Designing A More Courageous Life: Bluubird Founder And CEO Katie Begando On Outdoors, Identity, And Building The Purpose Driven Brand From The Ground Up

[MUSIC] >> Ugh, the world sure feels noisy and a little enmore. Same power structures and playbooks, different decade, but same outcomes. What? We need to change the game. But women advancing isn't about fixing women. For busy reorienting leadership for the world we're living in and the one ahead. On your host Kate Byrne, each week I talk with the women shaping what's next. Join us as we reset the compass on women advancing. [MUSIC] >> Hey everyone, it's your host Kate Byrne with Women Advancing. You know, some of the most meaningful businesses don't start with a big grand plan. They start with noticing what's missing from your own lived experience and then trusting the people around you enough to build it together. So on today's Women Advancing, I'm joined by a fave, Kay Bagando, who's the founder and CEO of Bluebird, a brand that's built on the idea that influence isn't just for people with massive, huge, megaphones. It's really something that we grow collectively through trust, community, and showing up consistently. Katie's story reflects to me a real shift in how brands are being built today, not from top down, not alone, but together with a village. Who's in that village? So many different stakeholders. You've got customers, creators, partners, believers, builders who shaped the brand and help it grow. In our conversation, we talk about democratizing influence, listening closely to the people you serve and what it really looks like to build the momentum without losing your center. She's also going to share a few tips of how she herself maintains that center, something that as many of my listeners know isn't easy when you're busy building something. We're going to dig into the realities of founding and scaling a consumer brand, "Ha, those crappy decisions that you have to make, the resilience that's required." And the leadership it takes to keep going, "Oh, when the path isn't linear." And yeah, that's right. You can do it step by step. So if you were building something you really care about and wondering, "Oh my gosh, how do I grow it in a way that won't kill me?" But it's also leveraging tech, but it's also super strong and incredibly human. This episode is for you. I'll refer to hearing what you think about it. Let's dive in. "Women advancing listeners. Welcome, welcome, welcome to what I know is going to be an extraordinary addition because we are talking with none other than the founder and CEO of Bluebird, Katie Begondo. And Katie's going to talk a bit about designing a courageous life, building a purpose driven brand, making some big leaps of faith, and a lot more. So without further ado, Katie, welcome, welcome to what I'm advancing." Thank you. It's nice to meet you here. Oh my gosh. All right. Here you are. How did you get here? Start. Leap, jump, share. How can you talk about the leap? It's funny. I actually had somebody yesterday ask me, like, how do you come up with an idea? And I had this very embarrassing answer of like the fact that I feel like it's been like many years of stumbling to get here. It doesn't necessarily feel like it was a clean jump. But I had kind of a funny career. I spent 10 years doing lots of different things. I started when I graduated from University of Georgia, go to about 10 years ago, thought I wanted to go to law school or to litigation consulting. I had probably the most incredible team I've ever had in my entire life. And spent a couple of years doing that, decided that that was not my journey. And wanted to do something completely different and took a very hard right turn when I worked at Delta Airlines. Spent of years working with, you know, putting seats on planes and getting planes over to Asia, which is a really neat job. It also was a very interesting place to be working in March of 2020. And so my job basically was a race overnight. Delta was incredible and kept us all employed. And it was a wonderful place to be in that time, but definitely squirrely. And so I had had some test scores in my back pocket. I whipped together an application in very last minute went to fifth in school, went to fifth in school at University of Virginia, and did not know what I was going to do with my life at all. I basically had a loose idea that I was going to be figuring it out in the two years that I was in Charlottesville. Consulting felt like a very safe place to figure it out. I guess I would continue to figure it out journey. And it was also going to be supportive of the fact that I was financially supporting myself in business school. So that was something that felt like lower risk than other alternatives. But I was very entrepreneurship curious. I had taken lots of classes. I had always kind of poked around with ideas. It's funny when I was talking to my mom recently. She reminded me that when I was in elementary school, people would talk about what they wanted to be when they grew up. I would once say, you know, doctor, scientist, all these things. And I said that I wanted to own a coffee shop. I just very much look up the door for a 10 year old to have that mission. Anyway, I went and worked at Deloitte for a couple years. And when I was probably in my close to the end of my first year there, my husband and I went on a ski trip to Winner Park to go visit our friends that were living there. And we had a nightmare of a time getting there with our equipment. I have skis, my husband's neighborhoods. And we have this big, big human sized long boxes that you take with you. And there's lots of kind of annoyances that go along with traveling with those based on just storing them in your house, getting to the airport in the window of time that you can check the bag and ball all the things. I was going to a work client meeting on the Monday after our trip. David was going home with our stuff. And we got charged about $400 because David was taking both my skis and his snowboards. And then he was after this is kind of death 5000 cups experience over the weekend and he was so fed up and he basically lived in was like, I just wish someone would bring these home for me. And there was something about the way that he said it in the experience that we had. And I remember getting on my flight to Dallas and he was on his flight to Atlanta. And I could not stop thinking about what he said. And I was obsessed with this like, yeah, why can't someone take my skis? I went apart for me or to Atlanta back for me or why can't someone babysit these while I don't need them. They just sit in my base and all day long like that's crazy. Anyway, my brain was spinning my wheels returning and over this, I guess following series of months, and there's a very long wanted answer to your question. But over the series of months, I basically told myself I'm still thinking about this in 30 days. I'll take a step on it because I do have the tendency to kind of have lots of big ideas. And I didn't want to do anything crazy. And I was thinking about it. I had done all this modeling. I had done all this research, all this stuff. And I was like, okay, guess I'm going to do something about this. And on the night with more 30th birthday, I opened an LLC. I was like, no, I'm not telling anyone about this. I feel pain. I'm nuts. But I'm just going to do this. It sounds fun. So I did that. And then over the course of the following year, it turned into a storage and logistics service for oversized outdoor equipment. It was called record holder, which is a terrible name. Google would always be like, did you mean reporter? No, no, record for damage. Yeah, come on. It was for recreation. It was a really hard. And after the year that we did that, based on conversations, I had had some like initial conversations with some investors. I had done my own kind of really hard thinking on kind of the long term path for this. And also had to marinate a lot on, is it the hard that I want to choose? It doesn't matter if you're baking cookies or building fintech, like it's everything in a start up or about owning herbicides. It's really hard. And you have to kind of choose the hard that you want to take on and shipping and storage and security and all that. Just was not my journey. And so I decided to kind of take a beat. It was a really tough time for me because I felt like I failed. I did not want to give up on the startup. I felt like I'd finally found the thing that I wanted to run a million miles an hour at. I was still working at Deloitte at this time, so it was very much a nice weekend. So I still have the security of having my full-time job, but I definitely kind of felt disappointed that it wasn't. I had not found the thing. And I was kind of looking over the stuff that we had done over the last year and we had done this big survey. And 2,500 people responded, thanks to Reddit. And we basically were trying to prove that travel was the biggest problem that people had with outdoor and athletic gear. And I was trying to tell brands like, you know, travel is the reason that people are renting their skis instead of buying them or, you know, travels. The reason that this is a hard way to help you kind of say. Exactly. Yeah. Like this is a pain on your business. Like maybe we could work together. I need to just to prove this. And it's probably like not the best practice for you. The researchers were supposed to kind of go in with open mind. And I was very much going in with an answer I wanted to find. Something I overlooked when we were doing all that research is that there was a huge proportion of our people that basically declared that decision particular is the number one reason that people have a hard time making decisions on their gear. That those just it's really intimidating to make decisions or, you know, especially for a gear that's a really big investment like golf clubs or something. You just don't really know what's going to be right for you. And there's all this conflicting information from the universe about influencers and paid media that's biased. And then there's also, you know, reddit threads and gear blogs that are just unstructured and giant and sometimes also kind of driven by affiliate marketing. So it just feels really intimidating and I'm just asking your friends, but you don't always have a friend for what you need. Basically again, we'll start spinning and I started scrolling on and over the course of the last year to have from that point, we were aimed to be so we were for I guess for listeners that might be familiar. We're very early so that we are to say no more. We've heard a social gear review platform where athletes can review gear in the context of how they actually use it. So you are able to leverage wearable devices to be able to say, you know, I want on this five mile run, you're doing about my run. I wore these, you know, hooker around you and I still love them 100 miles in et cetera, et cetera. And then there are other athletes like me can see what I'm doing what I'm using, but then they're able to kind of have that context to say, you know, I really trust Katie as a runner maybe because we're similar or because I know her or because we go in the same places with the same. since it's a whichever. And so just simply seeing what she's using and liking is a really powerful recommendation versus someone trying to necessarily sell me something. And so that's Bloomberg. - Which is so cool. It reminds me of Spotify, but for gear instead of playlist, it's gear lists. - Yeah, you know, it's funny. The moniker I like to use is Goodreads. - Yeah, good. - If you're familiar with Goodreads, it's basically, you know, I love looking at, there's some readers out there that I really, I know we have the same taste. And so I'll usually go to their shelves to be like, all right, what did you like recently? What am I reading next? - It's just a better recommendation. - Yeah, which I love because it is, it just makes everybody kind of, even some playing field a bit for one to become an influencer. And I, yeah, a great democratization of exactly the influencing so that people as opposed to, you know, shiny, happy people being the ones, I hadn't really thought about that. And the name, so you switched it to Bloomberg. - What's the problem? - Well, the Bloomberg with two years is very simply because it would be most affordable domain available to me. So that one was $14 and that was the one, the name, Bloomberg, in skiing or winter sports and other activities for sure. But it's kind of this concept of a Bloomberg day. And it's this day where, you know, it's snow the night before and it's not a cloud in the sky. And you've got perfect conditions and perfect weather. And it just kind of sets you up for this perfect day. - A Bloomberg day. - A Bloomberg day. And I really like the idea that if you can optimize the kind of variables in your outdoor athletic experience, you can kind of create that Bloomberg day for anyone anywhere. And so I really like the idea of basically giving everyone the opportunity to have their own Bloomberg day. - So the thing that also I think is kind of cool too is like the side result of people using it, right? So using your product and you just said, you're helping people get this blooper day, this day of encouraging them when they are gonna go outside before they might have said, "I can't do that, it's gonna be too strenuous to to cumbersome to everything, everything." And now they can go with ease and grace. So, you know, it's essentially adventure and well-being intersecting. And have you seen like, what is your audience like? Is do you know, audience breakdown? 'Cause I'm just curious, I'm thinking it's a great opportunity for a lot more women to get out. Not that men don't need to, but that's really so often have a tendency to sort of pull back and go, "Oh no, I wanna make sure others are taking care of and I can't possibly do what I need to stay behind." - Yeah, so we like to think of our audience or like our charity user base. It's kind of broken up into two groups. - Yeah. - There's folks that are, I don't remember, the grouping I think we use internally is like the quantified athletes. The person that's like always on their Strava, always measuring other wearable, you know, they track everything, their PO2 max, all the things. They're always thinking about you're talking, they're on the gear blogs, they're on the Reddit rides, they're doing all the things. Those are the people that are gonna contribute a lot of content onto Bluebird. And then there's gonna be also the athletes that use Bluebird as, you know, as their resources or reference to be able to get insights. That first group is probably gonna do a bit of both. But that first group is really important to be able to provide value for the second. Whether or not they're men or women, but what's neat, as a female, you know, it's neat for me, it's just in my own personal worked experience. I like the idea of you use the word democratizer earlier, I really like that. I really like the idea that you can rather than showing someone who, you know, maybe scaled Everest on the paid ad by XYZ brand. And that. - Talk to a bit about Bluebird in general. I wanna kind of talk about you and your experiences of founder, certainly. - Yeah. - Lovely shift, right? - Yeah. - What's been a moment where you had to trust your instincts over conventional wisdom. And now what did it teach you about leadership? - We're about to be the end of 2025. And I've been doing a lot of reflecting. That was kind of my rather than resolutions, I kind of like to do a little bit of a retrospective personally over the last year. And this is by far been a reciprocal year of my whole life. - It's been really, really tough. Not because things have been bad, but it's just definitely pushed me in a way that I did not anticipate. I think that my experience with fundraising definitely forced me to get better at trusting myself and my instinct and my intuition and all the things. I think that I'm almost grateful that I've went through this first foray with fundraising 'cause one of my mentors told me that building a startup is like looking at me or like you are left to it. It's just you, you know, no one's coming to save you. So you're left to face yourself for all your good and all your bad. And I am really, really grateful for the challenge to basically say, you know, you're basically gonna be doubted and you're gonna be rejected and you're gonna be turned down more times than you could ever imagine. And that's not me, that's just not just me. It is definitely me, but it's also every other entrepreneur goes through this. It's just, you know, if you're building something new, people are going to reject it. Like innovation comes from people, things that are unusual or doubt, you know, whichever. But you then, if you are going to move forward, if you are going to succeed through that rejection, you have to make the decision that I still trust myself. I still think I'm right. I still believe in myself. I still believe in this and I'm gonna do it anyway. And it's really, really hard when people every single day are telling you, this is the way you're time or, you know, I just don't get it or I don't see it or whichever. And you have to really believe in yourself and you have to say the signals on the outside are not telling me this, I just, I have to, I'm gonna go forward anyway. And it gives you so much power and confidence to be able to see what happens when you push through that. And so now I feel like a completely different person that I was a year ago. I feel so much more confident in myself. I feel I approach criticism and feedback and I guess doubts or, you know, anything external opinions. I approach them really differently. I still definitely take them in, but I don't necessarily let it crush me. (laughs) I mean, it may be historically done. And so I think that it's really important for any entrepreneur going through this to kind of be a mentally prepared for the fact you're gonna get loads of rejection just it's just part of the deal. But you also are allowed to trust yourself and say, no, you're wrong. And I'm right and I'm gonna go perfect to you. So it's not like a super precise answer of one moment, but I would say throughout this year, both kind of through raising money or trying to, you know, build this in the industry or whichever, just learning to really say, I believe in what I'm doing. I know what I'm doing is the right thing and yeah, trusting yourself. - Yeah, I think by the sounds of it going through, frankly, it's like a washing cycle where you go round and round and then you're like the air and then you're sucked back in. And it gives you this chance, I think, to really develop a deep resolve. Like you know, like you know, you just, I know what I know. And I bet there's also a time because then line between that and being stubborn. And I say that part because a little someone I know is that way. And I'm perpetually reminded of it, which is a good thing. But are there certain things like practices or I know you used to teach yoga? I mean, what are some things you do to kind of get yourself centered when you're incredibly overwhelmed and everything's coming at you five, you know, different ways and nothing's really sort of turning out the way you thought it was going to. - Yeah, I love this question. We joke that coffee is just the will adjacent for our conversation that I love. So I'm begging to practice the yoga, big into meditation. I would definitely say this was the year that I needed it the most and practiced it the least. Like I definitely learned the importance of taking care of yourself just like my point I made earlier about, you know, it's just you know what's coming to save you. Like no one's gonna say, okay, Katie, you're allowed to go take an hour for yourself today. So you have to have the ability to say, I'm gonna go take care of my brain, I'm gonna take her my body and then take care of my spirit, whatever. So very much 2026 Katie is going to be much more well than she was in 2025. (laughing) I stepped away from teaching this year just because it got to be a lot and something with teaching is really important is you have to be able to have the capacity to kind of give to your students, but also to, it's a lot of emotional energy that kind of happens in that experience and I was not, I am in a place in my life where I really need to be the student. So I stepped away from teaching beyond yoga meditation. Running is definitely the most powerful activity that has driven my mindset as an entrepreneur. There's so many times you can make to running and building a startup that's actually quite funny. Whether it's something that I say to myself as kind of a mantra of sorts when I'm running, 'cause I kind of consider running to be an invitation for myself in general. I get to decide if it's uncomfortable or it's impossible and usually helps me get out of bed when it's cold and I don't want to or it helps me run that last mile when quitting sounds nice. Definitely always listening to your body and obviously taking things as tried for sure, but it's really interesting if you can ask yourself, is it uncomfortable or is it impossible? How much more you can do or how much more is possible? And beyond the fact that running, especially with no music and just truly being with your mind for an hour, definitely gets into a state of, you can work out all your thoughts and you can kind of just spend time shooting on everything that's going on in your mind. It's also such a neat, I don't know, it's a neat kind of microcosm of the startup experience because it's gonna hurt, it's gonna be uncomfortable. You're not really in it for the end, like you're kind of in it for the journey. And I think I really like that about running and how I can kind of train your brain to be at peace with, sometimes you're gonna have runs and we're gonna suck. And sometimes you're going to have a startup that are really stuck. But other days you have these amazing runs. and you feel unblit, like you just feel like unstoppable and you prove to yourself that you can do really hard things. And certainly there's other sports, I'm sure you could equate this to. I can baseline just a ride a bike, but people that are into cycling, I'm sure it's similar. So we're experienced. I just think that running has done something really incredible for my mindset to prove to myself. Like you can do things that you may have got were not possible to you. Yeah, I think to me, I agree with the running piece for sure when I was running because I think it just, I don't know, there's such a steady rhythm just as there's still I switch to swimming, but it's the same kind of thing. Totally. You get to choose. There's a certain amount of response mechanism you have. You can go fast, you can go slow, you can walk different things just like with swimming, there's different different things. And you're right, it is a lot like running a business and going through all of that. Yeah. And knowing when to stop and take a breath. Totally. Just all of it. And I think it's terrific to have an outlet like that. I had a teacher who always talked about the four types of meditation. And in that case, walking slash running is definitely it's why Steve Jobs always did it. That was they often say to when you want to get when you're feeling overwhelmed and you're insecure and you're having a momentary of or two of self-doubt, just go run or walk amidst the forest and trees because it will witness you. And all of a sudden you'll say, oh yeah, now I remember. And it's where a lot of most of the innovation comes from during that time when you're just in that zone. So I think that's awesome. Also, running is right because doesn't Bluebird have a running club? We dabbled with a running club early. That's fair. Well, it's early. Yes, it's funny. So that was earlier this year. And I don't know why I felt that January was like the month to try and do that. It was 28 degree that side was breathing. I still have a lot of aspirations to get a run club together, especially because I see such a massive opportunity. But I also see the incredible importance of building community into your business. I think community is a feature. I think it is something where it also can be a moat. It can be a distribution network. I could be so many things for your business. But it also just puts a human element to your business where people feel like they belong and users understand that they are a part of this as much as the technology is. And so we tried the run club. There's a lot of run clubs in Atlanta. So I was trying to figure out, you know, are we something that supports other run clubs? Are we our own run club? What are we doing with that? So TBD 2026 has some plans. Stay tuned for that. But in general, I'm really, really excited to see where a community can kind of build in our business because to me, the entire purpose of boobery being valuable is athletes kind of sharing their experiences on the platform. And so to me, the boobery is really nothing unless the users have a voice and they have, you know, third part of it. And so it's kind of knitting that together. It's going to be a really exciting part of once we launch, which is very soon. Yeah, absolutely. So you've got the tech that the tech is worthless. And without the people. Without the people without both the human, the users, but also really without the actual because that's the thing. Yeah. I could totally see Bluebird ending up partnering with a bunch of the different run clubs, having different choosing different run club influencers. And then having them, you know, make their recommendations and then actually other running clubs going, oh my gosh, that guy from where that woman from over that club does this. I think that's a really interesting idea. I could see that really, really being a guy, dude, a broadening the community and have people because sometimes clubs are so homogeneous. And I think it's kind of nice to intermingle different clubs so that you end up having these serendipitous moments and meet significant strangers. So you normally would never have any orbital crossover with and then seeing nothing's happening. Yeah, there's it's something I learned when we tried to do our own club was it was a nice lesson in the like if you're trying to be everything for everyone, you're nothing. What are we afraid of? What's me about at least the Atlanta run club ecosystem at you all is there's lots of different clubs that serve lots of different, I guess interests or type, you know, whichever there's there's run clubs that meet really early in the morning because they're trying to go before work. There's run clubs that run on trail only. There's run clubs that have like 300 people and it's mostly for social interaction. You know, there's lots of different kind of what you would try value props for different ones. The lies. Yeah, yeah. And so part of when I was thinking about, you know, are we gonna have a run club or read something that's gonna support other communities? I kind of I'm thinking about the latter because at the end of the day, I want everyone to be able to get what they want out of their experience, but Bloomberg should be there supporting you as a side character. Yeah, exactly. So I've got some fun ideas for what that kind of looks like next year, but that's a TV. Okay, well, Dangle just tease us with that little carrot. I'm just curious. Okay, so and along those lines, you've, you know, referenced 20, 25 was a rough challenging all sorts of surprising things came about. So with that in mind, what's the bravest thing you've done as a founder personally or professionally? The bravest thing that you're past self would have said, what? No way. I can't imagine that I could possibly be starting it. Who knows? I was gonna say, I think, like, this is a probably terrible answer, but I would say just truly doing the thing is something that Katie, a couple of years ago would have completely bulked at. I think that and it helps for any aspiring curious entrepreneurs out there that are like, never, but people will sometimes say to me, like, you know, so brave what you're doing. I could never. And I always want to be like, if I can do it, you can definitely do it. And that's not a self-deprecating comment, but it's more my experience with, I remember sitting on the couch and going to legal zoom and opening the LLC on like I didn't would say anything of my husband. I think it was like $250 and I just did it. And I think sometimes people think it's this decision to do this huge thing in one moment. And you have to be so brave, and you have to be so smart. And obviously you have to be prepared to have to start with all these things. I'm not in no way am I trying to diminish the power of all entrepreneurs that have done incredible things. But it is also this kind of like little win series where maybe one day it's that I'm going to simply just, I remember being really scared to tell my best girlfriends that I did, I opened the LLC because I felt crazy. Yeah, I was like, I'm this good, I think I'm nuts. Like, I have a great job, I have a great stable life like this. I'm being so silly. And then I just over time kind of gradually builds where kind of like a compounding interest situation, like I have an incredible team of people who show up for Bluebird every single day. And we have a product that's real and we have, I remember we were, we went to our first trade show earlier this month. And it was a really, really, really humbling experience to be sitting in that room and being, oh my gosh, you know, this is a real, it's still kind of both of my mind when you see Bluebird written anywhere because you're like, that's a real thing. That's about there in the wild. I kind of have like two takeaways from that feeling. It's one is that, you know, absolutely nothing is my own doing alone. Like I would never be here without the people on my team, every single person that supported me, my best friend that, you know, hold me when I'm had a really horrible day. My husband that is so patient, my dog that is typically next to me in every meeting in Zeratville. I think it's really important, A, to know that this is very much supported by the power of the village. But also, if you just, if you have the ability, rather than saying, I'm going to go build a startup. If you have the ability to take one teeny teeny teeny step forward in the direction of the startup, you can totally do that. And if you continue to take those teeny tiny steps, then it eventually can turn into something really amazing. I don't know if you've ever read, I don't know if you've ever read or listened to the Atomic Abbots book. And you really read less. Okay, so I'm just for the first time I'm listening to that right now. It's my current run book. And he basically, in the very beginning of the book, he actually was talking about how if you changed on a flight from, I think, like LA in New York or something like that, if you change the, I'm probably getting this very wrong, but he changed the direction of the plane's nose by like three degrees. It changes your landing place from New York to Washington DC. And so it's like seven feet of a difference in California gets you like 300 miles of a difference in on a coast. And I think that if you can just think about with that tiny tiny little degree changes in your current moment, it's not as scary and it's not as impossible as it seems to go think about, I'm going to go do the end and result, which does seem quite intimidating and still does to me. So, right. I definitely think that's true. I think we make so many times we make things so much harder and bigger and more complex than they need to be. It's literally you just need to do this one thing. And the more comfortable, it also gets you more prepared and ready because when you started to take a few of those one thing steps, right? Yeah. Back and go, oh my god. Remember how I used to feel way back there? Yeah. I so did that. So of course I can do this and this and this and I think it's a great way of a nice gingerly way of building up confidence and also just familiarity and ease with unknown. Yeah. That's where if you get comfortable with that and just saying, okay, I know I'm going to figure it out. Something's going to happen. Do I need to know exactly what's going to happen? No. So maybe I don't need to have control over this. And I'm just I trust myself and I'm going to make the right response and the right the right answer. Yeah. For some reason, if it isn't, I'm going to address it when that happens and I know I'll end up okay. Yeah, it's funny. Bring that up because yesterday I was literally having this exact conversation with the guy on my team whose name is Sean. He and I were talking about the high, high low, excuse me, the high, high is and the low lows of especially in the early days things can feel so volatile. And you know, you can have this amazing breakthrough and you can also have this like huge setback that I can feel really, really scary. And it's neat when your brain starts to approach the setbacks rather than thinking like, okay, I'm doomed. This is doomed. I failed. It's rather just, okay, like how do I approach this? What's the next step forward? And you can continue to just practice that like one more step forward mentality rather than thinking I have to go find myself at the end. It makes everything feel, it doesn't make the low lows feel any better, but it makes everything feel more possible and manageable for sure. Agreed. I think definitely one of the things that I've found myself getting in the habit of is feeding my little curiosity and kind of things from that angle with that in mind and sort of from a place of, oh, I wonder what I'm going to learn from this. And that's what I try to say immediately when something, you know, fabulous has happened, and especially when something completely negative and hideous upon first looks. And more often than not, I come to realize, thank God that horror happened to me. It was a way of saving me from myself and my own. Notaling, right? Yeah, I mean, it's there have been some real lows. The last, yeah, and they're still going to be in the last, I mean, I've been doing this now, if you include from the very very beginning, I've been doing this now for two and a half years and a very offensive moments where I was down pretty bad. And now to your point, I look back and I think like I wouldn't be here if that had not happened. And also to your point earlier, you know, I, you kind of show up for yourself, you know, damn, like, I might get through that. I could get through other stuff and it just gives you a sense of confidence and resilience of knowing I'm less afraid of the hard stuff as we move forward because we have successfully survived hard stuff in the past. So I'm very grateful, excuse me, for the mindset and mental toughness that you do, you do acquire. Yeah, you do. And I will also just say finally, and then I'll put a fork in this and say, okay, that's done. But I will also say that I think another thing that I often look at is like, Oh, thank God, I got this learning out of the way early. So, you know, yes, it's, but it goes beyond failing fast. It's just I would say early things that, you know, get these things out of the way so that as you get, you know, they're going to get bigger and bigger, but you're going to have better things to reference to in terms. Yeah. And frankly, some of your early mistakes can steer you out from making massively huge mistakes if you had kept on that bad trail. Totally. Well, so family balance. I know those are all things that are of mind and maybe we'll have a separate conversation of that later on a subsequent or maybe at the upcoming women advancing summit that will happen in the year 2026. Thank you. And, but I'm just curious, you know, what are two or three little tips you would have for people who are contemplating or who are founders right now in terms of getting through and helping them see their way through and not giving up. So the first I would say is try to separate yourself from or at least get comfortable with embarrassment. There's so much can be made more possible if you can get almost get over yourself. I remember in the in the early days, I don't want to post on social media, but I'm trying this new crazy thing that hasn't even been formed yet because people are going to think I'm crazy. Right. You go get you every time you go, you have to say, and then again, you know, it's important to be able to kind of really get deep on your ego too and think about like, is this something that am I basically in my own way because at the end of the day, if you can get over yourself and be comfortable with failing in public, failing, looking potentially a little bit funny or kooky or whichever you want to call it, if you're comfortable with that, you can make a lot more progress because it's not a real barrier. It's your own barrier. It's you are in that, that is you getting in your own way. And I would actually argue that it would your peers or to family or whichever they might actually find you inspiring or admiring. And if you can inspire someone to do something that might find scarier and embarrassing, it makes everybody feel more comfortable. It's kind of like those, if you can be the first couple on the dance floor at the wedding, everybody else fall if you could say, oh, we're dancing. It's not fun to be the first couple, but it's actually for leaving to everybody else. So take one for the team. Yes, take one for the team. Be brave. Uh, kind of kind of, you know, get over yourself. I think it's the funny phrase I'm going to use. This second is to definitely remember that you are my critical part of the business that you have to take care of as well. It was a really hard adjustment for me to go from working in a full-time corporate job to working for myself in that at work. There was like a time I was expected to walk in and there was a time that it was kind of social and childhood to leave or there was time that was mine and there was time that was works. And when you're working for yourself or you're building your thing, that line is invisible, basically. And this year was really tough for me from a well-being standpoint. Like I said earlier, you know, I used to practice five times a week and I used to meditate every single day and I used to run. You know, it was, I was so good. And it was, if you would told me, you'll let that slip in the past. I would have thought you were crazy. But now no one's going to come to your desk and say, you have an hour to go take care of yourself. Or, you know, you are allowed to go to this book when you're with your friends or you're, you know, there's obviously always going to be sacrifices. That's part of the deal. But if you don't fill your cup, it is going to be to the detriment of your business. And so being really mindful about prioritizing yourself, even if it's for 15 minutes a day, I'm just going on a walk or getting really creative with the way that you operate. You know, no one's, you are the one that gets to make the rules. And so take a meeting in your headphones and go walk around your neighborhood. Or, you know, if you're trying to think, think through things, you don't have to sit at your desk. You can go on a hike and like needle in a way that works for you or, you know, whatever. I'm sure that people have their own, their own ways. But you just, you have to fill your cup and you have to take care of yourself. Because a happy, healthy founder is what's the fourth day, stronger resilient business. So I would recommend that I guess the third is if you want to do it, you can. I think that I always assumed you had to be a certain type of person, a certain type of, with a certain background or a certain amount of wins, to be able to go be this entrepreneur. And I'll never forget I was on a run. We do this founder, founder, jogging Atlanta. And I was on a run with this woman who works in DC and her startup is, I think it's eco-ridic and hanging table. And I hope she, but she had been full-time on her job and I was still working at Deloitte. And I remember being absolutely mind-boggled that she was, she had taken a leap in with full-time. But that's crazy. I can't even imagine ever doing that. And I think that it took me longer than I should have to trust and believe in myself to be able to say, this is something that I could do. And I hope that people know that again, it's not a huge jump. It's not some brilliant breakthrough. It's really just tiny little compounding decisions to move one step forward every single day. Even if it's just, I'm going to go talk to a friend about this idea, or I'm going to go spend 30 minutes after work researching something. And every single day, if you commit to moving forward every single day, it does become something that's real and possible for you. And it's a lot more possible than you might think. So I can do it. You can do it. Well, and also the way you were just describing, you know, the needs of setting up boundaries and things like that. That is exactly what you need to do when one is debating, do I start a family or not? Oh my god. You already have practice because that's really what it is. If the mother ship goes down the whole shooting match is done. So, yeah. Well, Katie, I so look forward to seeing how Bluebird really takes off and soars to all new heights this in 2026. I have a really good. Thank you. You're going to be your year on a lot of your own. No, I mean it. And I seriously thank you for making the time and sharing your pearls with all the listeners for women advancing. So I'm not here. I just come to you forever. Back that's your sister and you'll get a chance to in October of 2026. All right. And that's not normal. But seriously, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Cheers to Bluebird. Cheers to everything you do. I appreciate that. Thanks. I'd love listening to founders like Katie Begando of Bluebird who had the gumption encouraged to take a leap from a comfortable corporate job we've heard it before and really deciding to scratch that itch that she had. And then hence creating and filling a gap with Bluebird. To me, key takeaways are you don't have to do it in one foul swoop. Move forward one step every day. And by doing so, next thing you know not only will you take traction, but you'll also be more prepared for whatever needs to take place next. Everything will seem a lot less scary. Second is make those boundaries early for yourself, for self-care, separate it and get creative with what that can look like. You can do thinking and muting and musing and brainstorming while going on a run and getting some physical exercise and peace of mind. So be sure to get that in right out the gate and then be comfortable with the fact it's just totally relying a lot on yourself because no one is going to come and save you. That's not to say you don't have a village to support you, but it does say in the end, you're the one who chooses to accept that assistance and that help. Finally for Hurt, the company community is really so huge for the future. I know for the most part everybody really knows that, but I think with the platform like Bluebird that is democratizing the ability of becoming an influencer, I think it's so important and powerful. And in this day, perhaps maybe that is what makes technology more humane and it reintroduces us to each other. And with that, I will say see you later and look forward to our next conversation on Women Advancing. And listen to even more episodes. Here's the strong women. May we know them, may we be them, may we raise them. Be sure to meet them on the next Women Advancing. Until next time.