F*ck the Fear and Fly with Cindy Gallop, Founder of Make Love Not Porn

Dubbed the 'Michael Bay of Business,' Cindy Gallop is renowned for shaking things up.

A fearless advocate for women in business, Cindy has devoted her life to breaking taboos through open conversations about sex, consent, and healthy relationships through her groundbreaking startup, Makelovenotporn.

But the road hasn't been easy. Despite over 2 million TED Talk views and high-profile connections, Cindy faces unique challenges as a woman of colour in the sextech industry.

Explore her inspiring journey in this episode of Unfinished Business.

In this episode, you'll learn that:

• Starting a company is empowering because it allows you to create your own future and make a positive impact on society.

• Breaking through when your idea is ready before the market is essential for success in the startup world.

• It's crucial for women to unashamedly set out to make an “absolute goddamn fucking shit tonne of money.” Because when women earn more money, they can invest in other women and create their own financial ecosystem.

• Determination, resilience, and innovation are non-negotiable in the world of entrepreneurship and startups.

Tune in to learn how Cindy's conquering fear, making an impact, and defying the odds on this episode of Unfinished Business.

Episode Transcript: F*ck the Fear and Fly with Cindy Gallop

Liana: Welcome to Unfinished Business, a new podcast created to demystify entrepreneurship. I'm your host, Liana Fricker, Founder of Inspiration Space.

Consider this a power hour of mentoring available to you on demand. Throughout the series, you'll learn from a diverse group of entrepreneurs who have overcome the early stages of starting a company.

At Inspiration Space, we decode the language of entrepreneurship to give everyone access to the rules of the game.

What do I mean by that? In May 1983, Neil C. Churchill and Virginia I. Lewis published an article in Harvard Business Review called "The Five Stages of Small Business Growth."

Churchill and Lewis concluded that while there's no one-size-fits-all approach, every business faces similar challenges as it starts, develops, and grows.

As an early-stage founder who sometimes feels like I'm building the plane as I fly, I know firsthand that the journey through entrepreneurship is a wild, unpredictable ride.

And if life in the times of Covid and a cost-of-living crises have taught us anything, it's that even when your business is thriving, what works right now may not work in the future.

In our first episode, I spoke with Illana Gambrill, founder of Dance Box Studios, who shared her story of how she jumped onto the startup rollercoaster after falling out of love with her job as a professional dancer.

Illana's story taught us that there's never a perfect time to start a business and that managing your expectations is the key to success.

Liana: In this episode, we will teach you how to conquer fear and soar. This is the story of Cindy Gallop, founder of Make Love Not Porn, described as the Michael Bay of Business.

Cindy is well known for blowing things up. Yet, even with more than 2 million views on her TED Talk, connections in high places, and an international reputation, Cindy still struggled to raise money for her startup.

Liana: Before taking the leap into entrepreneurship, most people have to quit their jobs.

In Cindy's case, she stepped away from an incredibly successful career in advertising, where she was named Woman of the Year.

Cindy founded and chaired the US branch of the iconic ad agency, BBH, in 2003. Here, she was responsible for global brands like RayBan, Coca-Cola, and Polaroid, and she helped set up the Asia-Pacific wing.

Her 2009 TED Talk, "Make Love Not Porn," now has over 2.6 million views on YouTube.

Cindy is the founder and CEO of a company by the same name, which has grown into the world's first media platform dedicated to making real-world sex socially acceptable and shareable.

She describes herself as the Michael Bay of Business, blowing things up and driving innovation through her own consultancy.

In today's episode, we'll have an open conversation with Cindy about starting out in advertising, her journey through entrepreneurship, and experiences that have helped her build an illustrious advertising career.

Liana: Thank you for joining us, Cindy. It's great to have you here.

Cindy: It's great to be here.

Liana: Cindy, entrepreneurship is like a rollercoaster. Once you decide to act on your big idea, the seatbelt goes click, and you're on your way. There's no turning back.

Can you tell us about the moment when you realised you wanted to quit your job and start MLNP?

Cindy: There wasn't one. I did not decide to go into entrepreneurship. Everything in my life and career has happened by accident, and I have never consciously planned anything.

Leaving the corporate world happened by accident, as I had always considered 45 as a midlife point, a time to pause, take stock, reflect and review.

On February 1st, 2000, I did just that, and realised that I had been working for the same advertising agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, BBH, for 16 years.

Although it was a wonderful agency and I loved them, I felt it was time to do something different.

Cindy: The issue was that I had no idea what I wanted to do. After a lot of thought, I decided to put myself on the market publicly to review every possible option available to me.

So, I took a massive leap into the unknown and resigned as Chairman of BBH New York in the summer of 2005 without another job lined up.

It turned out to be the best thing I ever did because I stumbled into entrepreneurship, which I am now evangelical about. But it was not my intention back then.

I began consulting to support myself, and accidentally stumbled into entrepreneurship.

Liana: Can I ask, what did you do that first summer of unemployment?

Cindy: I was very lucky because the moment the news broke that I was a free agent, tons of things came to me, 90% of which I would never have thought of myself.

So, I decided to explore everything with no preconceived notions about anybody. I talked to everyone, took every phone call, and attended every meeting.

It was a fascinating exploration that was as good for telling me what I didn't want to do as what I did want to do.

Liana: Was there an opportunity that came your way that you felt compelled to take, but then didn't?

Cindy: Back in the autumn of 2005, I was approached by a headhunter about the role of CEO of the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival.

I was very interested in that position because I saw the opportunity for the single global creative awards festival in our industry to set the agenda for future advertising.

However, the job was based in London, and I had no intention of leaving New York.

The headhunter explained that the role had to be based in London, so that ended the discussion. But it was a role I was genuinely interested in.

Liana: You're quoted as saying that it's only when things break down that a new model and way of doing things is enabled. How did it feel once you were working for yourself and had the freedom to go completely against the grain?

Cindy: It was absolutely wonderful. I could have ideas and make them happen any way I wanted. I am all about working for yourself.

Many people make the mistake of thinking that a job is safe, but it's not.

You are at the mercy of management changes, industry downturns, and marketplace dynamics in a job.

I always ask people, whose hands would you rather place your future in - those of a large corporate entity who doesn't care about you, or somebody who will always have your best interests at heart, i.e., YOU.

Liana: Starting your own business is hard enough, but with Make Love Not Porn, there's added difficulty because, let's face it, sex is a taboo topic.

The confidence you have to do it anyway is inspiring in and of itself.

Can you tell me more about your experience trying to break through with a product before the market's ready?

Cindy: The creation of Make Love Not Porn was a complete accident.

I never consciously or intentionally set out to do what I find myself doing now. I date younger men, typically in their twenties.

About 13 or 14 years ago, I began realising, through dating these younger men, that I was encountering an issue that would never have crossed my mind if I hadn't experienced it intimately.

Cindy: I realised I was experiencing what happens when two things converge – and I emphasise the dual convergence because most people think it's only one thing.

What happens when today's total freedom of access to hardcore porn online meets our society's equally total reluctance to talk openly and honestly about sex?

When these two things converge, porn becomes sex education by default, and not in a good way.

Cindy: I found myself encountering a number of sexual behavioural memes in bed. I thought, "Whoa, I know where that behaviour's coming from."

I suspected that if I was experiencing this, other people must be as well.

I didn't know that because, 13 or 14 years ago, nobody was talking about this; nobody was writing about it.

Cindy: As a naturally action-oriented person, I wanted to do something about it. So, around 12 or 13 years ago, I created a tiny, clunky website called MakeLoveNotPorn.com.

In its original iteration, it was just words. The construct was "porn world" versus "real world" – what happens in the porn world and what really happens in the real world.

I had the opportunity to launch Make Love Not Porn at TED in 2009.

As you mentioned, I became the only TED speaker to say the words "come on my face" on the TED stage six times in succession.

The talk went viral, driving an extraordinary global response to my tiny website that I had never anticipated.

Cindy: Thousands of people from every country in the world – young and old, male and female, straight and gay – wrote to me, pouring their hearts out. I realised I had uncovered a huge global social issue.

I felt a personal responsibility to take Make Love Not Porn forward in a way that would make it more far-reaching, helpful, and effective.

Cindy: I also saw an opportunity to do what I believe in very strongly: create a big business solution to this huge, untapped global need.

I knew, even at the concept stage 12 years ago, that if I wanted to counter the global impact of porn as default sex ed, I would have to come up with something that at least had the potential to be just as mass, just as mainstream, and just as all-pervasive as porn currently is. So, I thought big right from the get-go.

Cindy: That's what led me to turn Make Love Not Porn into a business.

I always emphasised that it is not anti-porn because the issue isn't porn; the issue is that we don't talk about sex in the real world.

I saw an opportunity to do what I believe in very strongly, which is that the future of business is doing good and making money simultaneously.

Cindy: Our tagline at Make Love Not Porn is "pro-sex, pro-porn, pro-knowing the difference."

Our mission is a simple thing: to make it easier for everyone in the world to talk openly and honestly about sex.

I took every dynamic in social media and applied them to this one area, socialising sex and making real-world sex and talking about it socially acceptable – and, ultimately, just as socially shareable as anything else we share on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram.

Cindy: Nine years ago, my tiny team and I launched the first stage of this vision: Make Love Not Porn TV, an entirely user-generated, crowdsourced video-sharing platform that celebrates real-world sex.

Anyone from anywhere in the world can submit videos of themselves having real-world sex, but we are very clear about what we mean by this.

Cindy: We are not about amateur porn. We are building a whole new category on the internet that has never existed before, which we call social sex.

Our competition isn't porn; it's Facebook and YouTube – or it would be if they allowed people to socially and sexually self-express and self-identify, which they sadly do not.

Cindy: Social sex videos on Make Love Not Porn are not about performing for the camera. They're about capturing what goes on in the real world as it happens spontaneously, in all its funny, messy, glorious, wonderful, beautiful, ridiculous, and fabulous humanness.

Cindy: We curate to ensure safety. I designed Make Love Not Porn around human curation because no one else did.

Our curators watch every single video submitted from beginning to end before we approve or reject it. There's no self-publishing on Make Love Not Porn; we have the safest place on the internet.

Cindy: We have a revenue-sharing business model designed to democratise access to income. Our members pay to subscribe, rent, and stream social sex videos.

Half the income goes to our contributors, whom we call our Make Love Not Porn Stars. We are pioneering the social sex revolution.

The revolutionary part is not the sex; it's the social aspect.

Liana: So now we know why Cindy's called the Michael Bay of Business. She's literally blowing things up on all fronts, thanks to Make Love Not Porn.

Conversations about consent, education, diversity, inclusivity, and the questionable power of big tech are happening out in the open in a way that wouldn't be possible had she not quit her job and taken the leap.

And this, dear listener, is the power of entrepreneurship.

When your vision, mission, and purpose combine with a big idea, a market opportunity, and you've met a moment in time where you can create something from nothing for the benefit of us all.

Cindy: The most inspiring thing I've learned really is that the entire world is desperate for what we are doing at Make Love Not Porn.

Every day our members write to us and leave comments on our social sex videos, telling us how we've changed their lives.

Make Love Not Porn, as an utterly unique venture, has an utterly unique capability. We have the power to change people's sexual attitudes and behavior for the better. And that is extraordinary. It's why we are helping to end rape culture.

Cindy: We help end rape culture by doing something incredibly simple that nobody else is doing.

We show how wonderful, great consensual, communicative sex is in the real world. We role model good sexual values and behaviour, making all of that aspirational, versus what you see in porn and popular culture.

The other way I know how much the world wants us is that every single day, people all around the world search for Make Love Not Porn without knowing that we exist.

Cindy: The top organic search terms driving traffic to us are "make love," "not porn," "real sex, not porn," and "make love not porn," without knowing there is a business called that.

One young man told me he found us when he Googled "porn that is not porn," because he was desperate for something different. And when you Google "porn that is not porn," you find Make Love Not Porn.

We are literally the startup the world is crying out for, and that is what absolutely inspires me to keep going through the immense battle to keep this business alive every single day.

Liana: As you ride the highs and lows of founder life, you're going to face unforeseen challenges.

When you come from outside the status quo of what society traditionally presents as the "classic entrepreneur," the journey can be even more arduous.

It's really hard to be a founder, and it can be even harder when you're doing something new and different. It can feel like an insurmountable climb if you are also a woman or a person of colour doing this.

Liana: So Cindy, what's your journey been like so far?

Cindy: It's an absolute nightmare. I represent the quadruple whammy of "un-fundability": I am female, I am older, I'm a woman of colour, and I'm in sex tech. It's a nightmare every single day. So this is the thing that I did not realise when I embarked on building this business.

Every single piece of business infrastructure that any other tech startup takes for granted, we can't.

The small print always says "No adult content." And that is all-pervasive across every single area of the business in ways that people outside this sphere don't realise. I can't get funded. I can't get banked.

Cindy: It took me four years to find one bank here in America that would allow me to open a business bank account for Make Love Not Porn.

Our biggest operational challenge is payments. PayPal won't work with us, Stripe can't, and mainstream credit card processors won't work with us.

Every single tech service I need to use to build, run, and operate my video-sharing, video-streaming platform — be it hosting, encoding, encrypting — the terms of service always say "no adult content."

In every single case, I have to go to the people at the top of the company, explain what I'm doing, and beg to be allowed to use their service.

Sometimes they let me, sometimes they don't. It's a very labor-intensive process. We had to build our entire video-sharing platform from scratch, ourselves, as proprietary technology, because existing streaming services will not stream adult content.

I'm so jealous of friends who built video startups on top of Vimeo — quick, easy, simple. I can't do that.

Cindy: Even something as apparently simple as finding an email partner to send membership emails our way, MailChimp won't work with adult content.

We were rejected by six or seven others until we found SendGrid, who does. I needed a contract user experience designer a couple of years ago. I put a perfectly standard UX designer job description up on Upwork.

Twenty minutes later, Upwork took it down. They told us we're not allowed to advertise jobs on Upwork because we are Make Love Not Porn. And another very key piece of the infrastructure is that we cannot advertise.

We are banned from advertising on Facebook, on Instagram, on Reddit, and on YouTube. And, by the way, it's important for our listeners to know that this is not just us. There is a massive gender bias.

Any female-led sexual health and wellness ventures are banned from advertising, not just on social platforms, but in traditional media as well: menstruation ventures, menopause ventures, fertility ventures, sex education ventures.

Cindy: None of us are allowed to advertise. In the meantime, male sexual health and wellness ventures, erectile dysfunction solutions — come on in.

There is a huge gender bias in the massively male-dominated tech world that is a huge growth inhibitor for female-founded startups.

Liana: How do you stay focused on building Make Love Not Porn and not just trying to go against the system?

I'm feeling the rage because it makes it almost impossible for you to make the impact that you want to make. And when we look at things like R. Kelly and Me Too, you know, like you say, there is such a huge need for this.

This is a social service, right? Yet the whole infrastructure is making it almost impossible for you to do it.

How do you stay focused on the business and not just trying to, you know, change the world?

Cindy: Well, I do both. I've been doing both for 12 years: building my startup and keeping it alive, while working to change the cultural context around it.

Because when you have a truly world-changing startup, you have to change the world to fit it, not the other way around.

Cindy: You're absolutely right, Liana. It is, and I use this word deliberately, criminal that I cannot find investors because all of the problems I've just cited to you are all solved with money.

All of those advertising barriers fall when you write them a big enough check. I can find and build my own infrastructure when investors fund me at the same level that they lavish on white bro founders building trivial apps.

It's criminal because this is what Make Love Not Porn has the power to do at scale as the Facebook of social sex, which is what I intend for us to be.

Cindy: I designed Make Love Not Porn around my own beliefs and philosophies, one of which is that everything in life starts with you and your values.

So I regularly ask people this question: "What are your sexual values?" Nobody can ever answer me because we're not taught to think like that.

Our parents bring us up to have good manners, a work ethic, a sense of responsibility, and accountability.

Cindy: Nobody ever brings us up to behave well in bed, but they should, because in bed, values like empathy, sensitivity, generosity, kindness, honesty, and respect are as important as those values are in every other area of our lives where we are actively taught to operate them.

So my vision for a world in which we finally find that enlightened investor or investors who fund us to scale is this: Parents will bring their children up openly to have good sexual values and good sexual behaviour in the same way that they currently bring their kids up to have good behaviour in every other area of life.

Cindy: We will, therefore, cease to bring up rapists because the only way to end rape culture is by embedding in society an openly talked about, promoted, understood, operated, and very importantly, aspired to gold standard of what constitutes good sexual behaviour and good sexual values.

When we do that, we also end "Me Too", sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and sexual violence in all areas where the perpetrators currently rely on the fact that we do not talk about sex to ensure their victims will never speak up, never go to authorities, and never tell anybody.

When we end that, we massively empower women and girls worldwide.

Cindy: When we do that, we create a much happier world for everybody, including men. And when we do that, we are one step closer to world peace.

I talk about Make Love Not Porn as my attempt to bring about world peace, and I'm not joking. So what we are doing could not be more important in the era of Me Too.

Everybody is talking about consent, writing about consent, and there are lots of thoughtful, nuanced, insightful think pieces out there about consent.

Here's the problem: nobody knows what consent actually looks like in bed.

The only way you educate people as to what is great, consensual, communicative sex with good sexual values and behaviour is by watching people actually having that kind of sex.

Cindy: Make Love Not Porn is the only place on the internet where you can do that. Every single one of our videos is an object lesson in consent, communication, good sexual values, and behaviour.

We are literally educating through demonstration.

Liana: Oh my God, I love that. My kids go to a pretty progressive school, and I'm like, I wonder if we could get this through on the curriculum, you know, like new sex ed.

Cindy: And by the way, Liana, parents tell us that as members of our community, we have made them feel more able to be open because we're socialising and normalising all of this, bringing sunlight to it.

They tell us they want their children to see what happy, healthy, loving sex relationships look like.

Cindy: It's a way of tackling the issue head-on. It's like, if you're going to watch this, I would rather you watch what a healthy adult relationship looks like, as opposed to Lord only knows what you're going to uncover because you're going to watch.

And by the way, we are more than legal.

Liana: And I would also imagine you're a hell of a bootstrapper because you've done this.

Cindy: Yeah, but honestly, Liana, what's really depressing is, you know, I don't want to have to raise funding.

I'm about to set out to raise another round of funding for Make Love Not Porn, because if I don't, we will have to shut the business down.

Cindy: Our financial runway has a finite end. I have no intention of allowing that to happen, by the way, but I just want our audience to realise how serious our situation is for an awfully unique venture that needs to be in this world.

How much we need to continue to exist in this world.

Cindy: So, I'm setting out to raise funding this fall, and to our listeners, if anybody knows any open-minded investors, it's MakeLoveNotPorn.com.

What's enormously frustrating is I know my investors are out there. They are impossible to find by the usual means because they all have one thing in common.

Their willingness to fund Make Love Not Porn is entirely a function of their personal sexual values.

It's a function of their personal lens on sex and sexuality driven by their own experience, and I have no way to research and target for that, especially because sex is the one area where you cannot tell from the outside what anybody thinks on the inside.

Cindy: The people you think would totally get it, don't. The people who look like total prudes, do.

It's really impossible to be able to target investors by area of interest the way any other entrepreneur does.

So what I do is I put what I'm doing out there all the time because I have to rely on those synaptic connections being made that will draw those investors to me.

Cindy: The good news is that in the past year, that's been happening more than ever before.

My frustration is that I would've loved to have gotten Make Love Not Porn operational and profitable under its own steam to never have to raise funding.

All of the barriers I've outlined to you are why I do have to raise funding because they are insurmountable without money.

Cindy: The irony also is that right now, the market is flooded with more investor money than ever before.

It's been a record year, a record year now 2021 for VC funding, and yet at the same time, the pathetically tiny amount of that funding that goes to female founders has gone down and is at its lowest.

Cindy: In the past five years, last year, 2.8% of all venture funding went to female-founded ventures.

This year [2021] in the eight months to date of 2021, that Crunchbase has measured, only 2.2% of all venture funding is going to female founders.

So the pie is bigger than ever, but we're getting an even tinier piece of it.

Cindy: Of that tiny amount of funding, something outrageous like 0.001% goes to Black female founders. It's absolutely outrageous.

Liana: People have the ambition to build companies the size of Jeff Bezos to put greatness into the world. We solve our own problems, but the reality is we need capital to be able to do this.

We exist in a world where there are systems and structures in place, and we have to fight against them - it's really hard.

Liana: What about your biggest "Oh shit" moment where you're like, "Maybe I shouldn't have done that," but it ended up being a great learning moment for you?

Cindy: My biggest mistakes have always been when I didn't fire fast enough.

My biggest mistakes have been when I gave somebody who was not performing too many chances. And so, you know, I strongly recommend, not just to entrepreneurs but also people in the corporate world, to fire fast.

Liana: And what about a moment when you thought about quitting? Have you ever thought about quitting?

Cindy: Oh my God, all the time. It is so demoralising and depressing to be fighting this battle every single day.

You know, the reason I don't quit, there are two reasons. First, as I said, every day, our Make Love Not Porn community tells us how we've changed their lives.

Cindy: Not just our members, by the way, but our Make Love Not Porn Stars, our contributors. Socially sharing real-world sex is transformative.

The single thing that most motivates me is a dynamic that I call, "F*ck it, I'll show you."

You tell me it can't be done? I'm going to show you. You put an obstacle in my path? I'm going to show you.

I have to take all of that demoralisation, all of that depression, and channel it into motivation to keep myself going because it's hard.

Liana: Entrepreneurship is hard, regardless. And the more outside of the establishment you are, the harder it is.

You have these moments. I remember June 2020, I was like, "I'm done." And then I went on LinkedIn at 3:00 AM to look for a job, and I was like, "I'm unemployable. I've got to figure it out, you know?"

Liana: How has Covid impacted the business?

Cindy: Well, it's been absolutely fine for us because we're a digital business.

We did have an office, but we gave that up, and now my team works remotely. Actually, the pandemic has been very good for our business because we observed two key trends.

Cindy: What we thought for many years is, in fact, wrong.

For years, we've all believed the future is digital - this, VR that - but the pandemic has proven that what we are all desperate for is real-life human touch, connection, intimacy, feelings, love, and sex.

I'm sure you've seen, as I have on social media, people saying they would kill for a hug.

Cindy: That tiny physical gesture we thought nothing of two years ago has taken on a resonance, meaning, and value it didn't have before.

So, for a platform that celebrates all of that, it's very good news. The second trend we observed is that, as a global platform, we see that whole families, partners, and roommates have been in lockdown for months on end together.

Cindy: When you are all shut up together for a very long period, it forces a breaking down of societal barriers, guilt, shame, and embarrassment around perfectly normal human body functions and sex.

Maybe we're going to have our next summer of love. A healthy business is one that is always evolving.

Liana: So, what's next for you? Are you going to stay on this ride?

Cindy: What's depressing about answering that question, Liana, is that I've had so many new product expansions of Make Love Not Porn in the pipeline for years but never had the funding to build them.

I'm hoping the fundraising round I'm setting out to raise will enable us to do that. There are three products we want to build to expand beyond Make Love Not Porn's core user-generated, human-curated social sex video sharing platform.

Cindy: The first is what I call the Kahn Academy of Sex Education. Educational technology, EdTech, is exploding as a category, but not in this area.

So, I want to build out Make Love Not Porn Academy, an aggregation hub for sex education content from sex educators worldwide, where we help them publish, promote, and sell.

Cindy: It's your single go-to, segmented by age appropriateness. So, if you're a parent who needs age-appropriate tools and content, this is where you go.

Next, we are building our own ad tech product. My advertising industry background means I've been encouraging women for years to start ad tech businesses because ad tech is as white male-dominated as advertising is.

Women are the primary target for advertising, the primary purchasers, and influencers of purchasers, yet we are sold to through the white male lens all the time.

Since I'm not allowed to advertise anywhere, I'm going to build my own ad tech product that welcomes all other sexual health and wellness ventures like mine who have nowhere to advertise.

Cindy: We have a whole product roadmap for the future, and all I need is the funding to build it out.

Liana: So we like to wrap up every episode of Unfinished Business with a quickfire round that we call "Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda."

Your "coulda" is something that you think you could have done if you hadn't done this.

Your "woulda" is something that you maybe would do differently, and your "shoulda" is something that you feel you should do, but you haven't yet.

Cindy: Honestly, I have no idea because, as I've said earlier, everything in my life and career has happened organically, and with Make Love Not Porn, the path appeared.

I have no regrets, but the one thing I do wish I'd done is I wish I'd started working for myself much earlier.

Cindy: I should absolutely scale Make Love Not Porn to be the Facebook of social sex and change the way the world has sex for the better.

All I need are the investors, the backing, and the business support to do that.

Liana: Incredible. If you're listening to this, watch this space. Let's make this dream happen.

Liana: Thank you so much for joining me today. It's been an education on so many fronts. It's really inspired me with my mission.

I think if everyone works together to take down the structures of the status quo in the areas where we're passionate about, we can build a brand-new world.

Cindy: Terrific.

Liana: Cindy's story is a great lesson in the power of motivation.

Her "F*ck it, I'll show you" attitude helps her tackle the challenges that greet her day today. We learned the best way to predict the future is to create it. When you have your own company, you can bring your ideas to life in any way you want.

Liana: Vision, mission, and purpose are crucial. Every business will face unforeseen obstacles, which is why it's essential to think big from the start.

When you have a world-changing startup, be prepared to change the world to fit it, not the other way around.

The fuel of business is money, and while the amount of investor cash available is greater than ever, less than 3% of funding went to female founders in 2021.

Liana: Of that, less than 1% went to Black female founders. While it's important to change the system from within, realising the economic potential of women can give us the financial power to fund the ventures we believe in.

Entrepreneurship is a way to change the world, and you can't afford to hold back.

Liana: Thanks for listening to Unfinished Business. Make sure you subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss a lesson.

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