"Give yourself permission as a creator to make mistakes and learn from them" with Jeni Barcelos and Sandy Connery
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Sandy Connery is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Namastream and Connectable.Biz Software. Prior to co-founding Namastream, Sandy worked for 20 years as a footwear and gait analysis clinician. In 2014, while looking for a career change that would allow her the freedom to work from home while challenging her professional acumen, Sandy took a leap into the technology industry and ultimately teaming up with Jennifer on Namastream. Today, Sandy brings her business know-how to the Namastream team, where she plays a key role in creating community, teaching and inspiring other healers to find the freedom and impact they desire.
Jennifer Barcelos is the Co-Founder and CEO of Namastream and Co-Host of the And She Spoke podcast. Prior to co-founding Namastream, Jennifer founded the climate justice nonprofit, Three Degrees Warmer, served as a Gates Public Service Law Scholar, and worked for former Vice President Al Gore. Jennifer jumped at the opportunity to disrupt the wellness and technology industries by building the Namastream platform in 2015, making it easier for independent instructors to build and scale their businesses on the Internet. Today, Jennifer leads the Namastream team with the goal of empowering women to find financial freedom through online entrepreneurship.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
● Sandy: Before meeting Jeni in 2014, I was working as a clinician focusing on footwear and gait analysis for 20 years. Owning and operating successful brick and mortar-only businesses culminated in a classic case of career burnout. My passion for wellness and the practice of yoga deepend during this time and I was looking for a change.
● Jeni: In the years prior to Namastream, I founded the climate justice nonprofit, Three Degrees Warmer, served as a Gates Public Service Law Scholar, and worked for former Vice President, Al Gore. Because I was introduced to the world of tech entrepreneurship while fundraising as a human rights and environmental justice attorney, I gained firsthand insight into the gap that exists in the tech industry for female creatives.
What inspired you to start your business?
● Sandy: The opportunity to forge a path that worked for us and our unique needs as moms was so impactful. There is a feeling of limitless opportunity that comes with pursuing entrepreneurship. To develop a business that can reach all corners of the earth and enable me to find the flexibility needed to live the kind of life I want to lead was very exciting.
● Jeni: From my previous career, I recognized that technology is the currency of power. Before starting Namastream in 2015, we recognized that the online streaming industry seemed to have untapped potential. Never one to fear a challenge, I jumped at the opportunity to disrupt the wellness and technology industries with a platform I felt the world needed.
Where is your business based?
● Jeni: We are an entirely remote company! I currently live on an island in Washington state, and Sandy lives in Calgary, Alberta.
● Sandy: We currently have over 170,000 users in 168 countries. We are truly a global company.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
● Jeni: We met in 2014 through an online business course. I was drawn to the industry because of the immense opportunity to make a difference. In speaking with Sandy, we bonded over a gap we recognized in the industry for female creators and our shared passion for innovation and yoga. Beyond the freedom, flexibility, and financial benefits of building an online business, deep down, we felt called to help other human beings find personal and financial freedom through entrepreneurship.
● Sandy: When we developed the idea for Namastram, our larger mission was to build a company that we could leverage to create a tidal wave of empowerment for other women. We were excited to build our business in an unusual way. By forging our own path and saying no to outside investment early on, we created a powerful pathway for other female entrepreneurs, historically underrepresented in the tech industry.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
● Jeni: Drilling deeply into our niche with targeted, concise messaging has been extremely effective. We love to maintain a very clear understanding of our target audience, their needs, and how their needs might change over time. Then we develop our messaging and our strategy accordingly whether it’s social media advertising or connecting directly with our users.
● Sandy: Word of mouth is also important. It’s very important to us to deeply listen to our users and ensure that they have a positive relationship with our platform. Building and growing organically is very satisfying.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
● Jeni: Our biggest challenge was saying no to investors early on, and instead choosing to bootstrap our business to maintain autonomy.
● Sandy: We’re passionate about creating with intention, building a value-driven business, and helping other small business owners to do the same.
How do you stay focused?
● Jeni: Escaping into nature alone or with my family. Some of my best brainstorming has been achieved while on conference calls walking in the woods.
● Sandy: Maintaining a tidy and quiet work environment enables me to find flow with my workload. I love to seek out moments of solitude when I’m at my busiest. It’s an opportunity to reset and reemerge feeling more refreshed and ready to take on the day.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
● Jeni: Our hope is that the experience of using Namastream is incredibly easeful for those with little to no technical expertise. When we built Namastream, we recognized that many wellness practitioners needed a mechanism to more easily and quickly launch online businesses. The barrier to entry when moving your offerings online can feel unsurmountable. We hope that the ease of Namastream is a big differentiator.
● Sandy: On an ongoing basis, we’re constantly adapting and evolving our platform to meet the needs of our users. We’re so passionate about the work we’re putting into the business and the product we’re bringing to life. Putting our users first and foremost sets us apart.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
● Jeni: When we developed the concept for Namastream, we pre-sold our annual plans and a to boutique yoga studio owners and independent instructors in our local network. This launch strategy enabled us to build buzz among our target market, learn from their feedback and make invaluable adaptations to our platform at an early stage, and have just enough money to hire developers and allocate our resources wisely.
● Sandy: Because yoga is highly visual, our users strongly resonate with our marketing efforts on Instagram. Opening up about our challenges on our entrepreneurial journey on social media, interacting with our users in a way that feels authentic to us, and having conversations about how we can adapt our platform have helped us connect with our users in a very organic way.
What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
● Sandy: I always tell people that it’s okay to be imperfect - give yourself permission as a creator to make mistakes and learn from them. It’s important to be vulnerable because that’s where growth comes from. There is no final version of an online product and you will always be iterating.
● Jeni: There are many highs and lows to navigate while running your own business. Make sure to be financially literate and use that as your foundation. Pay attention to numbers but trust that they are not the only factor or indicator to your worth.
What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
● Sandy: We’re huge fans of Seth Godin and his work - books like This is Marketing and Purple Cow. He has inspired our way of thinking about our company’s core values and our mission to help other entrepreneurs build their businesses from a place of alignment and authenticity in service to the world.
● Jeni: When it comes to our reading list, our preference is for books that spark conversation around uncomfortable questions because that’s where we believe the most growth can come from - for example the book The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks.
What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
● Jeni: For bookkeeping, Bench is my recommendation for its simplicity. Our transactions are automatically imported into Bench, where we get on-demand financial reports. Opening up our profit and loss statements to review is a pleasure.
● Sandy: We’ve always been remote business partners and were early adopters of Slack and Zoom for internal communications. Building our Instagram account proved beneficial as a way to connect with our community and tap into the highly visual world of yoga.
Who is your business role model? Why?
● Sandy: Seth Godin is a creative genius with a way of thinking that has inspired many of our own company values. We are big advocates of finding alignment and authenticity in service to the world.
● Jeni: Kelly Diels is an incredible coach who helps people build businesses that break age-old oppressive cycles. Her dedication to defining the archetype of ‘The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand’ is instrumental to how we consider our impact as a company and the kind of business world we want the women who come after us to inherit.
How do you balance work and life?
● Sandy: Balance is an ongoing challenge I think many women can relate to, especially at this time. Creating space to think has really helped me in the challenge of balancing work and life.
● Jeni: Time blocking everyday to create windows for focused, creative work and others for whatever life has to throw at me that day. For two hours every morning, all notifications are silenced. Taking this quiet time creates the space for our most creative thinking.
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
● Sandy: Meditation and yoga. Finding your quiet corner to go inward and disconnect from the world around you. Resetting mentally and physically is so important to recharge. When Jeni and I are together, we often go for hikes while brainstorming. It’s where some of our most successful ideas have been born.
● Jeni: Spending time in nature. My family lives on an island outside of Seattle, which enables us to immerse ourselves in nature everyday. My best thinking is often done in the woods.
What do you have planned for the next six months?
● Sandy: We just launched The Inner Circle Experience, a year-long online business school, an incubator, and a mastermind with the aim of providing more support to our users launching online businesses. We are excited to dig deep into this program and connect with our users.
● Jeni: We are constantly evolving and updating Namastream’s software. With the launch of The Inner Circle Experience, we’re hoping to share our trials and tribulations with our users as business owners navigating online entrepreneurship. Because we are closely connected to our community and learned so much in our formative years, we are very excited to share this with a small network of aspiring entrepreneurs we can really work closely with for an entire year.
How can our readers connect with you?
● Sandy: We also host a weekly podcast series, called And She Spoke , where we speak to different female entrepreneurs about money, mindset, and meaningful work.
● Jeni: Check out our website www.namastream.com and our Instagram @namastream