Interview with Ashlee Ammons: Co-Founder of Mixtroz a data collection and integration company that increases engagement and collects data at gatherings. Mixtroz services dozens of industries including education, enterprise, and events. Mixtroz.com
This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. The series interviews women (& women-identified & non-binary) entrepreneurs, founders, and gurus across all industries to investigate those voices in business today. Both the platform and discussion are designed to further the global conversation in regards to the changing climate in entrepreneurial and founding roles.
TRANSCRIPTION
*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors
[00:00:07] Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series will contain interviews I conduct with female and female identified entrepreneurs, founders, co-founders, business owners and industry gurus. These podcasts speak with women and women, identified individuals across all industries in order to shed light for those just getting into the entrepreneurial game, as well as those deeply embedded within it histories, current companies and lessons learned are explored in the conversations I have with these insightful and talented powerhouses. The series is designed to investigate a female and female identified perspective in what has largely been a male dominated industry in the USA to date. I look forward to contributing to the national dialog about the long overdue change of women in American business arenas and in particular, entrepreneurial roles. You can contact me via my media company website Wild Dot Agency. That's why L DEA agents see or my personal website. Patricia Kathleen, dot com. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation. [00:01:25][77.9]
[00:01:30] Hi, everyone, and welcome back, this is your host, Patricia. And today I am sitting down with Ashlee Ammons. She is the co-founder and president at MCS TROs. Welcome, Ashlee. [00:01:39][8.9]
[00:01:40] Thank you, it's good to be here. [00:01:42][1.2]
[00:01:42] It's good to speak with you. Before I get into a quick bio on Ashlee, I want to give everyone a road map for today's podcast. We'll follow the same trajectory as the majority of the podcast. In this series, we'll first look at Ashlee's academic background and early professional life. Then we'll turn our attention towards unpacking, mix TROs. We'll get into the logistics of who, what, when, where, why and how, and then turn to the ethos and some of the philosophical structures of the company. Then we'll turn to the goals that Ashlee has for the next three years with mixed truths regarding scaling expansion, expansion, brand analysis and maybe some other more personal ones. And then we'll wrap the entire podcast up with advice that Ashlee has, looking for those to garner some knowledge from her history or also get involved in what she's doing, perhaps working in tandem with her. A quick bio on Ashlee before I start peppering her with questions. She's name to Entrepreneurs magazine inaugural's list of one hundred powerful women in twenty nineteen. Carrie Schrader and Ashlee Ammons are a dynamic mother daughter duo in the new wave of entrepreneurs creating services. [00:02:49][67.2]
[00:02:51] To make work and play simpler and more satisfying without formal tech backgrounds, they've blazed trails in the male dominated tech startup space with their company mixtures, which increases engagement and collects data at gatherings following remarkable progress in twenty seventeen team extras kicked off twenty eighteen by joining Alabama's prestigious Velocity Accelerator and starring on an episode of an E series Rooster and Butch. In May twenty eighteen, the duo was selected to pitch to AOL co-founder Steve Case during the Rise and Rest tour stop in Birmingham, Alabama, and secured a one hundred thousand dollar investment from Casey's revolution fund. The team went on to close a one million dollar round of funding, making them the thirty seventh and thirty eighth black females to ever close a one million dollar plus round of funding. [00:03:45][54.5]
[00:03:47] So it's exciting, actually. I want to climb into mixtures and kind of get into the ethos within that. [00:03:52][5.6]
[00:03:52] But first, before we do that, anyone who's looking to kind of pop into their website and get more into in depth information you can make Stroh's dot com is the domain mctear o.z dot com. And before we begin all of that, actually I'm wondering if you can walk us through a little bit of your academic background and your early professional life following that and before launching mixed Troas. [00:04:15][23.0]
[00:04:17] Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for the overview. I'm excited to have this conversation. So I am from Cleveland, Ohio. I'm actually here right now in Cleveland. And I went to undergrad in a small town in Ohio called Birria. It's about 15 minutes outside of Cleveland. The schools called Baldwin Wallace University. It's a it's a private liberal arts college. It's really well known for musical theater. Actually, we were the first college to get the rights to the Phantom of the Opera. And Andrew Lloyd Webber actually came out to the school when they performed it, which was pretty awesome. So a lot of my classmates are on Broadway. I see them often during like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. But I went to school for broadcasting mass communications and public relations. So those are the degrees that I graduated with. So my goal was to be a news anchor. That's where I thought I was going. But I ended up landing a an internship during my the like the spring of my sophomore year, and I became LeBron James first intern, actually. [00:05:22][65.7]
[00:05:24] Amazing. I mean, that's such a crazy first internship. Was there any other connections for that? [00:05:30][6.4]
[00:05:30] Did you I mean, did you have Connector's college professors, people hooking up with that or was it just a blind application? [00:05:36][6.0]
[00:05:38] So what's so crazy about this is this kind of feeds into why I'm so passionate about not just networking, but connecting with people, being able to connect with anyone agnostic of where they come from, what they look like, any of that. Like I believe that everyone should be able to talk to anyone. And so the internship actually came from a random conversation between an upper classmen and myself. He and I looked nothing like one another. If you just looked at us, if you just looked at us dead on, you'd be like, oh, there's no way that these people would buy. But actually, me and the classmate had a great conversation one night and he sent an email and about three weeks later, I was the Browns intern. It's as simple as that. So I tell people all the time that ability to be able to connect with people is so important because you never know who is going to open the LeBron door. Let's call it for you. [00:06:29][50.6]
[00:06:29] Absolutely. And that's power networking, right? Blindly and openly. I guess that's amazing. So after your how long does the internship last and what did you do after that? [00:06:39][9.6]
[00:06:40] Yeah, so two and a half years in that internship and it was such a cool time to be with LeBron because, you know, in Cleveland and in Ohio, he I mean, he's such a huge deal with such a huge deal. [00:06:53][12.5]
[00:06:53] And it's funny, I was kind of nonchalant about the whole thing because I was just like, OK, I mean, he plays basketball cool, but just understanding how huge he actually is, the global appeal he actually has. I was working on things like his marketing summit when he would bring the biggest executives from Coca-Cola and Nike to Akron, Ohio. I remember we had to do that summit at the Hilton. That was like the nicest hotel in Akron, Ohio. So, I mean, it was just very it was just very, very interesting. So after after I graduated, I stayed on with LeBron about six months postgrad. And it's funny, I live with my aunt here in Lorraine, Ohio, and I'm literally walking around her living room right now. And then I start a job for job hunting in New York City. For whatever reason, I had always wanted to go to New York City, like I was like, you know, spent the majority of my life in just smaller places in the burbs and I was just ready for city life. And so I went on three different interviews and I would like basically save all my money. And I would get I would take one which I would buy like one way ticket back and forth from Cleveland to New York. And I would go on interview and then I would fly right back. And so I did that three times. Third time was a charm. And so I got a job as an executive assistant. The person that I was working for was quite extraordinary. His name is no whatever word. You can certainly Google him. He owns a hospitality group, was part of the hospitality group called Tao Group. Tao is a huge brand name in Las Vegas. At one point it was the highest grossing restaurant in the United States, and that's where I grew my career. I was with you within your group for about eight years. And over the course of that time, really in the first five years, I went from being an executive assistant to director of events over that company. [00:08:49][115.7]
[00:08:50] Wow. That's an amazing ride. Did you were you based out of New York City at that time? [00:08:54][4.1]
[00:08:55] I was, yes. [00:08:56][0.7]
[00:08:57] So you've garnered this communications publications degree and then you've turned into an intern for LeBron James and navigating that kind of high famous high profile sports network and then turning to Noah's kind of industry. [00:09:11][14.9]
[00:09:12] And within five years of that going over events, it seems like you would have crawled into starting an event or like a marketing company. [00:09:22][9.5]
[00:09:22] How did you come up with mixed pros? [00:09:24][1.5]
[00:09:25] Yeah, so mixed race is funny. It's just, you know, I think it was another step in life. Like, I am very positive right now that I am doing my life's work, like as we speak. And I think everything before Mitros was just getting me prepared for mixed race. So the way that mixed race came about was I was at a conference in twenty fourteen. It was a conference that was put on by Cosmopolitan magazine. It was like their first in-person conference. They had a killer lineup of speakers, including Sara Blakely. She was actually the keynote. She founded Spanx. And I was just sitting there listening to it all. And I was like, wow, this content is really great. But my my purpose for going to that, like spending my own personal money and going to that was to meet people in different industries. I was very well connected and like nightlife events, you know, spirits, that kind of deal. But I wanted more connections and like beauty and fashion. And so when it came time to network, the event organizers said go up to someone with the same color dot on their nametag as you. And I found that to be so awkward because it was an all women's conference mostly. And women inexplicably put their name tag on their boobs like that's what we put it in you like you like go up to a woman that you don't know. And you you look you to take a close look at her breast area and then you say, I'm blue, you're blue. Let's talk about it. That's so weird. And at the time I was living in New York, I was too cool for school. And I was like, well, I'm not doing that. So I went to lunch by myself, which is completely normal. And I, you know, I caught up on the news and whatever. But when I was speaking to my mom about that later, she was asking about my experience and I told her and she was like, well, what a waste of money. She was like, wasn't your purpose to go there and network? And I said, Yeah, but it was awkward. And my mom and I had this conversation that kind of turned into like a four hour conversation. And by the end of it, we had come up with a very primitive idea for what would be mixture. [00:11:25][119.6]
[00:11:26] Yeah, and I love that because I think that I have not spoken with anyone who isn't kind of filled with, you know, this I go to huge conferences and things like that, usually with the sole purpose of interviewing people. For mining company, and even I sometimes have this moment and the idea that you're given Dotts or I think it was the early movement of we're at a conference to socialize and not even just to market oneself, but just to, like, connect with people. And people just get really shy, even very loquacious people in those events. You know, we want our own circle to talk to you and things like that. So how long was it before that kind of fortuitous conversation with your mom until you launched? [00:12:14][48.0]
[00:12:16] So it was actually very quickly, because on the same night, my mom had had an experience as well that kind of just challenged her thoughts about how do people actually connect with one another while they're there. And so that basically we came up with the idea on November 11th of twenty fourteen, continued to talk about it between November and December when I came home for the holidays that December of twenty fourteen, I was actually trying to be at home and rest. I was I was going to see my parents who lived in Nashville, Tennessee at the time, and I was like trying to chill because for me the top of the year is that like with the way my career was, because right off the bat I was going to go to the Sundance Film Festival. After that, I would go to Grammys and after that I would go to Oscars to do activations. So the top of the year was crazy. And while I was home, my mom and I, we were really grinding out like, first of all, what is an app? How do you get one produced? Like, we had no tech background whatsoever, but we tell entrepreneurs all the time, Google will tell you everything you need to know. You need to be willing to spend the time to find it. So that's what we did. We figured everything out via the University of Google. Yeah. And my mom, we we realized while I was home that the CEF, which is the Consumer Electronics Show, it was happening in January of twenty fifteen. That's probably the biggest tech conference that's held in the US annually. It's in Vegas. It's huge. And so my mom actually went there solo because I was working and my mom happened to be on sabbatical at the time and she went there just to educate herself on technology because I would say both of us were very casual consumers of tech, like we had iPhones and stuff, but we were using them like bare minimum to text and whatnot, really not knowing anything about building the back end of software and all of that. So that was really the first step. My mom going there. And it's funny as the story goes, my mom was at this conference and you have to imagine this is twenty fifteen. This is pretty neat to us, to them, to there were no movements about people of color, women in tech, nothing like that. It just kind of was what it was. The status quo was if you go to a tech conference, 90 percent of the people there will be white males in their 20s, 30s. And so my mom kind of felt like a fish under water, out of water. You know, we are women of color. Obviously, my mom is a much older than I am. So she's in that age demographic, all of that. And so she was sitting at a table. She went to a table and there were two drinks on the table. My mom was like, well, that's odd. Like, who leaves drinks open on a table in twenty fifteen? So she just kind of sat at that table and then a bit later and she was kind of thinking to herself at that point I wish Meckstroth existed today because I feel so awkward. I don't know who to connect with. You're like no one here is really like me. And so later these two gentlemen, white guys, they come up and they're they're like in my mom's age group and they all start talking. And then after a while, my mom said to them, why did you come to this table of all of the tables? And the two guys say, well, those were our drinks. Actually, you're at our table. [00:15:27][190.9]
[00:15:30] And lot of people have been our app developers since twenty fifteen. Still, I love it. [00:15:36][6.1]
[00:15:37] It's such a shame. I can't even imagine in twenty fifteen just given who your mother was. [00:15:42][5.2]
[00:15:42] But the idea of being a novice and going to like this Mecca center for the industry just to educate yourself is like learning how to swim in the deepest part of the ocean. I mean, it's really daunting. [00:15:55][13.0]
[00:15:57] I mean, it is, but the thing about my mom that I love and I think I said this at where you and I actually met in person, if you're looking for a co-founder, try a woman over 40 because women over 40. Figure it out and they get stuff done. And I find them to be quite fearless. And so my mom even to go to CBS, she looked up the ticket cost to go to see but crazy like fourteen hundred dollars, something for a ticket to see if my mom was like well paid for two hundred dollars to go to the conference. And so she found the email address for one of the heads of CBS and she just called, emailed this person and just explained, hello, my name is Shrader. And I just came up with this idea and I'm really trying to come out to see what's going on. And it was funny because at the time my stepfather and I both were like laughing at her. We were like, just pay the money, just go whatever. And the person emailed her back and gave her a free ticket. And so it's just like all those things, it's like the willingness to ask and not be afraid of. Someone says no, because really, when you ask the likelihood of someone saying yes or at least opening a door, it's high. But you have to be vulnerable enough to put yourself out there for that. And I I'm my mom is so great at that, as I've learned from her so much in just watching her work. [00:17:14][76.9]
[00:17:15] Yeah, I agree with you. And there is such strength in that vulnerability as well. [00:17:19][4.1]
[00:17:19] You know, the shyness that kind of plagues a lot of at least a lot of the female entrepreneurs and industry experts and founders, seasoned people that have a reluctance to outsource or ask for help. It's there is there's a weakness in that as well as a drain of time and money. As far as founding it, it was you and your mom. Was there anyone else brought on or there's just the two of you cofounding or just the two of us cofounding it. [00:17:46][26.9]
[00:17:46] So for the longest time, actually, except for this past year, literally, Alex Rose was my mom, myself and our team and the dev team consisted of two gentlemen met in Vegas at the twenty fifteen seats convention. [00:18:00][14.2]
[00:18:02] So, yeah. So they're actually based in El Dorado Hills, California. Belrose is the name of the dev, our dev lead. I mean, for all intents and purposes, he's our interim CTO and the rest of our team is actually offshore. It's very interesting because in the digital age we've actually only met Bill like four or five times in person over the course of all of these years. But we're incredibly close to him, close to his family and all that kind of thing. Now, so close that like when he visited Nashville, he actually stayed at my family home. So it's just extraordinary what work you can get done with all of the tools we have at our disposal. Like I look at entrepreneurs like Sara Blakely, who did all of this like early two thousands. They didn't have all the software at their disposal. So I'm like, hats off to y'all like having to go to, like a library and stuff like that for us. [00:18:55][52.7]
[00:18:55] Absolutely. [00:18:55][0.0]
[00:18:55] Everything is everything is able to be done digitally, which is pretty awesome. [00:18:59][3.8]
[00:19:00] It is. Entrepreneurship has really changed. It's a global environment if you're willing to, as you and you and your mother did, like jump in and really suss it out. [00:19:09][9.3]
[00:19:10] And it's awesome because I think that really educating yourself before you do bring on a team, you know, knowing how all of the finances are working and your business doesn't mean you necessarily have to be the bookkeeper. Twenty four seven. But being naive to any of those facets is ludicrous in that I think there are a lot of founders out there of tech companies that came up with the idea and have nothing about ideas about their backend. They couldn't tell you how things are being written or why. So I think it's awesome that you guys kind of started with that. And I'm wondering. So give us can you give us an overview of what makes Troas is we have a little bit of the back story now. Can you tell us what it is? [00:19:49][38.8]
[00:19:50] Yes, so one of my favorite ways to explain next Rose today, and this was an evolution, of course. So I look at a company like Slaínte and of course, Black is the messaging app that is used at so many different organizations today. And what I think is interesting about black is they're not selling messaging. That's not what they're selling. They are selling being very efficient. They're they're they're selling efficiency and being and connecting organizations, empowering and empowering employees to share information quickly in a way that is beautiful and graceful and all that. That's what Kodak is selling. Similarly, McShera is when you look at it, it is a tool that takes people from their phone to face to face in real time, that increases engagement and collects data. And so what I'm telling you is the potential of a more connected workforce, a workforce where synergies are uncovered, a workforce where there is open dialog, that sort of thing. So I am really a proactive tool across our main verticals, which is enterprise and education. So the way mixture is worked and I think using the use case of college is a good one because most people can relate to high school, college, some sort of schooling. So at a certain point when you start school, there's like an orientation. And so our quickest ways to get into a university system is for mixture is to be used during freshman orientation. And the way that this works is students will come into one of their orientation sessions. They will launch the next growth app and they get a nice branded feel. It feels like the app belongs to the school. They joined the mix, as we call it, and they quickly fill out a virtual name tab, which is name, email address and snapping a selfie. They then answer questions inside of the app that have been customized by the university ahead of time. And this is really where the magic of mixture of lies, those 10 questions can be anything that the university wants. So if they ask very smart questions, they are able to derive very valuable data. And I'll give an example of that in a moment. So the student does that and it takes them about students are fast so that that whole thing might take them two minutes and when they're done, they reach a countdown clock. And so while they're going through whatever this orientation session is about, when it's time for them to get together and network, let's say all the students at the same time will get a push notification to their phone. It will then show them of the students there who they've been matched with, where they're going to meet that group of people right then. So then all the students get up, they go to their grouping, and then this magical phenomenon happens. The volume in the room increases significantly because you have all these connections happening all at once. I love seeing it every time it happens. And then all of the data that's been collected from those surveys, the questions that were asked inside of the app, it is immediately available to the school so they can see exactly what there's, who their students are and what they care about instead of what they think. So some of the questions that our universities will ask are things like, I picked this school because of what they give them five answers. One of the schools we work with, it was overwhelmingly that students pick the school because of career opportunities postgrad. That's great information that that school can share with their career services department, like, wow, this is something that's really attracting students here. And here's the data that supports that. We should pour more money here or whatever the case is. But the whole thing with this is mixed. Rose is a tool that connects students on campus. We know that when students feel connected on campus and this is really exactly the same for employees, they're more likely to progress, retain and graduate and schools that can make data based decisions they perform better. So mistruth is a win win like that. So we have really moved networking into the digital age where it belongs right now. This kind of work is still done by hand. Students are getting put into groups for orientation, for class, whatever, and it's kind of done in an antiquated way. You know, you take a alphabetized list of students and count off by ten and that's it. And we knew that there was a smarter way to go about doing this, because when you can give people just one piece of familiarity with one another, they're just more likely to connect in. The last thing I'll say, Rose, is the first. Let's take this case I'm about to say so mistruth is the difference between this and that with what I'm about to say. So imagine that you are a woman and you're in a parking garage and it's late at night and you have to take an elevator. You get on the elevator and the doors open. And let's say that there's like a big burly man in there. He's all like, tatted up and he's kind of intimidating for you. So if I got on that elevator, I would get on it. I would turn around it. I'd be like, please don't let anything happen to me. However, if that same scenario happens and the elevator doors open and it's that same guy, but he have the Cleveland Cavaliers. [00:24:49][298.7]
[00:24:50] Head on, I'm going to be like, yo, what's up? How are you? [00:24:53][3.5]
[00:24:54] Because now we have we have something in common. We have a tie that binds it changes that whole situation. That is literally what mixture of dust plus data. [00:25:04][9.7]
[00:25:04] I like that. I like that in the metaphor. I'm wondering and analogy, do you do you have to it with a tool like this? [00:25:13][8.4]
[00:25:13] One of my my first thoughts as as a founder is you. There's certain genres or industries where you have to kind of come at the education component of the pitch more heavily than others. You know, you don't have to pitch a deodorant as much as you would say like this tool because it's so useful. But the utility of it, because it's boundless, feels like do you guys have to sit down and coach universities or schools in how to develop their question composition so that they can glean pieces of useful information? Do you do you do any of that kind of preemptive education before introducing mixtures to universities? [00:25:53][40.1]
[00:25:55] I would say our our customer success is really, really in depth with it, because we recognize that in implementing a tool like make sure you're going to ask people, be it students, employees, whatever, you're going to ask them to rethink the way that they have done something for a long time. So it's going to be a bit of buying and whatnot. But what we find is after they run, that first makes people lean into the opportunity because they were usually delighted that they have met someone who is quote unquote like them for whatever reason. So so that I would say for sure. But the other thing is we and this is something that happens over time. As an entrepreneur, you realize that you cannot boil the ocean. And so you really have to get narrow on who your customer is. So when I'm looking at schools, I am looking at schools on the extreme ends of the bell curve. So schools that come to us, it could be schools that have just experienced a crises like where perhaps students have done something in blackface or something like that. Then they're reaching out to us so they can put in DNA programing into the school. So that's one extreme case. Then on the other extreme, I have schools that are little, probably unlike the Princeton Review's most innovative campuses, like we've worked with Georgia Tech, we've worked with Ole Miss, we've worked with schools in Alabama. Those schools are schools that are just always looking for what's next. They're always thinking, how can we improve from where we are? And with those schools, they're my favorite kind of customer because there's very little explanation I have to do with mixed race. They understand the power of engagement. They understand that when you have a student that's engaged on campus, they will progress to retain and graduate. So I don't really have to do like a very light list for me that let's say and then all those schools that kind of fall in between, like they'll trickle into me, like as they're hearing about mixed growth. But those are the ones that we're actively going after. I'm looking for those schools on either end of that bell curve. [00:27:59][123.7]
[00:28:00] Yeah, absolutely. So it sounds like the the areas and the populations that you guys are mainly looking at are having the beginning. [00:28:08][8.0]
[00:28:08] Our universities, do you see with this this round of funding or the next do you see branching out into other industries or are you going to stay tight with the kind of academics university system? [00:28:20][11.6]
[00:28:21] So actually, academics, I would say, is our second largest market. Our first largest market is actually enterprises. So enterprises with five hundred or more employees, that is a huge, sweet spot for us because those human resources folks understand that when you increase in engagement points within the enterprise, that really hits bottom line profitability, because the more positive your employees feel about their workplace, they're more productive, there's less absenteeism, safety incidents go down, et cetera, and so on. All those factors lead to profitability. [00:28:57][36.2]
[00:28:58] So looking at big enterprises like we've done work from everybody from Deloitte to Alabama Power, for example. So in inside of those enterprises, our easiest entry point, I would definitely say, is somewhere in H.R., but certainly diversity, inclusion, if they have a median and US department inside of the enterprise, huge hit there, because there we can do everything from when you have like a meeting where you have paid the money as the enterprise to bring in your employees from north, south, east and west. What we know happens like sociology back this up is if you bring in employees from all areas of the country, they will automatically segregate themselves like people from the west. We'll see what the W e will say with E, and that's not what you want. You really need those people to be mixed up. So, again, that synergy becomes unlocked. So mixture helps there. When you're talking about diversity, inclusion programing, they say if you build it, they will come. I'm like one hundred percent, they'll come, but they will not network. And so that's where mixed growth plays a key role in this. And another one of our customers favorite use cases is using the extras to facilitate luncheon or dinner seating because we're sending a set number of people to a set location. So we're seating chart become a hot mess because somebody is trying to do that by hand. Make sure we can do that in seconds. [00:30:19][80.3]
[00:30:19] Yeah, clever. Sounds like a good wedding. [00:30:22][2.9]
[00:30:24] People have reached out to us for wedding. [00:30:26][1.5]
[00:30:26] I was just going to say I like the utility is is going to be just exponential. You know, there's just so many social environments that this can be kind of tweaked and applied to. [00:30:36][10.1]
[00:30:37] What do you guys looking out for the next three years from scaling and expansion? I'm speaking of like reaching into other industries and things like that. What do you foresee on your horizon? [00:30:46][8.5]
[00:30:47] Sure. So I think as we look so realistically, 20, 19 has been the first year of real business because at the end of twenty eighteen our business, we were able to complete a massive round of precede funding, just over a million dollars, which was exciting. At that point. My mother and I became the thirty seven thousand thirty eight black female to ever raise a million dollars or more for a startup in the US, which that number makes me cringe because like how in the world are we still in double digits? Go crazy. So I'm proud of that. And it also makes me cringe. But after raising that money, basically what we were able to do is take a business that was totally working in concept, but it wasn't really functioning like a business. Mitros was built on hustle and it was running out of hustle and we had to go back and put process where there was none. So today there are processes behind how mix growth is working and our business has continued to grow. Over the course of this year, we're eyeing opening another round of funding as we look to Q1 one in the new year here. And that is again, so we can pour some more gasoline on what we know is working in the next year. But I mean, realistically, as I look forward, there are enhancements to the software that are coming, including we are currently at best, mixed growth is both on iPhone and Android. But in future, we also want to have a Web version of Mix Road. So that will not require a download. Specifically, we're working with our customers who are doing one off events like conferences and this kind of thing that include that continues to reduce friction for the product. [00:32:26][99.2]
[00:32:27] So those sorts of things, but also bringing on our team members full time, that is something we will do with this next round of funding. We were very smart, I would say, with this million dollars, with my mom having an H.R. background. I don't know that I mentioned that my mom is a twenty five year plus veteran in human resources. She has been working for a Fortune five and one hundred companies over the course of her career. [00:32:51][23.1]
[00:32:51] She led a global HRR transformation for like over one hundred thousand employees. So she's no joke. And so she HRR is something that's kind of forgotten in the startup world because everybody is like the wild, wild west out there. But our company is different because my mom had that expertize. So most of the people working with us today, like our team, they are ten, ninety nine employees. With this next round of funding, we'll look to bring them on full time because we have an awesome team that we built in Birmingham and also some of our team members are in California as well. So just looking to scale the team that way. But then to your point, all these other markets, the thing about startups specifically, when you're in the early stage, the growth stage, you really have to be narrow. [00:33:34][43.1]
[00:33:35] You have to be narrow because you only have so much money and the world is really big and you can't try to chase everyone down. But with further scale, like you said, the wedding industry, that becomes a thing. Another place we love is like the travel industry. If you look at like cruise ships and things like that, wouldn't it be great before you got on a cruise ship to be able to know, is there another family on this boat like mine, like to have kids that will get off at the port, stop that we can hang out with? I find that like when you're on a vacation like that, people meet their favorite people, like the night before the vacation is over. And it's like, where were you this whole time? And the reason why these vacation brands will buy into that is the more engaged someone is on your property, the more money they're spending. [00:34:18][43.2]
[00:34:19] Yeah, absolutely. And the happier the experience, the more likely is the customer ship, all of those good things, right? [00:34:25][5.8]
[00:34:26] That's right. So, you know. [00:34:27][1.4]
[00:34:30] I think that I'm wondering, like seeing how much and how well you guys have done things, it feels like you and your mother have before you even launched this enterprise, you did things so well, like even this last concept of staying lean and things of that nature. It's like the top 15 pieces of advice that the best thing a young startup could do. Did you guys have any knowledge about a startup? I mean, you said you were kind of green in the tech world, but in startups in general, had you or your mom, either one of you started up a business? Never. [00:35:04][34.1]
[00:35:05] And we actually have like everyone in our family is. And I'm going to talk about my mom's side of the family. Like all her siblings, they went to college like my grandparents. They were like, you all need to go to college. They paid for college for everybody. And you guys need to get jobs and you need to work yourself up to those jobs to go as far as you can. That was the goal in our immediate generation of family. We don't have someone who just opened a restaurant or anything like that, like there is no entrepreneurship there. And so my mom and I are really the first to do it. What's amazing is some of my mom's siblings have gotten behind us as early stage investors and that sort of thing. So that's been awesome. But my mom and I, I would say, are really pioneers there. And so everything that we've learned is come from our friends and family. Investors are awesome. Our friends and family investors, they were really betting on the jockey opposed to the horse. I used to tell them, OK, that's great. But I do believe we're riding Seabiscuit, so we should be all right. So, you know, they they they help our friends and family investors. We were able to raise two hundred thousand dollars with them at a time when on average, black female starting a business, we're only raising thirty six thousand dollars, which is insane to me because comparatively a white male at the same stage was raising one point three million. And so that in itself was extraordinary. So although we didn't have that expertize right there at our fingertips, we did have quite a network of people who who gave us their expertize and different things, like one of my mom's best friends is a CFO. So she advised us early on on things. So we have just been really, I would say, blessed in that way to have these people in our circles who were there early on to fill in the gaps of things we didn't know. I mean, the thing about being a founder is you have to recognize really quick, you have to hire other people who are smarter than you in different areas. [00:37:09][123.7]
[00:37:09] Yeah, absolutely. Or to your peril. Right. I mean, you better find someone who's doing it better than you could otherwise. [00:37:17][8.0]
[00:37:19] It's yeah, I agree to your detriment. You guys have amazing gut checks. The issue needs to be like ironclad because it sounds like there is a lot of. But even to know who to ask. There's a lot of I'm not even sure who to ask and then to look through one's personal Rolodex and find out that you have experts within your own layer and things like that. I think it's it's just a phenomenal example of being able to self educate and then really reach out and ask the right questions and hire the right people. So given that and given that you guys are kind of this this wonderful example of how to do things right, if someone came up to you tomorrow, a woman or a non binary individual and said, listen, I'm going to I've had this background in communications and publications, I was this intern to this really incredible sports star. I've done the big city thing and I'm going to launch my own startup. I have this idea for a texting. I'm going to do it with a family member. What are the top three pieces of advice you would give that individual today? [00:38:19][60.9]
[00:38:21] The and let me just be super clear, there have been potholes and road blocks and all the things go like this journey hasn't been without its many tears. Many I suffered from a bout of depression during this, which I as soon as we saw those things, like presenting itself, like I got checked. I think that's so important to say because people don't talk about that sort of thing enough in this journey. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer over the course of this journey. And I promise you, it's the way she approached breast cancer. The reason that Mr. Rose is still here today, because at that point I was like, you know what, I think I'm good. I'm ready to, like, throw in the towel. [00:38:58][36.6]
[00:38:59] So, yeah. [00:38:59][0.6]
[00:39:01] So I think that's very important. But thinking about advice that I would give someone, I mean, one of the big things is find your spot in Nashville for us wasn't the best market for us to be. And when we moved to Birmingham, our business completely changed. So you have to as an entrepreneur or one of your first jobs is finding an ecosystem that gets you support to feels you go there and conquer. So that's one to I would say just start. People will come up with all sorts of reasons why they cannot do something. Figure out a reason to just start whatever that means for you. Is it doing the research to get yourself started? Is it filing for Licenciado again? Have to boil the ocean when you're starting a business, take those steps to get you to where you're going. And then I do think it's really do not people are going to have all kinds of opinions where you like people have give us the craziest advice before really take heed to the opinions of those who are up with you in the midnight hour. Like, don't put so much weight into those people who just come in. They're kind of looky loos and give nonsensical advice. [00:40:07][65.9]
[00:40:09] Yeah, absolutely. [00:40:09][0.6]
[00:40:11] I love those three pieces. Find your spot, just start and take heed to those that are truly invested in you. That's fantastic. [00:40:19][8.5]
[00:40:21] We are out of time, I wish we could talk more, and I did want to say that I don't believe that any entrepreneurial journey is without incredible pain and suffering. And I think that what you guys have done on paper and some of the story points out that even while you can kind of trudge through, people love to talk about the startup journey. And at the end of it is sometimes when you go to these conferences where you hear the testimonials, you think, why would anyone do that? But every every single person has talked about starvation and bankruptcy and all sorts of crazy things. And that it's not that it's not without more. But I think that there is also, you know, there's a rush from successes that we easily can forget to tell when we tell our story. And so I like that you're able to kind of articulate those in and throughout what sounds like has been an incredibly trying launch of the company. I think that having those to work in connection with each other makes it reality. [00:41:25][63.8]
[00:41:26] Right? It makes those real life. [00:41:28][2.3]
[00:41:30] And it absolutely does. You know, we've been able to see and do so many extraordinary things, I think having this partnership with my mom has been cool because, you know, we were really close anyway. I mean, close to the fact that, like, sometimes I would talk to her like several times a day when I was in New York and she was in Nashville. But this is like a different kind of close because it's it's really hard as an entrepreneur to, like, try to explain this journey to someone who's not in it with you. And so I love that whatever happens, good or bad, whatever, in the middle of my mom, she's usually right there experiencing it with me and vice versa. [00:42:05][35.0]
[00:42:06] Absolutely. Well, I want to say thank you so much to meeting with us today, Ashlee. It's actually I mean, she is the co-founder and president at Mastro's. [00:42:14][8.0]
[00:42:15] You can locate her at mixed TROs dot com. And thank you so much, Ashlee. And happy wishes for your new year. I'm going to circle back around and see if I can get you and your mom on a podcast in the future with 20, 20. [00:42:27][12.3]
[00:42:28] Sounds like a plan to me. Thank you so much for having me on. [00:42:31][2.6]
[00:42:31] Absolutely. And for everyone listening, thank you for giving us your time. And until we speak again, remember to always bet on yourself, Slainte. [00:42:31][0.0]
[2466.8]
Chatting with Kate Schnetzer; Award-Winning Video Content Producer & Top 100 Marketer
Speaking with Kasey Jones; Thought Leadership Coach & Growth Strategist
Talking with Nina Purewal; Author & Founder
Talking with Heather Hansen; Communications Consultant, Trial Attorney & Author
Speaking with Kasey Kitchen; Founder & CEO of Marque Public Relations
Chatting with Erin Ardleigh; Founder and President of Dynama Insurance
Speaking with Michaële Antoine; Creator & Founder of Curios
Talking with Sarah Ordo; Entrepreneur & Owner of 24 Luxe Hair and Makeup in Detroit
Chatting with Sayu Bhojwani; Advocate, Author, & Political Scientist
Speaking with Kim Woods; MBA & Spiritual Consultant
Talking with Crys Noell; Financial Expert and Founder of T&T LLC
Speaking with Sonya Barlow; Founder of Like-Minded females Network
Chatting with Tamsin Napier-Munn; Speaker, Facilitator, and Host; Founder and CEO of Raw Talks Academy
Sitting Down With Jessika Noda; Founder of Jiyubox, a clean beauty subscription box and online shop
Speaking with Susan Hunt Stevens; Founder & CEO of WeSpire
Talking with Laura Khalil; Speaker, Teacher, & Podcast Host of Podcast titled Brave by Design
Chatting with Lauren Smith; Event Planner & Founder of Modern Collective
Talking with Renata Joy; Founder, Nutrition Expert, and Personal Trainer
Speaking with Sheena Russell; Founder and CEO of Made with Local
Speaking With Ariel Garten; Founder of Muse: a tech startup that offers post-meditation brain feedback
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Commercial Edge: Unleash the Power of People
The emPOWERed Half Hour
Aligned Money Show
Gorse Culture PODcast : The H.R. Detective Agency!
HCI Leadership Revolution
The Ramsey Show
Planet Money