S2 E14: Harnessing Ridicule with Veronique Trang

Honey I Blew up the Business. We have a great interview today with Veronique Trang, the founder and CEO of Tell Me. The world's first podcasting platform by kids for kids. And Veronique has the most incredible story. This is a purpose led business which comes from her experiences as a child growing up in Paris. She now lives and is raising a family in London and in lockdown. Had the seed for this idea for this business. It's a very early stage business. It's got a product that's out there doing things and something I would recommend you get involved with because it's a fantastic mission and fantastic thing to gift to your children the power of being able to express themselves and communicate. A skill that really sets us on our path to success over the course of our careers. And we get into all that in today's podcast. Her story is really, I think, empowering and gives you some very practical tips to confronting things which might make you feel feel ridiculous in the moment. Something that we often feel. I felt when I blew my business up. I'm Dan Kirby. I'm the host of Honey I Blow up the Business. I felt ridiculous when I blew my business up. But I did turn it around after much blood, sweat and tears. So I don't want to go back there again. That's why I'm talking to Veronique and all my amazing guests on this podcast series so I can learn to help my business continue to thrive, but to help most importantly you with your business and your entrepreneurial path. Because as a tribe, a community of people working together, we can really help, help each other. And I'm trying to help you. So that's my purpose, my mission with this podcast. If you like that mission, please share it. Share it with your friends, share it with your colleagues, share it with the world. Give us a five star review, help us and our mission to help other founders become part of the community. Before I go into the interview, I want to recommend my business, the tech department, purely because they sponsor my podcast and indulge me on my mission to help other founders. Check them all out and without further ado, let's get into the podcast. Right, ready in three, two, one. Welcome to the podcast. Veronique Trang. Good to see you today. Good to see you too, Dan. Thanks so much for having me in your podcast. Oh, it's a real honor because not only are you on a podcast, my podcast, you are indeed the founder of a podcasting platform for children, which we will get into. Yeah, so we've. So I Thought as a fellow podcast aficionado that you are, you should come on my podcast and share what you've been up to. We'll invite you in our platform as well then. Yeah. Well, there you go. We can do it. So we're getting into this. If you've got. If you're into podcasting, if you've got children, you might be interested in what Veronique is up to. We're going to get into that. But before we sort of get into all of that, your story and what your business is up to and what challenges you're facing, you have a kind of interesting backstory to your com, your company. And one of the things I was kind of interested in reading about you was you. I read you grew up finding it hard to communicate effectively and with confidence. So why. Why was that? Why were you finding it hard to communicate? So, yeah, I was born in France, born in Paris, and my parents didn't speak French much. They immigrated to France, and I grew up in a household where Chinese was the first language. When I came to school, French was my. You know, I learned French at school. I didn't have enough opportunity, probably outside of school, to really structure my thinking, articulate my thoughts. And so I could remember. I can remember being in the classroom and not really being able to formulate my thoughts in a very clear way, so I'd rather not speak. So. And then, you know, it's a vicious circle to not have the chance to practice, and then feeling shy and not taking the opportunity to raise your hands in the classroom. So that sort of feeling stayed with me for quite some time, and I felt like this actually changed when. In my adult life, when I was forced to express myself at work. Okay, so you're. You're growing up in. In Paris, struggling to communicate, and you're sort of going into yourself, this vicious circle. Looking back on that now, because it feels like this is a very formative part of your view. What did you learn from. From that experience of being in this vicious circle in Paris? So I was not necessarily the. You know, I was very lively and I spoke a lot at home, but it's simply, you know, in the context, in the classroom, I just didn't have that confidence to. To speak up. And what I learned from that experience is when you're a child and you in that situation, you really just need the support. You need someone. You need a teacher or someone in your family to help you out, to take you out of that vicious circle. Sorry. Yes. If a teacher would have come to Me and, And, you know, see that I was struggling there to support me, things might have been different and things might have been easier for me. You know, I might have been able to learn these skills in a smaller group. You know, maybe I would have been sent to a drama class. You know, things. Things would have been different, I think. And yeah, so I'd definitely encourage parents who, who see some, you know, see their kids struggling to express themselves at a young age to really try and give them the opportunity to do this, whether it is to send them in a drama class or, you know, give them some more opportunity at home in the classroom, speak to teachers and see what's going on there, because this is something that stays with them for a long time and that can, you know, shutting them down from different opportunities. So then you say you stayed with you for a long time. So over what length of time did that stay with you? But that stayed with me for quite some time because, you know, at school you've got to present, you've got a, you've, you've got to, you learn these skills. Actually, you know, people tend to think that actually, oh, he's a good speaker. You know, that's kind of natural. He's a natural. He just had opportunity to actually do this many times, or she had the opportunity to present many times. She had speaking opportunities, more speaking opportunities at home. She was attending lots of debating at the dinner table at the dinner time, at dinner time. Yeah. Parents should simply make sure that their kids have that opportunity, have many opportunities actually to, to speak up, give their point of views, being asked to give an opinion, participate in the conversation. These are all very important. So, okay, so you kind of. And what sort of age you said you got to go, you had to at a certain point. So you were kind of in this little vicious circle of not communicating, not feeling confident to communicate, then being sort of trapped in this or this, this vicious circle, as you said. And there are ways that any parents, I'm a parent, but like, listening can kind of help nurture that. And I guess like any kind of skill or muscle, you got to work it and communication skills and, and so what, what BC at one point you said you had to. What age you went. This is when you went to the world of work. So, so you're kind of in the school system. And what, when did you, when did you start working then? So look, I, I remember this moment. It was very painful. I, I was not, you know, I was a good student. I went to business school. My English wasn't too bad compared to my other, my peers. I came to London. First job at EY started at Ernst and Young. It's a consultancy. You know, most, most graduates in the program in my, in my, in. You know, the juniors were all from Oxford, Cambridge, right. I come from France, from a business school. Came to London. English is my second language. I have the fear of speaking in public. And I'm here with a bunch of young, active, so active young professionals who are maybe a year or two younger than me and have that immense confidence. That's how I saw that at that time it was really overwhelming. And I remember that first day when they introduced me to the team. There were about 30 people in the room and they asked me to introduce myself. So I tried to do it in the best English I could. And then the partner started to make a joke. I just didn't understand the joke. I was there. Ah, what do you say, Barrel? So yeah, it was an awkward moment that very first day. And to be honest with you, I think I came out of that circle because I just didn't have the choice. You know, it's either I show what I can do and I take credit for the work I do, or I'm out, you know, or I'm out. I had to learn. I probably had to learn, you know, a lot harder than most people just because I came from so far simply how to get ready for a presentation, how do you build up a narrative, how do you sell. And this skill set I learned from observing others, making many, many, many, many mistakes. Had so many awkward moments in my career, honestly, so many awkward moments where I felt and I probably looked very ridiculous and you know, I ended up learning to not feel, you know, to not be too impacted by shame. That's really interesting. So could you give us an example of where you're one of these blow ups of your communication? Oh my gosh, yes. I think many times in a group, you know, when we had like a group meeting, I was always the quietest one. I just didn't. I wasn't able to actually share my thoughts. Maybe that's because I couldn't. I didn't know when was the right time. I didn't really know what to say to be, you know, to be able to articulate my thoughts in a logical way that others could follow my train of thoughts and with the vocabulary that I needed in English. So that wasn't, that was, I had a lot of awkward moments. I remember. So there's two moments, I think key moments when I was at EY1 was when the partner actually came to me and said, oh Vero. So you, you know, in the interview when we interviewed you, you were, you know, it was pretty easy for you to sort of explain things and present. And I was, you know, I could be super prepared for, for interview. It was just me to be interviewed. Right. I was the only one in the, in the room to be that was expected to, to speak. But in a group I was terrified. And I think he noted it and he did mention that to me. He found it a bit strange that I sort of, he saw me almost like a schizo friend. You know, you're very outspoken when you're on one to one and then suddenly in a group you're just not able to do it. And that fear of public speaking well is something that I knew it was a big thing for me to work on, to progress my career. And then the other moment was I was working on a project, I think it was for Channel four and we had a presentation to do and my manager wanted to give me the opportunity to speak, to present to the client. And I remember rehearsing so much for a couple of slides, recording myself in the middle of the night, recording again and again and again and then I delivered a fantastic presentation. In that moment I heard, oh, I can do it. I need to work harder than anyone else, but I can do it. And I think that was a defining moment for me where I thought, okay, you know what? Take any opportunities to take any opportunity even to be ridiculous, that's okay, try it. People will forget, but you get the opportunity to do it. You didn't have the opportunity to do this when you went in school, at school, but better now than never, basically. Hmm. Yeah, it's good. That's a good, a good little mantra. Better now than never. So you kind of like this. It's interesting that the emotional states, the shame, fear and these are things that are kind of. You've come on from a. It's funny, you usually drop yourself in the real deep end because you came from one country, France, to a different country, uk, which is a different culture that's different, different language, that's different. And you go to then top consultancy which is a very particular world in you know the, in London and in that world there's all these high flying people from Oxford and Cambridge which is, is itself an elite institution in the world. And these people tend to be perhaps confident and are coached very much. Yeah, communicate very well. Really. You really, really, you stitched yourself up. You find Yourself with this on multiple, multiple layers here. I was very far from anyone else. Very far, essentially. So you really had to a very. The irony from going from a situation at school where you're kind of able to perhaps retreat into your vicious circle and then you find yourself switcheroo in London. The. You're naked and exposed and I've got to go and do it now. And then there's nowhere to hide because you're in this environment and you know, you're working now. And, and so, so what does that, you know, what, what were the, what were you kind of feeling in. In. In those first. Sort of call it the first year or so at ey or the. That, that, that sort of very steep learning curve. What was going through your. What were the emotions you were feeling? Oh, I felt overwhelmed. Shame many times. And I, yeah, I. A lack of confidence. Confidence. But I just, I knew that I had to take the opportunity to do it because I was still young and I thought, you know, there's no way. I'm 40 and I'm there still unable to say a word in public. How old, at what age were you at that point? I came to London. I was 24. Okay, so you're 24 and you throw yourself in the deep end, as it were, or the top end of this day, and you've got a very steep learning curve and you're kind of getting after it. You're actually kind of embracing that and going for it and learning and looking ridiculous, but learning from that. And what were the lessons do you think you learned from just actually going and just, just taking the jump? You know, one thing that's for sure, and I, you know, I'm sure my colleagues forgot about it, or maybe they still talk about it, but I don't care. But you know, at certain point when you are in. Out of your comfort zone, that's when you learn. So I could have stayed in my comfort zone and datacrunch, I could have done that and let others take credit for the work I do. But at the end of the day, I took the opportunity to fail because I learned learning from failure, that is the most efficient way to learn. And so I think I developed a pattern where I knew that at a certain point I see progression step by steps, basically. So you've got. It's a stair. There are stairs, right. So a progression like a. Stairs. So it goes like that. And I could definitely learn from the experience that I had when something was really hard for me. I had to work very hard. I had Lots of failures. That's when, you know, I, I, I was actually going through that phase, going up hard, but up. And then I could feel something was, you know, something is holding me back and, and I had to identify what it was. Then I had to work hard on it, probably a few sleepless nights and then I could go up again. And I think I see progression not as a line, but rather different steps to climb. How do you sense when you're at a plateau, you're climbing, so how do you get that? So this is process, this pattern you've discovered or you've observed in yourself and you've gone through a painful, challenging process, which actually, to be honest, it's like this yin Yang situation of being very introvert to being very, then forced to be extrovert. And you took, and often, I would suggest, a lot of people wouldn't put themselves in that situation. All right, so you put, you sort of had this fire in you that, that made you fight in that scenario and actually put yourself in that scenario first, then fight whilst within it. It would have been kind of, there's an alternative parallel universe perhaps where you shrunk away from that and went and did something else. Right. How do you sense in yourself when you need to break through to that next level one? I think you can't be something that you don't see. And so, you know, we talk about role model a lot. When I see in my career, what I found is finding role models that I feel like, oh, you know, this is some, this is someone that is doing such and such things that I think I would like to be able to do, you know, that sort of mindset is inspiring. And once I'm able to envision what is missing for me to be there, then I can already see myself being there. So when I see myself being there and I know that there's a few things that I need to work on to be able to get to that milestone, then, then I think that gives me enough fire to fight, you know, ridicule myself, you know, take as many failures and failures that I need basically to, to, to get there, because I know it's, I know I had the faith that it would happen. And where does that faith come from? You know, when I was little, a little girl, I remember being like between, I think six, six years old and plus primary school, I was a very confident child, actually. I was a very confident child in a setting where so socially I was very, very happy, very confident. And I had this feeling that I had superpowers. I just had this feeling that I was going to be able to do anything and that if I really want something, it's going to work. And I sort of tested a few things and I saw. So, for example, I really like this boy. I wanted him to fall in love with me and I could make it happen. So that. Wow, that's amazing. You know, I had some very formative years as well playing the piano. And I think in learning an instrument is, is, is. Is so formative, actually. So learning the piano. I had a Shanghainese teacher, she was very, very strict, but she really. So Madame Lin, if you listen to me, I mean, she, she taught me so much and she, she taught me what work means. So when you play a piece, and especially the piano in the very beginning, when your child. It's so hard because not when you play in the beginning, it just doesn't. Doesn't sound good. And it needs a lot of hours of work so that you, that you create a piece or you play a piece that really you can enjoy and others can enjoy. So that practice period is very, you know, unrewarding. But at some point, somehow it clicks. And, you know, you sleep one night and you wake up in the next morning and, wow, you play Rackman enough. It's hard. And you have to cut work. You have to cut your piece, cut the work in different chunks to practice the piano. And I think I learned a lot from that process. Well, literally just putting in the work, breaking it down, keeping going, and then you find a breakthrough. Yeah, and identifying. I think it's very easy, especially when you play a piece of. You know, my daughter plays the piano today and she plays a song and the beginning is great, and then starting from the middle, it starts to suck. And she would want to play that whole piece again and again and again. But in fact, you have to, you have to identify where it's difficult. Once you have identified this, you have to practice that a lot more than the rest. And then it equalizes, equalizes with everything else so it merges well with the rest of the song. But you have one piece that is really causing you problems. You focus on that first. And that's how I see my work, my progression, my learning curve. Today, even today as a startup founder, there's million things you don't know how to do. And it's quite interesting, I thought, when you're saying what the absence of a thing is the thing, then that creates the focus for the next stage of learning. The one thing question I want to ask you, though, is you've mentioned a few times about looking ridiculous. Ridicule. How do you, no one likes to feel ridiculous. How do you do, how do you deal with that? I mean no one likes to be ashamed, honestly. Like you feel underperforming, you are less than anyone else. You know, you're not worth being here in the room. Oh my gosh. This, I mean sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not, but I think that in my case it was true. You know, we talk about imposter syndrome. Oh my gosh. I had that so much, you know, feeling ridicule and how to overcome that, that, that feeling again. I talked about patterns. I have, I had experimented it and I, I think my brain simply registered that once when you feel that way, you're learning. When you're learning, you're progressing. So I ended up feeling a lot less impacted by, you know, by this, by, by the situation. And, and you know, the, the learning curve is steep actually. So, you know, it stay, it probably lasts a couple of, you know, it lasts, it lasted a, a short amount of time in respect, you know, when, when you look at, you know, your lifetime in, you know, your life perspective, you know, that short amount of time when you're learning and you're super ridicule, it lasts a little bit and then it goes away and then it gets better and better and better and then you, you feel more confident and there you go, you're on that path. Yeah. So that kind of, any feeling of ridicule is just the price to pay to get to the next level of the step. I mean, you don't have to jump in the big pool to learn to swim. So you know, I did that because that was the, you know, the opportunity that I found. But I'm sure there's clever way to do it without damaging your reputation. I don't know about that. Well, I'm not sure if that's possible. But this is the, you know, I've made a career out of dropping myself in the deep end. So I guess you mentioned your startups. You've had this like formative experiences of. Around communication and you've had these formative experiences of learning. And whether it's on a piano or in a room full of Oxford and Cambridge graduates and you've got you sort of fast forward after your illustrious career in EY and various other kind of top institutions in the uk, you kind of had the idea for what is now your startup in 2020, I believe. Just tell us a little bit what happened with your Daughter and lockdown and where tell me came from. So, you know, when I became a mom, there's one thing that I found that one thing that I read and I experienced myself also is to empower kids. So really give them the opportunity to feel they can. They are able to do stuff, whether it is to dress themselves up to climb tree or something else. And, and communication was a big one. So for us, we knew that kids would have lots of opportunities to discuss at home, to share their opinions. They were encouraged to do it. And so during the lockdown, my daughter was five and a half then, and we discovered podcasts, not only to listen to podcasts with her, but also to create podcasts. And what happened is she, you know, ended up really embracing that tool. Just we were simply using anchor at that time. You know, she would record yourself, I would interview her, we would create stories together with just a nice bonding time. And I. She loved it so much as she ended up, you know, recording stories probably three times or four times a week. You know, during bedtime, lights off, I hold the phone and she's simply talking. We talk together. And then I realized that her, you know, it was a fantastic way for her to be in the spot, in the spotlight. The comfort of her own home giving her the opportunity to express herself, whether it is to invent her stories or talk about an experiment at school and to feel like she's being heard. And suddenly the context makes that she was going to do. She was. I could see her sentence formation grow, confidence grow. And then I. And I thought, wow, there's a huge educational power to podcasting now. One thing leading to another. I researched and realized that actually it was very. I mean, lots of parents were actually starting to podcast with their kids during the lockdown. And we're not the only one. There were a huge community. And in fact, when going on anchor, we actually discovered lots of podcasts from kids. Anchor is not made for kids, by the way. But, you know, they. They start to take over that, that medium. So we, you know, and then looking at the stats, I saw that you've got about 30% kids in the UK and US want to become YouTubers. So that plus the fact that verbal communication skills is one of the strongest predictor of success in life, and the fact that actually lots of kids like me actually didn't really have the opportunity to build this very important life skill. So I put two and two together and I just saw that, okay, there's lots of kids who want to express themselves, but only if those who are doing it in the digital world. They do this on platforms that are not made for them. They're not safe, not educational, not designed for them. And there's an opportunity there that is completely unmet. Enormous opportunity, actually. Kids have taken over video creation. They will take over podcast creation too. So we are, I think, at an inflection point here. It's gonna, you know, the wave of child podcaster is already starting. You know, I think Spotify had published that there were 300% more new podcasters in 2020, driven by younger creators. So creators are becoming younger and younger kids are adopting podcast listening as well. So it's simply. There's a need for something like, tell me on the market. So I simply created it. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Isn't it? Somebody, Somebody asked me for some advice recently about setting up a podcast and they were. They were sort of going, does the world need another podcast? And I was like, well, yeah, but it's like saying, does the world need more music? You know, it's kind of, you know, yeah, if it's good, you know, I mean, and you've got to learn and put this sort of stuff out there. But. So it's interesting that it's kind of the youth coming through and learning the tools. But there's a big difference between having a. A moment or a series of creative explorations with your daughter in a lockdown and observing things happening in the world and seeing the opportunity perhaps emerging and then setting up a startup. And again, this is in the lockdown in. So you're in a pandemic in a lockdown, locked at home. You had an insight for something. So what, you had this. So how did you. What spurred you to set up a company to pursue this? And how was that. What was that experience like in. In the middle of a pandemic? Yeah, you see, I. I started my first business in 2011. It was a fruit juice business. It failed. I had. It was. It was. It was profitable, but it wasn't scalable. So I decided to stop. Was a fruit juice business in Paris. But I learned a lot. But I knew that I had this entrepreneurial itch. I knew that I really enjoy creating something, something from scratch. I just felt like this is where my creativity could come out, come out very naturally. And so at that moment, when I had laurentride the first business, I just stopped working for Eye at that time. And then I decided to continue my career working with startups. So I then worked with Unilever and at Unilever, I was there working with, with lots of startups. Actually. I joined Unilever Foundry and there, you know, worked with many, many brands like Dove, Rexona, Macdonald, Axe to scout and work with innovative technology startups. So I've learned a lot in that process. Of course, have been mentored, have been mentoring founders and helped them work with bigger brands. Sort of created a framework for partnerships. So I, I actually engage with lots of founders before. Tell me. So when, when the idea. When, when I'm on. When we were in lockdown, I just had my baby actually my second, my second child. So I had Jack. He. We were stuck in the lockdown. I worked with lots of startup before. Obviously I already at that time when I was at Unity, but I already spotted the opportunity of kids audio. I was already researching that space when my daughter started creating podcast. It was a, aha. Moment for me because Tell me. Became a podcast creation platform, but before that it was a podcast discovery platform. Right. So we, we were working on podcast discovery for kids to listen to podcasts. Now we realized that the real opportunity was on the creation or the combination of creation and listening. So that's why we sort of moved our attention onto the creation part because they were a huge, a huge educational value as well to this. So this is kind of like your background kind of came to a bit of a head in lockdown. But again, what I'm curious about is you've had the second baby, it is a lockdown. And despite your. By the way, Jeremy. Do you know Jeremy Bassett? Of course. He was my boss. There you go. He, he's been on the podcast. So he's. And he's a good guy. I have a. Well, he's a good guy. I met him a long time ago. But. So you've got all this background working with amazing people like Jeremy, working with all these top, top corporates, top brands, interesting startups. But then you kind of like, but specifically you, in this specific moment in the lockdown, you got this experience, you've got this market opportunity, but you've got a second child. It is a lockdown, You've got the opportunity. So what was good again? What I'm this, this. I'm often interested in the creation story, this spark or how do you kind of. There's lots of forces there. Perhaps certain people might just go, nice idea. But you know, I've got a second baby, I've got all this lockdown. What got you to sort of actually get this thing out the door to kind of start the, start the journey? I had Many, many ideas. When I worked at Unilever, I was inspired by lots of founders and startups there, but no ideas really stick with me. So I could really take the decision to leave and work on it. But then during the lockdown, when I saw that most founders would probably tell you that they're the reason why they, they. They decided to do a lot of sacrifice for the, for working, to work on this idea is because that they had the urge, they felt the urge to create something or to solve a problem. And for me, I think now, thinking, thinking back, I think that this idea really stick with me, not only because of the market opportunity, but of course, because of my personal experience, because I could see that, you know, if I had a tool like this, I would have struggled less. And, and suddenly, you know, you know, my experience plus what I wanted my child to benefit and other kids to benefit. And, you know, I get a lot of energy from speaking to people as well. So I did a lot of interview, spoke to lots of parents. We did a lot of experiments even before we had the product. We had, you know, a community of kids creating podcasts with us. And I could see the value of creating podcasts for children or for kids creating podcasts. So I think, you know, all the benefits that, that, Tell me could have, the positive impact that Tell me could have on kids, plus, you know, my own experience of how painful it can be to not feel, not be an effective communicator. Yeah, just, Just, you know, I just couldn't sleep. I just had to do it. I had my baby. I was homeschooling my daughter. But any minutes that I have, and even, you know, most of my mental space was taken by building something in kids audio that will serve children. Amazing. So you've got this real. These different factors came together at this moment in time. So that. And. And then you pursued. Tell me. And you're kind of. We're out of the lockdown now. So what's this been? What's that been like the first few years of. Of you created the. You've seen the opportunity, you've compelled to do it. You have a purpose that's very deep within that. And what, what's been the experience been like the last couple of years sort of getting this product into the world? We were in research for a long time. We actually were speaking to users or beta testers for, you know, every. So every week. And we created programs, really. So again, without the product, we created programs where we basically had, you know, 60 parents on a WhatsApp group taking part of some activities we're giving them, you know, whether it was for their kids to interview them or for their children to recommend a book or talk about a movie they've they loved. Some even, you know, gave, you know, talked about their love for maths or coding. And we basically recruited those people. It was pretty easy actually to get together a community of parents who wanted their children to engage with podcast, podcast creation. And so we manually, we manually did the post production of those podcasts. That was the first thing that we did to really understand what was it that, you know, not only to identify the most active ones, the most active kids, like active users. So we could sort of identify, you know, to profile. Profile, you know, our most active users. And secondly, we could actually understand, you know, we could get a lot of information from the parents about, you know, what is it that, what is it that made them come to us. So, so really the first thing that we did is identifying who we would build it for. And once we've identified that, we basically started to get a lot of information from them. So we came quite close with our community. The most active one really wanted Tell Me to exist. Their kids were involved in prototyping the app. They chose the name, picked our current design direction. And so we worked together basically to create the app. And that's when we got the grant from Innovate uk. So got a grant from Innovate uk, managed to create an mvp. We used our community, we work with our community to create that first version. And I'm so grateful for them, to be honest. Some of them even invested in the company. And yeah, that's how. So I'd say that it was really community based. Yeah, user centric. That's where. That's how we really created the product. And I think, you know, having a couple of kids who also were podcasters were ahead of the curve helped as well. So you've got, for example, Jack to the Future, who is a podcaster, a child podcaster, he's nine. And so when we. He started, we actually started. Tell me. Thinking about, Tell me. So he was actually involved in the prototyping of the app. The Guardian actually featured him and for the kids in, you know, in an article called I think it was the Rise of Child of Child Podcasters Superstars. So that's how it started, really. I hope it answers your question. Yeah, no, it's good, it's good to hear, like how you, you really got your hands dirty with real people and kind of got, you know, like actually got into the thick of it and spoke to the people, your audience and found out your power users and got yourself in, in the mix of it. And looking back at all that now, what did you, what did you learn from that kind of origin period of engaging with your users, with your community and kind of actually the kind of creation story. It was the best choice I made actually, to not spend money and build something before, you know, to build something on my own and then test it. No, I think I did the best thing at that time. Build it very lean. And we use the money in a very wise way because. Because our users created it with us. Great. I think that's probably the biggest advice I would give any founder. That is great advice. It's funny because my company builds technology for startups, but. So what's counterintuitive often in the conversations I have is it's like, look, you don't need to build anything. You need to like just do and go and do what you did. Like actually go and speak to people. And often the first principle is to. Does anybody want to do this? Like, not how many features are I can I create within the technology platform? And oftentimes I think a founder. Well, anyone. You have an idea, you get very excited about your idea. But you said about experiments and running experiments. Well, an experiment is a guess and you don't know if it's going to work until you take it to some real people who aren't employed by you or your family and actually put it in front of them, your target customers. Yeah, so it's very, very good advice. And we had early conversations as well with the likes of Spotify, Pearson and Lego and big names basically to sort of test the value proposition and to see if they, you know, in which way they were interested in kids audio. And I think that gave us some great validation too. Interesting. Yeah. So, so where are you now? Where, where, where is the business? Where are you now in the business's journey? So currently we have an MVP that's had already without any marketing. We already had users. Even 33% of our most active beta testers paid in 24 hours. Again, that was a great validation. So in terms of traction, I'd say that that was the first sign of early conversion that we had. Again, small sample, but still some people managed to pay. And I think what was particularly interesting is to identify who was ready to pay and why they paid because the educational value was really big and they could see it straight away after their child has created a podcast or two with us. They could see that, wow, there's an opportunity here, big potential for their kids to progress. And so what we've done as well is experimenting with partners. So the way we see our go to market is actually B2B2C. So we are testing out with partners where we pay zero marketing, but we get access to their audience. There's a match in the audience, target audience, and, and they get a commission fee basically from the users we've managed to convert. So it's sort of. We are testing different models of monetization and more creative ways basically to acquire users rather than splashing all our money on social media. Very good. And if someone was listening to this, I'm conscious we're edging up to our time today, but if someone's interested in getting, if they're a parent listening or they're just interested to find out more about you. Where, where, where do we find more about. Tell Me. So you can go to tell me IO, that's our website. And if you, if you're on iOS, you can actually try out the MVP. So, you know, find. Tell Me Kids T L M I on on the App Store. Our web app and Android version is going to be out hopefully soon. We are. If you're an investor and want to find out about investing, come speak to me too. And partners, of course, we know we want to work with publishers and so, yeah, publishers, toy companies and any. And the reality is that education entertainment players are actually part of our distribution acquisition ecosystem. So kids can talk about anything, can talk about Roblox, talk about Lego, maths, coding. So if you're in that sort of industry and want to see how kids and want to help children, give a voice to children, that's what we do. So we empower kids from all backgrounds and we uncover the voices of tomorrow. Look at that. You. Not only can you help support this amazing business, but you can help children get their voices from all different backgrounds and communicate. Give them a literal platform to communicate to the world. What a beautiful thing and a beautiful story you've been able to share with us today. Thank you for sharing your links and we'll put all these links in the show notes and what have you. And I would encourage, encourage everybody to get involved because podcasting is brilliant, he says with his podcast. And I think what you're doing is fantastic and a great way to channel a sense of purpose and a sense of ability to sort of empower people, empower children. So, yeah, the next era of the Next Joe Rogan will be found on Tell me. So get on it and go check out. Really? Thank you so much for sharing today. Varunique. It's beautiful to meet you, beautiful to hear your story and I wish you all the best in the future. Thank you so much, Dan. It was a pleasure. I'll see you all next time. Bye Bye. Bye. Are you an impact startup founder? Are you looking to do good in the world? And do you want a team to build your tech product? But importantly, do you want that tech product to actually do what you want it to do based on the vision you've got? Then maybe, just maybe, my company, the tech department, could be a good fit. And as a founder of a startup, particularly in the early stages, every penny you invest is critical. It's adding value, it's creating improvement to your business. So our difference is we focus first on improvement and that mindset shift is unique. And we turn that mindset shift into a method which we called the tech boot camp. And it works really great. We get great feedback from all of our startup clients. And when you've got your business profitable and you want to build your in house team, then we can help you with that too and hand over in a way that's not weird and we're not hanging onto the code or anything stupid like that. So if you like the idea, check us out at www.thetechdept.com T H E T E C H D E P t the tech department. Thetechdept.com the worst name to pronounce as a domain name on a podcast. Check it out.