Deep Dive with Fran Hauser

Intro: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. Each day we welcome transformational executives to share their real- world experiences and practical advice about scaling yourself, your team, and your business.

Matt Blumberg: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. I'm Matt Blumberg, Co- founder and CEO of Bolster, and I am here today to go in deep with Fran Hauser. Fran is a longtime friend of mine. She and I were on an executive team together a very long time ago, I won't say how long. Fran is an author, she is a keynote speaker, she's a startup investor, and CEO advisor, she's a longtime executive. She is passionate about leveling the playing field for women, and I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. Welcome, Fran.

Fran Hauser: Hi, Matt, it's so great to be here.

Matt Blumberg: I would love for you to start with just a couple of minutes of the arc of your career because your career is so interesting to me. You started out as an accountant, a division controller at Coca- Cola, pivot to tech, pivot to investing, and advising, and speaking, and writing. It feels like you've done it all. So I'd love for you to sort of walk through a couple of highlights and then we can talk about what you're doing now.

Fran Hauser: So many pivots and a very long career. I do want to say though, I started out in accounting because when I was younger I was basically the bookkeeper for my dad and my mom. They are both Italian immigrants. My dad's a stone mason, my mom is a tailor, and I was doing invoicing for my dad's business when I was in first grade. Accounting is literally-

Matt Blumberg: In first grade?

Fran Hauser: In first grade, no joke. First grade I was doing invoices.

Matt Blumberg: His invoices went out with crayon.

Fran Hauser: Invoices went out with crayon. Literally, it's all I knew. I grew up in this immigrant family. First in my family to go to college. I had no network, I had no mentors so I just had to figure it out on my own. I'm like, " All right, I'll do accounting that's what I know." I have to say, starting out in public accounting and then going to work for Coca- Cola, and I ended up running the finance division for the New York office, it's so great that I had that foundation and that background because I think it just made me a much stronger business person. Just the fact that I know the ins and outs of financials and cash flow.

Matt Blumberg: Absolutely.

Fran Hauser: Right?

Matt Blumberg: Anytime we're advising a CEO who's doing a board search or an executive search we say, " One of the things is you have to hire a good corporate athlete." And it doesn't matter what function the person's in, you have to be able to read a P& L and a balance sheet.

Fran Hauser: I think it also just gave me more credibility later on in my career when I was in more general management roles whether it was Moviefone, AOL, Time Inc. where I was running these large groups and we were asking for money, we were asking for investment to launch people. com, to launch apps on the iPhone. When I was talking to the CFO or the CEO or chief legal officer, they knew that I had that background, I wasn't just the creative person totally.

Matt Blumberg: Now, can I ask you the charged question around that which is, do you think it was extra helpful because you were a woman?

Fran Hauser: Do I think it was extra helpful because I was a woman?

Matt Blumberg: Right. I mean, you grew up in the executive ranks at a time when it was still a little difficult. I mean, it's still difficult today but even more difficult.

Fran Hauser: Yes, yes. It was definitely difficult. I feel like the generation that was ahead of me it was... They were just much more competitive. I feel like women in that generation were much more competitive because there were fewer positions available at the top. Whereas I feel like my generation it got a little bit easier. And now, of course, for the next generations it's even easier. I feel like we're more collaborative, we're more supportive of each other, we're more helpful. I think what helped me get the investment dollars was my financial acumen, truthfully, and my leadership style. And that's a lot of what I write about in The Myth of the Nice Girl. The fact that I've always brought kindness, and warmth, and compassion to work and that really allowed me to develop strong relationships with people. But I've never been a pushover or a people pleaser, right? So the whole idea of that book is you can be both nice and strong, and that has been my leadership style. And I think that that also really helped me.

Matt Blumberg: All right, so you're working at Coke, you're a division controller, you're head of accounting at the New York office. You then joined Moviefone where you and I were on the executive team together. And then after Moviefone got acquired by AOL what were your few steps within the AOL, Time Warner, Time empire?

Fran Hauser: Which by the way, working with you at Moviefone, Matt... I mean, the fact that we went through that whole due diligence process together when AOL was acquiring us, I mean, that was an incredible experience I think.

Matt Blumberg: It was.

Fran Hauser: I really think about that as one of the highlights of my career.

Matt Blumberg: That was a crazy couple of months.

Fran Hauser: A crazy couple of months but really amazing. After Moviefone was acquired by AOL, and then AOL and Time Warner merged, and Time Inc. was one of the Time Warner divisions, they were looking for someone to be a liaison between the AOL division and the Time Inc. division because the senior management teams could barely speak to each other. They just did not get along.

Matt Blumberg: They didn't speak the same language.

Fran Hauser: They didn't speak the same language at all. They were looking for somebody to go over and really help bring the two divisions together, create products using AOL's tech and Time Inc.'s content. And that's the role that I moved into. And I have to say, it was a really scary move for me because I was so in awe of all of those brands of Time, and Fortune, and People. These are brands that I grew up with. The idea that I was going to be working with these brands. I actually was very nervous about going for that job. It took a male colleague of mine, Mark Golin to say, " You're perfect for this job." I was so focused on the fact that I didn't have magazine publishing experience. And he was like" But you've got the digital experience, and you're great at building bridges, and you're creative," and blah blah. He was a great ally for me at that time. And I'm so glad I went for that job because I ended up working there for 10 years.

Matt Blumberg: You ended up running People, right?

Fran Hauser: So I ended up running the digital division of People, and then ultimately I ran digital for the whole company, for all those brands. And it was fun because I was the innovator. I was the one that was focusing on how do we take all of this incredible content and create digital products using that content whether it was websites or apps or when the iPad came out. Really thinking about how does this content manifest itself in a digital world? And it was a lot of convincing People because there were a lot of legacy print people that didn't want to break news on people. com they wanted to wait until the magazine came out, right? It was a lot of convincing people that the internet was here to stay and here's some different ways that we could respond to that. It was just such an exciting time.

Matt Blumberg: For sure. Okay. You finish up your many years at Moviefone, Time Warner, AOL, Time, and you became a venture capitalist.

Fran Hauser: That really came from the fact that I realized the thing that I loved the most about my job at Time Inc., towards the end, was that I spent a lot of time meeting the startup founders because I was running digital. I was meeting with the Rent the Runway founders and Foursquare, and Flipboard, and all of these digital platforms. The Skim. I was meeting with them from the standpoint of, are there ways for us to partner. But ultimately what ended up happening was I ended up becoming an informal advisor to a lot of these founders and in some cases a formal advisor. One day I had coffee with Soraya Darabi. I don't know if you know Soraya. Soraya was the first social media person at the New York Times. And then she went on to found a company and now she's a VC, she runs a fund called Trail Mix Ventures. And at the time she was a founder and she said to me... She said, " Fran, I have so many female friends in New York City who want to launch businesses but when they look up they don't see any female investors, advisors, or mentors, and you would be perfect for this. This is what you should be doing next." And it was such a powerful, impactful conversation. And that's also really when I learned that only 2% of funding goes to women. So I thought, " Wow, this is something" ... " Maybe I could start doing this on the side at Time Inc. just to see if I enjoy it and if I'm good at it," and that's what I did. I did that for a couple years and I had to run every investment I made by corporate, of course.

Matt Blumberg: That must not have been easy.

Fran Hauser: No. And I'll tell you the one that got away was I would've been one of the first investors in Rent The Runway but our chief legal council was worried that it would be a conflict with InStyle. What If InStyle wanted to acquire Rent The Runway someday, yada, yada? Doing that as a side hustle I think was a really smart way for me to realize that okay, I really like this. And my kids were young, they were three years old, 18 months old, so I thought what if I go off and I do this? This is something that I can do on my own. I'd be running my own practice, I'd have the flexibility. So I left in 2014, it's been almost 10 years, and I've invested in over 30 female- founded companies at this point. And I'm a happy investor in a few VC funds like yours too, I want to say. So no, it's been an incredible experience and it also gave me the capacity and the bandwidth to write my books. I'd always wanted to be an author but it was hard for me to do that while I was at Time.

Matt Blumberg: It's hard, it's definitely hard. Let me ask you a question before we talk about your books. Did you ever get the itch to be an entrepreneur?

Fran Hauser: Yes, many times. It's funny because in a way now I feel like I am an entrepreneur.

Matt Blumberg: I mean, you are, right? Right. You started investing on your own, you're an author, but did you ever get the itch to start a company?

Fran Hauser: To start a company.

Matt Blumberg: A VC backed company?

Fran Hauser: Yes, yes. I still do. Every once in a while but it's got to be the right product, and it needs to be something that is really scalable. Right before COVID I wanted to open up a bookstore, the opposite of scalable. You know what I mean? That would've been more so... Something that I'd be doing for the community.

Matt Blumberg: I don't know, Jeff Bezos wanted to open a bookstore too, he found it pretty scalable.

Fran Hauser: There you go. So you never know. It could still happen who knows? Who knows, Matt?

Matt Blumberg: What do you love most about what you do, right? You do a bunch of things, right? You're investing, advising, you're writing, you're speaking. What gets you jumping out of bed in the morning?

Fran Hauser: I mean, I have to say I love what I do, I really honestly do. I look forward to sitting at my desk and working whether it's writing my newsletter or helping a founder who's really stuck and struggling. Later this afternoon I'm doing a talk for the women in the Air Force.

Matt Blumberg: Wow.

Fran Hauser: I know. Matt, I've done over 200 talks since The Myth of The Nice Girl came out five years ago. And that was unexpected, I didn't think that that book would lead to a speaking practice. What I really love about my career and my work right now is this sort of multi- hyphenate aspect to it. The fact that I can decide who I want to work with, what projects I want to work on, what gets me excited. I have to say, over the last couple of years, the thing that's really been getting me excited is helping aspiring authors launch their books. So that's something that I've been doing more of, this non- fiction book development coaching.

Matt Blumberg: Good for you. Because usually when people ask me for advice about writing books and I tell them not to do it.

Fran Hauser: I know. I mean, you know this, you know this as an author, it takes so much discipline. And that's why I find 95% of people end up not doing it once they realize how much goes into it.

Matt Blumberg: So I would love to ask you about your second book. So you talked a little bit already about The Myth of the Nice Girl which is an amazing book. But there are many things that are great about that but there's some things that are even more interesting about your second book. First of all, because it's not a book book it's a workbook. Second of all, you did it on your own, you didn't go back to a publisher. Talk a little bit about that. First of all, talk about what it is.

Fran Hauser: So the book, it's a guided workbook for women who are feeling stuck or maybe they're in transition or they just want to love their career a little bit more, it's just not working for them. And the idea really came to me during COVID. I remember reading an article about how many millions of women were leaving the workforce and how they were feeling burnt out. And I thought, " Gosh, it would be so great to create a beautiful guided workbook that could be helpful to these women." And I wanted to get it out quickly like in a year which is why I did not go the traditional publishing route. I worked with a hybrid publisher, I worked with a collective book studio.

Matt Blumberg: What is that? What does a hybrid publisher mean?

Fran Hauser: Basically, the way that it works is you're a partner with them so you're investing in the book. With the traditional publisher, they pay you, they pay you in advance, right, and then you get royalties. With a hybrid publisher, you're both investing in this together. And then as an author you own the IP and you're getting 50%, 60% of the profits as opposed to-

Matt Blumberg: As opposed to 10 or 15 or 20, right?

Fran Hauser: Going back to your comment about being an entrepreneur. That's why I feel like with this book it is very entrepreneurial. But when I met Angela Engel, who runs The Collective Book Studio, I said to her, " Can we do this in a year? Could we get this out?" She's like" If you could write it in six weeks we can get it out." I'm like" Okay." So if I had gone the traditional publishing, route, Matt, you know, it would've been years. Years, years, years. And I just felt like the topic was so timely and so important. And it's been cool because now I own all the illustrations in the book. Whether it's merch or I might do a guided like a journal, more of a journal- type companion piece to this, it's very easy to do when you own the IP.

Matt Blumberg: For sure. What are a couple of things that are in it? The concept of a workbook. Walk us through, walk me through. What are one or two things that the workbook guides its reader, its use... Do you call them readers or users?

Fran Hauser: I know. I know it's readers but you are really doing the book. It's a lot of exercises, it's writing prompts, it's very creative. One of the exercises that I really love is I ask the reader to basically look at their calendar for the last few months and pick out the meetings or the events that put a smile on their face. These are things that they really enjoyed doing. And then to dig a little deeper to understand what was it about that experience that was so fulfilling? Was it the skills that you were using? Was it the people that you were working with? Was it the type of problem you were solving? I feel like often we're in this autopilot mode and we're just doing, doing, doing as opposed to taking a step back and really reflecting on what's working for you in your current role and is there a way for you to do more of that? Kind of what I did at Time Inc. when I realized that I love meeting with startup founders. How can I do more of that?

Matt Blumberg: Reflection is such a powerful tool and powerful practice, and it's something that I think is a really hard discipline to just get embedded in your operating system.

Fran Hauser: Well, because it goes back to how do you find the time, right? It's making the time for it. And it's so critical. Even just to take a few minutes every day to reflect because I know how easy it is to just get into that autopilot mode, and go through your to- do list, and be checking things off. And you learn so much through reflecting.

Matt Blumberg: You certainly do. So you said you have 30 investments or more than 30 investments in female- led companies. What are a couple of challenges that you see that are sort of common to those founders, to those entrepreneurs which might also be common to male founders or male founders of color but might be more scoped to female founders who are trying to juggle family a little bit more?

Fran Hauser: Well, look, I think the top challenge always... I mean, this is what I've seen over the last 10 years is access to the right people, fundraising. They just have a much harder time getting that access which is why I feel like a lot of what I do is open doors and connect them with people who could be the right partners for them, the right investment partners. I think access for sure. The other one I see is burnout. It's what you said. The balancing and the managing of all of the things. Not building in that time to just take care of themselves. I can't tell you how much time I spent with founders asking them, are you sleeping? Are you getting enough sleep at night, right? You need to get your seven hours of sleep, you're going to be so much more productive versus being up until 1: 00 in the morning trying to get whatever it is done. I think that's another thing that I find myself talking to founders a lot about. And sometimes they need that nudge. And if they get it from an investor, I just think they're more likely to listen to it. Because it's me as an investor telling you no, you need to take some time to take care of yourself.

Matt Blumberg: No, right, because few people are going to give them that advice, right?

Fran Hauser: Right.

Matt Blumberg: They might get it at home or from a friend.

Fran Hauser: Yes. But when it's somebody who's invested in their business saying... Giving them permission to do it.

Matt Blumberg: Very powerful. All right, here's my last question for you. If you could go back and give six- year- old Fran some advice... I'm literally picturing you here sitting at a little white table getting your father's invoices out. If you could go back and give six- year- old Fran life advice, business advice, what would it be?

Fran Hauser: I was so shy as a child, and even I would say going into the early part of my career. I was always really afraid to speak up in meetings. And I talk about this a lot in The Myth of the Nice Girl. I always had this sort of imposter syndrome. It goes back to first generation to go to college, not having access to the right people when I was at that age, I think that really affected my confidence. It's something that when I talk to young girls today I always encourage them to raise their hand and to not worry about... Don't overthink what you're going to say because you want it to come out perfectly. Because that's what we do we ruminate. I swear it just happened, it just happened at a women's event that I spoke at last week. A room full of women, there were two men, and when it came time for Q& A the two men raised their hands right away. And my sister was in the audience and she literally said to me afterwards she goes, " Fran, I had a question that I wanted to ask but I was overthinking how to word it" and she never asked the question. So my advice would be don't overthink. It's okay. Speak from your heart, right, and it's going to be fine. People need to hear your voice.

Matt Blumberg: Cheryl Sandberg's seminal book, right, that kicked off a lot of the contemporary thinking around this. Lean in.

Fran Hauser: Lean in.

Matt Blumberg: Don't sit in the back row.

Fran Hauser: That's right. Raise your hand, speak up.

Matt Blumberg: Fran, thank you for being here. It's so inspiring to me every time I talk to you about the work you're doing and your philosophy, and how you're hopefully training dozens and dozens of new founders and entrepreneurs.

Fran Hauser: Thank you, Matt, so much I love chatting with you, you're the best.

Matt Blumberg: Talk to you later.

Fran Hauser: Thank you.