Career Growth Advice from Melody Biringer, Event Management Leader | Career Tips for Women in Event Management

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 30
Featuring Melody Biringer

Episode Title: #30 Career Podcast Featuring Melody Biringer, an Inspiring Woman who is the Founder and Producer of an International Leading Tech Conference for Women

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Melody Biringer



Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there. My name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the To Be Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. To Be Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you. Encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So sit back, relax and enjoy the conversation.

Hi there. Today my guest is an ambitious, driven and hardworking woman. Melody Biringer has an amazing story of perseverance. In addition to being an author, a mentor, trailblazer, international speaker and entrepreneur who has launched 20 businesses in 30 years, she is the founder and producer of the Wit Regatta. It's a week-long conference in Seattle, Vancouver and Amsterdam, bringing people together to advance women in STEM and tech. Her current entrepreneurial love child is called Coast Storming, a group think designed to be your personal board of directors for life and work, which I just absolutely love that term. Melody, thank you so much for being here today.

Melody Biringer (Guest): Hey, Mary. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Mary Killelea: Oh, you're welcome. Okay, so your story is so inspiring for me in particular, because way back when, when I was an entrepreneur in Portland, you had the Crave events and I went to one of those and it was just wonderful. It was one of those first experiences, I think for women helping women. And I just appreciated it. And then you wrote that book Craving Success and there was just, you know, rich with tips and advice. And so I've been a fan since then. And so it's a treat to have you on the show. We've got so much to cover today because like you've had such a rich journey. Can you give us kind of that like 500 foot view of your journey? And I'm sure we'll just go from there.

Melody Biringer Oh, wow. First of all, way back when I grew up on a strawberry farm. So I've only known being an entrepreneur. So, I've never worked for the man. 20 ventures in 30 years. But so growing up in a strawberry farm, I learned a lot about business from my very first business was when I was eight years old, I sold lemonade to the strawberry pickers because I had a built in audience. And then when I was 18, I started those little roadside, like when you're driving along the road, you see the little stand selling berries and different things. I started those and one thing led to another. And I ended up and opening up a retail store in the Pike Place Market for 15 years. And then I started when I met my husband, he's like, we should sell strawberry shortcake at all the festivals. And so, for 30 years, we've been selling strawberry shortcake at all the local festivals. So, from like May till September, my husband mostly runs those. But we've been doing that for many, many years before the good old COVID-19 hit that that shuts down in the last year. It looks like we might not be doing that again this year.

But after just kind of grinding from being 18 years old, I didn't go to university. I literally opened up a furniture store when I was 18 and then did the berry season in the summer. And so that was my university. I didn't wake up to realizing that I needed girlfriends and like minded people around me till I was 30 years old, which is like, oh man. When I finally woke up to that, I realized I was a workaholic and I was only hanging around my paid employees. I decided I needed some girlfriends. So I started what I call the Crave Company. And I've been doing that ever since. The Crave Company, the red thread that kind of runs through that for the past 20 some years is bringing women together. That's what I do. That's what I'm known for, bringing women together, making sure that they get to know each other on a vulnerable level, creating friendships. Loneliness is another pandemic that we're having right now. So, everything I do now is designed around bringing women together. So I started doing like, where you met us is at the Crave parties. Everything I do in Seattle, I bring to Vancouver, BC, because I always think I want to bring it to the next country and I can do that in three hours. I can drive and then I bring, bring it to Portland. And then I went, decided to bring Amsterdam as my other city that I love. And so those are my cities that whenever I do something in Seattle, I bring to the other cities. So, we did that. So for many years we did Crave parties where we bring women together in different venues, which have like pajama parties, girls night out shopping parties, just any reason to get women together and have fun and get to know each other.

And along the way I've always, I've always been interested in health and fitness. And as a side thing, one time I opened up a, I opened up a whole entire business called the Circuit Workout. I rent, I literally leased a building, five year lease, set up shop cause I wrote a book with a famous author, called Power Eating and Fitness Logbook, where we retract everything you ate. And I thought I wanted to be in that business until I actually got in it and then realized I didn't want to be in that business. And so I kind of got out of that and moved into the Crave business. But yeah, what's great about Crave for me is it satisfies my startup junkie personality. I can do all kinds of things under the brand. One time I got a bunch of women on buses and we drove all around the city and when the party was on the bus and then we went shopping in different neighborhoods and I just make up things to get women together.

I did have a personal breakdown in 2012. Everything stopped. I was in 30 cities with Crave. I had did a book called Crave Seattle, Crave Portland, Crave Amsterdam. I did this book in all these cities where I featured women entrepreneurs and it was working until it stopped working and I had a little bit of a…I never raised money so I was on the hook myself and I was in 30 cities worldwide and it just stopped working and I had a personal breakdown and I kind of went down for about five years before I came back out. And when I came back out, I invented a new thing called Urban Campfire and it was the first time I'd been vulnerable in front of people and started telling my story about my breakdown and I got asked to speak on a couple stages that year, which I shouldn't have, and I told the whole audience I was on drugs and in therapy and I had no idea what I was doing. But yet what I learned from that was people stood in line and thanked me and said, we don't talk that way around here. So I came up with this idea that we need more women on stages telling their real stories of their personal breakdowns and how they came back up. I feel like I should do that business today again, but I called it Urban Campfire. I had 500 women come to that first event. That was my first time in five years that I came back out to invent another thing that I didn't know if it was going to work, but I feel like we as women were happier when we're taking baby steps forward and it was just something I was working on that maybe this will work, maybe this will get me out of bed. And when 500 women came to that first event, I'm like, this is awesome. So I took Urban Campfire into, I brought it to Portland, Vancouver, Denver, brought it to all over the place and started just getting women on stages and telling their stories.

That ended up pivoting because it got too personal. I would do these events and I would have 500 women crying and I started group therapy and I didn't know what to do with that because I'm not a therapist. So, I pivoted that business a little bit because I did not know how to help everybody. I was getting a little nervous that people were opening up a little bit too much and I didn't know where to go with that. And my comfort level was more like, I like to help women in business. I kind of scaled back from that and started what is called co-storming where I brought women together to brainstorm for each other and with the vulnerability part, but also maybe not as deep as group therapy. That led into, I was sitting on a board of a nonprofit in Seattle called Women in Tech and I was sitting on that board for about five years while I was doing Crave and I was looking at what's going on in the ecosystem in Seattle in particular with Women in Tech. And we decided to do a big, huge event. We're like, why don't we put Seattle on the map and have a big Women in Tech event? Everybody on the board looked at me and said, you're the one that should help us put it on since you bring women together and you know events. Ended up doing that. It was another highlight of my life. 700 people came to that first event. The sponsors came out of the woodwork, started sponsoring it. And that was just something new to me.

And so for the last five years, I literally, that was kind of my, the Women in Tech, I call it the Women in Tech Regatta. It was the reinvention of what am I going to do next? How am I going to get out of this funk? How am I going to get support from the community for all these things I do? And so I've kind of ran with that for the last five years. And I brought it to, of course, Vancouver and Amsterdam. So we're right now, we're moving on to our fifth year in Seattle and we just finished up our fourth year in Vancouver and our third year in Amsterdam. Virtually, of course, this year.

Mary Killelea: Right, right. That's such an amazing, interesting story. And I can see you on video and maybe you can hear it, but you light up when you talk about bringing women together. And I just know that's kind of at the core who you are. And it's so wonderful to see you touch so many people's lives. Being resilient and having the ability to not allow roadblocks or unforeseen obstacles to derail you is super hard. And you've been successful in transitioning and pivoting over the years and always looking at where's the lemonade out of these lemons? What advice do you have for other women who find themselves in transitional stage or struggling with being laid off or looking to pivot in their own work?

Melody Biringer: Well, first of all, any kind of transition is not easy. And I would even though I've done it many times, I just I think I am a professional transitioner. It's not easy every single time it backs. So just want to acknowledge that, that there's no easy answer to this because you kind of got to go through it. But I have looked at it as this is what makes life interesting. When he like you said, turn it into lemonade, lemonade. So, I think the first thing I tend to do is I go back to my relationships. And so that was that's my biggest advice is to lean on your relationships and hopefully that you have some. And if you don't have some, you better start getting them. Because that's gold leaning on who you know, your friends, there's so many different layers of friends that we have in our life. But you know, calling every single one of them up, going for walks and talks and just leaning on them to do a little bit of almost like co-storming with your friends, and people that you know, your past bosses and explore with them what what's going on. I think that the more people that know what, where you're at, the more they're going to know, everybody knows everything, it's always two degrees of separation. So everybody's going to know somebody and that's going to help you.

I don't necessarily believe in like, oh, I'm going to put my resume out there to the whole world and somebody's just going to call and give me my dream job. It's really who you know. And so yeah, and also just like, digging deep on who you are and what makes you tick and go after that. Most people don't even know who they are. So, I think it's a great opportunity, when you're in a situation where you have to pivot, to take some time and really dig deep on who you are. And that's another thing friends can help you with, because they know you better.

Mary Killelea: That's great advice. And being vulnerable, obviously makes people uncomfortable, but I think it opens up so many doors, if you're willing to reveal what you're struggling with, and asking for help. So I agree with you. You've been described as a connection engineer. And I don't know if you made up this term or not, but I love it. Explain to me what a connection engineer is in your mind.

Melody Biringer: Well, just because the red thread of connecting people my whole life, when I started the wit regatta, and it was such a women in tech focused event, the connection engineer just kind of fit my new title. And what it means to me is when I design, and so my main business is putting events together. And when I design an event from scratch, the first thing I think about is the attendees, what is their experience going to be? And how can I connect them? And you know, how can I engineer the whole entire event, so that they're connected? You know, a lot of people are introverts. And they don't love meeting new people, or they don't even know how. And as adults, it's hard, everybody talks about, oh, it's so hard to make friendships as adults and create new connections as adults. So every event I do, I don't care if it's a women in tech event, I could do it for any industry. I think through how are we going to connect the audience? I don't like to put on events that are just inspirational, and you're just listening to speakers speak, and you're, you're all pumped up, and then you go away. And what are you going to do with that? I want you to be seen and heard at our events. And I want you to connect with not only our speakers, but the other attendees. And I want you to walk out meeting your new best friend or your new boss. And I engineer the whole thing of how that's going to happen. And usually it happens through vulnerability and storytelling. And so if I can get people vulnerable, and if I get people telling their stories, that's when it all happens.

Mary Killelea: You touched on something that over the course of this podcast, and women I've talked to, especially successful women, the thing that keeps coming up is the importance of networking. And you mentioned it just connecting. What do you tell people who are introverts or who struggle with networking? What advice do you give them if they're not in a situation that's ample opportunity like your events are? So let's say it's at work.

Melody Biringer: I believe in serendipity, and putting yourself out there and putting yourself into different situations that you're not normally in. And if you can do that, and just be open, they have no ulterior motive, but just really putting yourself out there into different situations, and be open and see what happens. You can look for like minded people, you can look for groups to hang out in. But how do you find them? I think that curiosity is one of my top values in life. And I think being curious and asking questions, and this is what you do so well, Mary. And like, just, it's all about curiosity, and putting yourself out there. And I just find so many people aren't really not that curious. So if you can kind of get a skill, add curiosity to your skill list.

Mary Killelea: I think that's so great. Because when you flip it as like, just be curious, it takes away the fear that's associated with networking.

Melody Biringer: Yeah, yeah.

Mary Killelea: That's so interesting. As women, we're usually quick to jump on new opportunities, you know, especially around careers where we're just excited to get an offer or excited about a new opportunity, we don't really evaluate and ensure that that new opportunity meets our non negotiables, if you will. Do you have non negotiables when you look at taking your career in a new direction?

Melody Biringer: I like to dig deep on non-negotiables. And, and I think that you have to be pushed to the edge sometimes to actually make to know what they are. I had as an example, I had an opportunity once. So I live in Seattle, and I had an opportunity to possibly sell one of my businesses and it was to a company in New York. Now, this was like, supposedly a highlight of my life. And just seemed like a great opportunity. But it came, I had to dig deep, I had to dig deep on myself. And I had to say, what will my life be like, if this happened? And do I want to be on a plane all the time, flying across the country? Do I want to get up early? Like all the things that I know about my personal self.

Mary Killelea: Yeah.

Melody Biringer: And I ended up kind of sabotaging, I sabotaged the deal. And I had to think back, why did I do that? And so digging deep on my non negotiables, I have them written down, I can read you a couple. And I, every decision I make going forward in my life, I look at my non negotiables. And if they don't fit that my life, the lifestyle I want to live, then I, then I, it just tells me my answer. Okay. So my top non-negotiable is I walk 10,000 steps a day. And I'm not a kind of a slow walker. So I, it might take me a couple hours in a day. That's a lot. And I do it seven days a week. I just hit my six year mark.

Mary Killelea: Oh my God, really?

Melody Biringer: So I use that time. Well, now in COVID, I use that time talking on the phone. I have a lot of business meetings walking. I catch up with my friends is how I keep my friends up and my, and my husband, it's my husband time. When we're in the house, we're on screens, like TV screen, phone screen, computer screen, and we just can't seem to get off the screens. And so we have to go outside and get off the screens to be able to have a great conversation. So that's non-negotiable. If I can't do that, then I'm, I'm not going to do it. I personally sleep till I wake up and doing this my whole life. And so I, if I have to set an alarm clock, the answer is no. I've been working at home at forever. So, I feel like the whole world is catching up with me now, but I have to be able to work wherever I want. I'm a project based person. There has to be a beginning, middle, and end. And I know that about myself. I can't take on a something that is just never going to end. It's just going to be day to day to day to day. So, like an event is a project and I can do the same event every year, but there's a beginning, middle, and end to that. So thinking through, when I think about things I want to take on, if it doesn't have that, I'm not any good. I need to be in creation mode. I just thrive on creating. And so that has to be in my life at least 30% of the time, or I am just like, no good. I could go on and on. I mean, I got more, but that's just some examples of knowing who I am and knowing that if I take whatever decision I need to make, I go back and like, this is who I am. I won't be happy two, three, four months down the road if I get into this opportunity that might look so great today.

Mary Killelea: That is so wonderful. And I don't think I have mine written down, but that's such a good exercise to do because it helps frame things that come in and out of your life that you start to be anxious about. It's so much clearer when you say, does it meet my requirements, my non-negotiables?

Melody Biringer: I think a lot of people right now, you hear a lot of people moving out of cities. People are moving everywhere where they want to live now because they can, because now their new life, they might have worked at a tech company and now they can. I always see everybody's moving to Bend, Oregon.

Mary Killelea: Yes, I know.

Melody Biringer: It's like, why is everybody moving? Everybody's moving to, I think what they consider their dream places, their environment they really want to be in. And what I find interesting about that is they, like they had to wait till this pandemic happened to say, life might be short. I want to be living how I want to live. And now I can with my company, but I hope that people could actually figure out what their non-negotiables are and figure out who they are and really try to live their life that way 24/7.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. I would love to live in Bend. It's gotten a little pricey now, but what are some of the biggest challenges that you see? Cause you obviously you started an event that's about bringing together women, whether it's in tech or crave or what's a common thread that you see women hungry for.

Melody Biringer: It's fricking confidence. I hate to keep saying it. It's like confidence, confidence, confidence, and we all need it. I need it. You need it. Everybody needs it all the time. I wish that we could just wave a magic wand and give everybody, every woman confidence, confidence to negotiate, confidence to go for what they want to ask. Like you said earlier, just ask for help. Even confidence to meet new people. If we all had that, just think of what would happen. I do. I have an event inside of the wit regatta called hashtag. What would Chad do? And like Chad is a 32 year old white boy that would ask for three times more than he's worth and walk into any situation and say, I can do that. A lot of people I talk to are like, Oh, I need to go take another class or I need to learn more about that before I apply. Or I'm not going to ask for what I really want because I don't know. There's just not enough confidence. And I just wished, I wish that, I don't know that I don't have the magic answer to this, but I know the more we talk about it, the better it will get and the more we address it. And so that's what I try to design our events around that and try to let everybody know that we all have those issues, and we just need to just take them straight on. But yeah, that's just the biggest thing I hear.

Mary Killelea: I would agree. And I think I've personally have learned that I need to be confident in myself. I've learned that through the interviews that I've done from various guests. It's been so refreshing to see successful women be vulnerable and say that they've struggled with confidence over the years when from on the outside, you're like, she has it all together. She's doing this and how could I ever? And then you realize, wait a minute, she gets in front of the mirror practices her speech because she's nervous and worried about performing or whatever. You're like, it just it breaks it down and it gives you confidence that you too can take it on. Let's talk more about the regatta. What would be if I were to show up, what would it what I encounter?

Melody Biringer: Yeah, so it's a week long event. You would before you showed up, you'd look at the itinerary. We have like 50 events happening throughout the week. We have what we call different courts, which are like breakout sessions. And we have like a tech court. We have a leadership court. We have a career court. We have a diversity court, and we have an adapt and thrive court. And we talk about all these different subjects, even though it is called a women in tech regatta. It's really for all professional people and we want men in the conversation to have a reverse dude fest. We have one man on every panel. And yeah, it's really funny because they're all so scared to speak. They're like, it's all women. I'm like, yeah, now now you know what it feels like. So yeah, you pick and choose what you know, all of our events. Well, virtually they're 90 minutes long in person. They're two hours in person. We are in Seattle. We're in the South Lake Union neighborhood where Amazon is headquartered. So, we're right under their nose and we, you know, like there's Google and Facebook and Northeastern University and Apple and they're all within like this four block radius. And so they all host our events and we you get we so you would go to pick and choose what you want to go to and you go inside of the companies and then companies host our events.

Mary Killelea: Oh, that's nice.

Melody Biringer: Yeah. So everybody gets to kind of see like at Facebook, they can see, oh, look at the chefs here and all the food. It's really fun to see inside all the all the companies.

Mary Killelea: I love that idea. Yeah.

Melody Biringer: And then we have a base camp. It's called the collective and it's a private club and it's got a restaurant and a bar and a rock climbing wall. And it's just a great like private club. And that is like right in the middle of this whole entire event. And people get to join that for the week and just kind of hang out there in between. So, I always say like, you don't have to take the whole week off to go to the event, but it's fun to just bring your laptop down, hang out in our coworking type spaces and then just go across the street and pick and choose what event. The average person goes about seven to ten events in a week. And we're finding virtually now virtually you can go to all of them or they're recorded now so you can listen to them. Although the same experience does not happen when you're not in person, when you when you don't show up and participate.

So yeah, so each event has like speakers on that subject. And then we break everybody up into small groups and we get everybody seen and heard and all of our speakers are just real people. They're the CTOs, project managers. They're just real people doing the work that the audience can relate to. And they get involved in the event too. They go into our small breakout sessions and then we all talk about it. We're all mentors to each other. And like I said earlier, I'm just trying to design it so everybody is seen and heard. And then that's when they find the great people that they want to be in their crew from here on forward. So my favorite thing after a regatta is when people say that it was just like going to summer camp and they met their new buddies or they got a job because they came to it.

Mary Killelea: That's awesome.

Melody Biringer: And all kinds of other social events throughout the week. And this year I have a little side hustle going on. I'm starting a walking club and I'm going to put a walking event every day into the event. So it's just like put your you know it's going to be a COVID walk. So put your phone, your earbuds in, walk outside and listen to. We're going to like walk with a leader and do some silent walks and some journaling. And I just want to get everybody out in nature more. We're all just too much stuck on screens and just trying to figure out how to keep moving forward in this little box world we're living in.

Mary Killelea: I love it. And then you get your steps in while you're working. Okay so we talked about co-storming earlier. The thought of having a board of directors to help me in life and work is so appealing because I see it as you know a mentor. There's something specific that you're looking for. And I see it. Tell me how it's different than getting a mentor and what and how you design that board of directors to look like and what a person would experience.

Melody Biringer: Yeah, so co-storm is like it's just my version of brainstorm. I just like to play on the play on words. And so when I first started out I had these big co-storming events where I'd bring like a hundred people and I'd break them up into groups of four. And one of them would be a mentor and the three others would call them co-stormers. And each person would get 30 minutes on the hot seat and the three other people including the mentor would brainstorm with them for the 30 minutes. And then we just keep going to the next one, and the next one. And by the hour and a half was over three people got co-stormed. This mentor was somebody that I picked as a person that has had just basically has got a lot of life experience and that can sit into any situation and probably add value.

But the thing is I even took those mentors out after a while because I realized we're all mentors to each other. So I can take any group of a hundred people, 20 people, 10 people, stick them in small groups of three and give them this formula what to do. And it's life changing. The thing is we all come from different backgrounds. We all have different life experiences. And you know that the whole meeting the stranger on a plane concept and you just talk to them and you tell them everything. It's kind of like that where it's just easier to kind of… I always say what do you lose and sleep on at night? Do you need a new husband? Or do you need a new website? Like whatever it is that you need to talk about. This could be group therapy. It could be business coaching. It could be whatever it is that you need that you're kind of stuck on right now. Put that out and let other people help you.

We, as women in particular, can see more. I can see more for you than you can see for yourself. Yeah. And same thing for you could tell me everything. And we're all so good at telling other people what to do. So that's what I do is I just kind of do this and now I'm doing it walking. I'm literally putting people out on walks. Just two people at a time go out for one hour. One person gets 30 minutes. The next person gets 30 minutes. They help each other. They get their steps in. And the thing is there's a lot of science behind if you go out when you're walking and talking versus just sitting. You're 60% more creative. So, I'm doing a lot of studying on this now and I'm finding like a lot of people inside of companies have a lot of walking meetings and they take all their meetings walking. It's just fascinating. I'm just so excited about starting. I was like during COVID, I have a little bit extra time because my strawberry business no longer right now. And so I decided this is my time to start a community, but I don't want us to start any old community. And I decided that walking is going to be my venue. So, I'm going to deliver all this content, but through walking. So that's kind of my next thing. But so I'm going to definitely put co-storming into that. So I'm experimenting with it right now.

Mary Killelea: It's so fun to hear you and it's like the entrepreneur. I can see it. Like your brain is just going like I get to go that way. I can go that way. Where do you think your creativity and vision and confidence comes from?

Melody Biringer: Good question. It's funny because I always think I don't have any. And then, but it takes a long time. Like I go down under for a long time in between things. And I get out. I do a lot. Like I said, I do a lot of walking, a lot of thinking, a lot of talking to other people. I'm always looking for opportunity. Like, so I'm like, I'm going to start a business during COVID and it's going to be because of COVID. And I'm just going to look for the opportunity. What are those? And when I started noticing, I used to be the only person that walked in my neighborhood because I've been walking for years. And now I have to like move off the street all the time because there's so many people in my neighborhood. And I'm going to walk in my neighborhood all the time because there's so many people in my neighborhood walking. I don't know if this is happening in your neighborhood, but like everybody's out walking. And I just went, okay, this is, I just started, I just pay attention.

Mary Killelea: Right.

Melody Biringer: I get into what I need. Like, so a bit way back when I needed girlfriends, I didn't have any girlfriends. And I woke up one day and said, I need girlfriends. Of course, I started business when I need something. Let's start a craze party. Cause I need girlfriends. And then I found out and then now I'm like, Oh my goodness, loneliness is an epidemic and it's getting worse and worse and worse. What can I do to help people meet each other? And so I, I just, I dig, dig deep on who I am and know what I want. And then I figure if I want this, maybe there's some other people that want it too. And I, and I just, I've been digging deep on trying to build a community for years and I just didn't know how I wanted to do it. And then it hit me just a few months ago that I'm a walker. That's what I get juiced to about. So, I'm going to attract all the other walkers of the world and they get more people to walk that aren't right walking. So, but I always feel like I'm really slow at it. I think about it for a long time and then I slowly brew on things and then I just run by a whole bunch of people right now. I'm asking everybody I know to look at my one pager that I've come up with for this walking concept. I'm like, will you look at this and give me feedback?

Mary Killelea: That's great. I love the self-awareness and, and knowing that you have a need and then looking at how you could turn that into a business, not just from a profit standpoint, but to cohabitate and connect with others feeling the same way you do.

Melody Biringer: Yeah. Like I, I'm not a mom, but I feel like everybody that becomes a mom for the first time, they see the world completely different. And then they see what there's so many moms that start a new business because they're like, this is needed.

Mary Killelea: Yes. Yes.

Melody Biringer: I need it. And there's not out in the world. So I guess I just tend to look at the whole world like that. What is, what's the pain points? I wasn't a woman in tech. I didn't, I've never worked for the man. So I take all these women in tech out to lunch and I listened to their stories and I'm like, what is, what are you, what are you dealing with at work? What, oh, you're the only woman in the room. Oh, you go cry in the bathroom a lot. Oh, I'm most like listening to all everything that's happening. And I'm like, okay, I can help you. I can help you with this. So it's figuring out people's pain points.

Mary Killelea: Absolutely. What would you tell your 20 year old self?

Melody Biringer: Well, for sure, I'd say get them relationships faster because I didn't do that until I was 30. Like, oh, if we can just know from little on how important relationships are and to start building those and to nurture them and make sure that we're constantly doing that. And to know that throughout life, there'll be seasons of people that come and go, but it's gold. Also like the sooner you can learn about who you are digging deep on yourself and doing the work, whatever you have to do, take classes, journal, ask your friends who you are, whatever you have to do to figure out who you are. I teach a class called a hundred things you crave and it's figuring out the hundred little things in life that make you tick. And it's if you can just figure that the sooner you can figure out that, but the better, because you don't actually really change throughout life that much. I reevaluate my lists all every year. I very rarely take something off. I think we know who we are from little on, and we just need to hang onto that. And it's really all about the little things in life, but if we just know what they are and focus on them, that's what I would tell my 20 year old self.

Mary Killelea: When you reflect back on your career, what are you most proud of?

Melody Biringer: I'm proud that I can pivot and expand and just keep iterating the next thing and the next thing from what I learned on the last, but some of the things, some of my highlights of what I'm most proud of is like when I started the Crave Party business and I brought it to Vancouver, BC for the first time, because I was like, I got it. I can do it in Seattle because people know me, but can I do it in another country? And 700 people came to my first event and then they came to Portland and did it. And a few events later, a thousand people came to the Jupiter Hotel in Portland for my big shopping party. And I'm really proud of that, that I was able to visualize that and do it. And also, that I brought all these women together that people tell me a lot of times they met people at my event and now they're friends. And that's to me what I'm most proud of. And I have more stories like that from the Wit Regatta and bringing my book to Amsterdam for the first time and standing there with 300 Dutch entrepreneurs saying, you women need to start more businesses and I'm going to fly here every year and make sure that's happening. And I just, I think I love going to other countries and bringing what I do in Seattle and having that work, I feel very proud of that.

Mary Killelea: That's wonderful. What does to be bolder mean to you?

Melody Biringer: I love that. I think it means to me, my blink reaction is to feel the fear and just go do it anyway.

Mary Killelea: Good. I love that. So what's next for you as we wind up this conversation?

Melody Biringer: Well, I've said it a couple of times, I'm obsessed with my next thing, which is the walking club. And I'm going to launch it during my next Wit Regatta in April. And hopefully we'll have a lot of walkers and talkers and be inspirational, getting wisdom on the streets. And I'm just having so much fun with that.

Mary Killelea: So that's fantastic. I've always wanted to go to Amsterdam. So maybe I'll hit the Amsterdam regatta.

Melody Biringer: Yeah, as you should. It's a great city. It's amazing.

Mary Killelea: How can someone connect with you?

Melody Biringer: Pretty much. I'm at Melody Beringer on every platform.

Mary Killelea: Oh, nice.

Melody Biringer: It's B-I-R-I-N-G-E-R.

Mary Killelea: All right. Well, I can't thank you enough. It's been a treat for me personally, just meeting someone that inspired me many years ago. And I know the audience. This was a great learning for them as well. So thank you for taking the time out and meeting us and sharing your story.

Melody Biringer: Amazing. Thank you so much.

Mary Killelea: Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guests. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at 2bbolder.com. That's the number two, little b, bolder.com.