Salma and Marijana are both professional women who have held senior management positions in their respective industries.
Salma is the CEO and co-founder of Womaneze. She has an economics background from the London School of Economics and two Masters’ degrees, one in Public Health, and one in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School. She worked in both the private and development sectors. Salma is the mother of two. She loves cooking, movies and books. Her passion is connecting people.
Marijana is a lawyer and an HR specialist. She was a Hubert H. Humphrey fellow at the University of Washington and holds a Master’s in HR and EU Law. She was the COO of a bank and held several executive management positions in her career. She is the mother of four and an avid reader and health buff.
What is Womaneze all about?
Womaneze is a company that helps women navigate menopause and regain control naturally.
There is silence around menopause which remains one of the last taboos in female health. Menopause is a time in a woman’s life when hormones fluctuate wildly, causing physical and emotional issues. In fact, menopause is associated with upwards of 45 different symptoms, from hot flashes to insomnia, mood swings, and more.
We support women going through menopause by creating a community, providing scientifically backed information, and by building a hot flash app that helps women discover what natural strategies work for them. Every woman is different and will experience menopause in a different way from another woman.
We approach menopause as a natural transition and not as a ‘condition’. Most women can navigate menopause without recourse to hormone replacements which have been associated with increased health risks.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your business?
We are both professional women who have held senior management positions in our respective industries. Marijana is a lawyer and an HR specialist. She was the COO of a bank. Salma has an economics background from the London School of Economics and two Masters’ degrees, one in Public Health, and the latest one in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School. She worked in both the private and development sectors.
We were friends that had met seven years earlier on an intermittent fasting forum as we were both battling weight gain in menopause. Conversations on the forum evolved into chats on email and Skype. We were living in two different parts of the world, but common problems and issues made for very interesting discussions between us.
Many chats revolved around what it means to be a woman going through her third chapter in life and about how women become invisible as we go through menopause. Society begins to not see us. Despite all the progress the world has made, women tend to be valued for their attractiveness and fertility. Well, in menopause both these things begin to fade, and we begin to feel the loss of value placed on us.
The business started as an idea to bring women over 50 together to explore what it means to enter into that phase in life. At that time, since both of us are trained and certified coaches, we were thinking of creating meetups for women of that demographic, and we started on that track in the last quarter of 2019, well before Covid turned the world upside down.
We dug deep into our own personal experiences and spent many days talking about the most difficult challenges for us going through our own menopause. We also read through reams of scientific research on the subject and the differences in how women from different cultures in the world experience menopause. We explored what has been discovered about the effect of food, coffee, alcohol, among many other lifestyle choices on the severity and frequency of menopausal symptoms.
The idea to create an app that would help women get a measure of control over their symptoms was born. To begin with, we elected to focus on hot flashes, which affects at least 70% of women in menopause. We wanted to validate our idea and see if women would find this natural approach useful.
How have the pandemic affected you or your new business?
In early 2020, we were planning for a different concept involving bringing women over fifty together. We had actually planned the first meetup and had started marketing it and taking reservations. When COVID hit, we had to cancel everything and think about a different idea that was still focused on serving women. We pivoted to helping women going through the menopausal transition by using a bigger platform accessible to most women without leaving their homes.
Starting any business is difficult, but to start almost in tandem with the pandemic was especially challenging. Ordinarily, co-founders would spend months in the same physical space, working on an idea and refining it. We had to do this virtually while also battling the fear and isolation of COVID lockdowns. We were in different countries and had to conduct everything virtually, pretty much like the rest of the world.
At the beginning, our daily meetings started with a check-in with each other. The first 15 minutes would be a discussion of the numbers of sick and dead in each of our countries. We are both trained coaches, and so part of our work was to keep each other’s spirits up and to keep the focus on the future.
On the positive side, the pandemic helped to normalize virtual work. You no longer had to meet people in person and could conduct business through a Zoom screen. This became the accepted modality of meetings very quickly and saved many hours of travel time and expense. We were all tied to our homes with fewer distractions. Luckily, our children are adults, and we did not have to do home-schooling or look after small children. Being able to focus on the business was actually a blessing at this time of extreme disruption.
The most difficult thing about working on a startup virtually is to manage the inevitable disagreements and tensions. Because all business is conducted through email, Zoom meetings, Slack and Whatsapp, without the ability to detect other cues as in normal human contact, sometimes things can be misinterpreted. A difference of opinion can turn into a disagreement. We have had to learn how to manage these challenges and to put in place mechanisms for when they happen. For us, remaining friends was a priority, and we have found ways to speak honestly about differences of opinion and to clear the air when disagreements happen.
What was the biggest problem you encountered starting up and how did you overcome it?
As neither of the co-founders is a developer, the biggest problem we encountered at the start was finding the right tech team to develop our app. We were outsourcing the MVP app development and we were bootstrapping at the same time, so we had to find an excellent development team that would develop the app within our budget. We examined many options in various countries and spent hours speaking with various companies. Initially, we were trying to find a female development team because we thought it would be easier for them to understand the nuances of what we were trying to achieve, but we finally opted for a great company in Serbia, where they are known to have excellent developers. The team of young developers listened to us very carefully and discussed with us the various technology options. We worked very closely with them and with the UX designer to produce an app that was precisely what we had asked for.
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from it?
One of the mistakes we made was to focus on the app right from the start. We started with designing the wireframes for the app. While the technology is important and is a cornerstone of our approach, we could have created a web app to test the idea first. We did survey several hundred women to validate interest and ensure that we were on the right track, but we were in love with the idea of creating this awesome app.
What we did do well is that we understood the importance of community from the start, but initially, building the community was a support for the app. Now, our focus is the community itself and how technology can help and support that community in the way women need it.
Another thing we did not pay enough attention to was how to build a website in the most efficient way to be discovered by women organically. We were pouring our hearts into writing informative blogs that unveiled issues in menopause, but we thought that quality content was sufficient. As we are bootstrapping, we did not want to spend lots of money on fancy site design or SEO work. In reality, we discovered that there is no escaping doing SEO well if you are trying to build community and drive traffic to your content. We are now in the process of going back to the drawing board and restructuring our site. Any company that has community at its heart should dedicate funds and time to this aspect.
What is one thing that you do daily to grow as an entrepreneur?
Honestly? We show up every day, and we chip away at what needs to be done. There are strategic decisions to be made, but also a mountain of to-do’s daily. We meet daily during the work week at set hours in which we work through decisions that have to be made, analyze the data and discuss plans and ideas. Because we are working remotely, ensuring that we are working together part of the day is important.
The one thing we do daily is look at our metrics. We are obsessed with engagement data. This allows us to learn what we are doing right and what we are doing wrong early enough to correct course if necessary.
What are three books or courses you recommend for new entrepreneurs?
What are you learning now? Why is that important?
What we are learning now is how to use SEO to drive traffic to our website and to help us grow our community organically. SEO is almost a science and is an important part of a successful marketing for the long run. We have had to learn many skills that were unfamiliar to us, but we are both stubborn and love learning, so we just keep at it until we learn what we need to.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
We wish we knew how all-consuming starting a new business is. Everything else takes a back seat to the business. You have to plan your life around it. You dream, eat and speak of almost nothing except the work. Sometimes, we have to stop and one of us will say to the other: “Can we just have an hour or two of friend-time?”. Even when we decide to just have friend-time, we often veer into talking about the business.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Our marketing strategy is to grow the community and its engagement with our content and with us. We spend a lot of time and effort in creating content which appeals to different types of women.
To grow our business, we started by creating a community on Facebook, Instagram and later, Pinterest. These are the spaces where our main demographic spends a lot of time. Growing a community this way is hard and time-consuming, but it is the way to reach our audience. It has grown exponentially since we started and continues to grow quickly. It is also our way of getting a deep understanding of what resonates with the women we are serving.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Grit. You have to show up every day and do the work!
There will be days when the last thing in the world you feel like doing is what needs to be done, but you just have to do it.
Often, entrepreneurship is portrayed as this glamorous and fun thing where founders get to do what they are passionate about. You may be passionate about an idea or a product, but the steps to bring it to life are hard and sometimes plain boring. You have to be a jack of all trades, especially at the start and particularly if you are bootstrapping. You have to be able to go from bookkeeping to understanding how Facebook ads work; from technology to speaking with investors. Some of these things may come naturally to you, while you dread others. Being an entrepreneur means you have to learn to do a lot of things and think on many levels.
Managing yourself is the one most important aspects of entrepreneurship. Managing your fears, doubts and lack of certainty is crucial, and you have to learn to put things in place for the inevitable difficult days. Entrepreneurship is an emotional journey as well as a business and technical one. You have to learn to manage your emotions.
What’s a productivity tip you swear by?
There are three things that we find help us become more focused and productive:
- To plan. We do this on a quarterly, weekly, and daily basis. At the end of the day, we set out what needs to be achieved the next day, so we are clear on what we need to do to move the needle in the right direction. We do the same review and planning for the week and the quarter.
- We set out 3 hours a week for discussion and creative brainstorming. We do not take meetings or schedule other things during this time. This is the time some of our best ideas are born.
- We take time off at the end of the week to recharge. At least one day is a no-work day. We find that we are far more productive if we take a break and set time aside for self-care.
What is your favorite quote?
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage”
– by Anais Nin
What is your definition of success?
Reaching the end of life having lived a full and exciting life with few major regrets!
It was important for both of us to create a business and see it grow. Neither of us wanted to regret not having tried to achieve a life-long dream. So, we are doing it. Better late than never!
How do you personally overcome fear?
We are lucky because we are friends above all, and we are able to lift each other up when things are tough. Right at the start, we agreed that we would approach Womaneze as an exciting journey. Whatever the outcome, we will have enjoyed the ride. If we decided to go on a trip around the world, at the end of it, we would have spent our money and all we will only have are beautiful memories. If that is the worst thing that can happen, it is still a wonderful outcome.
Building a startup is a long and exciting journey which we hope will succeed but are not sure of (particularly seeing the statistics of how most startups fail). When you reframe the story this way, you are more able to look fear in the eye and say, what’s the worst that can happen? Bring it on!
These tools are absolutely essential to us as we work on our business remotely:
- Slack
- Google Analytics
- Zoom
How is running a company different than what you thought it would be?
We have both run organizations before, so we were aware of what is needed to make a company a success. Nothing about running a company is a surprise to us. That does not mean that we think it is easy. In fact, running a company is one of the most difficult things you can do. You are responsible whether it succeeds or fails. That’s a big responsibility!
How can readers get in touch with you?
We are always happy to connect with people who want to learn more about Womaneze and the work we do. You can always reach us on our email (salma@womaneze.com or marijana@womaneze.com).
Otherwise, you can find us as Womaneze on all the social media platforms of Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. www.womaneze.com.
Entrepreneur Interview: Brianna Parks Photography: How the Pandemic Shifted My Business
