Jothy Rosenberg (00:03.086)
Hi Julia!
Julia (00:04.668)
Hi, how are you, Jothi? Great.
Jothy Rosenberg (00:06.23)
I'm good. It is great to see you. It's sort of, there is this thing that happened. It's, you know, called COVID. And it made everybody kind of lose touch. And I'm not, I'm not the kind of person that loses touch. So it's so, it's so great to be reconnected. And we'll keep it that way.
Julia (00:28.585)
It really is. thrilled to be reconnected.
Jothy Rosenberg (00:32.208)
All right. So we have an audience of people that are startup founders, entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes and colors, people that want to be a founder. So that's kind of the people we're speaking to. But whoever it is, I always like to start with a little context setting of where are you originally from and where do you live now?
Julia (01:02.986)
Yeah, that's an easy one. I was born in North Bay, Ontario. So it's about four hours north of Toronto. Not a very big town. And I grew up there, loved it, had a great childhood and got really involved in sports. And then when I left home, I went as far as I possibly could to get away from the parents. They know it, so it's no surprise to them. Went out west for school.
But in my last year of high school, I'd started kayaking and I decided that I wanted to try to be a high level kayaker and all the national team programming was on the East Coast. So I had to make the change from the West Coast to the East Coast, landed in Halifax and that's where I am now, just outside Halifax. And I've lived here since 1996 and love it.
Jothy Rosenberg (01:53.968)
And you live right on a lake so you can keep it up.
Julia (01:58.156)
Yeah, right on a lake. I was out paddling yesterday. I love being out. I love the water. It's such a big part of my life. It's important.
Jothy Rosenberg (02:06.894)
Well, another big part of your life is startups and you've had quite a few and maybe you can and you're CEO of one now. And so before we talk about that one, maybe you could kind of just give a thumbnail sketch of your, your journey.
Julia (02:16.492)
Mm -hmm.
Julia (02:24.75)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, having been an athlete, when I came out out east, I was training for the Olympic Games and made the Olympic team in 2000. And when I retired from being an Olympic athlete, I tried to get a job.
You'd think it'd be easy after that journey to find a job, but I couldn't get hired anywhere. I kept on getting the feedback that I just didn't have enough work experience. And so I got turned down kind of everywhere. And I had had kids right after the games and I needed to make money. And so what I started doing was just working in the space that I knew I was a graphic designer. So I started working in graphic design for
clients and I built up a bit of a small business. And that was my first kind of foray into business, into entrepreneurship. I had no idea what I was doing. But that led me to kind of start to learn how to build a business. So I was graphic designing on my own in my basement with my two young kids and I didn't feel legitimate. So I spent quite a bit of time saving up money and bought a building and created a shared workspace. It was kind of before shared workspaces were a thing.
And it was a financial disaster. But what was really good about it was that I made an amazing community of people. I brought together a massive group of people like me who are independent creative people doing podcasts, doing video, doing graphic design, sound. And I'm still in touch with those people to this day.
And so that gave me the opportunity to just test out being a business owner, learning kind of PNL, learning how to pay the bills. So that was my first step. And I think kind of what launched my real entrepreneurial journey was during that phase of life, one of the members of my shared workspace was a web developer, software developer. And we came together and decided that we were going to build a company focused on
Julia (04:30.498)
building websites, it's early 2000s. And most websites were proprietary technology and we wanted to do something open source. So this was new, it was kind of a new adventure for me. that's what launched me into a true entrepreneurial space where I learned how to not only build a business, but scale it to something that was established, you know? And yeah, so that was an exciting time, busy time of my life, but really exciting. And then it went from there.
Jothy Rosenberg (04:59.732)
and it was in that same building, right? That, you got involved with, sheep dogs.
Julia (05:09.25)
That's right. Yeah. So in that, so was such a beautiful building, Jothi. I wish you could have seen it. It was, it was the first fire hall in Atlantic Canada. It still had the old bell that they would use to, to ring if there was a fire downtown. and so what I did was I renovated that space and just made it a gorgeous space for people to work. And like I said, one of the members was a software developer, and he and I, we joined forces to start building software. And there was a third,
a third member who kind of joined with us, kind of to build out a concept of working to migrate people over to the Google platform. So we had a lot of clients for the websites we were building at the time, and none of them knew how to set up their own email. It's crazy to think in that short period of time how far we've come, but setting up email for your business was like a technical endeavor at the time. And so we had this web development company and we...
kind of envisioned this idea that we would build a company that was focused on moving people from traditional email systems like Lotus, for instance, over to the Google platform. And we launched that naively. We believed that Google needed us because they needed support helping people get over to the Google platform. And we actually went down to
We went down to the Google campus in Mountain View, California, and we pitched the idea. We basically said, we think you need us to be a partner. at the time, they happened to be looking to establish a partnership program. And we became their first global Google enterprise partner to migrate people over to their platform. And we were their only partner for a couple of years. And then they started to expand the partner network to, I think there was about seven of us.
for about three years. And so what we would do, and that was Sheepdog, so what we would do is we would work with, let's say, an airline, and we would get all of their technology, their emails, their calendars, everything moved over to Google. And then we would build out software that would bolt onto the Google platform, like time tracking technologies, for instance. So that was a really fun company to start.
Julia (07:27.474)
It scaled really quickly in the early days. We hired a whole bunch of people. This was a new experience for me because I'd never scaled that quickly. But working with Google, we got to work with all the large enterprise in North America, which was really fun. And once people moved to Google, they would never leave. So we never had any churn, which was beautiful. So that was a great new adventure for me. Intense, really intense, really.
Yeah, a lot of learning, as you know, Toby.
Jothy Rosenberg (07:59.204)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's jump to the, to the current one, which is an Ed tech company, shoelace learning.
Julia (08:04.855)
Yeah.
Julia (08:08.502)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, something so proud of. I think it's a fantastic model.
Jothy Rosenberg (08:12.528)
I'd love to hear, all of us would love to hear about it.
Julia (08:19.894)
Yeah, well shoelace came out of the fact that I have four kids and my second son Max was really struggling with reading. had just sold out of, I'd basically exited a company and I had a bit of time to figure out what I wanted to do, you know, before I made my next move. Seeing that Max was struggling so much with reading and knowing that I had no clue how to help him, I felt really helpless. But I did know that he was
highly engaged in video games. And part of me thought, geez, why can't we get the same kind of engagement and motivation out of kids when it comes to learning? Like, why can't we build tools and resources that find a way to get kids that motivated to learn? And I looked into some of the learning technologies for Max and they were just horrible. This was back in 2014. There was really not much on the market that he wanted to use.
I knew the Minister of Education at the time in our province in Nova Scotia, and I pitched her the idea that I would go shadow teachers in the classrooms and see if I could find a technology or if I could build a technology that would help kids like Max. So I did that. I spent months, three months in the classroom shadowing teachers. And that led to me starting to develop a product that would help kids with reading. But what was...
interesting, you know, they always say you really have to know your customer. This was such a great example of doing the work, like actually getting in front of the customer day after day after day. Because I saw teachers in, you know, first grade, second grade, and they would implement a technology in their classroom. And they'd have 30 students, 30 littles, and they'd have to log in to a piece of technology with an email, or some kind of complex code.
The teacher would spend the whole class just logging kids in and troubleshooting logins. And I thought, well, this is crazy. We're never going to get to the meat of the technology. So my first product with this company was actually just a login system built with pictures, icons that kids loved. And there was nothing on the other side, just a login. Kids loved it. We made it a tool to teach them about keeping their passwords safe.
Julia (10:38.542)
And it was funny, it was just like such an example of how keeping it simple and really focusing on the core problem was really important. From there, we built out another product called Squiggle Park, which focused on early reading. And I grew that company, that product from about 2016 to about 2018. But I was super frustrated because the pace of selling to schools and districts is so slow.
and difficult. It's a really challenging market, which is well known. And so what I decided to do is I decided to just retire that product. I put it on the shelf and we just maintained it, but we didn't invest in it. And then I really got lucky, not lucky, I built a relationship with a woman who led a company in Seattle, Washington. Her name is Jessie Woolley Wilson. I have so much respect for her. She was the CEO of a company called Dreambox.
And I pitched her that shoelace might be a good tool for them. after lots of legwork and diligence, I was able to sell that to Dreambox. And we were able to use that investment to put it back into the company to build what we have today, which is shoelace. So long story to get to the fact that today we have a tool that's focused on reading and comprehension for grades three to eight. What makes it really unique is that
It's got tens of thousands of assignments and passages and questions all aligned to the curriculum of all the states and provinces. And what's really cool is that it gets delivered through mobile games. So when kids are playing mobile games, instead of an ad popping up, a part of their lesson pops up and for them to go back to the game, they have to answer the question. And any mobile game can be plugged into this system. So we've built two, but we're just getting started frankly.
It's reached over 7 million users since 2020. And yeah, like I said, I think we're just getting started.
Jothy Rosenberg (12:43.842)
Okay, so I have a couple questions from that. So are you staying in your province mostly?
Julia (12:52.046)
No, no, no, no. The users that we have now are in 160 countries, mainly in the United States. But we've been able to get users in many, many different regions of the world. Our customers, it's a freemium product, so we have customers in 25 countries.
Jothy Rosenberg (13:12.172)
And the curriculum that you have built into it, that's not going to be the same for all the customers. How do they plug in their curriculum to it?
Julia (13:16.579)
Yeah.
Julia (13:26.838)
It actually is the same. So we focused on English language arts curriculum for grades three to eight. There are modifications for some jurisdictions who require specific alignment, but generally it's the same curriculum. And it guarantees to get kids from basic reading up to full comprehension, the ability to synthesize, predict, analyze and such. So no, it's the same curriculum for any user. We do have a...
roadmap item that we've been working on to have third parties add curriculum to our platform to deliver that through games. But that's not part of this phase of development. That will be part of our next stage of development.
Jothy Rosenberg (14:07.408)
And the end user is a kid, obviously, but is the customer, the teacher, the school district, who do you have to actually convince to buy it?
Julia (14:19.276)
That's a great question. We call the end user a player. We don't call them a student. We call them a player because that's what they are. We went to teachers first. So because I was so frustrated with how slow enterprise sales were in education, I decided this would be a consumer play. We were going to sell direct to parents and teachers, and that was going exceptionally well. And then post COVID, we saw a massive market shift that we weren't expecting. And that shift is that districts,
mainly U .S. districts because that's where the bulk of our users are, decided post -COVID that they needed to really wrangle in what teachers were using for technology in the classroom because during COVID teachers were really kind of like, just need help, right? So they were using so many different programs and districts realized, well, geez, we really need to make sure we're assessing these programs. Are they safe?
Are they effective? know, are teachers actually using them? Are we spending our money right? Their job is to make sure they're using public dollars effectively. So, so our teachers who we've been selling to started to get blocked from using our platform because districts were blocking them because they hadn't paid for the product at the district level, which forced a massive shift in our business back to enterprise sales because frankly, we just can't continue to scale if we're not going to be building relationships.
with districts. that's been the focus since I guess the end of last school year. And that's my focus over the next couple of years is to build out our enterprise sales team processes and pipeline that's going to get us to scale.
Jothy Rosenberg (15:58.532)
That's going to take a pretty big team.
Julia (16:01.102)
We have a small team. We're going to start small. think what I've learned, one of the things I've learned over the years is just not to get ahead of our skis. So we have a small team right now of 15 people, which may not sound small to everybody listening, but it's, you know, for 7 million plus users, it's a small team. And we're going to continue with this team and be quite scrappy until we start to get our, you know, our first large sales to support the growth of the company.
I find that's one of the big problems, big mistakes that we can make is as, I say we, because I've made it many times over as founders, as entrepreneurs, as we see the opportunity and we build to the opportunity without getting cash in the door. And it's, think one of the major reasons for failure in business, because you just, need the cash to sustain the business. So it doesn't matter how good your product is, if you can't support it, the doors are going to close.
Jothy Rosenberg (17:01.186)
And has all your funding been from the sale that you made? So in other words, all the funding has been self -funded. You haven't gone out for investors.
Julia (17:15.758)
We did. the first three years, first two and a half, three years were self -funded through the sale of our last asset. And then we went out for a seed round. And so we did our first institutional round at the end of 2022. And we brought in about three and a half million to continue to scale. But other than that, it's been revenue that's been driving the growth.
Jothy Rosenberg (17:43.074)
and last time I was in Halifax, which was quite a bit before, you know, COVID, it was already an impressive and supportive, entrepreneurial community. I'm sure it's gotten stronger. How would you characterize it?
Julia (18:05.622)
Yeah, it's funny when I first landed here in Nova Scotia, I came because this is where all the Olympic athletes were training and that's what I wanted to do. And the Olympic coaches were here, the facilities were here. And so I landed in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia on a lake that's world -class in terms of venue as a venue for paddling. And I looked around and thought, she's like, this is, you know, this is the best place in the world. This is a place focused on high performance. And I learned pretty quickly that that wasn't the culture.
on the east coast of Canada. The culture on the east coast has never been one of high performance, but that started to shift. I think I'd say mid -2000s, there was some leaders, entrepreneurs, business leaders in the east coast of Canada who really reinvested in the ecosystem. There was a couple large exits where the founders really reinvested in the area.
And there was a lot of conferences held to really get people kind of engaged in this idea of entrepreneurship, of innovation. And we started to see that needle kind of move, I'd say mid -2000s. During COVID, our province did an exceptionally good job of keeping things safe, which in Canada became a bit of a North Star.
for how to manage the crisis, which led to a lot of migration into Atlantic Canada. And I think we've seen just non -stop growth since then. There was a massively supportive ecosystem for entrepreneurs, especially in the early, early stages. We have organizations like one called ACOA that will put funding into early organizations in early stages to help them kind of get out of the gate and significant funding. These are not small checks.
with really, really kind terms. There's also a really good angel network of investors here, people who have done really well and they want to give back. And the culture here is of giving back, which is really nice. Everyone wants to lift people up here. And everyone's just phone call away. It's so small.
Julia (20:17.227)
small relatively speaking that you know you can pick up the phone and you can call one of the most prominent business leaders in in the province and they'll be meeting with you that week if you if you can pitch them in the right way it's really a beautiful space to make things happen.
Jothy Rosenberg (20:38.316)
It's a very comfortable place for anybody that's from Boston to go. I think vice versa. We think of it as like a mini Boston because the lobsters are the same. The environment is the same. We both occasionally get hit with a hurricane. And of course, we have that tie from that
Julia (20:44.898)
Bye.
Jothy Rosenberg (21:07.792)
long, long time ago, that explosion that just about destroyed the whole port. And Boston came to help. And ever since then, we get the most gorgeous, huge Christmas tree from you guys.
Julia (21:20.526)
I know that was a devastating explosion of people who are listening don't know it was a munitions ship who that crashed into another ship in the harbor and the explosion I think at the time was the second largest man -made explosion next to the to the bomb
And it took out almost all the city. And what was really sad about it was people knew that the ship was on fire, that there had been an accident, came down to the shore to watch it. And it was just devastating. It took out so many people. And you're right, the city of Boston stepped up big time. They sent so many people to help kind of dig the city out and really build it back up.
And so I think we've always been kind of the little sister, the little sister of Boston. And it is so, it does feel very comfortable. I love being in Boston. I guess the other connection that I didn't mention is we're a big university city, right? And which really helps the ecosystem, just like Boston, you know, really high level, post -secondary institutions that are really respected and that, you know, push out amazing kind of talent, which is so important for businesses too. So.
Jothy Rosenberg (22:09.029)
You
Julia (22:32.898)
So that's another great part about being in this part of the world.
Jothy Rosenberg (22:37.216)
I had never heard, probably am, and it's a common thing, I think, that most Americans have probably never heard of Dalhousie University. But then once you're here, once you're there, I mean, and you find out what it is, it's like a very impressive institution.
Julia (22:56.886)
It is, it's a really wonderful institution. And I'd say it's kind of the most prominent one here in Atlanta, Canada, but we have so many, know, we have St. Mary's University, we have NASCAD, which is one of the leading independent art institutions, much like RISD down in Rhode Island. We've got, you know, Mount Allison, Acadia, we've got so many universities here. And I think it's really important for the ecosystem to constantly be
be developing kind of young people that are coming up that want to stay. And I think maybe that's one of the things that we've seen change in the last couple of decades, I guess, is that people want to stay. They don't feel like they have to leave for opportunity, which is really, really exciting. It's a good feeling. It feels exciting to be here right now.
Jothy Rosenberg (23:45.712)
So tell us a little bit more about your Olympics journey because it's a big part of your existence, of your personality, of how you formed. that year, the Olympics were in South America, right? they were Sydney, really far away.
Julia (23:57.315)
Yeah.
Julia (24:07.968)
They were in Sydney in Australia. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was it was exciting.
My Olympic journey, think, really dates, the start of it dates back to when I was in fourth grade, the same time my son was struggling with reading. I was struggling with school too. I had a speech impediment. I was a very low reader. I just didn't feel successful at all at school. And I remember, like I can remember the crushing feeling of just wishing a teacher could see potential in me. I just felt like nobody recognized, no one sees me. No one recognizes potential here. And I felt really,
frustrated more than anything. And I think that's when I turned to sport. And, you know, I was always a really hard worker and I think coaches respected that quickly. And so I got a lot of attention from the coaches in terms of, you know, just seeing that I had potential and wanting to push me.
to be better. And so early days I started, my dad said to me when I was really little, he said, Julia, I want you to do 21 sports before you're 21. And I thank him all the time for that because I'm pretty sure that was a big piece of what allowed me to be a high performance athlete. And I really encourage kids, you know, these days to not focus too early, like to really try lots of things. But I became a swimmer, swimming was my thing. That's what I loved.
And I was at quite a high level. think I was top 10 in Canada by the time I was 13. And my plan, my goal was to make the Olympic team as a swimmer, but I was in a ski accident in high school and I broke my back, which put me out of commission for quite a while. But I ended up recovering fully. And when I came out of that injury, I still had the passion for sport, but I had lost the
Julia (26:03.854)
the hunger and swimming because I saw everybody pass me by and I thought, I don't know if I can, I don't know if I can build back up. So I started a new sport. We had the opportunity to join a canoe club in town in North Bay and I tried paddling for the first time when I was 19 and just loved it. Luckily swimming was quite transferable in terms of the muscles you need to be good at paddling. And yeah, so started really late. And then I thought, well, maybe I can make.
the Olympics in this sport. And so I spent the next four years doing everything I needed to do to get there and I got there. And yeah, it was just such a dream come true to be able to be at the Olympics and looking around and thinking I was with kind of the heroes that I'd always seen over the years. that was awesome. It gave me a confidence, Jothi, that I feel so lucky to have earned, which is...
just the fact that being the best in the world is absolutely within reach in anything you do if you really put in the time and if you have a bit of luck and put yourself in the right environment. And so I've been able to transfer that feeling, whether it be, it might be misguided sometimes, but I've been able to transfer that feeling into my business life. And I have a goal really with shoelace to be world -class, to be among the best in the world at what we do.
I know we're there from a product perspective and now we just have to, we have to scale it to the market.
Jothy Rosenberg (27:37.066)
that's great. And I have to say that I completely understand the attitude about sports and helping with your overall confidence, self -confidence, and self -esteem because I had the same experience.
Julia (28:01.644)
Yeah, tell me more, wanna hear.
Jothy Rosenberg (28:03.792)
Well, for me, was, it was having lost a leg and a lung at 16 and 19. And everybody said, can't you can't ski, you can't bike, you know, they said, said, you can't swim because you'll go in a circle. said, you can't bike because you'll fall right over. they, they said, well, you won't be able to ski either. mean, and all of those became, you know, sports that I got to a very high level in.
not Olympic level. but, I probably could have gone for the Paralympics, I suppose. but at that point I was, you know, already halfway through college and, and other things were also getting to be important.
Julia (28:54.838)
Yeah, yeah, it's a life choice for sure to go in that direction. And it sounds to me, Jothi, that you have the same, don't know if it's a good thing or bad thing that I have, which is when people tell you you can't do something, you're going to make it happen.
Jothy Rosenberg (29:13.124)
Well, that's why that other book is called Who Says I Can't?
Julia (29:15.402)
Yeah, I know. I love it. actually when somebody tells me that I can't do something, I always get a little smile thinking, we got some work ahead of us.
Jothy Rosenberg (29:27.024)
Yeah.
Jothy Rosenberg (29:30.65)
Yeah, so I've had people who've said to me, wait a minute, if it starts with the word who, that it's gotta have a question mark on the end. And I said, no, it doesn't. It's got an exclamation point.
Julia (29:42.19)
I love it. Yeah, it's good. It's good. And you need that kind of determination because it's not easy all the time. So it's good to have.
Jothy Rosenberg (29:46.298)
Jothy Rosenberg (29:53.262)
Well, it's true. And then when things get tough, when you switch now over to, you're CEO of a startup and there's a crisis or there's a really challenging situation, there is this base that you build up in yourself by focusing hard and working harder on a sport. And the thing about sports, of course, is that it really is just a matter of
focus and hard work and you can get good at it. There are other things in life where it's not necessarily true that if you just work hard at it, you can be really good at it. It's just, it's not quite the same. So, so with that base that you've got from all these success you had at whatever sport you love, that base of confidence and in your own ability to deal with a situation.
Julia (30:26.253)
Mm
Julia (30:33.966)
Mm
Jothy Rosenberg (30:52.26)
does transfer over to the business side of your life.
Julia (30:57.644)
Yeah, absolutely. I think something I had to learn though, was exactly what you were just saying, that hard work will only take you so far in business. I think you have to work hard, but you also really have to, you have to be so thoughtful and strategic and you often have to blaze your own trail. You have to figure out where you're going. The pathway isn't always clear.
patient, you have to be patient sometimes, which is not my best trait. But as I get older, too, I realized that, you know, it really, and it's such a cheesy thing. It's not the outcome, it's the journey, but it truly is, you know, because as I go through my, like, as I think about my experiences in business, there was always extremely low points. But that was always just a point. It was never
It was never the end, right? And even if things completely changed after that point, it was just a dot on the journey. It wasn't an end. And I think that's something I've really kind of embraced is that nothing is an end. It's just kind of the stepping stone that you're on right now before you take the next step. And I think that's a really good philosophy is just know that all you have to do is just take the next step.
And we can all do that. When you break it down to that level, it seems so much more doable. Just take the next best step that's right in front of you right now.
Jothy Rosenberg (32:32.1)
You know, I always talk to everybody about grit, grit for a startup, but you had grit that, I've heard what you just said about how you felt like sport was an important outlet. And it's like, that is exactly the moment when it sounds to me like you developed grit and then you've been able to leverage that into.
all the startups and some of the challenges, including some that we have happened to face together.
Julia (33:09.582)
that built our bond to be strong. That's right.
Jothy Rosenberg (33:12.29)
Yeah, yeah. Well, you're also the first person that ever sort of called me out of the blue and said, hey, I could really use some CEO mentoring and like, and that ended up becoming just this, you know, incredibly fun. And then ultimately, you know, a year or so after that, joining, you know, the company that you were CEO of as the
board member. Those were mostly fun times.
Julia (33:46.446)
Yeah, well, the coaching was awesome. So for me, it actually that's such a transferable piece from the from the sport background too, is, you know, I knew the value of a coach. And I've always respected the value of a good coach. And so reaching out was just a way that I was trying to find that support, you know, find
really somebody that could help anchor me, help make sure that I had a bit of a fire all the time. And sometimes just make sure that my direction is right. And I really appreciated that. our, your role at that stage of the business was so, so helpful to me because it was all new. Like I really didn't know what I was doing. And so just to be able to have a soundboard was, was critical, frankly. Like I just, couldn't have done it without your, your support at that phase of the business. And then yes.
And then having you on the board was awesome. And we went through some interesting, challenging times, but we got through, which was great. But it gave me a whole new respect for who you have on your team, the good and the bad, and really making sure you have the right players on the team.
Jothy Rosenberg (34:55.874)
And I had no experience mentoring. So it really was just me acting as a sounding board. It's all really all I did.
Julia (35:03.47)
You didn't know that? No, I'm just joking. I think I remember how we met, I think immediately when I met you, I knew that you would be able to provide me with the type of coaching that I needed because I often I have a good intuition. I think generally we as humans have good intuition. Sometimes it's just hard to clear the noise so you can really listen to it, right? And a good coach can help you do that.
Jothy Rosenberg (35:33.136)
I want to end on the work -life balance because I feel like with four kids, you're a master at the work -life balance. But I mean, you work hard. You put in all the time necessary to make the startup successful. But you also put in all the time necessary to make your family successful.
Julia (35:46.867)
I
Julia (36:02.38)
Yeah, it's extremely important.
Jothy Rosenberg (36:02.772)
And what do you think your, what's your approach to it that's made it possible, that's made it work?
Julia (36:14.282)
It's been a journey. I'd say in the early days, I was so much younger too. You know, I was in my twenties starting my first business with two young kids and really figuring out so much and made so many mistakes and felt guilty a lot because I couldn't do anything as well as I wanted to do it because it just was stretched in every direction. eventually I just learned to let go of that guilt. I just saw that it was a big waste of energy. And I really
believed in the fact that my kids may not see the model of a mom that I saw with a wonderful mom who was a stay -at -home mom and really gave me everything I needed as a kid growing up. I was a different kind of mom and that they would respect that if I was consistent with them and I showed them love when I could and when I wasn't traveling and that I just wouldn't feel guilty because the guilt actually made me not show up for them very well either like it made me
Yeah, just not the best I could be. And so I think I got there eventually, it took a little while. But I think the moment for me that was just so heartening was a couple of years ago, my son was at university and he called me, FaceTimed me and he was like, Mom.
He's like, you won't believe it. He takes business. He said, my teacher is doing a presentation right now on a really amazing Nova Scotian company. And he turned it around and it was my face up on the screen that was being presented. He's like, I'm so proud of you, mom. really done amazing things. And it was just like, it was just like.
what I hoped would be true had come true at that moment. And I've seen my kids really respect the journey and they might not take a journey that's similar to mine at all, but they see that I've found something I care about and I've put in the work and I've been consistent and it's really mattered to them. And my daughter last week came home from grade five, my youngest, so I'm all over the map with my kids and their ages, but my youngest came home last week.
Julia (38:21.28)
and said, mom, I'm putting my name forward for class president in grade five. And I was just so proud of her to see that level of leadership from just such a little, but I think she's been able to watch me all the way along. And her excitement was that she gets to go to meetings like mom does now, because she got voted in yesterday as Madame President in her class. And it's just really cool to see.
I'm taking a lot more time for the kids as I get more mature in business and I just make sure that, yeah, that I'm not missing out on the really important part of life, which is family. Like family is really, it's number one, so.
Jothy Rosenberg (39:04.303)
I don't know. think the older ones are going to be jealous that the younger ones are getting more of your time.
Julia (39:07.31)
No doubt, my older ones say I'm way too easy on her and that they wish that they had everything that she has.
Julia (39:28.055)
I'm gonna lose you.
Jothy Rosenberg (39:38.586)
Something happened to the sound right there for a second.
Julia (39:42.924)
Yeah, yeah, no, I'm back though. I think I think we just broke up for a minute.
Jothy Rosenberg (39:47.278)
Yeah. Well, listen, this has been perfect. This has been just fantastic. I really appreciate your insights and your stories.
Julia (39:53.517)
No.
Julia (40:01.164)
Well, Jothi, I'm so thrilled to be reconnected and I think you're a wonderful storyteller. I just, yeah, I've got so much respect for you and time for you and thanks for welcoming me on. I appreciate it.
Jothy Rosenberg (40:14.852)
Well, my pleasure. I'm going to hit stop now.
Hi Julia!
Julia (00:04.668)
Hi, how are you, Jothi? Great.
Jothy Rosenberg (00:06.23)
I'm good. It is great to see you. It's sort of, there is this thing that happened. It's, you know, called COVID. And it made everybody kind of lose touch. And I'm not, I'm not the kind of person that loses touch. So it's so, it's so great to be reconnected. And we'll keep it that way.
Julia (00:28.585)
It really is. thrilled to be reconnected.
Jothy Rosenberg (00:32.208)
All right. So we have an audience of people that are startup founders, entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes and colors, people that want to be a founder. So that's kind of the people we're speaking to. But whoever it is, I always like to start with a little context setting of where are you originally from and where do you live now?
Julia (01:02.986)
Yeah, that's an easy one. I was born in North Bay, Ontario. So it's about four hours north of Toronto. Not a very big town. And I grew up there, loved it, had a great childhood and got really involved in sports. And then when I left home, I went as far as I possibly could to get away from the parents. They know it, so it's no surprise to them. Went out west for school.
But in my last year of high school, I'd started kayaking and I decided that I wanted to try to be a high level kayaker and all the national team programming was on the East Coast. So I had to make the change from the West Coast to the East Coast, landed in Halifax and that's where I am now, just outside Halifax. And I've lived here since 1996 and love it.
Jothy Rosenberg (01:53.968)
And you live right on a lake so you can keep it up.
Julia (01:58.156)
Yeah, right on a lake. I was out paddling yesterday. I love being out. I love the water. It's such a big part of my life. It's important.
Jothy Rosenberg (02:06.894)
Well, another big part of your life is startups and you've had quite a few and maybe you can and you're CEO of one now. And so before we talk about that one, maybe you could kind of just give a thumbnail sketch of your, your journey.
Julia (02:16.492)
Mm -hmm.
Julia (02:24.75)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, having been an athlete, when I came out out east, I was training for the Olympic Games and made the Olympic team in 2000. And when I retired from being an Olympic athlete, I tried to get a job.
You'd think it'd be easy after that journey to find a job, but I couldn't get hired anywhere. I kept on getting the feedback that I just didn't have enough work experience. And so I got turned down kind of everywhere. And I had had kids right after the games and I needed to make money. And so what I started doing was just working in the space that I knew I was a graphic designer. So I started working in graphic design for
clients and I built up a bit of a small business. And that was my first kind of foray into business, into entrepreneurship. I had no idea what I was doing. But that led me to kind of start to learn how to build a business. So I was graphic designing on my own in my basement with my two young kids and I didn't feel legitimate. So I spent quite a bit of time saving up money and bought a building and created a shared workspace. It was kind of before shared workspaces were a thing.
And it was a financial disaster. But what was really good about it was that I made an amazing community of people. I brought together a massive group of people like me who are independent creative people doing podcasts, doing video, doing graphic design, sound. And I'm still in touch with those people to this day.
And so that gave me the opportunity to just test out being a business owner, learning kind of PNL, learning how to pay the bills. So that was my first step. And I think kind of what launched my real entrepreneurial journey was during that phase of life, one of the members of my shared workspace was a web developer, software developer. And we came together and decided that we were going to build a company focused on
Julia (04:30.498)
building websites, it's early 2000s. And most websites were proprietary technology and we wanted to do something open source. So this was new, it was kind of a new adventure for me. that's what launched me into a true entrepreneurial space where I learned how to not only build a business, but scale it to something that was established, you know? And yeah, so that was an exciting time, busy time of my life, but really exciting. And then it went from there.
Jothy Rosenberg (04:59.732)
and it was in that same building, right? That, you got involved with, sheep dogs.
Julia (05:09.25)
That's right. Yeah. So in that, so was such a beautiful building, Jothi. I wish you could have seen it. It was, it was the first fire hall in Atlantic Canada. It still had the old bell that they would use to, to ring if there was a fire downtown. and so what I did was I renovated that space and just made it a gorgeous space for people to work. And like I said, one of the members was a software developer, and he and I, we joined forces to start building software. And there was a third,
a third member who kind of joined with us, kind of to build out a concept of working to migrate people over to the Google platform. So we had a lot of clients for the websites we were building at the time, and none of them knew how to set up their own email. It's crazy to think in that short period of time how far we've come, but setting up email for your business was like a technical endeavor at the time. And so we had this web development company and we...
kind of envisioned this idea that we would build a company that was focused on moving people from traditional email systems like Lotus, for instance, over to the Google platform. And we launched that naively. We believed that Google needed us because they needed support helping people get over to the Google platform. And we actually went down to
We went down to the Google campus in Mountain View, California, and we pitched the idea. We basically said, we think you need us to be a partner. at the time, they happened to be looking to establish a partnership program. And we became their first global Google enterprise partner to migrate people over to their platform. And we were their only partner for a couple of years. And then they started to expand the partner network to, I think there was about seven of us.
for about three years. And so what we would do, and that was Sheepdog, so what we would do is we would work with, let's say, an airline, and we would get all of their technology, their emails, their calendars, everything moved over to Google. And then we would build out software that would bolt onto the Google platform, like time tracking technologies, for instance. So that was a really fun company to start.
Julia (07:27.474)
It scaled really quickly in the early days. We hired a whole bunch of people. This was a new experience for me because I'd never scaled that quickly. But working with Google, we got to work with all the large enterprise in North America, which was really fun. And once people moved to Google, they would never leave. So we never had any churn, which was beautiful. So that was a great new adventure for me. Intense, really intense, really.
Yeah, a lot of learning, as you know, Toby.
Jothy Rosenberg (07:59.204)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's jump to the, to the current one, which is an Ed tech company, shoelace learning.
Julia (08:04.855)
Yeah.
Julia (08:08.502)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, something so proud of. I think it's a fantastic model.
Jothy Rosenberg (08:12.528)
I'd love to hear, all of us would love to hear about it.
Julia (08:19.894)
Yeah, well shoelace came out of the fact that I have four kids and my second son Max was really struggling with reading. had just sold out of, I'd basically exited a company and I had a bit of time to figure out what I wanted to do, you know, before I made my next move. Seeing that Max was struggling so much with reading and knowing that I had no clue how to help him, I felt really helpless. But I did know that he was
highly engaged in video games. And part of me thought, geez, why can't we get the same kind of engagement and motivation out of kids when it comes to learning? Like, why can't we build tools and resources that find a way to get kids that motivated to learn? And I looked into some of the learning technologies for Max and they were just horrible. This was back in 2014. There was really not much on the market that he wanted to use.
I knew the Minister of Education at the time in our province in Nova Scotia, and I pitched her the idea that I would go shadow teachers in the classrooms and see if I could find a technology or if I could build a technology that would help kids like Max. So I did that. I spent months, three months in the classroom shadowing teachers. And that led to me starting to develop a product that would help kids with reading. But what was...
interesting, you know, they always say you really have to know your customer. This was such a great example of doing the work, like actually getting in front of the customer day after day after day. Because I saw teachers in, you know, first grade, second grade, and they would implement a technology in their classroom. And they'd have 30 students, 30 littles, and they'd have to log in to a piece of technology with an email, or some kind of complex code.
The teacher would spend the whole class just logging kids in and troubleshooting logins. And I thought, well, this is crazy. We're never going to get to the meat of the technology. So my first product with this company was actually just a login system built with pictures, icons that kids loved. And there was nothing on the other side, just a login. Kids loved it. We made it a tool to teach them about keeping their passwords safe.
Julia (10:38.542)
And it was funny, it was just like such an example of how keeping it simple and really focusing on the core problem was really important. From there, we built out another product called Squiggle Park, which focused on early reading. And I grew that company, that product from about 2016 to about 2018. But I was super frustrated because the pace of selling to schools and districts is so slow.
and difficult. It's a really challenging market, which is well known. And so what I decided to do is I decided to just retire that product. I put it on the shelf and we just maintained it, but we didn't invest in it. And then I really got lucky, not lucky, I built a relationship with a woman who led a company in Seattle, Washington. Her name is Jessie Woolley Wilson. I have so much respect for her. She was the CEO of a company called Dreambox.
And I pitched her that shoelace might be a good tool for them. after lots of legwork and diligence, I was able to sell that to Dreambox. And we were able to use that investment to put it back into the company to build what we have today, which is shoelace. So long story to get to the fact that today we have a tool that's focused on reading and comprehension for grades three to eight. What makes it really unique is that
It's got tens of thousands of assignments and passages and questions all aligned to the curriculum of all the states and provinces. And what's really cool is that it gets delivered through mobile games. So when kids are playing mobile games, instead of an ad popping up, a part of their lesson pops up and for them to go back to the game, they have to answer the question. And any mobile game can be plugged into this system. So we've built two, but we're just getting started frankly.
It's reached over 7 million users since 2020. And yeah, like I said, I think we're just getting started.
Jothy Rosenberg (12:43.842)
Okay, so I have a couple questions from that. So are you staying in your province mostly?
Julia (12:52.046)
No, no, no, no. The users that we have now are in 160 countries, mainly in the United States. But we've been able to get users in many, many different regions of the world. Our customers, it's a freemium product, so we have customers in 25 countries.
Jothy Rosenberg (13:12.172)
And the curriculum that you have built into it, that's not going to be the same for all the customers. How do they plug in their curriculum to it?
Julia (13:16.579)
Yeah.
Julia (13:26.838)
It actually is the same. So we focused on English language arts curriculum for grades three to eight. There are modifications for some jurisdictions who require specific alignment, but generally it's the same curriculum. And it guarantees to get kids from basic reading up to full comprehension, the ability to synthesize, predict, analyze and such. So no, it's the same curriculum for any user. We do have a...
roadmap item that we've been working on to have third parties add curriculum to our platform to deliver that through games. But that's not part of this phase of development. That will be part of our next stage of development.
Jothy Rosenberg (14:07.408)
And the end user is a kid, obviously, but is the customer, the teacher, the school district, who do you have to actually convince to buy it?
Julia (14:19.276)
That's a great question. We call the end user a player. We don't call them a student. We call them a player because that's what they are. We went to teachers first. So because I was so frustrated with how slow enterprise sales were in education, I decided this would be a consumer play. We were going to sell direct to parents and teachers, and that was going exceptionally well. And then post COVID, we saw a massive market shift that we weren't expecting. And that shift is that districts,
mainly U .S. districts because that's where the bulk of our users are, decided post -COVID that they needed to really wrangle in what teachers were using for technology in the classroom because during COVID teachers were really kind of like, just need help, right? So they were using so many different programs and districts realized, well, geez, we really need to make sure we're assessing these programs. Are they safe?
Are they effective? know, are teachers actually using them? Are we spending our money right? Their job is to make sure they're using public dollars effectively. So, so our teachers who we've been selling to started to get blocked from using our platform because districts were blocking them because they hadn't paid for the product at the district level, which forced a massive shift in our business back to enterprise sales because frankly, we just can't continue to scale if we're not going to be building relationships.
with districts. that's been the focus since I guess the end of last school year. And that's my focus over the next couple of years is to build out our enterprise sales team processes and pipeline that's going to get us to scale.
Jothy Rosenberg (15:58.532)
That's going to take a pretty big team.
Julia (16:01.102)
We have a small team. We're going to start small. think what I've learned, one of the things I've learned over the years is just not to get ahead of our skis. So we have a small team right now of 15 people, which may not sound small to everybody listening, but it's, you know, for 7 million plus users, it's a small team. And we're going to continue with this team and be quite scrappy until we start to get our, you know, our first large sales to support the growth of the company.
I find that's one of the big problems, big mistakes that we can make is as, I say we, because I've made it many times over as founders, as entrepreneurs, as we see the opportunity and we build to the opportunity without getting cash in the door. And it's, think one of the major reasons for failure in business, because you just, need the cash to sustain the business. So it doesn't matter how good your product is, if you can't support it, the doors are going to close.
Jothy Rosenberg (17:01.186)
And has all your funding been from the sale that you made? So in other words, all the funding has been self -funded. You haven't gone out for investors.
Julia (17:15.758)
We did. the first three years, first two and a half, three years were self -funded through the sale of our last asset. And then we went out for a seed round. And so we did our first institutional round at the end of 2022. And we brought in about three and a half million to continue to scale. But other than that, it's been revenue that's been driving the growth.
Jothy Rosenberg (17:43.074)
and last time I was in Halifax, which was quite a bit before, you know, COVID, it was already an impressive and supportive, entrepreneurial community. I'm sure it's gotten stronger. How would you characterize it?
Julia (18:05.622)
Yeah, it's funny when I first landed here in Nova Scotia, I came because this is where all the Olympic athletes were training and that's what I wanted to do. And the Olympic coaches were here, the facilities were here. And so I landed in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia on a lake that's world -class in terms of venue as a venue for paddling. And I looked around and thought, she's like, this is, you know, this is the best place in the world. This is a place focused on high performance. And I learned pretty quickly that that wasn't the culture.
on the east coast of Canada. The culture on the east coast has never been one of high performance, but that started to shift. I think I'd say mid -2000s, there was some leaders, entrepreneurs, business leaders in the east coast of Canada who really reinvested in the ecosystem. There was a couple large exits where the founders really reinvested in the area.
And there was a lot of conferences held to really get people kind of engaged in this idea of entrepreneurship, of innovation. And we started to see that needle kind of move, I'd say mid -2000s. During COVID, our province did an exceptionally good job of keeping things safe, which in Canada became a bit of a North Star.
for how to manage the crisis, which led to a lot of migration into Atlantic Canada. And I think we've seen just non -stop growth since then. There was a massively supportive ecosystem for entrepreneurs, especially in the early, early stages. We have organizations like one called ACOA that will put funding into early organizations in early stages to help them kind of get out of the gate and significant funding. These are not small checks.
with really, really kind terms. There's also a really good angel network of investors here, people who have done really well and they want to give back. And the culture here is of giving back, which is really nice. Everyone wants to lift people up here. And everyone's just phone call away. It's so small.
Julia (20:17.227)
small relatively speaking that you know you can pick up the phone and you can call one of the most prominent business leaders in in the province and they'll be meeting with you that week if you if you can pitch them in the right way it's really a beautiful space to make things happen.
Jothy Rosenberg (20:38.316)
It's a very comfortable place for anybody that's from Boston to go. I think vice versa. We think of it as like a mini Boston because the lobsters are the same. The environment is the same. We both occasionally get hit with a hurricane. And of course, we have that tie from that
Julia (20:44.898)
Bye.
Jothy Rosenberg (21:07.792)
long, long time ago, that explosion that just about destroyed the whole port. And Boston came to help. And ever since then, we get the most gorgeous, huge Christmas tree from you guys.
Julia (21:20.526)
I know that was a devastating explosion of people who are listening don't know it was a munitions ship who that crashed into another ship in the harbor and the explosion I think at the time was the second largest man -made explosion next to the to the bomb
And it took out almost all the city. And what was really sad about it was people knew that the ship was on fire, that there had been an accident, came down to the shore to watch it. And it was just devastating. It took out so many people. And you're right, the city of Boston stepped up big time. They sent so many people to help kind of dig the city out and really build it back up.
And so I think we've always been kind of the little sister, the little sister of Boston. And it is so, it does feel very comfortable. I love being in Boston. I guess the other connection that I didn't mention is we're a big university city, right? And which really helps the ecosystem, just like Boston, you know, really high level, post -secondary institutions that are really respected and that, you know, push out amazing kind of talent, which is so important for businesses too. So.
Jothy Rosenberg (22:09.029)
You
Julia (22:32.898)
So that's another great part about being in this part of the world.
Jothy Rosenberg (22:37.216)
I had never heard, probably am, and it's a common thing, I think, that most Americans have probably never heard of Dalhousie University. But then once you're here, once you're there, I mean, and you find out what it is, it's like a very impressive institution.
Julia (22:56.886)
It is, it's a really wonderful institution. And I'd say it's kind of the most prominent one here in Atlanta, Canada, but we have so many, know, we have St. Mary's University, we have NASCAD, which is one of the leading independent art institutions, much like RISD down in Rhode Island. We've got, you know, Mount Allison, Acadia, we've got so many universities here. And I think it's really important for the ecosystem to constantly be
be developing kind of young people that are coming up that want to stay. And I think maybe that's one of the things that we've seen change in the last couple of decades, I guess, is that people want to stay. They don't feel like they have to leave for opportunity, which is really, really exciting. It's a good feeling. It feels exciting to be here right now.
Jothy Rosenberg (23:45.712)
So tell us a little bit more about your Olympics journey because it's a big part of your existence, of your personality, of how you formed. that year, the Olympics were in South America, right? they were Sydney, really far away.
Julia (23:57.315)
Yeah.
Julia (24:07.968)
They were in Sydney in Australia. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was it was exciting.
My Olympic journey, think, really dates, the start of it dates back to when I was in fourth grade, the same time my son was struggling with reading. I was struggling with school too. I had a speech impediment. I was a very low reader. I just didn't feel successful at all at school. And I remember, like I can remember the crushing feeling of just wishing a teacher could see potential in me. I just felt like nobody recognized, no one sees me. No one recognizes potential here. And I felt really,
frustrated more than anything. And I think that's when I turned to sport. And, you know, I was always a really hard worker and I think coaches respected that quickly. And so I got a lot of attention from the coaches in terms of, you know, just seeing that I had potential and wanting to push me.
to be better. And so early days I started, my dad said to me when I was really little, he said, Julia, I want you to do 21 sports before you're 21. And I thank him all the time for that because I'm pretty sure that was a big piece of what allowed me to be a high performance athlete. And I really encourage kids, you know, these days to not focus too early, like to really try lots of things. But I became a swimmer, swimming was my thing. That's what I loved.
And I was at quite a high level. think I was top 10 in Canada by the time I was 13. And my plan, my goal was to make the Olympic team as a swimmer, but I was in a ski accident in high school and I broke my back, which put me out of commission for quite a while. But I ended up recovering fully. And when I came out of that injury, I still had the passion for sport, but I had lost the
Julia (26:03.854)
the hunger and swimming because I saw everybody pass me by and I thought, I don't know if I can, I don't know if I can build back up. So I started a new sport. We had the opportunity to join a canoe club in town in North Bay and I tried paddling for the first time when I was 19 and just loved it. Luckily swimming was quite transferable in terms of the muscles you need to be good at paddling. And yeah, so started really late. And then I thought, well, maybe I can make.
the Olympics in this sport. And so I spent the next four years doing everything I needed to do to get there and I got there. And yeah, it was just such a dream come true to be able to be at the Olympics and looking around and thinking I was with kind of the heroes that I'd always seen over the years. that was awesome. It gave me a confidence, Jothi, that I feel so lucky to have earned, which is...
just the fact that being the best in the world is absolutely within reach in anything you do if you really put in the time and if you have a bit of luck and put yourself in the right environment. And so I've been able to transfer that feeling, whether it be, it might be misguided sometimes, but I've been able to transfer that feeling into my business life. And I have a goal really with shoelace to be world -class, to be among the best in the world at what we do.
I know we're there from a product perspective and now we just have to, we have to scale it to the market.
Jothy Rosenberg (27:37.066)
that's great. And I have to say that I completely understand the attitude about sports and helping with your overall confidence, self -confidence, and self -esteem because I had the same experience.
Julia (28:01.644)
Yeah, tell me more, wanna hear.
Jothy Rosenberg (28:03.792)
Well, for me, was, it was having lost a leg and a lung at 16 and 19. And everybody said, can't you can't ski, you can't bike, you know, they said, said, you can't swim because you'll go in a circle. said, you can't bike because you'll fall right over. they, they said, well, you won't be able to ski either. mean, and all of those became, you know, sports that I got to a very high level in.
not Olympic level. but, I probably could have gone for the Paralympics, I suppose. but at that point I was, you know, already halfway through college and, and other things were also getting to be important.
Julia (28:54.838)
Yeah, yeah, it's a life choice for sure to go in that direction. And it sounds to me, Jothi, that you have the same, don't know if it's a good thing or bad thing that I have, which is when people tell you you can't do something, you're going to make it happen.
Jothy Rosenberg (29:13.124)
Well, that's why that other book is called Who Says I Can't?
Julia (29:15.402)
Yeah, I know. I love it. actually when somebody tells me that I can't do something, I always get a little smile thinking, we got some work ahead of us.
Jothy Rosenberg (29:27.024)
Yeah.
Jothy Rosenberg (29:30.65)
Yeah, so I've had people who've said to me, wait a minute, if it starts with the word who, that it's gotta have a question mark on the end. And I said, no, it doesn't. It's got an exclamation point.
Julia (29:42.19)
I love it. Yeah, it's good. It's good. And you need that kind of determination because it's not easy all the time. So it's good to have.
Jothy Rosenberg (29:46.298)
Jothy Rosenberg (29:53.262)
Well, it's true. And then when things get tough, when you switch now over to, you're CEO of a startup and there's a crisis or there's a really challenging situation, there is this base that you build up in yourself by focusing hard and working harder on a sport. And the thing about sports, of course, is that it really is just a matter of
focus and hard work and you can get good at it. There are other things in life where it's not necessarily true that if you just work hard at it, you can be really good at it. It's just, it's not quite the same. So, so with that base that you've got from all these success you had at whatever sport you love, that base of confidence and in your own ability to deal with a situation.
Julia (30:26.253)
Mm
Julia (30:33.966)
Mm
Jothy Rosenberg (30:52.26)
does transfer over to the business side of your life.
Julia (30:57.644)
Yeah, absolutely. I think something I had to learn though, was exactly what you were just saying, that hard work will only take you so far in business. I think you have to work hard, but you also really have to, you have to be so thoughtful and strategic and you often have to blaze your own trail. You have to figure out where you're going. The pathway isn't always clear.
patient, you have to be patient sometimes, which is not my best trait. But as I get older, too, I realized that, you know, it really, and it's such a cheesy thing. It's not the outcome, it's the journey, but it truly is, you know, because as I go through my, like, as I think about my experiences in business, there was always extremely low points. But that was always just a point. It was never
It was never the end, right? And even if things completely changed after that point, it was just a dot on the journey. It wasn't an end. And I think that's something I've really kind of embraced is that nothing is an end. It's just kind of the stepping stone that you're on right now before you take the next step. And I think that's a really good philosophy is just know that all you have to do is just take the next step.
And we can all do that. When you break it down to that level, it seems so much more doable. Just take the next best step that's right in front of you right now.
Jothy Rosenberg (32:32.1)
You know, I always talk to everybody about grit, grit for a startup, but you had grit that, I've heard what you just said about how you felt like sport was an important outlet. And it's like, that is exactly the moment when it sounds to me like you developed grit and then you've been able to leverage that into.
all the startups and some of the challenges, including some that we have happened to face together.
Julia (33:09.582)
that built our bond to be strong. That's right.
Jothy Rosenberg (33:12.29)
Yeah, yeah. Well, you're also the first person that ever sort of called me out of the blue and said, hey, I could really use some CEO mentoring and like, and that ended up becoming just this, you know, incredibly fun. And then ultimately, you know, a year or so after that, joining, you know, the company that you were CEO of as the
board member. Those were mostly fun times.
Julia (33:46.446)
Yeah, well, the coaching was awesome. So for me, it actually that's such a transferable piece from the from the sport background too, is, you know, I knew the value of a coach. And I've always respected the value of a good coach. And so reaching out was just a way that I was trying to find that support, you know, find
really somebody that could help anchor me, help make sure that I had a bit of a fire all the time. And sometimes just make sure that my direction is right. And I really appreciated that. our, your role at that stage of the business was so, so helpful to me because it was all new. Like I really didn't know what I was doing. And so just to be able to have a soundboard was, was critical, frankly. Like I just, couldn't have done it without your, your support at that phase of the business. And then yes.
And then having you on the board was awesome. And we went through some interesting, challenging times, but we got through, which was great. But it gave me a whole new respect for who you have on your team, the good and the bad, and really making sure you have the right players on the team.
Jothy Rosenberg (34:55.874)
And I had no experience mentoring. So it really was just me acting as a sounding board. It's all really all I did.
Julia (35:03.47)
You didn't know that? No, I'm just joking. I think I remember how we met, I think immediately when I met you, I knew that you would be able to provide me with the type of coaching that I needed because I often I have a good intuition. I think generally we as humans have good intuition. Sometimes it's just hard to clear the noise so you can really listen to it, right? And a good coach can help you do that.
Jothy Rosenberg (35:33.136)
I want to end on the work -life balance because I feel like with four kids, you're a master at the work -life balance. But I mean, you work hard. You put in all the time necessary to make the startup successful. But you also put in all the time necessary to make your family successful.
Julia (35:46.867)
I
Julia (36:02.38)
Yeah, it's extremely important.
Jothy Rosenberg (36:02.772)
And what do you think your, what's your approach to it that's made it possible, that's made it work?
Julia (36:14.282)
It's been a journey. I'd say in the early days, I was so much younger too. You know, I was in my twenties starting my first business with two young kids and really figuring out so much and made so many mistakes and felt guilty a lot because I couldn't do anything as well as I wanted to do it because it just was stretched in every direction. eventually I just learned to let go of that guilt. I just saw that it was a big waste of energy. And I really
believed in the fact that my kids may not see the model of a mom that I saw with a wonderful mom who was a stay -at -home mom and really gave me everything I needed as a kid growing up. I was a different kind of mom and that they would respect that if I was consistent with them and I showed them love when I could and when I wasn't traveling and that I just wouldn't feel guilty because the guilt actually made me not show up for them very well either like it made me
Yeah, just not the best I could be. And so I think I got there eventually, it took a little while. But I think the moment for me that was just so heartening was a couple of years ago, my son was at university and he called me, FaceTimed me and he was like, Mom.
He's like, you won't believe it. He takes business. He said, my teacher is doing a presentation right now on a really amazing Nova Scotian company. And he turned it around and it was my face up on the screen that was being presented. He's like, I'm so proud of you, mom. really done amazing things. And it was just like, it was just like.
what I hoped would be true had come true at that moment. And I've seen my kids really respect the journey and they might not take a journey that's similar to mine at all, but they see that I've found something I care about and I've put in the work and I've been consistent and it's really mattered to them. And my daughter last week came home from grade five, my youngest, so I'm all over the map with my kids and their ages, but my youngest came home last week.
Julia (38:21.28)
and said, mom, I'm putting my name forward for class president in grade five. And I was just so proud of her to see that level of leadership from just such a little, but I think she's been able to watch me all the way along. And her excitement was that she gets to go to meetings like mom does now, because she got voted in yesterday as Madame President in her class. And it's just really cool to see.
I'm taking a lot more time for the kids as I get more mature in business and I just make sure that, yeah, that I'm not missing out on the really important part of life, which is family. Like family is really, it's number one, so.
Jothy Rosenberg (39:04.303)
I don't know. think the older ones are going to be jealous that the younger ones are getting more of your time.
Julia (39:07.31)
No doubt, my older ones say I'm way too easy on her and that they wish that they had everything that she has.
Julia (39:28.055)
I'm gonna lose you.
Jothy Rosenberg (39:38.586)
Something happened to the sound right there for a second.
Julia (39:42.924)
Yeah, yeah, no, I'm back though. I think I think we just broke up for a minute.
Jothy Rosenberg (39:47.278)
Yeah. Well, listen, this has been perfect. This has been just fantastic. I really appreciate your insights and your stories.
Julia (39:53.517)
No.
Julia (40:01.164)
Well, Jothi, I'm so thrilled to be reconnected and I think you're a wonderful storyteller. I just, yeah, I've got so much respect for you and time for you and thanks for welcoming me on. I appreciate it.
Jothy Rosenberg (40:14.852)
Well, my pleasure. I'm going to hit stop now.
