Sheree Rubinstein on Bootstrapping, Pivoting, and Building One Roof

0:00 Joan Westenberg: You're listening to a Day One FM show.

0:07 Sheree Rubinstein: Pick My Brain is the podcast where founders pitch me their startup and I try to give them some useful advice so they can connect better with potential co-founders, investors, media, and of course, customers. My name's Alan Jones and I was a founder myself for about 15 years, and after that, an angel investor for another 15 years. So yeah, old. Some of my ventures have been successful and some failed disastrously, But I like to think I've learned a thing or two along the way, and maybe some of that can help you. So if you'd like to learn how to tweak your pitch, subscribe to the Pick My Brain show now, wherever you like to listen to podcasts.

0:41 Joan Westenberg: Good morning and welcome back to another episode of the Unfunded Podcast. I like doing these in the morning because I feel like I lose all my traction after lunch. You know, I've still got the buzz of caffeine going on right now. I feel like I can really make a go of this. Today we're talking to Sherry Rubenstein, who is the founder of One Roof. We're gonna be talking about what it means to be a founder doing things their own way, doing things without falling into that traditional VC trap. Thank you for joining me today. I'm really excited about this.

1:17 Speaker C: Thanks, Joan. Great to be here.

1:19 Joan Westenberg: Look, before we dive into this, I'd love to hear the story of One Roof. What's the pitch? How have you got to this point and what are you trying to build right now?

1:27 Speaker C: I guess I started out in corporate law, um, working at a top-tier firm. I became very passionate about closing the gender gap in entrepreneurship.

1:36 Joan Westenberg: Yeah.

1:36 Speaker C: And leadership. I really realized that feeling and seeing the challenges that women face in the business world, I realized that entrepreneurship is an incredible pathway for women to create their own workplaces, build businesses on their own terms, create products and services that may not have thought of different people's needs traditionally. And so I became very passionate about supporting women to build businesses. I started One Roof. The concept was creating everything women need to succeed and thrive in business all under one roof. For about 6 years, that became a co-working operation, and we ran One Roof as the leading co-working space in Australia dedicated to women-led businesses.

2:19 Sheree Rubinstein: Hmm.

2:19 Speaker C: That kind of all fell over pretty spectacularly through COVID, and we were forced to pivot very quickly and now built One Roof as a go-to business membership and community for entrepreneurial women. We have a purpose-built all-in-one platform that provides everything from coaching calls to masterclasses to meetups, and we've onboarded over 1,500 women across Australia and even globally in the last 3 years since we pivoted from the ground up.

2:47 Joan Westenberg: I mean, that makes so much sense to do that at scale. I, I guess in a coworking space you're always going to be constricted by proximity. And pre-COVID life, I was the CMO of Fishburners, so I kind of understand some of the, the challenges of doing that model. And that digital model makes so much more sense.

3:03 Sheree Rubinstein: Yeah.

3:04 Joan Westenberg: I was wondering if you could describe the initial launch of One Roof when you were looking at that coworking model. It's not a cheap thing to do. It's quite costly to get that off the ground.

3:14 Speaker C: Great question. So exactly right. We had no funding, so it wasn't like we could sign a lease, you know, 10, 15-year lease and fit out a space and kind of build a traditional coworking business. So we had to do it in a really smart way, and we still needed to test the concept. Like, coworking was at the beginning, even like events and kind of programming around women and women's needs was just at the beginning. So it was all very new. So what we did was we decided to test the concept running a pop-up coworking space in an Airbnb home. So we took over this woman's house. I love that. In, in Melbourne. Yeah, it was amazing. And for— and didn't tell her. We were like, oh, we're just running some like women's circles. Um, unbeknownst to her, we had nearly 500 people in her house in 6 days. We'd completely converted her home into co-working. Like, her bedroom became a meeting room, the kitchen was a workspace, the living room was co-working, and we programmed the week and partnered with different organizations to bring people into the space. So we just had great success in that one.

4:25 Joan Westenberg: That's brilliant. That is brilliant. That is such a killer story, honestly, because that's the MVP thing, isn't it? People, people will often say to themselves, you know, my idea is too hard for an MVP. I don't know how to do an MVP. And a lot of people would say that about that coworking model, but there's such a cool way of getting past that. So absolutely kudos on that.

4:44 Speaker C: I'll just add to that, that From there, we continued to run One Roof for nearly 2 years as pop-up spaces. Like, we would find unique underutilized properties and convert them into pop-up coworking spaces, whether that was a surf lodge in New York, a boutique shopping mall in LA. I used a family friend's, like, home in Melbourne that was going to be renovated, so that became a One Roof home.

5:10 Joan Westenberg: Brilliant.

5:10 Speaker C: And then we ended up meeting Central Equity, who are property developers, and they had a building in Melbourne that was earmarked for redevelopment and was sitting there dormant. And so we took over that building. It ended up being 4 years until they started demolishing and, and rebuilding into apartments. So we were able to do that for almost 4 years, working with like these unique ways, no funding, and just finding unique spaces to convert to. Yeah, co-working for women.

5:39 Joan Westenberg: Did you have paying customers at this point? Are the people who are taking on these, like, these co-working spots, were they paying customers?

5:44 Speaker C: Yeah, so my ex-business partner worked at ISOBAR. I was a lawyer, so wasn't very good at all this stuff, but she knew how to like create a website on Squarespace and start charging people for day passes or week passes. So we had that from the very beginning. And then yes, once we moved into the space in South Bank, that was a 1,500 square meter building, two buildings, it was huge. We had a 200-person event space. We had 180 tenants working in the space. You know, it was all done very DIY. Like, I literally built the event stage with my dad, who's an electrician. I painted the walls with friends. Like, it was all just done— like, we didn't know how long we were going to be in the building for, so everything had to be DIY. And we obviously didn't have the money to do it any other way, but it worked really well. And to this day, everyone's like, wow, that was so special, this like rundown building that you converted into something amazing that changed our life in 4 years.

6:40 Joan Westenberg: I love that DIY approach, you know, really getting on the tools and getting it done.

6:45 Speaker C: As bootstrappers, we have no choice.

6:48 Joan Westenberg: That's it. You know, you don't have that. And we call it a safety net, but honestly, sometimes it feels like it's a bit more toxic than that. You have somebody else's money that you can spend without a lot of accountability. You know, that's the VC path far too often. Were you ever tempted to go down that path? There is something appealing about that safety net, isn't there?

7:09 Speaker C: I was tempted and I did go down that path. We reached a point where we had a humming coworking space in Melbourne, but we knew that at some point I was gonna get a call and say, hey, got permits, you need to be out. Like we were going to get kicked out at some point.

7:24 Joan Westenberg: Yeah.

7:24 Speaker C: And so in order to keep going, we needed a more permanent space. Like we were really challenged by having to move the community around so regularly. And so the only way really to have a permanent flagship space was to have funding. Like, we had to either partner with a property developer or we had to get a lot of capital. So that was when I started having conversations with prospective investors and bringing people into the space and starting to build these relationships and to work through that next phase. And, and we, we did raise capital.

7:57 Joan Westenberg: Okay. And what was that process like?

7:59 Speaker C: It was a mixed process. It's challenging in that I'd never done it before. I didn't know what I was doing. How do you value the business? It's co-working, so we're like raising capital on a business that's not really a tech business, but WeWork was kind of leading the way of it being tech without being tech, you know. And then we— Yeah. So everybody's freaking out, what actually is co-working? So I think there were a lot of those challenges, but then at the same time, I felt very fortunate that I was introduced to predominantly women, high net worth families and investors who were really interested in the mission and the bigger picture of what we were doing and not just the coworking model, like they saw a lot more to it than just the coworking. So I had one woman in particular who I'd built a good relationship with, and she ended up putting on a lunch for me with a group of high net worth people, mostly her friends, you know, and I presented there and I brought a couple of One Roof members along to share their experiences.

9:00 Sheree Rubinstein: Mm-hmm.

9:00 Speaker C: That was where I got most of my investors. So I will say that while it's a really hard process, I was fortunate in that I had some really nice values-aligned people who just really were in it for the mission and the vision and for the long run. So it was mixed.

9:18 Joan Westenberg: What do you think the benefits were of, um, making that shift from bootstrapped to funded?

9:23 Speaker C: I just don't know if we could have scaled it any other way. And I mean, I haven't even talked through kind of how it all fell over, so I never actually used their money, but I think we reached a point where, because we had no stability in terms of the premises, how could we keep running a coworking business if we didn't have a coworking space? And I couldn't see any other way. Like, I asked everyone, you know, I kept looking for kind of good deals, you know, non-commercial arrangements where somebody could give us a, a good deal on a property and we could keep moving around, or we could get government funding. But I kept running into a lot of challenges. And I just found that the quickest, lowest-hanging fruit option for us was to raise capital in order to take the business to the next stage. I don't think I could have done it without it.

10:13 Joan Westenberg: All right. So what happened next? The COVID hit, things started to go off the rails. Is that what I'm hearing here?

10:18 Speaker C: Yes, it all unraveled. So basically around the same time as COVID hitting, I had found myself in this difficult position where I'd raised $1 million. Which in the coworking world is just not a lot of money. And then I'd raised it on assumptions of rental pricing and everything had just gone up. And so I found it really hard to find a premises. When COVID hit, we— around the same time we were evicted from the premises that we were in, we had to support all our members to find another office space.

10:51 Joan Westenberg: Yeah.

10:51 Speaker C: We went overnight from $1 million in annual revenue to zero. We lost all our members. We became a coworking operator with no coworking space and investors and a board being like, okay, what is going on here?

11:04 Joan Westenberg: What next?

11:05 Speaker C: Yeah, like now what are you going to do? And then just before COVID hit, I had signed a heads of agreement on a very expensive building in Cremorne that I was concerned about, but I was committed to doing. Um, and so I was full steam ahead on setting up that premises. I also had my first child in the first week of the first lockdown.

11:29 Joan Westenberg: Congratulations.

11:31 Speaker C: Thank you. It was a pretty rough, hectic time.

11:34 Joan Westenberg: Yes.

11:34 Speaker C: That all happened and we all went into lockdown. The agents kept calling me saying, you know, you need to sign the lease. And I was like, I can't sign a lease in this—

11:43 Joan Westenberg: I know. Yeah.

11:45 Speaker C: Know what's happening. And I was very lucky I hadn't signed the lease. And they said, well, we're going to put the building back on the market then. And I was like, okay, good luck.

11:53 Joan Westenberg: Yeah.

11:53 Speaker C: And then investors said to me, we know this is unprecedented times, but you have to, as a leader and a business owner, make a decision. Like, are you going to use our money for coworking? Are you going to put it into something else? You can't just sit on the money and wait and see what happens. So I remember I spent the weekend crying over it and not knowing what to do. And then came Monday, we had the meeting with the investors and I said, I just need to return every dollar of money to each of you. And I'm going to pivot to online. And yeah, don't want your money right now because I don't know what I need it for. I just need to start again, rebuild, and kind of see where it goes. And to be honest, that was an amazing pivot, and we were very successful in doing that and grew massively through COVID. And I think it ended up being a sad for my investors, but a really good result overall for the business.

12:46 Joan Westenberg: That's huge, paying back investors and just walking away from that. That takes a lot.

12:52 Speaker C: Yes, June, how many people do you know who have returned money to their investors?

12:56 Joan Westenberg: Not many, not many. What was their reaction? Were they surprised?

13:01 Speaker C: I think they knew that there was an option, so they weren't surprised. I think they were just sad. Like, I think in the end, obviously the best result is that I haven't lost their money and I'm able to give it back.

13:13 Joan Westenberg: Of course. Of course.

13:14 Speaker C: But as investors, they want to see you invest the money. So I think they were just sad to not see it go to that next level and not be involved in the journey and not kind of see it. But they understood, like, I think it was the obvious decision that had to be made and everybody understood it.

13:32 Joan Westenberg: Bootstrapping it again from there. Did you have lessons that you could draw on from that first bootstrap experience? Or was it a completely different ballpark because of the pivot?

13:42 Speaker C: No, definitely very similar. And I think the, the lessons are you really need to hustle and you need to just kind of lean on networks and collaborations in order to rebuild things. So when we rebuilt it into a digital membership, we got a small grant from the City of Melbourne. They were supporting people to build online businesses during COVID So we used that money to redo the website. We went out to all our old members and everyone in our community and our database and offered a founding membership. We went out to people that we'd collaborated with in the past and said, "Hey, can you come on as an expert? Can you run a masterclass? Can we do like a virtual event together?" So we kind of built up the value of the membership and had kind of offerings going on inside the membership. We partnered with a social enterprise called Metal. They're a gift delivery service and they employ women who have experienced domestic violence. Ooh. And so we gave every person a welcome pack when they joined One Roof. And you know, you just kind of do things cheap, used our Squarespace website with a password-protected area for members to go. Like, it was so basic, but it was perfect to rebuild.

14:52 Joan Westenberg: Can I ask about the first week back? This is something I think about a lot. When you know what you want to do, you've got this, this big idea, but you have to get past that inertia of what's the first step? What, what's the first thing I, I do? Do I send an email to someone? Do I write a tweet? What's that first step?

15:08 Speaker C: The first step was rebuilding the website, and we had a woman on our advisory board, Kate Kendall, who did that for us. Oh my God, I love Kate. Yes, she is, um, wonderful.

15:17 Joan Westenberg: Okay.

15:18 Speaker C: Yeah, very smart, very awesome entrepreneur.

15:20 Joan Westenberg: Incredible. Yes.

15:21 Speaker C: One of the first things I really always do is the simple thing of like outreach to 150, 200 people in my network, like an email and just say, hey everyone, it's been a hard time. Here's what's happened. We've pivoted. Love for you to join. Here's a special offer, or share this with someone you know. Like, I keep it simple, but I try to go out to as many people as I can just kind of with an ask. I wanted to be really public about having returned the capital to investors. Yeah, you know, rather than hiding all of that. So I ended up writing an article that got published in Women's Agenda and Smart Company, and that was also a way of telling everyone this is what's happened, we're now pivoting. And so got some really good PR out of that. So they were kind of the initial things that we did.

16:05 Joan Westenberg: So I'm kind of seeing a few things aligning here in a really interesting way. Do you think you would have been able to get the current traction that you have if the pandemic hadn't happened?

16:14 Speaker C: No, I think it's a great question. We always spoke about building an online membership, but I think at the end of the day, co-working has very real costs associated with it. You need bums on seats and you need offices filled. If I had signed that expensive lease, like I'm talking— we were talking like a $2.5 million fit out on a building in Cremorne on very expensive rents.

16:37 Joan Westenberg: Yeah.

16:38 Speaker C: All I would have been focused on is filling the offices and the event space and the meeting rooms and making sure that we're covering our costs. Like, that's really where it would have been. It just kind of aligned in a way, like, I could work from home. We actually ended up moving to Brunswick Heads, which is in like Northern Rivers near Byron. So we ended up spending 2 years through COVID there in this beautiful region, spending time with our daughter that we probably otherwise wouldn't have had, working from home that I would not have been able to do, and then being being able to scale the business in a way that we just wouldn't have been able to. And the revenue is less— like, we definitely made a lot more revenue with the co-working business, but we had a lot more expenses. So as a bootstrapped business, it's allowed us to be super nimble and to keep creating new offers. And like, the consumer behavior just changes all the time, you know. Through COVID—

17:32 Joan Westenberg: Oh yeah.

17:33 Speaker C: Everyone was online, everyone loved it. And then we came out of lockdown, everyone's like, I don't want to be online again, I need to be in person. And then you've kind of come back to this middle ground So we've just had to keep shifting based on, on the needs, and we've been able to be really nimble because we don't have capital, we don't have huge overheads. I don't have to be at a physical space every day cleaning toilets and dealing with internet issues and security issues and, you know.

17:57 Joan Westenberg: Oh, I remember the fishburners days. Yeah, everyone had to stand up.

18:01 Speaker C: Yeah. No doubt you would know.

18:02 Joan Westenberg: Oh my gosh. Yeah. What do you think the consumer sentiment is these days? About that coworking model? Is it— has it come back at all?

18:10 Speaker C: I think it has come back. Look, I have lots of friends in coworking. My partner actually runs a couple of coworking spaces in Melbourne called Engine House. I think overall there is a good sentiment for coworking, but I think people want that mix of working from home and then also working in a coworking space. So I wouldn't say it's gangbusters. Like, I think in the days where I was doing coworking, it was so exciting.

18:38 Joan Westenberg: People will—

18:38 Speaker C: yeah, and probably when you were at Fishburners, it was the big thing. Everyone was talking about it, everyone was going to events, everyone— like, spaces were full, pumping.

18:48 Joan Westenberg: It was all about community all the time.

18:50 Speaker C: I don't think we're back there. I think people like being at home. I think people are more fearful of getting sick. I don't think people are going to events in the same way that they were. I think a slow rebuild still. It's there, it's just not the same. And it's probably a bit more corporate driven, like corporates downsizing and then utilizing coworking spaces for their staff.

19:11 Joan Westenberg: Would you ever consider opening up another pop-up? Would you ever do that again?

19:16 Speaker C: I don't think so. I always say if somebody wants to gift us a space, I'll happily do it. But beyond that, we've got such a good model now. Like, we've got 35 ambassadors around Australia who run regular meetups in their area. They partner with co-working spaces. We've got a whole section in our member portal of co-working discounts. We've got different spaces where we can go. Yeah, I think that we don't need a space.

19:40 Joan Westenberg: You won't go back to the Airbnb model?

19:42 Speaker C: I mean, the Airbnb model was great, and we—

19:45 Joan Westenberg: it's fun, it's really fun, it's fun.

19:48 Speaker C: But yeah, to be honest, no, I think we've got a better model now. Like, if we had to create and build our own platform and then raise capital and go down that path, it's a whole different the business that we have now is actually, you know, I talk about this a lot and I'm sure this is really relevant to this podcast, is the difference between a unicorn business and an elephant business. And I love the concept of an elephant business, which is all about slower, sustainable, steadier growth, building a profitable business, not necessarily raising capital, or if you do raising when you're kind of at the peak rather than when you're desperate, building a business that's going to be there for the long run. And it's not just like going to be the best in its industry and you're going to get out of my way. And I think building an elephant business works very well for me at this stage of my life.

20:36 Joan Westenberg: And you're not going to go back down that VC funding path?

20:39 Speaker C: I don't know. Yeah, I'm not close to it, but in the current model that One Roof is, I don't see a need to raise capital.

20:48 Joan Westenberg: And I guess if things change, you can be flexible with that. You don't, you don't want to burn those bridges, burn the boats and so on, but it's not where you're at now.

20:55 Speaker C: Yeah, and I think the key thing with raising capital or, you know, looking at selling your business or exits or anything like that, I just think it— so often I see people doing it from the place of desperation, like, shit, this isn't going well, we're about to run out of money, this is when we need to do it. And that's just— you're never going to get a good deal. So for me, it's— it has to be at the time when you're soaring, you're getting your PR.

21:19 Joan Westenberg: Place of power.

21:20 Speaker C: Yeah. And then investors are running after you and you can create the deal that works best for you.

21:26 Joan Westenberg: Do you have a long-term plan for One Roof? Is the goal to get to an IPO, to be acquired, or is this a business that you wanna be in in 20, 30 years? What's the thinking?

21:34 Speaker C: The ideal would be to be acquired, but to be acquired by a business that can inject more resources and capital into what we are doing to help grow One Roof in a way that we wouldn't be able to without that. I'd love to still continue working in it as well. So I think it's gotta be the right business values aligned that sees, you know, the benefits can then be part of something greater. Um, because it's a very strong community, you know, a lot of One Roof is about the people in the community. So that is a hard thing to sell. Mm-hmm. A company that would acquire us and see that the community side can help service some other product or service that they're trying to get out there, probably specifically for women business owners.

22:18 Joan Westenberg: Yeah, would you ever consider like a community takeover or like a community buyout, that kind of thing? I'm always curious about community-based businesses and how they think about these kind of questions.

22:28 Speaker C: Yes, and to be honest, we're actually looking at something right now.

22:32 Joan Westenberg: So— Amazing.

22:33 Speaker C: A possible acquisition. One Roof would be acquiring another membership group.

22:38 Joan Westenberg: Incredible.

22:39 Speaker C: So that's been really interesting to work through, and I think we'll see how that goes. And if it all goes well, it might be that that's something we do more of, or we find, you know, different merge acquisition opportunities, because I think, yes, there's definitely something interesting in that.

22:54 Joan Westenberg: As the, the founder of this, how often are you, I guess, the, the community-facing person here? Like, how often do you, as the founder, front up to the community and just, and talk to them in that way?

23:06 Speaker C: Um, I do a lot. Yeah, I think more often in the last couple of years since I've been on maternity leave and I've been able to give my team space to also turn up and do more of the emceeing of events and hosting and interviews and running masterclasses. So I would say I kind of turn up less than I did to, yeah, hosting masterclasses or emceeing events. I do a lot. Like already this morning I've had 3 phone calls with 3 different members asking questions about different things. So I'm pretty on there in the trenches, on the ground with members. I really enjoy it. Like, I love it.

23:46 Joan Westenberg: So yeah.

23:46 Speaker C: part of who I am, and it fills out my comp. I can't be doing that all the time, obviously, um, and I probably do personally do a lot more of external PR and, and, you know, engagements and outreach. I still just love to be there.

24:00 Sheree Rubinstein: And—

24:01 Joan Westenberg: Absolutely. Yeah.

24:02 Speaker C: Even last week I went to a member meetup because I just also love to support our ambassadors. And, and, and that was only 15 of our members, so there can be small meetups. When I can, I love going along to those things too.

24:14 Joan Westenberg: Yeah. One of my favorite stories about my time at Fishburners was that the CEO at the time, Annie, would get into the office early and she would man the reception desk for the first hour, hour and a half, just to be the public face and also see how members were treating the staff.

24:29 Speaker C: Love it.

24:30 Joan Westenberg: It was something that's always stuck with me.

24:31 Speaker C: I'm very like that as well. I like to be on the ground. I really enjoy that. I like to know every aspect of the business. I like when members to see that, yeah, founders and leaders and CEOs are getting on the ground and getting involved. We recently launched an offering called Inner Circle, which is peer-led coaching, group coaching for women founders, very similar to the YPO or EO model. And I'm participating in it because I love it and I want peer-led coaching myself. And I like to, again, be on the ground with One Roof members and supporting them and getting involved and sharing my challenges.

25:04 Joan Westenberg: Do you have a mentorship group or a coaching group that you turn to for advice? I'm just asking because this is something that people who have VC backing often say is a benefit. They can turn to their investors for advice, you know.

25:16 Speaker C: So Inner Circle is absolutely like, we meet every 2 weeks and each person gets to sit in the hot seat and share a business challenge. That's been amazing. I have my own coach, not a business coach, more of a life coach, but I can talk to them, you know, ask questions, and that's been really beneficial. I used to have investors and a board of advisors. I don't have that anymore. But I have a lot of unofficial mentors. Like, over the years, I just know how important mentorship is, and so there's a ton of people that I can call when I need to, to ask for advice and feedback. And every business decision I've ever made comes from people around me giving me their support. I bring people together in a room and present what the business idea or challenge is and ask them what they think. So I'm big on asking for advice and unofficial mentorship and official mentors. I have a lot of it.

26:03 Joan Westenberg: How do you stay coachable when you're running a company and you're at that, that level?

26:08 Speaker C: I mean, there's so much I don't know. I don't know how you could not coachable, you know. It's— I'm always learning. It's like we can always be bigger and more and better, and I can see so many things that we improve and do differently. So for me, I, I'm just pretty good at taking on feedback, like constructive feedback. I, I'm open to it. I feel I need it. I love to learn. I I love to meet people, so maybe that's my nature. Like, I'm just a very approachable person.

26:35 Joan Westenberg: Are you good at saying no? I feel like this is a bootstrapping master skill that people have to have. Are you good at saying no?

26:43 Speaker C: I've gotten better over the years. I've made plenty of mistakes where I've said yes just to say yes, um, because I was excited by the opportunity. And you look back and you're like, yeah, that was a shit opportunity. Why did I say yes? I am probably inherently a yes person, so it's harder to say no. But over the years I've definitely gotten better and gotten better at negotiating to make sure that it's a deal that works for me or an arrangement that works for the business and being happy if the outcome is a no, like being comfortable if the outcome is a no.

27:13 Joan Westenberg: Do you have a schema for analyzing opportunities and questions about the business?

27:19 Speaker C: We roughly do. We have written out our values and indecision-making processes. In collaboration opportunities, these are the questions that we ask ourselves and that we need to answer in order to say yes to this opportunity or to consider it. So we always go back to that document. That's been very helpful, and that's come out of saying yes to opportunities in the past that didn't work.

27:43 Joan Westenberg: Yeah.

27:44 Speaker C: And then beyond that, so Fran, who's our head of community, we work through a lot of these things together. We do a kind of pros and cons list. I then will turn to, you know, mentors and other people for advice. It's a bit of those things.

27:57 Joan Westenberg: So going back to the fundraising process and experience, did you maintain contact with the people after you'd returned the money to the investors? Did you keep in touch?

28:05 Speaker C: Yeah, I loosely have. I've built such good relationships with all of them. Every so often, you know, I might email them and let them know what's happening in One Roof. Definitely not as kind of chatting as much as we used to. There's certain investors that I see, I might bump into, still like like I look to them as amazing people, as amazing relationships and connections that I've built. And if I need something, I'd always reach out to them. Obviously they're like, we don't talk as regularly as we did when they were investors.

28:35 Joan Westenberg: Yeah, I'm always curious what happens if you pay back an investor. Are they mad or will they still take your phone calls? You know, I'm curious about that.

28:43 Speaker C: They're definitely not mad. They, there's definitely a good relationship there. They're probably kind of following things as much anymore, and it's more if I reached out to them, then, you know, they'd be happy to. I did bump into one of my old investors the other day, and they were like, let's catch up for coffee. So there's a few of them who maintain an interest, whether they're following what I'm doing online or not right now, I don't know. But it's not like I don't feel like I couldn't call or email any of them if I wanted to.

29:13 Joan Westenberg: Looking back on this, the last Has it been 4 years since COVID It's been 4 years, isn't it?

29:18 Speaker C: Like that. Yeah.

29:19 Joan Westenberg: Yeah. The last, last 4 or so years, any regrets or key lessons learned?

29:23 Speaker C: Um, look, I never really have regrets because really, what's the point?

29:27 Joan Westenberg: Yeah.

29:28 Speaker C: I hear that. We've had to rebuild our member platform 3 times. Probably the second time that I rebuilt it, I could have had a bit more foresight to be like, this is a limited platform and we're going to need to rebuild again. So let's just just go for it rather than, you know, doing the kind of cheaper, easier option. But I guess then, in this, by the same token, it was okay. Last year we did a massive migration from a MemberSpace platform to a Mighty Networks platform. Mighty Networks has been perfect for us, and we did a rebrand, and so the actual, like, member portal looks beautiful, and it's just so— it's really easy to use. It's beautiful. There's a few little things I'd like to change, but overall I think it's a really good platform. You know, if you have the, the 3-year step ahead and you're seeing that, then it's easy to make the decisions about what you need now that's going to serve you for 3 years from now. But I was probably still in that very just like go, go, go, bootstrap, see what works mode, rather than trying to work out what's going to serve us 3 years from now. But you know, it kind of has all worked out in the end, really.

30:41 Joan Westenberg: Yeah, getting into a bit of a hypothetical, do you think that you could have built this digital membership-based business if you hadn't built a co-working space first?

30:49 Speaker C: I don't know, it's a good question. Look, I've seen people do it, so it's not that it can't be done. I think that I had the benefit of a community, of a physical space, particularly an event space, that I would say allowed us to get lots of people into the space, seeing One Roof, connecting with us, collaborating with us, putting on events. I think event space really built our event spaces don't make that much money. I'm sure Fishburners would know.

31:18 Joan Westenberg: Yeah.

31:19 Speaker C: In terms of like bringing people to Wanneroo, I think it was super beneficial for that. So to create our database, our socials, to have our name out there, we built this really good reputation in this really good community. And so then that made it— even though we were starting again, we weren't starting again. Like, we had a huge known brand and community to rely on, and people were great, we're in, what do you need? So I think that was really helpful.

31:45 Joan Westenberg: Do you have any advice or dos and don'ts for other bootstrap founders, people who might be going down that— I call it the hard path, but sometimes it's the easier path?

31:54 Speaker C: I think understanding that bootstrapping is just test and learn and iterate off the testing, and don't spend a lot of money putting out a website or building this huge tech without knowing if it works. Like, I just think you've got to be in hyper-testing mode for a very long time. Like, I've been running One Roof for 9 years. Of course we did a massive pivot, but I just feel like I've been testing since the first day we started. It's just been a non-stop test. That would be one thing. I think the other thing is I just feel like every door that ever opened for us was because someone I connected with loved the vision, loved the mission, connected with me, connected with the community, and opened a door us. And so I just think that networking piece and that surrounding yourself with other founders and business owners, people in this space doing similar different-ish things but who get it, makes all the difference. And so you just need to be really out there saying yes to opportunities even when it scares the shit out of you, speaking even when you don't want to, and connecting and building relationships. And that's really what builds your business.

33:01 Joan Westenberg: What extent do you sales takes a role in this. Do you ever see yourself as somebody who is doing sales?

33:07 Speaker C: I think as a bootstrapped business, it's actually predominantly about sales because you're not going to get the funding from anyone or anywhere else. And the only thing that you can do to build your business is build your revenue, and it's all about the sales. I had an epiphany at some point where I was like, wow, I actually really like sales. Like, I thought I hated sales, but I actually really like it because I love what I'm selling and I love what I'm doing and I believe in it. And I think you start to realize that particularly as a business owner, you're selling all the time in everything, everywhere you go, every post you put out there, people are looking at what you're doing and thinking like, what is One Roof? Oh, let me, you know, some people will be like, I've been following you for 3 years or 5 years. I've finally joined. Like they're just watching and it's all part of the sales strategy. A big value of mine is honesty. And so I'm not, I'm never really out there kind of cringeworthy selling. It's always sharing pretty openly and honestly. And because we're building a business that's about entrepreneurship, I get to share about my entrepreneurial journey, and I find that resonates well. And it's also pretty therapeutic for me, so it works both ways to be able to share pretty openly about what's going on.

34:16 Joan Westenberg: I love that. And look, sales doesn't have to be something to be ashamed of, right?

34:19 Speaker C: No, it's like, you have to— you can't build a business, can't do sales. Yeah, you got to do And also don't think you can just hire someone to do your sales for you because again, as a business owner, you have to be able to do it and you have to be able to be a great front-facing person for your business because you should be out there building relationships, building partnerships, looking at, at new opportunities and revenue streams, and it's all part of the sales.

34:44 Joan Westenberg: It makes so much sense. Thank you for being with me today. I appreciate your time. I appreciate your insights. This has been wonderful. And look, like I keep on saying to the people that come on this podcast, I would say good luck, but it does not sound like you need it.

34:59 Speaker C: Thanks, Joan.

34:59 Joan Westenberg: Thank you very much.