Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.
Behind Her Empire: How Camping World CEO Marcus Lemonis Lives Out His 'Mother's Mission'
On this episode of the Behind Her Empire podcast, hear from Marcus Lemonis, the CEO and chairman of the multi-billion dollar business Camping World and the host of CNBC's "The Profit."
Lemonis is the first male guest on Behind Her Empire, but prioritizing diverse entrepreneurship remains the theme for this episode. Lemonis says he is constantly inspired by his mother who "always felt… that women rule the world."
He says he's made his mother's values a cornerstone in his work, which is centered around "living out my mother's mission." To Lemonis, this means "creating platforms and creating pathways that allow women and women of color and people of color… to be given opportunities that have been… not made available to them."
To achieve this, he created The Lemon-AID Foundation, focused on backing underrepresented founders, which he seeded with $50 million of his own money.
Lemonis says he prefers to work with female founders because he "think[s] that women, generally speaking, don't make decisions with their ego." He also shares how he thinks "women make better business people because they also manage with a level of empathy."
Lemonis also shares his strategies for overcoming the fear of embarrassment, something he feels everyone has to deal with. He argues that by giving yourself permission to be embarrassed, you give yourself permission to fail, and fail with dignity.
In the rest of the conversation, Marcus shares how he got started with entrepreneurship, how he avoids imposter syndrome and how he dresses to feel free.
Marcus Lemonis is the CEO and chairman of Camping World, and the host of "The Profit."
"Ultimately, businesses are run by people... Whether you're running Dell computers, or Susie's coffee shop, the numbers may have more commas in them. But it really doesn't change the principles." —Marcus Lemonis
dot.LA Engagement Intern Colleen Tufts contributed to this post.
Want to hear more of the Behind Her Empire podcast? Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.
This week on Behind Her Empire, we hear from Afton Vechery, the co-founder and CEO of Modern Fertility, a startup that aims to make fertility testing more affordable and accessible.
Vechery drew on her personal experiences with reproductive care when she was starting her company. She said she found doctors often aren't open to referring patients to fertility testing if they are not actively trying for a pregnancy.
Once she finally was able to get tested, she said it cost upwards of $1,500.
Vechery said she was very disappointed by the barriers people with uteruses had to overcome just to get basic information about their bodies. Every person has a different fertility curve. As she started her company, she found people were demanding these type of services.
"The 'A-ha' moment was really sharing this experience with my friends that then turned into friends of friends, and truly hundreds of women that were reaching out and having conversations about reproductive health and fertility."
Being able to offer users customized information about their fertility empowers them to be active participants in their family building decisions, "as opposed to having biology make those decisions for you," she said.
"I think it's just what people with ovaries deserve to have at their fingertips," she added, "more tools and more solutions."
Disseminating information is cornerstone to Vechery's entrepreneurship philosophy. A project for her high school science fair testing water quality in her neighborhood led her to start a water testing company. She talked about how this project inspired her and grew her interest in entrepreneurship.
After college, she went on to work in clinical settings and as an investor. Vechery said as she began her work on Modern Fertility, she felt uniquely suited to address this information gap.
Afton Vechery is the co-founder and CEO of Modern Fertility.
"When I was pitching Modern Fertility to investors, there was just kind of confusion and disbelief 'You're creating a fertility company, for people that don't want to get pregnant. What is that?'" —Afton Vechery
dot.LA Engagement Intern Colleen Tufts contributed to this post.
Want to hear more of the Behind Her Empire podcast? Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radioor wherever you get your podcasts.
This week, Behind Her Empire sat down with Alexandra Carter, J.D. Carter is a professor at Columbia Law School teaching mediation.
Since 2016, Carter has partnered with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. Her career is focused on alternative dispute resolution. Before she enrolled at Columbia herself, she was a private equity analyst at Goldman Sachs and a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan.
As a child, Carter said she was shy and nervous. She felt she struggled socially to make friends, but discovered if she was very passionate about something, she "kind of came alive in front of this group."
Early on, she "realized that one of the main ways I can connect with people is on issues that I really care about." She said her ability to share and connect with people taught her that "I didn't always know what to do socially. But I could teach and I could lead."
While enrolled at Columbia School of Law, she realized that mediation was her path to success.
"I swear, the first time I did that, I thought, this is it. I've found what I should be doing for the rest of my life," she said. "I loved helping other people negotiate."
Carter has run with her passion for negotiation. She said that she has to consider "what would my life look like, as a woman, as a professional, if I treated every conversation I had with someone — not just the money conversations — but every conversation as an opportunity to steer that relationship, to teach that person how to value me."
She said she found that not only did she have to negotiate, but she felt she had to do it for other women, so that they also know that negotiation and recognizing your own value is a good thing for every party involved.
Carter shared invaluable tips on how to negotiate, especially navigating pitfalls that disproportionately affect women. She spoke about how to see and protect your worth, the power of silence and how to ask the right questions.
Carter said that asking the right questions is key to successful negotiation.
"Questions are the secret weapon in negotiation," she said. "Negotiation starts with how you talk to yourself."
If you feel unprepared for a negotiation or have trouble making choices in the moment, she said it's likely "you didn't know the right questions to ask yourself first."
Once she started looking for ways to steer conversations and prioritize getting what she wanted, Carter said, "everywhere in my life, I saw opportunities to negotiate."
Carter shared advice on taking yourself seriously, the unique challenges women overcome as negotiators, how she deals with imposter syndrome and how to negotiate pay, promotions and project management.
Alexandra Carter is a Columbia Law School professor, public speaker and author of "Ask for More: 10 Questions to Negotiate Anything."
"Studies show that only 7% of people know the right questions to ask to make the most money at the table… They're open questions, you want to get that other person talking about their needs, their goals, what are the problems that they want to solve. And that is when as an entrepreneur or a person in corporate, you are going to start to crack incredible ceilings in your career, generate more business, do more business with your current clients, and also have them come back over and over again." —Alexandra Carter
dot.LA Engagement Intern Colleen Tufts contributed to this post.
Want to hear more of the Behind Her Empire podcast? Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radioor wherever you get your podcasts.