Become the Obvious Choice: Brand Positioning That Turns Reputation Into Demand | Paige Arnof-Fenn

Leadership isn't just changing. It's evolving in ways we're only just beginning to imagine. And women, we're not playing this game anymore. We're the ones reshaping the entire field, building models, movements, and businesses that serve more than just a few. On the She Leads podcast, you'll hear real conversations with women who've broken through all kinds of barriers, revenue, identity, orders, and expectations.

There's no sugarcoating here, just the truth told by those who are living it. I'm Adrienne Garland, entrepreneur, strategist, educator and creator of live experiences, gathering women leaders together for over a decade. And this is the She Leads podcast.

Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the She Leads podcast. Today, I'm so excited to welcome my new friend, Paige Arnoff Ben, who's the founder and CEO of the global branding and digital marketing firm, Mavens and Moguls out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her client list is so impressive. It includes Microsoft, Virgin, The New York Times Company, Colgate, as well as several venture backed startups and select nonprofit organizations. Paige graduated from Stanford University and Harvard Business School.

So we have a very impressive woman that we're speaking with today. And she also serves on several boards. She's a popular speaker, and she's a columnist who has written for both Entrepreneur and Forbes. So welcome to the She Leads Podcast page.

Thank you, Adrienne. I'm so excited to talk to you today.

I am so excited to speak to you as well. And we connected through our mutual friend, Donna Cravata, who does an incredible job of highlighting women who are doing great things, I guess in the latter part of their lives with her 50 under 50. But 50 I feel like it's so young. So it's been we are so all of us are so accomplished. We have so much experience and expertise under our belts.

And when you and I connected, I wanted to invite you on the podcast because you do work with these larger brands in a in a marketing capacity. And we talked a lot about how, you know, women entrepreneurs who are at the million dollar mark growing and beyond, that we can learn some lessons from these companies. So we'll get into that. But before we do, I want to talk to you about you and your journey. So take us back to, let's go back even to, you what was the reason that you decided to go to, you went to Stanford undergrad.

Yeah. What was the reason

that you went to Stanford?

So my dad was a commercial banker and he had a conference out in San Francisco when I was in high school. And he said, why don't you come with me? I think I was a sophomore or junior in high school. And he said, Why don't you come with me and go look at some colleges on the West Coast? And I thought, you know, it's not like it is today where kids start thinking about college so young.

I hadn't even thought about college yet. I was like 15 or 16 years old. But I thought, okay, I'll go out. And while he was at his meetings, I took a tour of the Stanford campus and I immediately fell in love. And then they had an information session for all the people in the group to talk about getting into Stanford.

And when they talked about it, I thought, Oh my God, I'm never gonna get in here. Not a chance. When I got back to the hotel that night, my dad said, How did it go? And I said, Oh my God, it's amazing. But I don't think there's any chance I'm getting in.

And he said, Well, you won't know if you don't apply, so you should just apply. So I did, and I got in miraculously. And today it's even harder to get in, so I'm not sure that I would get in today. But was an economics major in college. And my senior year, the first Wall Street movie came out with Michael Douglas, and And it won an I had seen it, and I just was completely enamored with the whole Wall Street scene.

And my dad and both my grandfathers were commercial bankers, so I always thought I'd go into banking. But once I saw the movie about investment banking, I thought, Oh my God, this is it. That's what I want to do with my life. And I got a job offer and I moved to New York City after I graduated. And I was a financial analyst for two years.

And it was just as crazy, if not crazier, than the movie. I was really good at it, but I didn't really love it, is the problem. The lifestyle is completely insane. You work seven days a week. You pull all nighters.

And I didn't have a passion for what I was doing, but it paid really well. I had made a two year commitment to the investment bank. But I knew when I finished, I needed to pivot. I had to find something that I was really going to love doing. And a girlfriend of mine who also worked at the same bank, after we finished, we both applied to business school.

We both got in, and we thought we would travel the summer before we started school. So while we were in Europe, we were on a beach in the Algarve in Portugal. And she said, So what are you going to do when you're done with your MBA? And I said, Oh my God, I have no idea. I thought I would always go into finance because that's what my family is good at, but I didn't love it the way my dad and my grandpas love it.

I said, What about you? She goes, Oh, I'm definitely going back to the bank. It was amazing. And I was like, Oh no, I don't know what to do next. And she said, Well, you were so good.

You have to have loved part of the job. Like, you can't be that good at something and not really enjoy it. And I said, Honestly, there are only three things about that job that I enjoyed. After the transaction was completed, if we helped a company get bought or get sold or raise money, we got to do a closing dinner. And because I was the most junior person on the team, I had to plan the dinner.

And I had to get a deal toy, like a promotional gift for everybody who was involved. And we got to run an ad in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times to let everybody know we had completed the transaction. So I said to her, Those were literally the only three things I liked, but that didn't come until the end of all the work. And I didn't like the work. She said, Paige, you're so crazy.

You're not a finance person. You don't love the finance, you love the marketing. Like, what are you talking about? I never took a marketing class. I was an econ major.

You know, it was a liberal arts school. There was no marketing in undergrad. There was no marketing major. Yeah. And she said, Paige, what you love is event planning, promotions, and advertising.

Those are all marketing functions. So I went to business school. Wouldn't you know it? My first semester, we had to take a marketing class. I got the highest grade in the class.

Wow. I got a summer internship in marketing at Procter and Gamble. And P and G is like the most celebrated marketing company in the world. They kind of invented the concept of brand management. As a consumer products company, they have the most loved, beloved brands in every category they compete in.

It's Pampers and Bounty and Pantene and Oil of Olay, and all the best brands. They are number one or number one and number two in every category they compete in. So I had a great internship, and they made me an offer at the end of the summer to come back full time, which I did. And I spent about three and a half years there, and I loved the work. And I've been in marketing ever since.

But if you had met me in college or graduate school, I would have told you, I wanna be kind of a CEO. Both my grandfathers and my dad all ran banks. I grew up in a family that was very business oriented, and I really loved going to work with them and watching how they motivated and inspired their teams. And I wanted to be just like them. So I thought, you know, maybe I'll be the next Meg Whitman or something, a Fortune five hundred CEO, and lead a group and help really do something fantastic in business.

And I started off on that path at P and G, and then I worked at Coca Cola. Again, the most recognized brand in the world. P and G and Coke sell their products all over the world. And I loved the marketing, I loved working for such a recognized, respected brand. But then the internet started taking off.

And like around 1997, it was like the shiny object I could not take my eyes off of. And I was reading about all these technology companies that were raising money and just setting the world on fire. And I just, I was obsessed. And I left my Jig corporate grocery job at Coke, and I joined a startup in Los Angeles in Santa Monica, five blocks from the ocean. Beautiful.

Yeah, I loved it. And I built the marketing department from the Ground Floor. We went public. Not even two years later, we were sold to Yahoo. And then my husband got a job in Boston.

We moved to the East Coast. I did two more startups as the head of marketing. And both of those companies also had good exits. Then nineeleven happened, and all the marketing jobs got cut. And I hung out a shingle, and I started my own independent marketing firm, and I've been doing it ever since.

So the long winded answer is I joke that I'm the accidental entrepreneur. I had no idea that I'd be doing marketing or that I'd start my own company. I really thought I would go run a very established company and work my way up the hierarchy, up the food chain, and run the business. And that's just not at all what happened. But I think it was Steve Jobs that said, Careers only make sense looking backwards, not forwards.

And so I can connect the dots now and tell you how I got here. This was definitely not on my dance card when I started.

And it wasn't planned. Paige, as you were talking about your sort of beginning and majoring in economics and going into investment banking and an analyst, you know, that is exactly what I did as well. So my degree, my undergrad degree is in economics, and English is my minor, I always had that left brain, right brain thing going on. And when I graduated, I actually worked at a company. I don't let me this, you might know this company.

I worked at a company in New York City called Value Line.

Oh my god. I absolutely my mother was an aficionado. My mother, she built an amazing stock portfolio, and she had a system with Valueline that I wish I could channel and do as well as she did, but I know exactly where you work. That was a great business.

Yeah. So I when I graduated from college, I actually did data entry for Valueline. So I was inputting all of the stock prices me and a bank of other people. So that was like how long ago that was. But then I also moved into investment banking as an analyst, and also equity research.

And so I have the similar background. I was there in the 1990s, and I ended up-

I'm older than you. I was there from 'eighty seven to 'eighty nine, but you know

exactly what I'm talking about. Exactly. And so the company that I worked for was doing some shady business, as I think they all were. And I got really upset about it because I had always loved, like in high school and middle school, I always loved math. It's why I went into economics because there was an answer, right?

It was like, so when I found out some of the things that this company was doing, I just, I couldn't keep working there. And at the time I was going for my MBA. And so I said, you know what, I'm getting out of finance. Like, I hate it. I hate the people.

I hate, like, everything that's happening here. And so I switched my major to marketing.

That's hilarious.

And one of the reasons that I knew that I loved marketing is because we did the same thing. We provided bridge financing or took companies public. And so I was always looking at, what are these companies doing? What is their go to market strategy? Who is their customer?

And I was so obsessed with that. And I also hadn't taken a marketing class in my life. And so I thought to myself, oh my gosh, I've been honed in on the marketing aspect of these businesses, the make or break, you know. And so I too transitioned into marketing. So we have very similar origin And I love that you started your own marketing agency.

It is a very difficult transition, I think to move especially from working with these established brands with exact rules, playbooks, all of the resources that you could ever hope for, and then trying to do all of that on your own. So,

So I took baby steps because I started with the big brands. And like you said, the P and Gs and Cokes of the world, they have a process, they have a methodology, and it works because they're number one in their category. And when I look back now, if you had talked to my bosses early in my career, they would have told you, Paige is great, very enthusiastic, has such a good work ethic. But boy, is she a pain in the butt. Because at P and G and Coke, your boss would give you a project and say, Go do this.

And I'd think about it and I'd say, You know, can we have a meeting? Because I have some really good ideas. What if we tried They're like, No, Paige, we don't need to try anything new. We have a process. We know how to do this.

We know what the packaging is. We know what the pricing is. We know what the messaging is. We know what the advertising is. You just need to execute.

And I was always trying to bend, break, and change the rules. Love it. And they didn't need that. But it's funny. Entrepreneur was not really a word when I was a kid.

No. There really wasn't a well known path to do that my So little when I left my big corporate job at Coke to go run marketing for a startup that no one had ever heard of before, I think my boss and my mother thought I was having a nervous nervous breakdown. Like, What's wrong with you? Nobody leaves Coca Cola to go work for some company that has no name, no recognition. Like, no one's going to know who you are when you give them your business card.

But like I said, there was just something pulling me to all these. I was reading about all these stories of these companies raising $10.20, $30.40000000 and making impact. And I thought, this looks so fun and it's so fast paced. And so being able to make these companies that literally were under the radar and make them brand names, and they go public, they get sold to a much bigger company, and everyone now knows these companies. The first one became Yahoo Music.

The last one, Zipcar, got bought by Avis, and now everybody knows It was a completely new concept when I joined So the I fully felt like I was going to create the next Starbucks or something, a company that no one had ever heard of, and then now everyone just goes to and uses it. And so then starting my own business after nineeleven, it didn't seem scary to me at all. First of all, I had made money three times on the three exits. So I didn't have to work, but I was young. I was literally like in my early 30s, and I had no interest in retiring.

I wanted to work, but I kind of wanted to work on my own terms. And there were no real great marketing jobs right after nineeleven anyway. I had just gotten bought out of my third startup. And because I had had success with three venture backed startups, I knew a lot of investors, I knew a lot of CEOs, friends from college and business school. So people were coming out of the woodwork after nineeleven saying, Hey, we have a new product launching, or We have a big trade show coming up, or I need to fix my website.

Can you help me? My first instinct was, No, I'm not a consultant. I'm the client. I'm the chief marketing officer. But my husband's like, Paige, you know what you're doing.

You've done this at big companies, small companies. You can help them. Tell them you'll do it. And so I called a bunch of people that I had worked with earlier in my career who were also just recently laid off, and they were all available. So I knew people, I knew projects, and I just started putting them together.

Didn't think at the time I was starting a company that I'd still be running twenty four years later. But this is my longest job ever in my life. And I can't even imagine going back to work for anybody else again.

Yeah, no, you are not employable at all, which is a good thing, I think.

Exactly.

How big is your company today? Like how many people are working with

So I've got about four dozen people, but they're all independent contractors. I pull together teams on an as needed basis, and I've got people in 14 cities around The U. S. And a lot of major metro areas overseas. Because having worked at P and G and Coke, I have contacts in marketing all over the world.

And we've done work all over North America, Canada, Mexico. We've done work in the Far East, in Europe, in The Middle East. So, you know, the amazing thing is, you know, I started this way before COVID, so we were virtual kind of before it was Trinity. And so, you know, the work can be done anywhere around the world, and everybody's got computers and cell phones, and the technology's only gotten better. And so finding the right team based on the skill set, the geography, who's going to be simpatico with the client.

We've just been doing it now for more than two decades. So when COVID hit, we didn't miss a beat. Like, my clients were having trouble transitioning to a hybrid world, but we were already there.

Hey, everyone. So for years, I've been working with Doctor. Kent and sending people in my network his way. He does so much impact work. What do I mean by that?

Well, he helps people create books and podcasts and things like that. He even helps with this podcast behind the scenes. Doctor Kent is my thought partner. Anyone listening knows that we all need to do what we can to get our thoughts, opinions, and voices out into the world and how important it is for women to invest in other women and for women to hire other women. I am all about that, and you all know that.

But in this case, I think doctor Kent is an exception. He's doing something really different via this new program that he's launched called the Genius Discovery Program. So he wants to work with people like me and like you who are impact driven. Doctor. Kent has an intensive program that goes for a month.

He also has a three month program where he figures out where you're headed with your brand, your business, your speaking, and your signature story as a thought leader. I've known Doctor. Kent for a long time. So believe me when I say that he has a ton of experience working with people that are looking to make an impact, but might not know exactly how to approach them. So if you're interested in talking to him, you can go directly to talk to Kent dot com, or you can send me a DM on Instagram at she leads media, or just shoot me an email over at hello@sheleadsmedia.com.

I love this so much. You know, I know of an, gosh, a columnist, was gonna say an author and she's both, she's an author and a columnist. But her name is Elaine Poefeldt. And she wrote a book called The $1,000,000 one person business. And it's very much about pulling together groups of people and not necessarily having a lot of overhead or employees because that is definitely something the agency model that is very difficult to sustain because you need a certain level of client work in order to keep everybody employed.

But the way that you are doing it and have done it since the beginning is so smart, especially because it's also how people are working now. There are so many people that are consultants and freelancers, and they want to be because they want that flexibility. So you're giving them the opportunity to work in a way they want to work as well. So you were very smart, well, from the beginning, but smart in starting your company in that way back then when nobody else was really doing that.

Yeah, no, we were kind of a pioneer in marketing to do this because people hired agencies, ad agencies, PR agencies, but they didn't outsource their marketing. And so actually Harvard Business School wrote two cases on my company. Think it was our third year in business. Now it seems like not a big deal because the sharing economy has taken off. You know, you've got Airbnb and Zipcar and all these companies that you share your house, your car, your sporting equipment.

I'm like, there's nothing people wouldn't share now. People don't feel like they have to own everything. But when we did it, it was definitely kind of, people maybe hired an accountant or an attorney that they used that wasn't an employee. But marketing always felt like you had to do your marketing, but you could hire an agency. We just felt like it would make sense.

And the majority of my clients, I would say, are mid market, emerging market, kind of $2,000,000 to $200,000,000 in revenue. And for those companies, unlike P and G and Coke, who have a lot of marketing people in house and agencies of record, my clients can't really justify the overhead and expense of a fully staffed marketing department. You know, if you've got a tech company that has two trade shows a year and one product launch coming out, When they're not in trade show mode or in product launch mode, what are they going to do with a full marketing team? They're paying a lot of money and they're not really getting as much bang for the buck. And you alluded to this.

I mean, I knew that a lot of startups failed at the beginning. I mean, the statistics were never great, and especially women owned businesses. And I made a decision. I didn't want to raise any outside money because the overhead was so low. I didn't really need any outside funding to start my company.

And, you know, I had clients almost before I admitted I was starting a company, which happens to be a great way to start a business because, you know, we were making money from the very first engagement. But, you know, the first year we did well, you know, low 6 figures. And then we quadrupled, and then we tripled the next year, and then we doubled. And so we were, you know, it only took us a couple of years to break through a million in revenue, which I was really happy about. I could see the value we were providing, and I had a lot of confidence in the team that I assembled, and I knew we could help the clients.

But I didn't really appreciate until that Harvard Business School case writer approached us. I kept saying, When I was in school, we didn't study companies like mine that were working out of a home office. That wasn't a thing. She said, Well, it's a thing now. Now people want to start businesses.

They drop out of business school because they come up with a great idea and they want to start their own company. Like that's what people are doing now. And so we really were kind of ahead of that curve. And it's great that, you know, the technology and tools have only gotten better. And with artificial intelligence, they're saying it's not going to be long before, you know, the one person, contractor model is gonna be a multi bajillion dollar company because people that are really good at AI are gonna be able to scale even quicker than I did.

Well, I'd love to sort of jump to that. Really, the Steve Jobs quote is so spot on because you really laid all of the groundwork, got all of the expertise from a big company perspective, a startup perspective. It was sort of divine the way that it all happened. Yeah, all the roads of my career and life converged into my company, no question. Yeah, it's incredible.

And all of the network that you built over that time, that all made this It set up the conditions for success. So many women I just read statistics, I think it was yesterday about the majority and I don't know the actual number, but the majority of businesses that are being started by women are started by women that are 50 years old. They're not too. Right? So it's super interesting because these people often have a very incredible career, but they want to have their own legacy, right?

Really monetize their expertise, if you will. But I guess the ceiling on that is also a statistic that I hate talking about, but it's reality. And that is that it's, I think, less than 3% or it might have maybe 2% of women owned businesses ever get past that million dollar mark. So if you were to sort of give advice to maybe a woman who's 45, 50, has a great career behind her and wants to start a business. And we're not 25, so we'd like to get to that million dollar mark as quickly as possible.

What is some advice maybe from the clients that you have or just people in your network? What's some advice so that we can get to that mark? So number one, I think you have to realize that everyone is a brand today, not

just Taylor Swift or Beyonce or Serena Williams. Like, we're all walking around with these phones in our pockets, and you have a platform. Especially if you have a business, your website is a launchpad, and that is your calling card. And you need to think of yourself as a brand today, because if you're not a brand, you're a commodity, and commodities compete on price. So brands command a premium.

You can charge more. People remember brands. You own real estate in your customer's brain so that if you have a product or service that can solve one of their problems, you want them to think of you first. So that's number one. You don't need to be famous to be a brand.

In your niche, you can be the LeBron James or the Taylor Swift in your niche. And I think once people embrace that, they're going to think of themselves in a better way. I feel like, you know, you don't want to be a nice to have, you want to be a have to have product or service. So what problem are you solving? And make sure it's a real problem.

Do market research. And again, it doesn't need to be fancy research like I used to do at P and G and Coke, where you talk to thousands of people, it was statistically significant. You can do a Zoomerang or a SurveyMonkey, but just make sure you're asking objective questions and you're talking to your target audience. What worries me is when people come to me and say, I have this amazing idea. Everybody says we're great, and I don't understand why we're not selling more of our stuff.

And I'm like, Well, great. Who's telling you that it's great? Let me see your research. And they're like, Well, I haven't done any official research. I'm like, Well, who have you talked to?

Well, I talked to my neighbor, my mother, my best friend. That's not research. You're talking to people who know you and love you and don't want to hurt your feelings. You need to talk to your target audience and get real feedback of, you know, are they going to spend their hard earned cash with what you're selling? And if they're not buying it, you need to pay attention.

Make sure you've got the right message, the right packaging, the right pricing, and you understand if they didn't have your product or service, how are they solving that problem today? So you've really got to apply the tough love on yourself. And once you get the right package put together, the right messaging, you can't stand for everything. You have to pick one or two things that really stand out and reinforce that in everything that you do. Know, people can't remember 10 different things.

No. When people start their families and they want to get a safe car, a lot of people buy Volvo because it's positioned as safety and, it's easy to have your kids in the car. They're not buying sports cars or convertibles. A lot of people buy Volvos at that life stage. There's a reason why.

Have branded themselves, and they do own that space in their customer's brain. So you have to be smart. It's not about how big your budget is. It's not about how much money you're spending. It's about, you know, if you find a niche that you can own, a small niche, that's brilliant.

You know, want to own that niche in a way. We worked with a woman who was a money manager, wealth management person. There are a lot of people in every city who manage money and are out there networking and they can help you put together a good portfolio and blah, blah, blah. And those people are a dime a dozen. And whatever firm they work for, if they have their own firm, they've hung out their own shingle, it all kind of blends together in your brain.

Like, how do you decide which person that you would even want to have a meeting with? But we worked with a woman who she said, you know, I want to stand out. I want be someone that people beat a path to my door and say, I wanna work with you. And I feel like I'm invisible. Can you help me?

So we did some research on the clients that she works with. And it turns out the majority of her clients and the people that love her the most, she works with other So this is a woman in her fifties. She started at the big firms and ultimately hung out her own shingle. And the people that were her most loyal and the cheerleader clients were other women, older women, 50, who had come into a lot of money, either through a windfall, they sold their business, they got divorced and got a good settlement, they came from a prominent family and their parents died, they got their inheritance. And she really did a great job with these women and helped them structure their finances in a way that provided security and upside and really helped them go from just being wealthy to having a very successful life where they could do more philanthropy and use their means in a way with more impact to their communities.

And so we said to her, This is a niche that you could own. These people love you, and when we talked to them, again, this isn't expensive research. We were just, again, you could send a Zoomerang or SurveyMonkey or talk over the phone or Zoom or over coffee. And so we put together a marketing message plan for her and talked to her associates, and really got her messaging. Again, she's not just a wealth manager, like somebody who can help either pick stocks or pick funds.

That's just noise. That's just invisible. Anybody can do that. So when she tightened her message, and she put it on her website, she put it in her brochures, we got a nice elevator pitch. We got her writing some articles in trade magazines and local media.

She started speaking at different conferences about this niche. Literally, when somebody was going through a divorce or somebody just sold their company, it's like everyone and their mother was saying to the person, Congratulations. I just heard about your company. That's so exciting. Or, I'm sorry to hear about the divorce, but I'm glad you got a great settlement.

That's awesome. Have you met with Susan yet? Because she's the one you want to talk to. She has helped so many people like me. If you want an introduction, let me know, but I think that's who you need to talk to.

And that person is hearing it from everybody they know. Turned into like there was nobody else she wanted to talk to. Wasn't like she was meeting people to decide who to hire. She had almost made the decision before they even met. So when everyone becomes a megaphone for you, when all your messaging is in sync, all roads lead to you, that's a great business because that makes you recession proof.

That makes you stand out in a crowded field where everybody else is invisible, but you own a niche. And again, you can do it in any category, but you just have to be strategic and thoughtful about it. So I would say to people listening, you might think of marketing as a necessary evil. Hold your nose. I don't want to be too show off y.

I feel like I'm bragging. I feel uncomfortable. You need to get over that. You need to Google yourself. Google your business and see what pops up.

And either nothing pops up, and that's a problem, because then you're a commodity. Or the stuff that pops up maybe isn't that flattering, that's a problem. But if what you're showing is like you're all over the place with 10 different messages, people aren't going to remember you for that. So be strategic, be thoughtful, plant those seeds so that you really can just go deep in an area where you have a competitive advantage and you can stand out versus your competition. And if you do that, you can build a very good business.

Yeah.

That's such incredible advice. I feel like that was definitely a masterclass in the critical success factors. And as you are talking, I'm thinking about so many women that I know that have businesses and they often, when they launch their business, they say, I want to do this, and they don't necessarily think deeply about, well, what problem are you solving for someone else? Because you can want to do it all day long, but unless you are independently wealthy, you are not your own client. So that's, I think, a shift that I think a lot more women need to make in order to get their businesses past that point.

And not everybody wants to have a million dollar plus businesses perfectly okay to not, especially if you have low overhead and you're making 6 figures, high 6 figures, you're doing really, really well. So as much as I like to talk about women that have million dollar businesses and beyond, the reason is not for vanity purposes at all, but rather if you have any type of overhead, you need the money for expenses. And then you need that money to put in your pocket so that you can go out and help your community. If you are not if you are not profitable, you cannot help anyone.

Bingo.

Yeah. And women, when they have wealth, are more likely to help their community than men who have wealth. So that's why it's so important. And then I'm sort

of hell bent on it right now. Now it's a good platform. And, you know, I just feel like, you know, don't sell yourself short, because if you've got a solution to a real problem that people are willing to pay for, that's a business. That is something that you can really use as a platform to get the word out and make a difference. And, I mean, if you look at two high profile examples, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, who both went through very high profile divorces, and both of their ex wives, you know, did very well in their settlements, they're both doing high impact philanthropy in a way that you're not seeing their ex husbands do.

Their ex husbands are building the businesses, which is great because they employ a lot of people and they sell a lot of good products. But their ex wives are both doing incredible work in philanthropy in a way that almost has never been seen before.

Yeah.

And they're helping communities that were underserved and invisible, frankly, before they were discovered by them. So, you know, women do typically have a different approach. And it's amazing when you see the impact and the ripple effects of what that success can lead to.

Yeah. And I love that example so much. I was just talking about Mackenzie Scott on the podcast the other day and the billions that she's given. She's absolutely remarkable. And the philanthropy aspect of everything is so so important.

And unless more women can get to their that point on their own, as as well, right? We need more women to be able to build these businesses that free up these resources and also the whole entire shift of wealth that you know, 50% of the world's wealth by 2030 will be in the hands of women. And it's something like, you know, 90 or $100,000,000,000,000 with a t. So so women are going to have access to this capital. And, you know, there's no reason why that can't continue to grow so that we can do even better work for underserved communities, for women in general, because I do think that we are going to be the ones that right some of these wrongs that have been going on in the world, at least I hope so.

More power to you, I agree.

Yeah, wow. So I feel like we need a part two of this conversation because we're sort of coming to the end here. I definitely wanted to talk more about impact work as well. Women that have gotten to that mark, yes, it's amazing to continue to grow your business, but what impact do you want to make? What legacy do you want to leave?

So I'm gonna ask you to come back for a part two, because I'd love to hear about that with you. You're 25 into your business almost, right? Because

it's twenty five it's years. Unbelievable. Can't believe

credible, incredible. So I'm sure that you have your sights on, you know, maybe what's next for you. And I'd love to hear about that. So we'll do that next time.

That sounds great. No, this has been a lot of fun, and it's so funny how we both kind of started in the same pond and how we've kind of grown from there, but I really loved it.

Oh, I have loved speaking with you as well. I can't wait to just continue our conversation. And if people want to get in touch with you and hire you, talk to you, have you speak, how can they

do so? So the best way is either through my website, mavensandmoguls.com. It's M A V E N S A N D M O G U L S dot com. Or LinkedIn is my kind of platform of choice. My name is hyphenated, but on LinkedIn it's all smushed together.

Whereas one of my clients always says, because my name is hyphenated and my company name has an ampersand, she's like, there are just too many words for me to remember. All I remember is Paige and Mavens. And so if you Google that, you will find me right away, to search engine optimization. So you can find me, and I'd love to continue a conversation with any of the listeners.

Amazing. Well, Paige, thank you so much for spending time with us here today on the She Leads podcast, and it has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Adrian. I've loved it too.

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