How Cady Wolf's A23 Became a Beacon for Women Entrepreneurs

[00:00:00] Hector: Hello and welcome to another episode of the 'How to Scale a Business' podcast. My name is Hector Santiesteban and I'm your host for today. Today we're here with Cady Wolf and she's the founder and CEO of A23 advisors. They're an award winning boutique that really helps executives, leaders to scale and grow their business and perhaps, scale and grow themselves and their teams while they're at it and we're going to talk about all of that stuff.

[00:00:22] Hector: Cady, thanks for hanging out and spending some time with us today.

[00:00:25] Cady: Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for asking me, Hector.

[00:00:27] Hector: So I can never really explain what a business does, especially from their bio. Some businesses do a good job with their website and stuff, but I don't think it ever really conveys the essence of what they actually do. So talk to us a little bit about what A23 does and then also if you can mix in how you got there. And then, if there's a product or service that you provide, maybe that's what you do, but it may not be the reason why you do it.

[00:00:53] Hector: So would love for you to mix in some of the purpose and the reasons behind the business as well.

[00:00:58] Cady: Sure. So I've had a career in hospitality and travel. My undergrad and graduate degrees are in it. I'm very passionate about travel, travel and technology and hospitality.

[00:01:08] Cady: And so I've had a great career up until about 2015 and I said, I really wanted to go out and do my own thing. I wanted to be my own boss. This was before covid and everybody had the chance to work from home. I have 3 sons, I wanted to be able to leave and go see their play in the middle of the day, or I wanted to go make sure I saw their sporting events or I wanted parent coffee in the morning.

[00:01:32] Cady: And in 2015, you were still really wedded to being in an office. So, I ventured out and I started my own consulting firm and it's female founded, funded, and led. I really wanted to create a marketplace for female executives. Women in my position who have families, who have a ton of experience and a great skill set and can lend a lot of value in the workplace, but also can have a little more balance and flexibility that lets them enjoy their family and not miss things while their kids are growing up. I started it in 2015 and what we do is we focus in travel and hospitality, hospitality tech. We do dabble a little bit in the education sector. We've done a little bit in entertainment, health care.

[00:02:12] Cady: Like I said, it's really a marketplace for executive women and people bring their different skill sets. Maybe you're a marketer, maybe you're a product person, maybe you're a finance person. And we offer a platform for them to showcase their talents and we work within a network of companies, mostly start up to mid stage, but we have worked with some senior level companies as well.

[00:02:36] Cady: Generally, 1 of us might start working with a company and then once we're in there, we see, "oh, they need some product help", or "they need some additional help". And, we can bring in other colleagues as well. And it really gave a place for women to create their own work destiny and work when they felt like it. They might work one day a year, they might work on a six month project, they might work for a company, consult for them for two or three years. It really is up to them. One of the niches that we fill is a lot of fractional executive level roles. So if a company is just starting up and they can't afford a VP of product, or a CFO, or a CMO, they can come to A23 and we can do that for them generally at a lower cost or a shorter timeframe while they're getting their sea legs underneath them.

[00:03:22] Cady: Also, it gives an opportunity for a lot of these women at A23 to be in an organization and do different roles like that as well. And I think you hear that term more and more lately; fractional CMO, fractional CFO, different fractional executives and so it's a great way to give experience and get experience, to a lot of these companies.

[00:03:45] Hector: One of the earliest questions that a lot of leaders, founders need to answer is "what's the business model?" And I think there's a lot of founders that answered that question too late in the game, or maybe some that don't answer it at all. But you seem to have a really interesting and unique model.

[00:04:01] Hector: You're a platform, but it's a marketplace, it's got this mix and pull of all these different kinds of industries or separate business models so how did you land on that? Was that what came out of the box initially? Or what was that evolution like?

[00:04:16] Cady: Yeah, I mean, I know a lot of people who are consultants and so I know a lot of people who start their own businesses and everybody goes through the same growth. You got to legalize your name, get a lawyer, make a business template and NDA. You got to incorporate your business. You got to set up the finance piece. If you're going to hire employees, you've got to figure out how to pay them. If you're going to market the company and get clients, you got to have a marketing person. And so what I wanted to do, and a lot of women were also asking like, "Hey, how did you get into this?" " how did you do that?" And from enough people asking, it was like, okay, we could create this marketplace or this umbrella that offers all of those services for these women to essentially have their own consulting business really without all the overhead. I have a couple of family members who are lawyers and so my model was really based after similar to what they do in law firms. It's an eat what you kill model. Everybody has a percent of the revenue that they leave to the business. There's the overhead expenses that covers legal or marketing and some of the basic things. The rest goes to their bottom line.

[00:05:17] Cady: So it's like renting a room in a house, I guess, right? Somebody owns the house and they have all of those pieces taken care of and then you can come in and rent the space, but it's under a name and an umbrella that's known in the industry, with a lot of colleagues that I know in the industry.

[00:05:35] Hector: Which took precedence or priority? In terms of did you have a model and then try and fit that model onto some sort of market or some audience that had a need? Or did you realize that there were women who needed support or opportunities or all these resources, whatever that may be, and then tried to reverse engineer the support that they would need. How did that unfold?

[00:05:55] Cady: Yeah, I started out just as the individual consultant myself and started the company myself. And then a couple other women were like, "oh, I like what you're doing. How did you set that up? How are you doing that?" And I didn't want to have to employ anybody full time and have that monthly bill, right? To have full time employees.

[00:06:13] Cady: And a lot of the women wanted the same flexibility. I wanted to take my summers off while my kids were out of school and I didn't want to work. And I wanted to be able to say to a client like, "I'm not available for this time period, but I am available starting September 1st". And that really resonated with some of the women in the industry that I was talking to that were in a similar role that I was.

[00:06:32] Cady: Then from there, I thought, okay, how does this make financial sense? And what's the business model that's out there that would look like that. And that's when I started talking to some family members and colleagues about some law firm models that resonated with me and I built a little bit of a hybrid model myself.

[00:06:47] Cady: For me, I started as an individual, saw the opportunity, and then had to create the business model that fit the demand that I saw at the time in the market for other women who wanted to do something similar.

[00:07:00] Hector: And were there things that you ended up adding on, or incorporating, or layering on that kind of surprised you or that you didn't anticipate at the beginning that ended up being, you know, such a glaring need or, people clients or, your community or employees were asking for something so much that you ended up developing it.

[00:07:17] Cady: Yeah, at first it was the legal piece. Getting the entity set up, getting contacts, getting an NDA, just making sure we were covered because these other women are coming in as contactors. So, how do you structure that to cover the contract employee and have it be beneficial for the business and also interesting to a customer as well

[00:07:36] Cady: At first we were all just word of mouth. We all have a pretty vast network and we didn't really feel like we needed to do any marketing. And then we were like, we probably should be talking more about what we're doing and evangelizing, this business model and this opportunity. And so that was probably a later add on. Was doing more marketing. Just social channels, LinkedIn, things like that relatively basic, but just enough to develop the brand. I underestimated in the beginning, the importance of developing the brand. Through that, you get PR opportunities and speaking opportunities and other things like that. In the beginning I just thought, well, we'll just rely on our network. So I think that the marketing and PR pieces was important that we didn't really plan on in the beginning.

[00:08:20] Hector: Yeah, it's great to see how you took initiative, figured out the next step, looked up, and kept the ball moving and I think that that's so important.

[00:08:27] Hector: I'm wondering if because you have the fortune of working with a lot of different companies, if there's a blueprint or an order of operation, something like that, that you like to run a company through or the things that you focus on first.

[00:08:40] Hector: And so when we get back from break, I would love to get your insights on that.

[00:08:47] Hector: Hey, y'all. Thanks for tuning in today.

[00:08:48] Hector: Today's episode is brought to you by Amplafy Media and we are a podcast and content production company. If chances are, if you're listening to this, you have a mission, a message, a passion, purpose, a product, something that you want to get out to the world, but you might not have the time or the tech or the team to be able to do it, we might be able to help. Go to amplafy media dot com. That's A M P L A F Y media dot com. You can also check the show notes for the link. And with that, let's get back to today's episode.

[00:09:15] Hector: Katie, in just the short time that we've had a chance to connect and chat, it seems like you are someone who, grabs the keys and figures out where to go later. You're someone who just dives in and gets things done. I'm curious now that there's some sort of blueprint that's allowed you to scale outside of your own efforts, but when you're working with businesses or helping the women in your organization work with these businesses, what are some of those key focuses or pillars that you like to focus on?

[00:09:41] Cady: Sure. It probably sounds very basic, but listening and observing is number one. You're coming in, you're meeting an organization, you're meeting the key players. You're trying to understand their business objectives. And so really listening to how they run their business, what their KPIs are, what their priorities are. And then if you get the opportunity to be with them in person, observing their interactions and what seems to be important to the business, how people operate together. From there, generally, what our team does is sits down and, we talk to some of the key stakeholders, see if their objectives are aligned or if there's a disconnect there. And then we go about creating a 30, 60, 90 day plan, where we really lay out, okay, "here's what we think the key opportunities are", "this is the timeline that we think we can complete this in", " this is what we heard or we saw". Do these go in and going back and talking with them. Do these really align with your objectives? And if not, refining that and defining that going forward. That's really the general jumping off point. From there, making sure that you're sharing out results weekly, telling them what performance metrics you're hitting, where their observations are things that you see for opportunities.

[00:10:49] Cady: Because sometimes businesses, they're in the trenches every day and they're used to doing things a certain way, it's nice to have some outside counsel or someone who comes in with a fresh perspective on your perspective or that can say like, "hey, have you seen this or have you thought about it?" So I would say really listening, observing, getting to know the key players, creating a strategic plan, 30, 60, 90 days, reporting out on that and just having really good communication and building relationships.

[00:11:15] Hector: Yeah, I can't imagine that this idea of a fractional leader is necessarily new because I don't think there's a lot of new thing. I think the terminology just probably got popular.

[00:11:23] Hector: But with that, I really love what that provides for businesses in the sense of either a short term or even a less expensive solution. But my curiosity is that because you have the unique opportunity of coming in with such of a fresh or no perspective, are there any favorite examples or stories or experiences of something that the business just couldn't see because they were so close. But because you had someone come in with a fresh set of eyes that was able to change things up or offer a new set of experiences.

[00:11:52] Cady: yeah, I did some work at a company where I came in at an executive level to build out a proof of concept for something that the CEO and some folks on the staff had been thinking of and I was definitely met with some friction from some other people in the company wondering why I was there, why are we doing this? What's the point of this? This is something that we can handle in house. Again, I was able to come in with this fresh perspective, look at different resources, partner up with a couple of people. And after about seven months, we built out a proof of concept and decided to launch the project and build a team around it.

[00:12:23] Cady: And after I left the company, now that team is one of the larger global teams that's managing a lot of key initiatives. From that learning experience, I think that's also interesting for people when they're coming into a business or even as a consultant, you just have to have confidence in what you're doing and know that you're bringing something different and unique to the table and just try to stay the course even when you can be met with some friction and opposition.

[00:12:47] Hector: Yeah. I think that you had a very essential blueprint in terms of creating a strategy before you actually go out and start executing. Was all that this business need a plan that was based in some of that or were there some things that you saw that they just weren't saying?

[00:13:03] Cady: Probably a little bit of a combination of both. In an environment like that, you have to be nimble and you have to be adaptable. Maybe I want to go on the straight line, but I realized that I'm going to have to take a couple of turns to get to, my end point to try and get everybody on board on the train.

[00:13:19] Cady: Without setting specific business examples, there were some things that needed validation that they have thought, okay, "this is what we think for the business. Can you validate it?" And I was able to validate that. Or maybe poke some holes in it and then bring some new things to the table or around, "have you thought about this or could we design things a little bit differently?" Bringing that new perspective was helpful for the business and building out the proof of concept.

[00:13:44] Hector: This has been such a fun conversation and such an insightful and Cady, when you look forward, whether it's from a more narrow perspective in the sense of the opportunities for women and this changing economic landscape, or just in general, what are some things that you're thinking about or excited about or looking forward to?

[00:14:02] Cady: I mean, everybody's talking about AI, right? I play around with chat GPT and see what it spits out and all of that. So I think it'll be really interesting in the hospitality and tech industry I had a boss who used to say it's about the relationship stupid and I don't think anything will replace that personal touch.

[00:14:20] Cady: But I think there is a big evolution coming in hospitality and travel, probably on all businesses, but that's where I'm focused of where A I could step in and really change the landscape. That for me is really probably what I'm keeping my eye closest on. I love the space. I love to see more women rise up through the ranks and become more leaders in the hospitality and travel and technology space.

[00:14:44] Cady: On the education side, continue to see universities promote travel and hospitality and technology. And for people to look at that as an industry to come into, because it's very lucrative and it's really fun.

[00:14:57] Hector: Yes. This is a world of possibilities, universe possibilities. Cady, if people want to get more connected with you, find more about A23, where's the best place to go?

[00:15:06] Cady: Yep. You can find me on LinkedIn. Of course you can go to A 23 advisors dot com. We also have an offshoot organization called Women in Travel Tech, which really promotes women in the space and travel and travel technology that we have a conference coming up in Park City, Utah, December 5th.

[00:15:22] Cady: If people are interested in that as well. So, yeah, you can find me in all social channels. I'm around at Cady Wolf. C A. D. Y. W. O. L. F.

[00:15:30] Hector: I love it. Well, thanks for all you listeners for sticking with us. We appreciate it. If you enjoyed today's episode, we'd be forever grateful for a rating or review wherever you get your podcast. If you know someone who's in the midst of scaling their business or thinking about starting one, please send them this episode and then go get connected with Cady and you might be able to get involved or support what it is that she's doing. And as always, thanks for being a part of the tribe. We'll see on the next one.

[00:15:54] Hector: Later, y'all.