Empowering Women, Mothers, And Wives To Become Great Entrepreneurs With Peggy O'Flaherty
Brilliant women find ways to provide revenue for their families. That's why Peggy O'Flaherty’s passion is to empower women to become entrepreneurs and content creators. Peggy is the Co-Founder and CCO of Mavely, an app that gives you access to social selling tools and brand partnerships. In this episode, Peggy talks with Chad Burmeister about why you need to discover the gifts God has placed in your heart. These gifts are not for you. They're gifts for the world. Tune in and let Peggy's story inspire you to make this world a better place with your God-given talents!
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Empowering Women, Mothers, And Wives To Become Great Entrepreneurs With Peggy O'Flaherty
I've got a special guest with me, Peggy O’Flaherty. She is a four-time serial entrepreneur and a mother of five. Peggy, welcome to the show.
I'm excited to be here. It's a highlight of my Friday.
There are many cool people that I talked to. I found out that you also built an app. Why don't we start there because that's pretty interesting? Tell me about the app and then we'll go into the normal questions.
The app that I created was inspired out of the University of Notre Dame to help churches. It wasn't necessarily Catholic churches but just churches with the idea of engaging the community for people that were not necessarily coming on a Sunday. They know that 30% and sometimes up to 70% of their registered parishioners do not show up each week. They wanted an opportunity to engage with them in new ways, from communication, service, spiritual growth, as well as donating. Not necessarily donating to the church but donating to good causes like a food pantry or a homeless shelter. We created a platform to take that community and engage parishes in a new way. I sold that company in 2017.
You probably have more experience working with churches and pastors than I do. What I've found is a lot of times, they're managing their flock. They don't want to let anything in from the outside that could potentially impact their flock. They're very cautious. It's interesting that you were able to bring this idea in. You must have had a close working relationship with someone that had the need and you were able to help them solve it. It wasn't just a random idea that you brought to them.
I had a partner, His name is God. He opened up a lot of doors for us. Churches are also very hungry to feed their flock in new ways and engage people that don't show up. Honestly, it was one of the easier sales that I've ever done because they were ripe and hungry for technology to further reach people. COVID was a perfect time as well for them when people couldn't come in the door. They could still open up a communication pathway beyond a bulletin or a website to reach their flock and continue to nurture them.
“I had a partner, His name is God" is the quote of the day. I'm sure there'll be a few more. Before we go too deep, I like to rewind the tape for our readers and get to know you. The best way I've found to do that is to go back to when you're a child because we don't have the filters of the world on yet. A lot of times, what our passion is in life can be shown brightly when we're 5, 6 or 7 years old. What were you passionate about when you were young, and what are some of the memories you can share with us?
I'm the baby of ten children. I will be honest with you. I've been a bit of an entrepreneur my entire life. What I was probably passionate about was being in communion with other people. The biggest joke in my family was when I was six years old, I went to my parents and said, “I want to go to the 7-Eleven and buy some candy.” They said, “Go figure that out. Figure out how you're going to get that money.” I took my wagon and I went around the entire house. I asked everybody what kind of little trinket would they like to get rid of. Everybody in the family threw something in the wagon. I went door to door in our neighborhood and I offered for people in the neighborhood to buy things out of my wagon so that I can go buy some candy.
Quickly, I realized the power of the initiative I could take to get what I wanted. I started these little circuses and performances where I would get all the children in the neighborhood to put on a show. I would market it. I would go down the strip mall to the 7-Eleven, to the Kentucky Fried Chicken, to the dry cleaners. We would put on the show in exchange for gifts like chicken wings or French fries. All the kids in the neighborhood thought, “This is so fun, Peggy. All we had to do was do a little tap dance and we got a Slurpee.”
You said four. The numbers are actually more companies. You just didn't call it a company then. You didn't know what to call it.
It was quite comical because how many times my whole family had to sit through my performances and they said that I have no creative ability but I was a good producer. At that time, I wanted to buy candy but I also liked the idea of serving the people in my town.
Empower Women: We’d love to put a little bit more money in mom's pocket so she can spend more time at the dinner table.
Thinking about that experience and now the companies that you've built and sold in some cases, how does that tie into what you've been able to do in your career?
In the last several years, it's always been about empowering women and helping women. My quote has always been, “I'd love to put a little bit more money in mom's pocket so she can spend more time at the dinner table.” I had the opportunity to stay home for eighteen years. I always had little side gigs so that I could lift the burden off my husband's shoulders for holiday spending, vacations, private education or club sports. Whenever I felt I could contribute to the bottom line, I felt I was an extra value to the family. I knew that other women had that same desire to keep being home with their children first but brilliant women who could find new ways to generate revenue for their families. Helping other women become entrepreneurs and content creators was my passion. That's what I've done with my current company.
I talked to someone that's doing influencer marketing. She talked about how some people are like, “I'm passionate about gluten intolerance,” like the CFO that I work with. She's done it for 6 or 7 years and she said, “Now I'm a massive influencer.” She was on a webinar with 50 CEOs. They're like, “Do you mean you’re a real influencer?” “Yes. What I say, people buy instantly.” It's interesting. That's fun. I love to hear that. It's not always amazing. We always go through some challenges in our life that feels like a gut punch along the way. When you look back at it, sometimes you say, “That sucked at the time but it helped make me who I am.” For our readers, something you're comfortable sharing. What's one of those times in life that was tough at the time, but looking back it's something that had to happen and made you who you are? How did you get through the time?
Probably many of the people that you interview, there are lots of stories we could all talk about. The one that has probably been my biggest driver was quite honestly, I was not a very good student. We're typically evaluated by A, B, C, D or whatever grade we're getting on our report card. I remember at one point, I took a college entrance exam and the counselor said to me, “You scored lower than a monkey. I don't think you're going to get into any college at all. Your best bet is to go to a community college and maybe that will be it for you.” I’m like, “Okay.” By the time I was twenty, I was already making over $100,000.
I learned a lot from that. Even now, I'm comfortable saying to my business partners, “I'm not good at everything but the things that I'm good at, I'm really good at.” I'm not going to try to fill every bucket and be an A student in everything. Let me be good at what I'm good at. Let's find other people to bring in their strengths and contribute to the organization in the way that they can best contribute. Let me contribute in the way I can best, my leadership, relationships, clients, employees, teams, partners and brands. Everything has been focused on. Let's focus on what people are good at, celebrate that and build that up.
It's okay to be less than a fifth grader or lower than a monkey in some areas, but be off the charts in others and figuring out your individual fingerprint of what God made you to be. Once you hit that lane and figure it out and start shedding some of those other things that aren't important, life becomes easy and frictionless at that point.
I went back and I got certified probably in my '40s about a program called Your Spiritual Gifts. It has everything to do with the gifts for which God put onto your heart and into your life. Those gifts are not for you or me, Chad. Those gifts are for the world. When we start living into our gifts, He makes everything a lot easier. I cannot tell you how many times I've closed a $300,000 deal and I’m like, “I do not know how that happened,” because I'm not that smart, but God would put somebody in my life. I genuinely wanted to serve them and help their business grow. The contract was signed and I was able to serve them and we both grew. It's not because I went out and tried to showcase all my goodness.
I let God put people in my life and worked hard to serve them in a way that would elevate their life, business, clients and customers. That idea that the world sometimes judges people on A, B, C or D, that's a very limited view. God views the world much bigger in a different way and we have to be open to that. I've tried to impart that on my children and on my team.
Before I move on to the next question, I want to go back because you talked about empowering women. One of the things that maybe I could play a role in here is I'm an equal-opportunity interviewer. We don't say male or female when we're building a list. We look for Christian people. We look for people that have interesting backgrounds and it's in LinkedIn. Yet, about 75% or maybe even 80% of people on the show are men. There seems to be something that your personality says, “Sign me up." There are other people's personalities who are one standard deviation in a level that says, “I'm not comfortable putting myself out there on a podcast telling my story.” How do we get more women to raise their hand and say, “Bring me on?” What did it take for you to get over the hurdle of putting yourself out there? What would you recommend to someone else who's on the fence of thinking about being on a show like this?”
There is no coincidence that we're talking now. I was introduced to a woman that we had a conversation. She's starting a company about helping women who have a disorder that they were born with no ability to have children. She didn't realize it until she was sixteen years old. She realized that there's a percentage of women around the country that struggled with this. She's trying to coach women and families on how to live in a world that you do not have these organs. It's painful. She's like, “Peggy, how do I tell my story?” I said, “It's easy. You need to accept the fact that God gave you this gift for a reason and now, how are you going to go out and help other people with it?”
One thing you want to do is you need to be on podcasts. You can't just start talking to people. It's no coincidence. Another example of that is I've had the opportunity to speak to a lot of women about how do you raise money? How do you get investors? VCs are not always inclined to invest in women's companies until they have a great man standing behind them. That itself has been another area that I've tried to help women. How do you raise money? How do you go raise $2 million? You have to start with relationships. Who are you talking to?
Are you putting yourself in the circle of talking to other people who will be willing to open those doors for you? I've tried to be the type of woman that always reaches my hand out to help another woman and open a door for her in the area that she needs it, fundraising, podcast, clients and relationships. I've had the opportunity of now being involved in huge communities of women that are doing this for each other. I have several large organizations and I'm talking about hundreds of thousands of women that I would love to be able to continue to share your platform.
Empower Women: Are you putting yourself in the circle of talking to other people who will be willing to open those doors for you?
Two things that come to mind, Kevin O'Leary “Mr. Wonderful” on Shark Tank is not a bad person. He just makes himself out to be like Simon Cowell when you watch him on the show. I met him live and he talked in front of a room in New York City a few years ago. He said, “I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Most of my successful companies are run by women entrepreneurs.” Especially now, empathy and the ability to have conversations at a deeper level are more important than ever as AI comes in. It causes people to rely on the computer and the machine. The more empathy you can have the better. My wife's way more empathetic than I am. I have to work at it. There's a shift coming in the world these days.
I read an article that he wrote about that same topic. I shared it with my VC who invested in me twice now. I thank my VC for doing that but thought, “How else can we do that for other women?” It's a combination of women or men. The blend between IQ and EQ, you have to have both.
Two things that I would offer for women in your groups. One is my day job is a company called ScaleX.ai. We do outbound prospecting at scale using AI, LinkedIn outreach, email, voicemail drops, and the coolest thing is that we have helped people raise capital. The way we do it is we identify, “These are the 300 top either VC or PE people in America.” Instead of reaching out saying, “We've got the next coolest thing,” we identify people in their network who know those PE people. We email the influencer to ask for the introduction rather than going direct. We'll get 65 meetings per 500 people using that approach, which is way higher than a cold call.
Cold call stink, warm introductions are amazing. Asking for someone to introduce you to Mr. Wonderful is better than picking up the phone because he won't take your call. That might be something. They're raising a $4 million seed round. They raised from friends and family $2.4 million and we helped them find their lead. They were like, “We got all these people who want to invest $50,000 and $100,00 but we couldn't find a lead.” Both these guys were ear to ear grins going, “This tool helped us do that.”
That would be a tool we should talk about because primarily what I do is bring together brands and women to tell brand stories. I do influencer marketing but my focus is not necessarily the macro influencer but it's the everyday woman who has influence in her community. She wants to tell the story of amazing brands. If there are things that we can do together to find more brands that are looking for their stories to be told, I've got 60,000 women that can do that.
Warm introductions and LinkedIn outreach. Fast forward the tape three years from now, you're back on the show and I say, “Peggy, how's the last three years been for you?” What would you say? What transpired over those three years?
At this point in my life, I’m checking off some of my bucket list items. I know that I will be able to tell you about the story of me being in Africa and serving on a mission trip that I've had my heart set on for quite a while and bringing solar lights to some of the poorest areas of the world, specifically around the idea of replacing kerosene, children that are being burned. I can't wait to tell you about that. As well as the fact of helping my five children live into their greatest potential by doing the jobs that were placed upon their hearts and watching their success. Hopefully, to also grow some young entrepreneurs.
There are two things that made me tear up right now. One is God's been telling me about Africa for the last few months and it's obvious. One of our companies were sponsoring what’s called FoodForOrphans.org. He's fed nine million kids around the world. Another is Daraja Academy. They're 240 teenage girls in Kenya. The founder of Food for Orphans said, “Let's go on a mission trip. I'll show you how we feed the hungry.” The Kenyan one, we want to go see that. When you talked about the burn thing, my son went through a pretty terrible thing but God got him through it. He was cooking in his apartment at Colorado School of Mines, engineering school. He puts the Panko in the pan and it caught fire.
That's okay until you put the water on top, total explosion in his face and hands. He got second and third-degree burns on his face and hands. It went from bad to worse. That day you see them and you're like, “You're still here. This is amazing.” It got worse every day. We prayed and he was healed like the level of things they can do this day called RECELL, where they mix it all up. I try to explain it as RECELL doing it. What you said at the beginning of this call, “I've got God on my team.” There's no other way to describe it besides that.
That's what happened. That's why we built the app. That went live because of Brendan and what we were able to see through him. I’m like, “We got to do this for the rest of the world and show people that He's there. All you got to do is ask.” We should figure out the mission trip together when you're ready to do that because my wife is interested in going and Gary, the founder. I want to take a couple of side trips to go see it all and let's impact the world. We're on the back nine of life. It's time to go do that.
I agree. Chad, it's so nice to meet you. I'm so grateful that you found me through our mutual friend. I'm here to serve your community too. Some good things will come from this.
Let's stay in touch. Let's remember, we need to get more estrogen on the show. Now that baton has been passed and I'm sure you can help us do that. Everybody, thanks for joining another episode. Peggy O’Flaherty. She is reachable at, what's your website, Peggy?
Thank you, everybody, for joining. Peggy, we'll catch you next time. Enjoy the rest of your summer.
Thank you.
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About Peggy O'Flaherty
At Mavely, Peggy is responsible for building and empowering a community of Mavens who are able to be their own influencers while earning additional income.
An accomplished founder and entrepreneur, prior to Mavely, Peggy co-founded OneParish – Growing the Faith, an app designed to foster engagement within church communities. Her strength in sales and social commerce drove the app to a successful acquisition in 2017. With extensive experience in strategic project management and business development, Peggy has made it her mission to inspire women to achieve success both personally and professionally.
After building a body of expertise from working in the direct selling space, Peggy was inspired to launch Mavely to enable entrepreneurs with technology tools. Mavely was born from her commitment to finding a better way for women to influence their communities while earning supplemental dividends. As a mother of five, Peggy cites her family and her faith as the force behind her success and her continued drive to empower women. Peggy graduated from DePaul University with a degree in Tourism and Travel Services Management.
