The Entrepreneurs for Impact Podcast: Transcripts
$62M of VC Investment for Fintech + Energy Efficiency Leader – Lauren Salz, CEO of Sealed
PODCAST INTRODUCTION
Chris Wedding:
My guest today is Lauren Salz. Lauren is the Co-founder and CEO of Sealed, a company making it so much easier to be energy efficient for single-family residential homes, bundling all sorts of services from optimizing which energy efficiency solutions make the most sense, finding the financing to make that happen, as well as the contractors to make it happen as well.
01:58
In this episode, we talked about why her experience playing the flute as a street musician, of all things, is relevant to her success as a startup CEO. How she's been able with her team to raise over $60 million for her company's growth. What it means to be a female CEO doing this. How to treat feedback and why it's so important to give it in real time almost in any way you can, just get the feedback shared for the benefit of the recipient and the company as a whole.
A need to ask this question, if not me, then who? The importance of learning by doing, not just by more analysis at a computer. How you can make money by bundling or unbundling products or services. The influence of her stint at McKinsey & Company on what she's doing right now. Why she loves weightlifting, book recommendations, and again, so much more. Hope you enjoy and please give Lauren and Sealed a shout-out on LinkedIn or Twitter by sharing this podcast with your people. Thanks, y'all.
PODCAST INTERVIEW
Chris Wedding:
Lauren Salz, Co-founder and CEO of Sealed, welcome to the podcast.
Lauren Salz:
Thank you for having me here today, Chris.
Chris Wedding:
It’s a fun juxtaposition of, “Hey, wait a second. Let me close the door because my little dude is sleeping. He may wake up and interrupt us,” combined with, “Hey Lauren, it was four years of finding product market fit and now you guys are on fire, 62.5 million bucks raised.” For those listening, you can do both, mother, CEO. Yeah, exactly. I think one thing we talked about before pressing record is, these four years to find product market fit, I think a lot of listeners will say, “Wow, that's a long time. Could I persist? Should I persist?” We joked about answers to that question. Maybe let's start there. What made you continue to say, “I know there's a business here,”?
Lauren Salz:
A couple of things made us persist because it's hard to say and I would never say to an entrepreneur, “Never give up, never quit,” because sometimes it is time to quit and move on. I think what gave me, my co-founder, Andy, a lot of conviction around what we were doing is we looked at the total greenhouse gas emissions that were coming from homes. It actually, makes up 20% of greenhouse gas emissions in the US and we just thought, “Somebody has to figure out how to get people to adopt these really effective technologies and if it's not us, it might not get done.” And so, we just had that passion for what we were doing.
04:47
Then also it's not like during those four years we weren't out in market with a product. We actually launched a different product early on that had traction. It just wasn't flying off the shelves types of traction, but we have these like market hints that we had something right about our thesis and we just need to continue on it to iterate on it before we can get there. Versus like if we had launched something and it totally flopped and there was no traction, maybe we would have given up, but we thought that we were the right people to go and solve this problem.
I always felt that Sealed was a little bit before it's time and I think that was definitely the case for funding, for example, but those early years were actually very important for us to build up the data and intellectual property that we needed for the product that we have today.
Chris Wedding:
I like all that. I wrote down a few things here, that sentiment, if not us, then who, right? I mean, maybe somebody else, but where there is the either opportunity or really responsibility, take the bull by the horns. That resonates. You talked about launching a few products over that time period and some worked, some didn't, you learned some things. And it's a great reminder to learn by doing versus to learn by looking at spreadsheets and reports and long business plans that very few people see. I see you shaking your head vigorously.
Lauren Salz:
Yeah. I strongly believe in getting something out to the market even if it's not perfect Because surveys can only get you so far. Market data can only get you so far. Customer research only gets you so far. By the way, I have spent plenty of time during rush hour in Penn Station and in Grand Central speaking to homeowners in the early days of Sealed. But you don't really know how good your idea or your product is until you get out there and you try to sell it.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, I always like to think about when folks complete surveys, sometimes they're saying what they think the recipient wants to hear versus, “How do I provide an answer where I don't seem like an evil human being? No, I will not choose or I will not sacrifice one thing for what's good for the world.”
You're also talking about persistence through these years and there's just so many quotes in the startup world about how persistence is half the battle, blah, blah, blah. But I think what I hear you saying is, yeah, persistence along with market feedback, right?
Lauren Salz:
Yeah.
Chris Wedding:
If market feedback says direction—
Lauren Salz:
Right, exactly. You can't be stupidly persistent and be like, “I have this great idea,” you try to sell it and nobody likes it. You're like, “But this is a great idea. Someone will like it eventually.” No, you have to listen to what your potential customers want.
07:36
Chris Wedding:
Amen. I've mentioned on the podcast before that my first startup I was like, “Persistence matters.” I was like, “Watch this. I'm going to persist through so much negative feedback and lack of interest and what I was building,” but some smart people told me it was worthwhile, right?
Lauren Salz:
Right.
Chris Wedding:
The last thing I'm going to call out is, you mentioned essentially a pie graph analysis. We looked at a pie graph. What was a gigantic slice of that pie? Now let's go after it. I think sometimes we pick slices of a pie that are too small or parts of a pie, that the whole pie is too small. So that even if we win, very few outside investors really care because there's not much to grab there, if you will.
Lauren Salz:
Correct. I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs or people who are thinking of becoming entrepreneurs because they have an interesting idea, and sometimes people have a good idea, but it's for a small pie. Then it doesn't necessarily mean that they shouldn't pursue the business idea. It just means that it's probably not a good fit for a venture. There's plenty of successful small businesses that focus on some small tiny market and they're the best in that market and they make a nice living for themselves and their family, but they shouldn't raise 62 and a half million dollars.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, some would say Entrepreneurs for Impact fits in that bucket. Look, it could be a chief scalable business, but that's not what I want, but yeah, lots of impact and fun. Okay, so we've teased the audience a fair amount. Give us the pitch, Lauren, what is Sealed?
Lauren Salz:
Sealed makes it easy and affordable to get homes off of fossil fuels. In particular, right now we're really focused on single family homes, making them energy efficient and getting people onto all electric so eventually they can get onto all renewables.
What we do that makes us different is we're a full-service partner where we figure out the best solutions for each homeowner. We find the best contractors to do the work and we're managing the entire process. But the key reason why people trust us to help them with these decisions is because we're covering the upfront costs ourselves and we only get paid back based on the actual energy reductions.
Chris Wedding:
I think in so many words, in business speak, you all turn a CapEx into an OpEx. You turn the customer's capital expense into a manageable operating expense where they save money. When I learned about you-all's business as we've joked, I was like, “Great, here's my zip code. Please come to my house tomorrow.” I mean, you're not in every city just yet.
Lauren Salz:
Yeah. Well, but the whole idea behind our business is that we looked at energy efficiency and electrification and these are very tried and true technologies that are cost-effective and solve a clear customer pain point and are also good for the environment. It seemed like the type of thing that logically should be a no-brainer and so we had to figure out what the actual barriers were. A big part of it was hassle because it shouldn't make sense for our customer to go out and do it on their own, but it's just too much work and too complicated to figure it out.
10:53
Then also we know that they're tried and true and we know that these technologies are good, but it is a big capital expense for someone to put up front if they're not feeling confident that the energy savings are actually going to be there.
Chris Wedding:
Well, the hassle was a big deal. I think about, we're doing some much needed renovations at our house this summer as are many people with COVID savings, but anyway, the friction of, okay, well, who do you trust? Okay, the job is done, they left. Oh, wait a second, it wasn't done right. Now four calls later and they come fix it. Teah, the hassle is a big deal. You're really bundling. You're bundling a lot of things into one. Some listeners have heard the idea, one way or two ways at least to create business is, one is to bundle a lot of things and the other is to unbundle something from someone else's bundle and make it really freaking awesome. So, you're bundling a lot of things to make it really seamless.
Lauren Salz:
Yeah, but the interesting thing is when you're talking about unbundling becoming the best at it, that was part of our original strategy. Originally, we were doing something even more different than what we're doing, but there was a point in time where we just had our performance-based financing and that was our product. It was de-bundled from figuring out the project scope itself and managing the contractors, and what we found is that the bundling of it was really essential to our success.
Chris Wedding:
It's hard to know where the bottlenecks are until you try. Try this, try that. This is what we learned by doing. Amazing.
Lauren Salz:
Exactly.
Chris Wedding:
If you were to think about the suite of products and services you all offer to improve energy efficiency, what are some of the biggest slices of that pie or the most common or most impactful perhaps products and services?
Lauren Salz:
Everyone who hasn't gotten insulation and air sealing in the past 10 years needs to get air sealing and insulation. That's one of the lowest hanging fruit measures that almost everyone needs regardless of geography, so that's included on almost every project. Then the second bucket of things that we like to see customers do is electrify and get a heat pump, which is for your listeners that aren't familiar, it's a super-efficient combined heating and cooling system. The great thing about electrification is that you can then get renewables and make your home even more environmentally friendly.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah. In fact, I'm staring at the new heat pump in my office. Super quiet, super-efficient and how nice that Acadia can make it renewable. Cool. How about geographies, where it makes sense today, why, and where you all seek to go in your future regions, if you will?
13:40
Lauren Salz:
So, 15 months ago, we were only in the state of New York and then since then, we've expanded to four more states, primarily in the Northeast, but we just expanded to the Chicago metro area. Typically, markets that we like are homes or regions that have older housing stock and that have at least one extreme season, so either that's winter or summer. In some cases, where we’re operating, they have both, those are our best markets. I will say that unfortunately for the world, there are now a lot more places in the US that have extreme weather, especially during the summertime. Places like Northern California, the Pacific Northwest, those are places where traditionally people didn't have air conditioning and we're seeing that change very rapidly.
Chris Wedding:
I've got a sister and her family in Oregon and they will testify both to the extremes of temperature as well as, “Are our bags packed in case the next wildfire is closer to our house at this time?” How about your ideal customer, if that's the right word? I don't know whether it's size of family or other demographics that make them the right fit.
Lauren Salz:
I mean, our customers are single family homeowners, so it's a combination of people. We’ve got young couples who have just purchased their first home and maybe have their first couple of kids and we also get people who are empty nesters, so it really runs the gamut.
Chris Wedding:
Excellent. I can imagine some listeners are thinking, “Wait a second, air sealing, insulation, heat pumps, this is not venture capital style material. This is not new stuff. How in the world did Lauren raise all this money? How is there scale here?” Obviously, there were answers, but how do you help them cross that bridge, Lauren?
Lauren Salz:
Yes. We're not actually a maker of insulation air sealing heat pumps. The way I think about our business, it's a managed marketplace with a fintech product in addition to it and so that's why it's venture back bull. I'll tell you, it's very scalable. We're growing very, very fast. Last year we grew like 350% year over year.
Chris Wedding:
Heck, yeah.
Lauren Salz:
So, that's what makes it venture back bull, but I'll say, and this is what it was like in the early years of Sealed is that there was a cleantech burst that happened right before we started the company. And so, there wasn't a lot of venture dollars available for Sealed. We were funded primarily through angel investors during that period of time we were finding product market fit, and it's only in recent years where two things coincided. One, we found product market fit and we started growing really well, but two, there became a lot more venture dollars available in climate tech, which it had to be rebranded as climate tech. Nobody talks about clean tech anymore. It's kind of a he who shall not be named.
16:37
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, it's a four-letter word for sure. Well, then take it one step further, where we have the Inflation Reduction Act passing, or when this podcast goes live passed, which I'm guessing has lots more investors knocking on your door.
Lauren Salz:
It's a very, very exciting time to be Sealed, or really any company in the space. One, I think that the bill generally is very good policy, but in particular, I think it's a really big accelerant for the private sector. I'll say Sealed is definitely one of the companies that's a really big beneficiary of the Inflation Reduction Act.
It's a thoughtful bill. Of course, I know the parts that are relevant to our business more than the parts that are not relevant to our business. But I think it does a good job balancing between providing the right government incentives to get the economics on parity with heating, cooling your home in a dirty way makes clean stuff on parity with that, but while not crowding out the private market. I think it strikes the right balance.
Chris Wedding:
You talked about your business model as a managed marketplace plus fintech. I think it's really interesting for folks listening to think about, okay, cool, you all are growing climate tech businesses or funding climate tech businesses. How do you describe them? Well, you could call it a climate tech business, but that's not often really accurate or helpful. It's like, well, yeah, but what's the model for how you make money, right?
Lauren Salz:
Exactly and that's the funny thing about climate tech investing when I speak to other entrepreneurs about, is when you think about climate tech investors, we love a climate tech fund. But the people who run the fund, they have different areas of expertise and there's all types of climate tech businesses. There are companies like Sealed that are highly software and tech enabled and then there's businesses that are developing some new type of hardware. Those are really, really different business models with very different margin profiles, different operating models. Like the way you have headcount looks completely different, but it's the same investors who are investing along the entire value chain, which is really, really different from a lot of other sectors. But yeah, there's all types of business models that are going to be needed to fight climate change.
Chris Wedding:
For sure. So, sticking with the kind of business model you all have, what are examples of the kind of professionals or skillsets that find a good home at Sealed?
Lauren Salz:
We hire across the board. We always have open sales positions at the company, that's one of our bigger teams. Then the rest of the places that startups hire, product, engineering, HR, recruiting, really all types of stuff. I'll say because Sealed really is focused on being a full-service partner, we have to be good at so many different things. It is an operationally complex business and because of that, you name a scale or a job type and we probably have it here at Sealed.
Chris Wedding:
You, I believe, are also a Forbes 30 under 30.
19:46
Lauren Salz:
I am.
Chris Wedding:
Good confirmation. Are there any stories about what it means to be not a gray haired, grizzled, this is a compliment to those folks who are, veteran? Well, to be two things, a young leader and a woman leader in this space raising so much capital. Any insights or ways that you've had to deal with a little extra friction in raising capital, hiring team, all the different basics to getting to where you are today, Lauren?
Lauren Salz:
Well, I'll say that I don't know what a counterfactual would be if I was an old white man, but I'll just tell you about the experience that I've had, I think especially being a younger founder. I'm half Chinese, so as many Asian women know, sometimes you look pretty young to people who aren't Asian. When I was 25 and starting Sealed, I looked a lot younger than that, so that can lead to some really interesting dynamics. There's ways in which it's benefited me. There are ways that have been more of a handicap.
I'll say one of the top ways that it benefited me is, if I'm in Penn Station doing customer development, everyone thinks I'm a student rather than someone who works for a business. So, everyone's happy to help out a student on their research project. That part really came in handy.
I'll say that being a female CEO, especially in climate tech is pretty rare. I don't know too many other female CEOs in climate, but I'll say that overall, it's hard for me to do a counterfactual conversation I've gotten or knock on because I'm female. I do think that it is an advantage in recruiting. We've been able to get a lot of really top female talent at CEO throughout the ranks of the company. I'll say a unique challenge I've had being a female CEO is being pregnant during a fundraise.
Chris Wedding:
Amazing.
Lauren Salz:
That was a super interesting experience. Signed a term sheet maybe when I was like 37 weeks pregnant or something like that, I’m using the round off where I actually had a baby. People say like, “Oh, there's no difference between being male and being female,” I'll tell you being pregnant, you don't feel that great. Going through that experience, physically was very challenging, but it is a very empowering experience to know that I can accomplish things professionally while also achieving my personal goals.
Chris Wedding:
I think it's fair to say that that would fit the description of a bad ass, closing a round 37 weeks pregnant. I can also imagine there are scenarios where people may underestimate you and get surprised. If they're on the other side of the table, let's say or try to cut a deal, they underestimate you and you come back and, “Oh, I'm glad you said that. Now it's time to work some Lauren magic.”
Lauren Salz:
Yes, and I think also what I look like or looked like, especially when I was a little bit younger, I did surprise people when I started to speak. So, sometimes it's very fun.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, sure. I can relate just a touch. When I first started teaching at Duke, the first classes I had, they were executive classes. And so, I'd walk in and I was, I forget, late 20s maybe and I heard stories later from students who were my dad's age, who became friends and peers. They're like, “Chris, when you walked in, I was like, ‘I know I'm at Duke, but what is this young dude going to say that I need to know?’” Luckily, it worked out.
23:35
I would also just say for those listening, if there are growth stage female CEOs who want to find other peers like Lauren, dot, dot, dot, you're in luck, because come join us at the Entrepreneurs for Impact CEO Mastermind program. Look, we recognize that there are not enough female CEOs, we're going to change that. Let's go back to Penn Station. I believe you have some other fun stories that are less Sealed related about train stations and other skills or hustle that you have, Lauren, if my memory is correct, right? You're blanking, but yeah.
Lauren Salz:
Not quite train stations, not currently, but I did spend time as a street musician when I was living in England.
Chris Wedding:
Thank you. Yeah.
Lauren Salz:
Yes. I played on one of the main streets in Oxford for a summer and played the flute. I actually made a ton of money. I made around $30 an hour or it was 20 pounds an hour, so it was like 30 back in the day. By the way, trust me enough, that was one of the things that when I met my co-founder, Andy, made him think that I was the one that he wanted to work with.
Chris Wedding:
Amazing. All right, so not quite at the train stations, but it could have been at a train station, the entrance perhaps.
Lauren Salz:
Yeah. It would have been, except for the Oxford train station was a little bit far out of town.
Chris Wedding:
Not a great venue for performance.
Lauren Salz:
Yes, exactly, but theoretically, it could have been a good place to perform.
Chris Wedding:
Nice. Why do you think that experience made Andy think, “Yeah, Lauren is the one to partner with,”?
Lauren Salz:
Because I think if you look at my background, going to Columbia and then working at McKinsey, people might have certain impressions about me going to these big institutions. Then when he found out about me being a street musician, he's like, “Oh, hey, this girl has some hustle.”
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, for sure.
Lauren Salz:
I also think that there’s something about going and making your living on the streets and taking that risk and also putting yourself in a variety of interesting situations. You definitely have to be willing to take some risk to be doing that. It was also the summer before my senior year of college when most people were getting internships at banks and consulting firms, and I decided I wanted to do this instead. I thought I would learn more and it's hard to do the counterfactual, but I did learn a lot that summer.
26:15
Chris Wedding:
Wow. I sometimes try to get our two teenage boys to do things that require them to interact with strangers in public. Talk to the waitress or waiter or just order things, getting tickets, who knows? I've yet to be super successful in that, but I can see that ability to be ready to be told, “Get out of here. I love what you're doing,” disdainful looks, general disapproval or lack of interest, yet you persist because there are all sorts of reasons why you persist.
Lauren Salz:
It was very scary to do it the first few times and it was hard to get myself out there the first time to do it. I felt very uncomfortable with it, but that's one of the things about being an entrepreneur is you just have to get comfortable being uncomfortable.
Chris Wedding:
That is a good soundbite. I mean, you can imagine it, you're at a conference, you're on the phone, you're trying to make sales or just do customer discovery, where it's early and you certainly have parts of your product that don't work for whoever you're talking to. To treat it as data, it's just data.
Lauren Salz:
It's just data, but the other thing I think about being a good manager of people, you have to be comfortable becoming uncomfortable because I think good managers are consistently giving feedback including a lot of negative feedback, and that's uncomfortable. It's very uncomfortable.
I have a strong opinion that startups who are going to be successful are the places where the company learns the fastest. That includes all team members of the company learning as quickly as possible, and that means giving the feedback, even when it's hard.
Chris Wedding:
Let's talk more about that because part of what I'm hearing is along the lines of, let's be a learning organization. The other part is just how feedback is given, whether it's how we value candor or the frequency or the format of feedback. Say more about that if you could.
Lauren Salz:
I think that the most important thing is that you are giving the feedback. I believe feedback should come relatively soon after you observe something. Should we save it all up for like a quarterly review, it's actually hard for people [crosstalk – 00:28:33].
Chris Wedding:
Criticism, slam dunk. Yeah.
Lauren Salz:
Yeah, exactly and then also it becomes hard for people just to make those small adjustments over time. Sometimes feedback is something as simple as you are saying I'm a lot or you are sighing a lot when you gave this presentation, and those are the types of things where it has to be in very recent memory for someone to learn something. Or I asked you to do X, you ended up doing between X and Y, here is specifically what I want you to do differently. You just shouldn't save up that type of feedback. It makes someone's rate of learning much slower and you're not doing them any favors.
29:11
Chris Wedding:
I think that's really important to stress is that the feedback is meant to help the other person and the company. It's not meant to be some sort of power play or whatever else it may be interpreted as. You're denying them the opportunity for growth, right?
Lauren Salz:
Correct and it is better to give feedback than not to give it, even if it's not said in the most perfect way. I actually think that a lot of first-time managers, or not even first-time managers, a lot of managers generally who are kind, empathetic people struggle with this. Just keeping in mind that the most important thing is to say something versus just letting it being like, “Oh, I have to figure out the perfect time and place and verbiage to say [inaudible – 00:29:58] a few things.” Obviously, it's better if you can do all those things, but in the moment feedback, I think, is very, very important.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, I know one thing that has come up in some of our peer group discussions is the idea of intentionality around the feedback and to have both candor and compassion or candor and even love for that person, for their growth. I think that matters as well. Let's switch and this is a good bridge to the next conversation, switching from Sealed to Lauren as here's an entrepreneur talking to mostly entrepreneurs listening.
The question I normally ask, which sounds funnier asking you is, what advice would you give to your younger self, Lauren, who's not super old yet? What advice would you give yourself just starting Sealed in the first year or two, let's say?
Lauren Salz:
I would say that you don't have to be perfect or nothing has to be perfect and you don't have to figure it out by yourself. I think, especially in the early days of Sealed, everything I was trying to figure out, not just on the product market fit side, but even when it comes to things like HR handbooks, I thought I had to reinvent the wheel and I didn't really have to. I wish I could go back and tell my past self that ask people for advice who have done it before and figure out what the common threads are of what people are saying.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah. On the, “I don't have to be perfect,” thread, what were some ways that you got past that?
Lauren Salz:
I think deliberately prioritizing speed over perfection and just accepting that it meant that things weren't going to be perfect. Also, I think this is typical people who come from larger companies, and I had come from McKinsey before that, is the standard for the work is extremely, extremely high and it does have to be perfect or as close to perfect as possible. Versus in a startup, you're trying to get market feedback, you're trying to learn quickly, and it's like you're trying to fail fast, but fail fast and to fail slow.
32:22
Just embracing that as a mentality and knowing that you have to make decisions without perfect information and you have to put a product out there or some content out there, it's not going to be perfect because that last 5% to make it perfect will take an outsize amount of time. Time and resources are what are in short supply at an early-stage company.
Chris Wedding:
There's some, quote unquote, law, I forget the person who came up with this law, but it says something like the first 90% of the time to code a project is the first 90%, and then the second 10% is also the next 90% of time to finish the project. Yeah, that last part takes a lot.
The perfection piece, there's also a saying in the startup world that if you're not embarrassed by your first product or version of your product, then you waited too long. That's hard, I think, for lots of folks. Like this is your identity and your new baby and blood, sweat and tears, you'd probably rather not be embarrassed, but again, learn by showing, learn by doing.
Lauren Salz:
I just think that you just can't take yourself that seriously when it comes to a startup life because if you do, I feel like you're really setting yourself up for failure. You have to be willing to try stuff, get some egg on your face and just be happy to move on with it. Don't set your expectations so high, and just know that you're going to make lots and lots of mistakes and that's just part of the journey.
Chris Wedding:
It sounds like the training one would get playing the flute at Oxford.
Lauren Salz:
Yes. That's like very true and also, even going back into my even earlier years, I used to do a lot of solo travel by myself, places in Asia, places in West Africa. You just have to stay calm no matter what, be prepared for any eventuality and you just can't take yourself that seriously.
Chris Wedding:
I like that. Easy to say, hard to do. How about habits or routines that keep you healthy, sane, and focused?
Lauren Salz:
I think that sleep is really important. That's my top thing. Obviously, in the first few months my son was around, when my son was born, those weren't so great for sleep, but generally just prioritizing sleep is important. I would take an extra hour of sleep over an extra hour of work any day. It’s not always possible if you've gotten to these really intense operating times where you're in some either crisis mode or huge opportunity mode that can make sleep become less, but making sure those are sprints and not your default over time. I think sleep is really important and I think exercise is really important too, but I would choose sleep over exercise.
Chris Wedding:
Okay, so let's get a little more detailed. How much sleep and what kind of exercise?
Lauren Salz:
I sleep depending on the night between seven to nine hours and the key to doing that is you have to go to bed early. If you go to bed at like 1:00 in the morning, you just don't have time to sleep long especially if you have a young child, they like to wake up around like 6:30. I try to be in bed between 9:30 and 10:30. Then for exercise, I like a couple things. I like anything outdoors. I like adventure sports. I think all that stuff is super fun, but then on a day-to-day routine basis, I really like weight lifting.
35:59
Chris Wedding:
Well, now, you can't just stop right there, Lauren. The audience listening was hearing your voice and they did not expect you to say weightlifting, I don't think. Just give us a little more detail there. What does it look like?
Lauren Salz:
I do Olympic style weightlifting, so the snatch and the clean and jerk. I'll say pre-baby, pre-pandemic I used to do a lot of competitive weightlifting and something I had found that was very helpful to structure my day. I always believe that for an entrepreneur to have a healthy balanced life or I'll say as healthy and balanced as possible because there's a lot of things about entrepreneurship that are just not healthy and balanced, but it's to have at least one thing outside of your work that you're passionate about. So, you don't feel almost bad, like your work is your entire life and that's the only thing that you're pursuing at the time. Yeah, I have done plenty of competitions there. Now, I'm just getting back into it post-baby, but I get a lot of motivation and joy from doing that.
The other thing too, and I think this is underestimated is doing a sport where someone else tells you exactly what to do. I make so many decisions all day long that when it comes to my workouts, I just want a coach to tell me like, “Do these things,” and then I'll do them and I don't really think about doing them. It's really nice not being in charge all the time.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, that's true. So related, we were at dinner the other day and my 14-year-old says, “Daddy, I think you need a hobby.” I was like, “What do you mean? I think you three kids are my hobby.” He's like, “No, I think you need a hobby, like a sport.” I was like, “But I like to hike or back--” Oh wait, no, I don't backpack anymore, used to. Anyway, it's a good reminder. Yes, we need hobbies.
Lauren Salz:
Yeah.
Chris Wedding:
Let's go to the next one here. Give us two or three recommendations on books, podcasts, tools, et cetera, that you found helpful.
Lauren Salz:
A really great book that I like is called Dear Founder by Maynard Webb, a prolific Silicon Valley investor. It's different letters to founders, both from him and from other entrepreneurs about different scenarios that you might face. Like if you're a leadership team that's been working out or you're struggling to figure out how to sell the right product or you're having trouble with your board, it covers a lot of hot topics for entrepreneurs. I really recommend that one.
The other one I've touched on, the concepts earlier, I definitely recommend Radical Candor and that's just one of my favorites, I'll say for people who have a startup large enough to have a team. And so, that's a book I like to give to a lot of first-time managers still as well.
38:51
Chris Wedding:
Perfect. Maybe let's close and give you a couple of minutes before your next expect a back meeting here. Is there a myth you want to bust around cleantech, climate tech entrepreneurship or is there a call to action for folks you want to hear from at Sealed? What's a final message or two here, Lauren?
Lauren Salz:
I'll just say call to action for entrepreneurs who are thinking about their next move, that climate tech is a really great place to be and I think will remain a great place to be for the years to come. It's an imperative. It's an important issue that we're trying to solve. There are a lot of investment dollars available and it really will make for a lot of meaning behind what you're doing. So, I would call on people to start other climate tech companies.
Chris Wedding:
Hear, hear. Love it. Well, hey, Lauren, clearly, we're rooting for you-all’s success at Sealed. See you soon.
Lauren Salz:
See you soon. Thanks Chris.
Chris Wedding:
Thank you so much for listening. Seriously, the world needs you and I know your time is super valuable. If you want more content like this, please subscribe to our weekly newsletter at entrepreneursforimpact.com. If you liked this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I read every single one, I promise. These reviews are the number one way to draw more attention to the world-changing climate CEOs and investors that I am lucky enough to be interviewing on the show. And each month I pick one listener review for a one-on-one brainstorming call with me. Who knows what can come of those?
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