Lacy Garcia
speaker
108 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Lacy Garcia’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
When people look at me and be like, that's great. That's nice. Good luck. That seems really nice. But I was like, I'm like, no, no, no matter who said no, no matter what door was shut or email at this COVID, right? Like emails not returned, like calls not responded to the massive sort of rejection. I knew like firsthand, I was like, I know that what we're doing works.
Maybe I've got to figure out how to communicate it better, position it better. But I'm like, I know deep down that the solution that we have here actually works. So for my experience as an entrepreneur with all the ups and downs and all the rejection and kind of all the challenges, because the highs are so high, the lows are low. It is lonely. It is challenging. It's wonderful. It's terrible.
It's like, all those things. But at the core, I've never doubted the solution. We've certainly made updates, improvements, enhancements to sort of the business model or the delivery method. And you've got to do that, right? You've got to constantly be listening and looking at the data, right?
And making decisions because if something in your head, the way it translates out to actually how it's coming together, like it doesn't always connect, right? But I definitely think for me, the fact that I knew firsthand that this worked. And we've done a lot of research. We backed that up with our own firsthand market research. And clearly we have all the third party data.
But I think if you can say that you truly are, you're authentic in it. You're passionate about it. You know, you're doing this because you really believe in what you're doing. And that enables you to stay connected to it and push through. But it also enables others to get on board, to see. and want to become part of the solution if they know how much you believe in it.
There are so many, to your point. I think one of the things that really resonates has been the point about the problem, right? And I say solution, but to your point, the business model or the exact way in which we're delivering has had to evolve as the market evolves. And the environment from a customer or from a fundraising perspective, from what's happened in financial services.
So I think what is challenging is that as an entrepreneur, as a founder, as a CEO who is deeply passionate about everything you're doing, you're doing your best to make the right decisions and then you're going all in. You're going all in until you have to not. But you have to go all in and you have to get people on board. I'm always saying, listen, we're going to learn. We're going to try this.
We're going to do it. If it doesn't work, fail fast. We're going to pivot. We're going to take what we learned and we're going to then come with the next solution. But that's hard, right? And that's hard, I think, with other members of the team, with employees, because startups have to continually learn. evolve. They have to continually be nimble. They have to continually pivot.
And that can be very challenging for other people who are really bought into something that you're doing or really want to give it more time or really want to see or really like, we can't. I think that's one of the hardest things is that it is not a straight path necessarily. Sometimes it is. And there are some companies out there, they nailed it right out of the gate.
They had the right, there was a a certain technology, something that came out and just revolutionized everything, right? But that is not the majority of the kind of longer term successful company story. And so it is that constant need to evaluate, to update, to pivot, to change directions. And the fact that there is a human element to that, which is really tricky.
I mean, I think it's one of the hardest things when you're successfully developing kind of running a company and making the best decisions for the business, they don't always necessarily feel like the best decisions sometimes for the people or the culture in the short term. And that's a challenge, especially when you are running a mission-driven company, right?
Where you really do care authentically about everyone on your team.
And it's really hard, right? Because in a startup or a fast-growing company, you are taking small data points and you're making decisions really, really quickly. And you're often, it's a combination of, you certainly have my co-founders
trusted advisors i love to hire people who i think could replace me and do a better job than me like i like hire the smartest most talented people like let them rip and listen to them you know that's how you get to that next level is empowering these people to come and tell you share their opinion share their feedback share their solutions but you're then at the end of the day you're making the decision you have more information than anybody else does have but then you also
Exactly as you said, you're making decisions in absence of the like backed up in a corporate way, the proof. I made this decision for these reasons, but it's not because of like, because we had that great two or three years, now we're deciding to do this. It's like, well, because we saw like positive indications and we are going this way. So it does.
You have to make decisions in absence of like a full data set. And you're relying on your instincts and you're relying on your gut and you're relying on trying to as much as possible take in 360. But quite frankly, at the end of the day, you are just, okay, gotta make a decision. I take a minute and I know sometimes I'm like, okay, I'm like my head and I just sit back, take a breath.
Sometimes if you can sleep on it, I always say sleep on it if you can sleep on it. But a lot of times you can't sleep on it. But when you can sleep on it, sleep on it. I'm an early morning person. I'm like, I feel like I fall apart at night. And then I'm like, my best is like first thing in the morning. Everything crystallizes. So whatever it is, maybe you're a real night owl.
But no, you've got to make those decisions. But I try to clear that space, like take a minute and just... analyze the data, but then also go with your gut and then realize that you've got to own it no matter what. And you've got to own it. And the thing is too, it's like, it could be wrong.
And it's a week, a month, six months later, you're standing in front of your board and you're saying, course, correct. Yes. And you got to own it. But you know, when you're making that decision, you're going to own the consequences of it.
We are very fortunate to have a couple of institutional investors. Certainly BlackRock is our lead investor and grateful for the amazing team that we've worked with at BlackRock. And I know what caused them to say yes is we actually started working with them. We had a three-year relationship with them or close to three-year relationship with them in firsthand data with their team prior to them.
Showing 61–80 of 108 · page 4 of 6
← Previous
Next →