

Lori: Yeah, so it definitely wasn't easy. It was a combination of our development with our product as well as really. Getting smarter on the funnel and which funnel to really.

Allocate resource or our limited resources too. Yeah. We made all the mistakes that you can fathom, right? We we had boots on the ground. I had knocked on doors, canvassing, you know, cold called. I've like just dialed for dollars on Yelp. You know, like I've tried every single thing. Oh, how hard it would it be to acquire my.

You know, 50 customers. It was really hard, you know, if it were to go the traditional route. And then I realized, okay, that is definitely not a scalable path, nor was it a good path for me to quickly learn about, you know, what the right messaging is because, Oftentimes you're blocked by the gatekeeper and you're never able to have an engaging conversation with, with you know, the, the decision makers.

And then at the same time thinking you know, that coupled with doing demos, that was also another mistake that we had. Because in my mind I'm thinking, well, our product is not that straightforward. You know, if they're coming to us not from a dig from a digital invoicing platform, but from pen and paper, we need to show them how to digitize an invoice, right?

And so I was making a lot of assumptions. Yeah, it turned out to be incorrect, right? Thinking that they need a lot of handholding, they need a human and all that stuff. And at the same time, those assumptions didn't translate to good unit economics, right? Cause you can, you should never have boots on the ground, one-on-one sales and one-on-one demos to target a very low price point product.

We charge $39 a month For full access of our platform. And so then, so, so what? You know morphed into, from a go-to market standpoint was a combination of just us getting really smart and targeting one to many opportunities. So like agencies, associations, platforms that have a curated, already a highly engaged audience of small business owners that could benefit from FIN solutions.

So leaving them to distribute our product in a scalable way where they. Full engagement of their customer base. Wow. And then at the same time, we really invested a lot of time and effort in automating the onboarding, automating self-serve, making sure that it's truly self-serve so businesses can find us onboard and issue their first payment in minutes.

Yeah. You know, removing the friction and so that, By doing a combination of both, both of those things, it really accelerated our growth to where it is today. And I am just, just extremely optimistic to you know, what the future of Philly look like. Just in the upcoming months. We're currently going through every refactor, so we have version two of our product and market today.

Yeah, version three is going to launch in February. I'm so excited for that. It's gonna be so much better and more powerful. Than what we currently have because we've taken in consideration and incorporated all of the feedback that we've received from our customers now and then you know, it's just gonna be, you know, onward and upward from here.

Julian: Yeah, no, that's incredible. I, I love the process of going through, you know, the go to market strategies, because I think that's something that's not as spoken about in a lot of, you know, founder conversations is you know how to get your product out there, how to acquire customers, what do they care about, what are the different avenues?

And a lot of. I wouldn't say a lot of times, you know, but the, the partnership strategy with, with an already curated audience is such a hack to getting into, you know, your first customer base, but also the continued customer base and also some, some confidence or trust in your product. So, you know, it's incredible that you went through those different iterations and, and found, you know, really almost like a launchpad to, to the 5,000 customers that you have, that you have today, which is so impressive.

What's what are some of the biggest risks that Finli faces?

Lori: Wow. That's a, that's a really good question. One of the biggest risks that we face is we are it would be us taking on more than what we can handle, right? Yeah. Hence, As going through a refactor to make sure that our platform can scale for more customer base, because when we don't have the right balance of customer acquisition and then what we can serve and, and, and manage and scale with, then that becomes a big problem because all the effort that we put forth to acquire the customers, if we can't support them, they're gonna churn.

Right? And so, And, and, and for this customer base, word of mouth is so important. So if we don't do right by one cluster of customers, they're going to tell their community and tell one another. And next thing we know, we can't penetrate this market anymore. And the cost to acquire this customer back is like, X folds more , right?

So, so we really tread lightly and make sure that everything we deliver is with a lot of insight, a lot of heart, and a lot of research to, to make sure that we are kind of every step we take is on firm grounds. And that's kind of the biggest. The biggest cha, the challenge there because if they entrust us with helping them get paid, right, that is a huge responsibility we have on our shoulders.

So it better be on time, it better be accurate, and we better delight their customer base, right? Because we are. Kind of the behind the scenes engine that has to do with money collections for these small businesses that put so much trust on us. And so I would say that's, you know, that sense of responsibility also poses the highest risk.

And so we just have to we have to, we have to treat it responsibly.  

Julian: Yeah. If everything goes right, what's the long term vision for Finli?  

Lori: The long-term vision for Finli is that we do want to be the go-to financial platform for small businesses. Our current. Solution in market is an account receivables management system, right?

Yeah. It's helping these small businesses get paid, but what we have kind of in the pipe is we want to continue to expand our financial solutions offering. Yeah. We run the market with helping our customers get paid because this is the stickiest component of their entire. Yeah, we want to be the fifth debit card in their wallet right behind Chime, Novo Chase, Bank of America.

Right. It's just too much to compete there. It's too crowded. Yeah. But if we own their relationship with their customers and if their customers are set up on autopay to pay their invoices through Finli to them, they're going, they're not going anywhere. Right. Yeah. And as long as we continue to demonstrate value and iterate.

You know, solutions in market, then we're only going to make these relationships stickier and more engaged and and more fruitful. That then allows us almost to look at our product and market today as a lead magnet for us to do, Yeah. You know, implement additional financial services. So helping our customers get paid is, Step one of Finli.

Eventually we want to be the defacto go to platform that displaces all of the other financial tools that they have in their wallets, right? To, to just use Finli.  

Julian: I I love the, the, what you said, owning the relationship with their customer because, you know, if you're able, it is such a sticky product if you're able to, you know, Achieve that, and then, you know, you kind of build upon those services is such a, I think it's such a brilliant way to go after versus offering, you know, one part of a solution to a much greater problem.

I guess whether now, or I always love to ask this question, one for selfish research, but also for my audience whether that's now or in the past, but what books or people have influenced you the most, whether you know and even influenced you today as, as you build Finli.  

Lori: Books. My favorite book is actually, Nicholas Christoff, I think it's called Woman something about, wait I, the, the, the title escapes me, but essentially is woman, you know, Hold up half the sky.

And, and it's really is such a motivational book for me, and I probably have read it three times and, and, and gave it to my sons to, to read as well. Yeah. And it just, it's just like, it's a, it's a, it compiles. Stories across the globe on how women you know, takes on so much responsibility and multitask and is really driving, you know, how their communities function.

And I, I'm absolutely empowered by all of those stories of amazing women. They, they course service inspiration for me as I continue to navigate through life as a mom and as a care.  

Julian: Yeah, I mean, I thank you for sharing that. I haven't heard that book yet, and it's so fascinating how different founders kind of grab certain, you know, whether it's anecdotal stories or, or other people and their influence upon their career and, and how it kind of translates long term.

So it's always exciting to, to get new pieces of information that we can all dive into and, and get some inspiration from. Well, Lori, I know we're at time, but thank you so much for, for chatting with me and, and getting to know your background, your experience, you know, the problems you're solving in the community, but also on a grander scale, the market that you're trying to tackle.

And I, I really think it's brilliant the way your, your, your strategy is and where your focal point is. And I'm so excited to see, you know, what comes about in, in 2023 when you launched the version three of your product. But last little bit is where can we be a part of that, where can. With support Finlay, where can we be a fan of the product?

Where can we go to demo it? What's your LinkedIn to your websites, your Twitters? Where can we be a part of Finlay and the.  

Lori: Absolutely. Please just visit our website, just the finli.com. Yeah. And subscribe to our newsletter, you know, to our fin insider so that you can get the latest and greatest on all the great work that we're doing for communities.

We recently launched a spotlight campaign where we showcase small businesses in the community that's just trying to do good and really like shed light on their story, their origin story, and. What their struggles are and how we as a community can help one another. And then the, the title of the book is Half the Sky.

I kind of just added a couple of more words. Got it. It's about women holding up half the sky, but it's, the title is Half the Sky, Nicholas Kristoff. Love that.  

Julian: I love that. Well, thank you so much, Laurie. I'm so excited to share this with my audience. And there's a lot of small business owners that do you know you join the podcast as, as regular listeners.

So many people in, in my community that I think could benefit from your, your platform. So I hope you enjoyed yourself and thank you again for being on the show.  

Lori: Yep. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.  

Julian: Yeah.

Other interesting podcasts