College Isn't the Only Path: Building Worker-First Careers and a Women's Camp in a French Château with Leah Lykins

Adrienne Garland (00:01.282)
Hi everybody and welcome back to the She Leads podcast. I'm so excited to welcome my next guest, but before I introduce her to you, I'd like to ask you to take just two minutes to give the show a five star rating and review on Apple or Spotify. This is so important for the show's visibility and the visibility of each and every one of our guests.

The women on this show share their journeys, their wisdom, and their lessons so you can go further, faster, wealthier, and with more ease. If you're interested in seeing more successful women leaders and entrepreneurs in this world, please take this easy step to support women everywhere. Thank you so much in advance for helping to share our incredible show with more people. Now, my next guest, her name is Leah Lykins.

and she's the co-founder of Where We Go, a public benefit corporation. She's also the co-founder of Camp Chateau, because women can't just do one thing, can we? Leah founded Where We Go in 2018 to build a clear worker-first tool that makes career decisions easier and more motivating. This is well positioned now at a time where we see low labor force participation, record high unemployment rates,

ballooning student debt and middle skills gaps in every state. Where we go is creating connections between people who are ready to work and programs that are ready to train. I just love this so much because college is not for everyone.

Leah has the background in public education and she was an environmental science teacher and the director of teaching and learning. She's got a data-driven personalized instruction focus that has helped students chart their own paths. And in 2022, Leah co-founded Camp Chateau, an all-inclusive adult women's sleepaway summer camp in a chateau in southern

Leah (01:39.916)
That's right.

Adrienne Garland (02:04.792)
France with more locations I hear opening soon. Demand is super high, long wait list and most spots book over a year in advance. I can't wait to hear about all of this, Leah. Welcome to the She Leads podcast.

Leah (02:09.515)
Yeah.

Leah (02:22.359)
Thank you so much, Adrienne. It's great.

Adrienne Garland (02:24.584)
my goodness. So let's start in the beginning. First, I see that you went to NYU, which is my alma mater. And I also teach entrepreneurship at NYU in the School of Professional Studies in the hospitality program. So right there with Camp Chateau, yes. So I'll have to have you come in and talk to the students. So that would be great.

Leah (02:34.325)
I saw that,

Leah (02:43.69)
Excellent.

Leah (02:48.055)
That would be so fun. I'll be in New York. I'm in New Orleans right now. I'll be in New York starting on next Friday for the summer. Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (02:54.08)
Amazing. amazing. OK, so maybe we'll have you come into the summer class, even though it's virtual, but we'll get you in at some point. Awesome. So can you, in addition to graduating from NYU, can you just kind of walk people through how you started, you got into education, and then you started your own business? I'd love to just understand that journey.

Leah (03:20.309)
Yeah, absolutely. think,

Where we go started because it kind of came from a lived experience that just made me really mad. And I was going to have to become a technologist to work on it. So the, it's not a case of I have this bucket of skills and I'm going to put them into this new endeavor. It was, I am this endeavor and I'm going to need a whole new bucket of skills to get to work on it. And that problem was that my students, bless them.

Adrienne Garland (03:50.316)
Yeah.

Leah (03:53.495)
were graduating, over 95 % of them getting accepted into college. And then 18 months later, they're bagging my groceries, they're at the fast food counter, I'm having conversations with them and like they just impacted with reality and there were so many systemic barriers. And I knew for a fact that it was not their motivation and not their academic skill, even in most of these situations as well. So.

Adrienne Garland (04:03.406)
Hmm.

Adrienne Garland (04:13.432)
Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (04:20.624)
Hmm.

Leah (04:22.225)
That led to this really big frustration. And that was the pain. The pain was how are we going to work on that? Then through basically working on that problem and trying to understand it every Saturday morning with my co-founder, Ben, because that's how you start, right? You're like, have your job. And now you just have this new one on the side that you give yourself. Great. And so gave myself a new job on the side, which was Saturday mornings working on this problem. And then

Adrienne Garland (04:38.413)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (04:52.165)
landed on, okay, there's no navigation for the plan B on college that is anywhere near on par with the navigation that we have on college. We can navigate jobs. We can use Glassdoor, Indeed, LinkedIn. We can do this for colleges countless ways. We just do not have that level of transparency and visibility, let alone like reviews of vocational training programs, because they're all different shapes and sizes, because it's really hard to do it. It's just, it's really, really hard to do it. But like, you can't tell me that.

Adrienne Garland (05:14.412)
Yeah.

Leah (05:22.123)
It's not possible without that temptation of having to go off and try to do that. And so that's where it started, career and training navigation. That's crystal clear. And then when we started testing with the students, they were like, can my mom use this? We were like, there's a business. Okay. Great. Yeah. Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (05:38.605)
Yeah.

There's something here.

Wow, there's so much more to talk about and everything that you've done and built and continue to build. And I want to talk about all of it. I know you're launching the Where We Go labs, and I want to hear more about that. But it's fascinating to me because I see this as well. Even I know that you were teaching in New Orleans.

Leah (05:58.881)
Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (06:10.83)
I'm here in New York in Nassau County, one of the wealthiest counties in the United States. And the problems are very much the same. I saw a lot of students that the path, the only one that's given is go to high school, go to college. And if you don't, you are kind of lost. I've seen...

people, children of friends, my son's friends, that they tried the college path and for one reason or another had nothing to do with how intelligent they were, it just didn't work. And same, they're working at the liquor store. And it's heartbreaking when you know that somebody has such great capability, but just sort of can't find their way.

Leah (06:58.465)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne Garland (07:08.052)
So what are some of those moments in younger people's lives where they realize college is not for me, but they don't know where to turn to next? What happens?

Leah (07:08.225)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (07:24.491)
I think that there's a really big draw to something that you've heard of.

And then you start seeing and colliding with a lot of things that you have not heard of. And now you have moved from your comfort zone into your growth zone into panic. And sometimes it's an appropriate reaction. You're out of your depth. lot of times we're talking, for our instance, a lot of times we're talking about students who have a lot of responsibilities outside of their own education. And so it might be like,

Adrienne Garland (07:59.202)
Yeah.

Leah (08:02.605)
to spread yourself that thin might not be very good for your mental health at this time. So whether or not a young person would describe it that way is different, but there's really any reason you can come up with is a valid reason. We're so complex as people. I will say that that level of familiarity and just calibrating this growth, this comfort zone to growth zone, to panic zone, that calibration is so different for each of us. And if you have heard of these things,

Adrienne Garland (08:06.925)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (08:30.753)
And then you suddenly haven't heard of a lot of things that you start to move where you're at. And that's where this kind of personalization of learning comes into this process. Like, have you heard of the aquaculture industry? Never. Got it. So are you going to explore the entry level careers for aquaculture? Got it. No. But can I say like, or are you interested in GIS technology? No.

Adrienne Garland (08:40.419)
Hmm.

Adrienne Garland (08:45.142)
Right.

Leah (08:57.701)
never heard of it. What if I say flying drones to save the wetlands? Do you like that? Like that? So there's ways to make the same information and the same collision with reality way closer to your comfort zone and way further from this like panic feeling by really like speaking the language better about what is actually happening. And

Adrienne Garland (09:02.973)
Mmm, fun.

Adrienne Garland (09:12.91)
Hmm.

Adrienne Garland (09:17.986)
Hmm.

Leah (09:20.417)
Fundamentally, I think what the core issue for a lot of our young people entering into education environments is there's not as much effort for that translating as there could be.

Adrienne Garland (09:31.086)
Like what you just did. Yeah.

Leah (09:32.181)
Yeah, but it works, but that tiny move completely changes the way that someone's going to interact with something.

Adrienne Garland (09:38.71)
Yeah. You know, it's funny too. I was mentioning about teaching at NYU and the students that are graduating right now from college, they entered college four years ago and the world was very different. The world that they're graduating into because of AI, because of the economy, because of all of the different issues that are ahead of everybody.

is very, very different. some are very looking forward to getting out there and trying things. Others are scared out of their minds. So this is not happening just for the transition from high school into what's next. It's also for these college students that are going into the working world where...

Leah (10:23.437)
correct

Adrienne Garland (10:30.862)
Me, I don't know what to tell them. I have never been in this world either. I don't feel like I'm a very good God.

Leah (10:36.939)
I'll tell you, it's for our friends and family too. know, every day I have someone coming up and saying like, what on earth is going on with the job market? Like, what do I even have to look forward to here? Because you, people, and there's not a lot of good news being passed around. So even beyond that, like these transition impact moments, especially.

Adrienne Garland (10:49.922)
Yeah.

Leah (11:02.529)
I mean, we were just seeing across the board how many people want to do a career pivot and they're like, into what? Like, where am I going to go? And a lot of times the path is, okay, well, let's talk about what your skills are and where you can use those. That's absolutely a valid way of processing. For me personally, I had to talk about what I cared about. And then I have total confidence I can go and bag those skills. If I really, really love what I'm about to do, then I'm going to be able to do that.

Adrienne Garland (11:07.714)
Right.

Adrienne Garland (11:27.15)
Hmm.

Leah (11:32.288)
If I am going to enjoy it, you know, like I'm bad at basketball because I hate playing basketball. Like I'm not going to do good at that. But I think the optimism, there is optimism here, which is like all of the parts of our infrastructure that actually like are the bedrock of being an advanced technological civilization. Cyber security, clean energy, manufacturing, where our food comes from, the electrical grid.

Adrienne Garland (11:35.02)
Right.

Great.

Leah (12:01.279)
semiconductors, like all of these actual like core infrastructure for like what makes a country tick in a town run, need people desperately. And the path through those is so accelerated because the interest in them is so hard to, it's so hard to get that familiarity across with these industries that people, know, as the fly drones to save the wetlands problem. And, but you know, you enter in, you get a technical foothold.

Adrienne Garland (12:07.266)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne Garland (12:10.882)
Right.

Adrienne Garland (12:26.531)
Yeah.

Leah (12:30.951)
And if you're reliable and autonomous and like being a woman, because we're amazing, there's a path. There's a path there. Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (12:37.634)
Yeah. Yeah.

This is so interesting. you're saying that you don't necessarily need to have that college degree. You just need to be responsible. You need to be curious. You need to be a learner. And there is a real path to growth there because there is a need. I love that because I think there's so much messaging out there that AI is taking over.

It needs humans to operate it in one way or another. It makes certain things more efficient. It makes other things, I would argue, a lot more complicated. But no matter what, there has to be human oversight or human interaction with the technology. And I think that that's a really great message that we definitely don't hear enough about. can you talk about...

Leah (13:31.808)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (13:35.67)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne Garland (13:39.114)
you know, where we go, we understand what the concept is that you help people to understand, you know, where there are opportunities for them to move into. How does that actually happen? You know, do you talk to people? What does that look like? What is where we go look like?

Leah (13:54.868)
Yeah. So we, we find that regions, find that our customers are industries and our customers are regions and industries and regions are highly specialized. And our role is to help surface some patterns of things that totally do not work when you're building tools like this, those like patterns of failure, we see you over and over and over again, and then help them adapt into.

avoiding that. rather than kind of like, here's this perfect model for what always works, let's copy paste this into, you know, Santa Fe for semiconductors or whatever the industry plus region is. I don't even know that's a real example, but like the, sounds great, but the, but it's not so much like, let's copy paste all of this stuff that worked really well over here, over here. It's like, Hey, you have to solve this problem. We've solved this problem over here. Here's the big failures in the way.

Adrienne Garland (14:32.622)
Sounds good.

Leah (14:49.235)
And let's try, let's try and avoid those. And so we started building tools way beyond just training navigation and career navigation, but always centered around like there's a workforce problem that's got to be solved. People aren't finding X opportunity in this thing. And so one of those failure gaps, for example, is this like launch and leave like products are like cars. If like, as soon as you drive it off the lot, it just starts breaking. Have to maintain it. It just gets so much more expensive.

Adrienne Garland (15:14.382)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (15:19.607)
to rebuild, you're signing it up to be totaled. It really is so not cost saving to just launch and then not put the money into maintaining it. I would say if you're going to launch a product, launch it at size like 0.2 out of what you were going to do, like 20%, and then dedicate the rest of that 80 % to all the maintenance after. It will get so much further. So that kind of failure point in this collision will go through and

Adrienne Garland (15:20.844)
Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (15:43.021)
Mmm.

Leah (15:49.089)
talk about. Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (15:51.48)
So how do the actual users, the people who are, yeah, how does it work for them?

Leah (15:58.079)
yeah.

Yeah. So we're unique in like our customers are not our end users. So our end users are workers, our customers are people who are trying to connect them to a great opportunity. So our end users are, I think, relieved to not be given information about a career, the way that people shop for like shoes. Like when you're deciding what career or training you might want to start.

Adrienne Garland (16:05.165)
Right.

Adrienne Garland (16:10.431)
Understood, okay.

Adrienne Garland (16:23.64)
Hehehe.

Adrienne Garland (16:30.988)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (16:31.682)
Big words like apply versus help me start. Big words like even sign up versus join. Or big things like a career that you've never heard of and then a lot of information that you've never heard of side by side. Like what we try to do is progressively disclose information at a clip that's gonna get people just sitting around their comfort and growth zone.

Adrienne Garland (16:36.398)
Yeah.

Leah (16:59.726)
for as long as they can until they can take a piece of action. And so for some tooling that might be getting to experience a day in the life of this career visually, or for another instance, might be, for another use case, might be being able to visually map your pathway from entry role to senior role. It really depends on the customer's big workforce problem, but the end user has to experience this very comfortable pace of progressive disclosure.

Adrienne Garland (17:02.67)
Mm.

Adrienne Garland (17:06.606)
getting this experience of aim and experience. For another UKIP, the visual.

Leah (17:29.078)
Or else we panic.

Adrienne Garland (17:29.356)
Yeah. I'm just wondering, how are people finding out about this? Is there some type of a broadcast campaign? Is this introduced to students at the high school level? How does that, how do people find out? Okay.

Leah (17:44.064)
All of the above, all of the above. So we've got tools for finding jobs in the 10 parishes of Southeast Louisiana. So you can imagine billboards, big launches, all of those tools. And then we've got tools for the entire city of high schools. All of Houston's high schoolers exploring vocational training, that is like people on the ground hustling, going into classrooms.

Adrienne Garland (17:55.022)
Adrienne Garland (18:04.686)
Adrienne Garland (18:10.552)
Got it.

Leah (18:12.102)
really, that's what I mean by the like super unique little combinations of what has to be solved in each place. So that adoption is also really interesting to explore too, and comparing how all of our different customers approach this like adoption problem and being able to cross teach across these, across this group, across this network. yeah.

Adrienne Garland (18:30.882)
So how do you scale? Because, you know, town by town, I can't even imagine.

Leah (18:39.244)
I don't know, how should we scale? No, we've been really fortunate. We've been really fortunate. We've had 3 million workers use our platforms in 40 regions. We've got thousands of employers and thousands of training providers that we get to learn from. And the way that we scale is by finding people who have an industry or region problem to solve. It's workforce development boards.

Adrienne Garland (18:40.782)
Town by town.

Leah (19:07.608)
telling workforce development boards, a lot of traction comes from events. We're seeing more and more that for a company like us, having an event where we can bring people to the table and really just discuss the issue, because the deal sizes are quite large. We're talking about slow sales pipelines and large deal sizes. And so the first thing is how do you scale relationship building?

Adrienne Garland (19:13.431)
Okay.

Adrienne Garland (19:25.858)
Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (19:32.652)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne Garland (19:37.142)
Yeah. Town by town. House to house. my goodness. can you talk a little bit about what Where We Go Labs is?

Leah (19:38.114)
Yeah. Down by town. I'm just standing at the airport.

Leah (19:53.024)
Yeah, we're like, this is about the AI way that I mean, we're a tech, we're a team of technology, like educators turn technologists, like what is AI gonna do? and AI has dramatically reduced the time it takes to stand up software. It's not reducing the number of individuals that we think it takes to maintain it really well, but, or that we've seen so far in our instances, but it has not reduced the value of like understanding people.

Adrienne Garland (20:02.84)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne Garland (20:09.186)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne Garland (20:22.69)
Right.

Leah (20:22.702)
And so where we go labs means we can put the subject, it's releasing a new public workforce tool every 30 days. Just release a new thing every 30 days, put it out there, basically do the launch and leave failure, like knowably do that, but so we can impact with reality and learn right out the gate. And there's this issue in our industry, which is we just have more reports and PDFs than we need.

Adrienne Garland (20:30.732)
Wow.

Adrienne Garland (20:37.25)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne Garland (20:42.636)
Hmm.

Leah (20:51.426)
We don't have the amount of tools that we need. And so rather than like getting the momentum to build these things, why don't we like build these things to get the momentum behind them? so building to get momentum behind what we think are good ideas and what we're hearing are good ideas is a really excellent way of building right now. So what it means is I, the subject matter expert,

Adrienne Garland (20:53.678)
Hmm.

Adrienne Garland (21:05.868)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne Garland (21:19.394)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (21:20.248)
get to build a tool from pretty much step, like the second step to the penultimate step. And my developers take care of me at this top and at the end.

Adrienne Garland (21:27.47)
Mmm.

Adrienne Garland (21:32.608)
Now, you originally talked about starting out with some of the younger people and then the younger people said, can my mom use this? And I think that that is such an amazing use case because there are so many older people that are highly responsible, highly motivated. We still have a ton of energy, so much to contribute. Is there a difference in how you sort of bring

Leah (21:54.445)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne Garland (22:01.068)
these two different groups into where we go.

Leah (22:05.326)
It's a really good question. I actually have said a few times that when you build for a 12th grader, it rises all boats. Because if you're building for that moment, they're not looking at super silly design. They're making some serious decisions about their life. So I'm not talking about corny design, like when I'm saying building for them. But if we can...

Adrienne Garland (22:16.312)
Hmm.

Adrienne Garland (22:28.158)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (22:33.748)
I write our tools at a sixth grade reading level and like try to progressively disclose information really not for your age, but for how totally in the dark you are about this. How like in the dark are you about what it is that we're talking about? Maybe you've heard of green energy and you're not so in the dark about that. Or maybe we're talking about advanced manufacturing and you don't know what a CNC technician is.

Adrienne Garland (22:36.576)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne Garland (22:47.34)
Hmm.

Adrienne Garland (22:54.722)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne Garland (23:03.18)
Right.

Leah (23:03.33)
Like so it's really calibrating on like how in the dark is the person on the other side. For older individuals and for those of us who are considering, who have considered career pivots a hundred times and for your friends and family where they're like, my job is a slog and I think it has a, and I think it's got an expiration date. Where am I going to go? I think it's really important to make the pitch to people that the next place they go actually matters.

Adrienne Garland (23:23.877)
Yeah. Yeah.

Leah (23:32.158)
and has a reason to get them out of bed in the morning. Like you can fundamentally change the way that the electrical grids are modernized across the United States. Or like you can fundamentally bring a level of like matriarchal compassion to an industry that is totally devoid of it. Like the pitch being about like, why there? Like for me, because we, I think are a bit more.

Adrienne Garland (23:43.073)
Riot.

Adrienne Garland (23:52.046)
Hmm.

Adrienne Garland (23:56.524)
Yeah.

Leah (24:01.384)
knowledgeable about what our core core passion is that drives us when we're older. And you're really figuring that out when you're young. Like, who do I what do I care about?

Adrienne Garland (24:06.445)
Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (24:11.886)
Yeah. And that changes. That changes from when you're young and then you go through and then you uncover at a deeper level, I think, what truly matters. And then to be able to take that along with all of the skills that you've developed and apply it in maybe a brand new area, I think that that's really exciting, especially for older people when it's at a time

Leah (24:13.814)
that changes.

Leah (24:24.398)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (24:28.757)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne Garland (24:40.43)
especially with everything that's going on, that so many of us feel like, don't know what I'm doing anymore. That whole world that I had my career in is no longer. It's totally different. So how do I move through this? I have conversations with a lot of my friends that are, we always say that we want to go back to school now with what we know, but...

Leah (24:47.31)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (24:54.638)
Totally.

Leah (25:06.392)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne Garland (25:09.294)
it's exciting to think about the prospect of, well, wait a minute, you don't need to throw it all away and start something brand new. You can take what you have developed and you can apply it somewhere else that is going to be meaningful for the future. And I think that's great. I mean, to me, I think that a humongous publicity campaign is required here so that people know that there are other options and that

Leah (25:16.757)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (25:22.926)
and

Leah (25:35.31)
Mm.

Adrienne Garland (25:39.158)
jobs aren't just available on LinkedIn.

Leah (25:42.708)
And you know, I'm not to be so, so depressing, but like the jobs on LinkedIn are not available either. Like people, like people are, people are the secrets out for like four out of 10 jobs are fake. this, like when we were building job board, like when we're building things to help people connect people to jobs, the core problem we have to solve is spam and fraud. Like there's more malicious bots on the internet than there are people. It's a really uphill.

Adrienne Garland (25:50.816)
No, they're not.

Adrienne Garland (25:56.29)
Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (26:07.565)
Yeah.

Leah (26:12.878)
journey. I honestly think that any person who is out there applying to jobs day to day, I have like such goosebumps. They're believing so hard in themselves and they're doing so well. They're doing so well. You're doing great. You are doing so great. They're doing so great.

Adrienne Garland (26:27.37)
Yeah.

Wow. Yeah, you're hitting me in my heart because my younger son is graduating from college right now and it's become his full-time job just applying and reaching out to people. he gets so frustrated and I say to him all the time, just keep going. Because I also think to myself, even if it's not the perfect whatever,

Leah (26:52.194)
That's right.

Adrienne Garland (26:57.898)
If he could be the last one standing, Like just stay in the game and that's all it is at this point. And if you could just get your foot in somewhere, you can make your way into anything that you want to. Yeah.

Leah (27:00.494)
No.

Leah (27:12.704)
And talk to people, talk to your old football coach, talk to your former therapist and like everyone who knows you should know that you are looking for a job.

Adrienne Garland (27:23.938)
Yeah, that's such great advice. So you shouldn't be looking for another job and then, hello, you co-founded Camp Chateau. So you created another job for yourself. How did that even come about?

Leah (27:34.166)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Leah (27:42.048)
Again, this was like, here's something I care so much about. I'm just gonna have to figure everything out to make that one work. I have two co-founders. One is my mother and the other is her best friend.

Adrienne Garland (27:48.876)
Wow.

Adrienne Garland (27:56.974)
okay. I love this. Amazing.

Leah (28:01.774)
So big, big, big endorsement of turning your family of matriarchy. Camp Chateau is a part of my life as a co-founder differently than Where We Go is. Where We Go is I'm sleeping, I'm eating it, wait, it's the last thing I think about, it's the first thing I think about in the morning. If it's not my son, it's Where We Go. And like,

Adrienne Garland (28:07.362)
The matriarchy.

Leah (28:28.682)
Is everything going to be okay? What can I do to make everything great? Like just always feeling the pressure of having employees basically that you just care so much about them getting by and doing really, really well anyway. But Camp Chateau is a adult summer camp for women in French Chateau. And so we basically were, me and my mom were gabbing. We ended up going on frenchproperties.com just like for a laugh.

Adrienne Garland (28:41.219)
Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (28:57.08)
Ha ha ha ha.

Leah (28:57.762)
And then for a laugh saw this chateau on 20 acres in like our favorite, in the area where my grandmother lived in France often, which is an area that's special to us. And then like for a laugh, we're like looking at it and then it like stops being for a laugh. We're like visiting it during high COVID. We are falling in love and then we're like, okay, well just for a laugh, where would we get this?

Adrienne Garland (29:06.542)
Wow.

Adrienne Garland (29:23.606)
Yeah.

Leah (29:24.874)
And then it just, and then just kind of like the ideas that like keep you mad is this was just something that just gave us so much joy. could not stop thinking about it. And so it was like, how could we make this happen? You know, this is a chateau for sale for 2 million euro. That's like a San Francisco apartment. How can we make this happen? And so we, my mother, most of all painstakingly literally just download your entire LinkedIn contacts, sort them by date.

Adrienne Garland (29:41.653)
Right. Yeah.

Leah (29:54.618)
And everyone that has a female sounding name send a message and being like, Hey, I'm doing this. Would you like to learn more? Like I'm doing, I'm opening up a summer camp for women. Would you like to learn more? Cause that's where we were like, maybe that's a way we could make use of this building.

Adrienne Garland (30:02.222)
Wow.

Adrienne Garland (30:05.902)
Sure.

Adrienne Garland (30:11.214)
That's yeses all around. Everybody wants to go.

Leah (30:13.804)
You know, okay, well, 10 % say yes, and you got to message 100 people a week. Got it. Okay, here we go. Like, so just the slog, just do it. And then, we funded the first location in 18 months from 150 people, all women. And then we funded the second location in seven days. And we are over-enrolled by Two Chateau and on our wait list. We're not building a third and a fourth, but we could if we wanted to.

Adrienne Garland (30:29.27)
Wow.

Adrienne Garland (30:36.842)
my goodness. is the...

so the second Chateau is in the same area in France?

Leah (30:47.37)
It's three hours away. It's the same airport, which is Toulouse Airport, which is a beautiful part of the mini Pyrenees. These locations,

Adrienne Garland (30:50.38)
Okay, to lose.

Wow. Wow. This is incredible. And was this chateau fully functioning or did you have to renovate it in any way?

Leah (31:04.162)
Let's give it like a six out of 10 on fully functioning.

Adrienne Garland (31:07.092)
Yeah, right, because I mean, I know how difficult that is and the local regulations and everything that you have to adhere to and all of that.

Leah (31:15.946)
Absolutely, absolutely navigating. That's our business mode is being able to effectively navigate the local regulations with some tact and persistence. like, I do believe that that's actually our differentiator here. Like being able to really persist through what does it mean to get a Chateau from like six out of 10 ready to nine out of 10 ready? And what does it mean to do that?

Adrienne Garland (31:29.826)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Leah (31:43.648)
in an international location with a remote team and how do you make sure that you're really involving the local community in such a purposeful way that they love it.

Adrienne Garland (31:50.702)
Mmm.

Adrienne Garland (31:54.456)
Yes. And I love that that is your focus. We talk about that all the time in my hospitality, entrepreneurship class. There are so many larger organizations that come into these local areas and they talk about maintaining the local culture and helping everybody around. And it's quite the opposite. So I love the fact that you are maintaining that.

Leah (32:17.08)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne Garland (32:22.498)
Did your mother or her friend or you have any experience in the hospitality industry at all?

Leah (32:29.856)
Again, zero. But what we did have was legal expertise, financial expertise, so operational risk expertise, curriculum, user experience, design, all of these things that when you shove them all together, you're just in your growth zone for everything. like, can take this from A to B from here to there. for those things that we don't have, we'll get to find a superstar who does, which...

Adrienne Garland (32:31.352)
Hahaha!

Adrienne Garland (32:37.39)
Okay, beautiful.

Adrienne Garland (32:50.68)
Yeah, yeah.

Leah (32:59.938)
When you're doing a project like that, the superstars come and find you. They're knocking down your door. It's a very different type of recruitment.

Adrienne Garland (33:05.078)
Yeah. Wow. Does Camp Chateau operate only in weeks or months, or is this a round the year type of camp? I know you said summer camp, but just curious. is our autumn camp. OK. Yeah.

Leah (33:20.076)
It's really spring, summer, autumn camp now. Yeah, we started our first, I think our first summer, had 90-ish women. And five of those were my friends that I was like, you gotta come for free and pretend that you're loving this. Because we have no photos. We have no photos. We got 150 founders and no photos of what actually it's gonna, like, they were just a huge leap of faith. Bless them.

Adrienne Garland (33:29.437)
Okay.

Adrienne Garland (33:35.402)
Yeah, take pictures. Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (33:44.918)
Ahaha.

Leah (33:48.726)
So, but now we have 16 sessions at the second location and 20 sessions at the first location in order to meet the demand. I know I would love a winter one.

Adrienne Garland (33:57.088)
Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Yeah, like a holiday one sounds really, really special. I have to get myself on this waiting list and it's over. No. okay. We have the room. Okay. Okay.

Leah (34:02.519)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

No, we got the room now. We got the room now. The waiting list was super anti-mission for us. So not great to have like this waiting list that would have taken like 10 years to clear. Like great, successful. But the mission is like making sure that women have a space to rejuvenate and have fun, which I haven't said, which is like the most important thing, which is that women do not need to have more spaces where you're told to get better.

Adrienne Garland (34:18.99)
Adrienne Garland (34:24.227)
Yes.

Adrienne Garland (34:38.082)
Yeah.

Leah (34:38.414)
How about you come to camp and I'll give you a badge for taking a nap? Instead. So, you know.

Adrienne Garland (34:43.786)
girl.

Adrienne Garland (34:50.782)
Wow, wow. So I was going to ask, so it seems to me that it makes a lot of sense that you were this very busy educator, this very busy co-founder, and that you actually needed what Camp Chateau offers. So you built that as sort of...

a rejuvenation place for yourself, which I just love. think that is such a great story. Are there any plans to have any other type of camp anywhere else or you're set on France for right now?

Leah (35:36.238)
Well, for camp we are set on our two right now. And if we see that we would be able to fill the demand for bookings and things like that, we'll consider it. But I just came off of a month of setting up location too, and it's hard work. It's hard work. Yeah. Really hard work.

Adrienne Garland (35:53.916)
yes. Yes. Yeah, I can imagine. how do you balance that between the business that you're running, where we go, and then taking a month away to sort of stand up a second location? What is that like?

Leah (36:11.065)
well, now we're getting into some really like.

Adrienne Garland (36:15.34)
Real stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Leah (36:15.47)
That's really hard. It's really hard. sometimes it's easier than others and sometimes it's harder. So this is an example of a leadership position where sometimes you were just on a special project and it's going to eat your life. sometimes and like so you so for camp, it was this in April.

Adrienne Garland (36:32.706)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (36:39.394)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (36:43.038)
It was doing all the Camp France stuff during the French working hours and then doing all of the Where We Go stuff during American working hours and then somehow figuring out bedtime. Somehow. That's the thing that kept me going is like, but like it's really important that people love where they work and that's why where we go and really important that women have rest and that's why camp and I'll rest later.

Adrienne Garland (36:51.464)
my goodness. my goodness. You need Camp Chateau.

Adrienne Garland (37:10.284)
Yes. And I can also imagine that you have co-founders on both ends, that you have to have very open communication with it, understand everything that you are trying to accomplish and that they can understand, be accommodating, step in where you might not be able to sometimes knowing that you'll pick up your

Leah (37:18.274)
They're amazing.

Adrienne Garland (37:40.265)
and when they need it as well.

Leah (37:42.572)
Yeah. And like, I'm really lucky to work in workplaces for the last 10 years where I can be like my whole and complete woman self unapologetically and don't have to take on the extra labor at work of translating everything into being okay for dudes. I don't have to do that at where we go because we're a majority women owned company.

Adrienne Garland (37:54.218)
Hmm. Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (38:05.314)
Yes.

Leah (38:12.026)
and the people that I get to work with are absolute superstars. And then with camp, there are men who were hired, but it's entirely run and founded and operated by women and women leadership. So it's a huge part of the workday translating your womanness into not womanness sometimes.

Adrienne Garland (38:16.035)
Wow.

Adrienne Garland (38:35.34)
Yeah. I mean, I think that that's something that I think about a lot. And I had a conversation with another guest who helps women to exit companies and not only get the value out of those companies, but also shift in the identity from building this thing that's very personal into whatever is next. And we had a conversation about how women

Leah (38:56.398)
Hmm.

Adrienne Garland (39:04.799)
are building businesses differently that are much more holistic around our lives and how sometimes that can be good and sometimes that can blur the lines. But I really like this conversation and the fact that it's even continuing because I think that the women that are listening and whoever's listening share this far and wide.

But I think that we do need to be building businesses that are different than businesses that were built in the past because of what you just said. It's hard to not be who you are all the time at work, especially when you're at work so much. It's such a big part of your life. Having to be something different that is not natural to you when what's natural to you is amazing.

Leah (39:38.222)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (39:42.243)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (39:58.86)
Amazing. Yeah, absolutely. And there's so many places to start. think that's kind of why it's sometimes so difficult to start like, okay, where am I, where, where am I going to be? Where am going to tap in for doing that? You know, it's coming constantly on my mind. Like we just released this tool called Can A Mom Actually Work Here? And it's basically like a couple minutes of an assessment and it's based on really good research.

Adrienne Garland (39:59.042)
and it just hasn't been seen like that.

Adrienne Garland (40:14.871)
Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (40:20.822)
Hahaha.

Leah (40:28.354)
really good research. And that was not done by us, it was done by the people who should be doing that research. And it just kind of lets you know, like how supportive is this workplace for, we said mom, because we were releasing it for Mother's Day. So like for caregivers, right? And then if you're a workplace, you can take it and see like what some actionable next steps are.

Adrienne Garland (40:28.782)
Hmm?

Adrienne Garland (40:44.354)
Caretakers,

Leah (40:52.11)
that you can do. Something so simple like it's okay to have PTO that's by hour measures, not days or half days, because sometimes you just have to pick up your kit. Or like, just the, like, I can't tell you how many Zoom meetings have been in where I myself am pumping breast milk or someone else is pumping breast milk. Like, like being able to figure out ahead of time what that actually is going to be like.

Adrienne Garland (41:00.83)
Mm. Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (41:13.79)
Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Leah (41:21.94)
is like another example, just these tiny things that are making workplaces more inclusive of what it takes for us to support having children is one step towards matriarchal business leadership. But there's so many steps that we can take because we're so far away from it that sometimes like decision-making on, all right, what are you going to do to make this a more inclusive environment? Like sometimes that's really hard to figure out what at a time we're to do everything. Like what is just

Adrienne Garland (41:21.965)
Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (41:31.341)
Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (41:48.098)
Yeah.

Leah (41:50.616)
what comes first.

Adrienne Garland (41:52.864)
And some companies don't have any interest in that either. I think that that's good to know. It's good to know so that you know where you really shouldn't go unless you want to be fighting a battle. I mean, I think it's good to know where you're going to be supported. And I also think that it's great to start a company that has

Leah (42:02.861)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (42:12.877)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne Garland (42:22.412)
those considerations in mind. And it's why women need to start different type of companies. cannot be starting companies that look like other companies have in the past or else we'll be building something that is not for us. So I also love the ability to co-found

Leah (42:25.23)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (42:39.502)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne Garland (42:46.154)
multiple companies with other people so that you're spreading the responsibility. And I know how difficult that must be. But I also think that women are amazing at being able to handle multiple competing priorities with a lot of grace and communication, quite frankly. And the fact that you're doing that is incredible. So thank you for

Leah (42:52.803)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (43:05.88)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (43:14.99)
Thank you.

Adrienne Garland (43:15.564)
for the work that you do. thank you, really thank you for the work that you're doing, of course with Camp Chateau because that sounds amazing, but with where we go, because you're talking about people that are going to be setting the tone for our future. And we don't need more of the same that we have today. It's not working. So.

Leah (43:34.2)
Mm-hmm.

Leah (43:42.934)
It's not working.

Adrienne Garland (43:43.995)
No, we need to bring more people into the fold that have diverse skill sets that have diverse ways of, you know, living different ideas altogether. It's the only way that we are ever going to progress as a society and god damn it, we need to progress because this is yes. Yes.

Leah (43:59.586)
Yeah.

And we as workers deserve it. We deserve it. We deserve it all. We deserve it all as the worker. Like you spend a third of your life there. I'm going to spend more time at work than I spend with my own child in his life. you, your kid turns 18 and then you work for 20 more years. Like it's just, we deserve it so much. Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (44:09.453)
Yes.

Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (44:17.75)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, Leah, my gosh, I have loved our conversation. I can't wait to go to Camp Chateau. I actually can't also wait to check out where we go and potentially share that with my son and some of his friends too. What a great, great resource. How can people, if they want to talk to you, if they want to learn more, people that are listening,

Leah (44:27.167)
Yeah.

Leah (44:44.81)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you're a person who's a worker and you're trying to view this as a worker, you're trying to solve a worker facing problem, you want to change careers, this, that, and the other, you can jump into what our customers have accomplished through our success stories on wherewego.org. And you can see what the great people that we work with have done. So you can see what industries and regions we targeted with that. And then if you

Adrienne Garland (44:46.456)
How can they get in touch with you?

Adrienne Garland (45:05.934)
love it.

Leah (45:14.58)
are anywhere near workforce problems or even just like the category is my job is to connect people to opportunities. It's a great way of putting it. Then where we go.org and following us on LinkedIn and you'll be able to get to labs. You'll be able to get to me, no problem, super accessible.

Adrienne Garland (45:22.658)
Mm-hmm.

Adrienne Garland (45:34.744)
Great. Amazing. Well, I can't wait to spend time with you at Summer Camp. I keep saying that because I'm serious. I really, really enjoyed our conversation today. Thank you so much for spending time with me and everybody here listening on the She Leads podcast.

Leah (45:39.51)
I got you.

Leah (45:53.58)
Thank you so much, Adrianne.