Matt Gregory (00:13) Hello, Pat. How's it going? Welcome back, you've been on tour, man. How was the tour?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:20) Yeah, it's great to be back. The tour was great. We spanned Colorado. through Idaho, Montana, up to the Northwest. The Pacific Northwest is so beautiful, so verdant. I mean, all those places are beautiful in their own way, but for my own sinus and skin situation, the Pacific Northwest really suits me. It's just like, I am a creature that's living among other creatures and plants. Yeah?

Matt Gregory (00:37) my god. It's funny that you bring up sinuses. Is that just like being in your 40s thing?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:57) It might be, for me it's been all decades. I love all different regions, but when I'm in the dry ones, the rocky mountain zone, various zones, the desert, it's rough for me. It's a very dry time.

Matt Gregory (01:10) Yeah. Sure, yeah, it's a dry time. This podcast is not sponsored by anyone, have you used any of the sort of neti rinses?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:30) I've done some neti-ing and various saline sprays. There's a bigger one that's slightly too big to bring in your carry-on luggage, so you need to be checking a bag.

Matt Gregory (01:35) Mm-hmm. We're big fans in this family of the Neil Med Sinus Rinse Bottle. So, yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:48) NeilMed I think I might actually have had some experience with that. I'm trying to do some visual recall. So your whole family is a fan of that? Yeah.

Matt Gregory (01:57) Yeah, well, the three of us, my immediate family. So that's so cool. And I feel like you get to see this country in a way that most people don't.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:01) Sure. Right. I feel very lucky about that, yeah. Sort of get to go bop into all these little ecosystems that are just humming along in parallel to our own ecosystems. ⁓ it's, you know, I think it's a nice balance of ⁓ like us being rewarded by people saying nice things and like having a good time and

Matt Gregory (02:27) Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:43) people being rewarded. I think people have a great time when they come. And it's just a nice moment of stepping out of routine for them and for just trying to do the best of what we've been trying to do for a long time for us. It's a nice coming together of those two things.

Matt Gregory (03:05) Yeah. it's cool that you have a career where you intersect with people, with other people in a moment of them enjoying life. Listening to music, being with friends. There's a lot of people like...

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:17) Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Matt Gregory (03:27) I mean, I'm just thinking about all the careers that intersect with people when they're stressed out.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:31) Right, there's a lot of that. I mean, are, it's super usually pleasant in that way. At showtime, I should say, there's a lot of garbage, logistical nothingness that goes along between those. yeah, you trade stability and health insurance and retirement contributions for nice interactions with people. It's a pretty good trade.

Matt Gregory (03:32) There's a lot. Sure. Sure. ⁓ Yeah, well, you know, and I would describe myself. I've mostly worked with small businesses in my career. And today on the show, we have somebody named Penny Finnie who's going to be our guest. And Penny is an entrepreneur. ⁓ And I think she has a really unique ability.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (04:11) Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Matt Gregory (04:27) I would say to connect it to what you were just saying, I don't think Penny has had a feeling of stability in her career. She has always gone after things that have been sort of at the frontier of new things and built new things through the companies that she's created. And so I'm pretty excited to chat with her because I think

Patrick Dyer Wolf (04:42) Yeah.

Matt Gregory (04:51) whether you're a musician or whether you're an entrepreneur building new things, you're making a real choice to have so me more vulnerability, less stability, to do something that can be pretty magical at times.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (05:05) Yeah, I mean just reading about her, she seems very impressive. She seems of the Renaissance, would you say? She's a Renaissance gal?

Matt Gregory (05:13) Yeah, it's funny that you say that because she's also a painter. She's a very, very capable painter. So yeah, she's got a lot of different skills. And I think for me, she's been somebody who's really, without like sitting me down and being like, Matt, this is how you do entrepreneurship. Like just being around her has been very inspiring for me and has kind of taught me about how to... create businesses and how to be part of that ecosystem. And she is, Heejin and I got to know Penny out in San Francisco. So you were talking about the Pacific Northwest, a little bit south of there, the Bay Area. Penny lived in Oakland for a long time and is just a super creative and lovely human being. So I'm excited to have her on the show today. yeah, so I guess with that, I think we should just dive right in. All right.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (06:12) Let's do it.

Matt Gregory (06:17) All right, we're here with Penny. Awesome to have you on the show, Penny.

Penelope Finnie (06:22) Great to be here, Matt and Pat. Yeah, it's really fun. Looking forward to it.

Matt Gregory (06:28) Yeah, cool. Can you introduce yourself for our listeners?

Penelope Finnie (06:33) I'm Penny and ⁓ I live in Massachusetts and I'm the CEO of a company called Egal and we make period pads that are on a roll and that's my current job. I've been doing that for the past five years and I met Matt, ⁓ I can't remember, 15 years ago? He was an intern of mine and I, yeah. So back in the Bay Area.

Matt Gregory (06:58) Penny has had a pretty awesome career path ranging from being an early employee at Ask Jeeves, which for maybe some younger listeners who might not know it, was an early internet search technology and really, yeah, one of the major ones. So we'll get into that a bit. Penny started a chocolate cafe in the Bay Area called Bittersweet Cafe, where I had the opportunity to intern and learn a bit from Penny about chocolate and about entrepreneurship. She also worked in the cannabis space at Merimed. Again, we worked together in the respiratory health space at Sensory Cloud during the COVID pandemic and now is working on menstrual equity issues, at Egal and I know that you're also a mom, you know, a wife, you've got a lot. going on in your life. I guess specific to the professional work, like, you've done a lot sort of at the frontier of creating new things. And I'm just wondering, I know this is sort of open ended, but like, any thoughts about that? is that something that you seek out?

Penelope Finnie (08:08) It's funny, I realized that maybe about five or six years ago, maybe a little longer. I think, and then I started sort of wondering, well, what was that about? And I think, and when I went to college, I thought I was gonna be a doctor, because that was the only kind of, ⁓ my father was a doctor, my grandfather was a doctor, all my parents' friends were doctors, so was like. And I thought, my father was a neurologist, so thought, the brain is pretty fascinating. But I got to college and I realized I was spending all my time in the studio art classes. Like, any time I had any free time, that's where I was. And so was like, well, maybe I should rethink this plan. But I think the being an artist piece of it is kind of the... It's never conscious, but it's like, it's that creating a new genre or a new type, you know, going into something new that hasn't been done before. then, you know, sometimes I get down on myself like, oh, God, you should be painting. That's what you went to school for, blah, blah, blah. then I'm like, but no, building businesses is really creative too. So it's kind of that combination of things of like, something that's never been done before, that creative act, and then building a business, which is a creative act. So that's where the startup piece comes into it, I think. But I'm the least ambitious person I know. When I was in college, oh God. Career, all I wanted to do was paint and teach, and that was it.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (09:47) Really?

Penelope Finnie (10:01) And so, you know, even having children wasn't really on my radar. Yeah, was just paint. know, teach so I could paint. And that was it. So teach art. Yeah. That's what I figured I'd do. And I did do that for like two years, I think.

Matt Gregory (10:13) Mm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (10:14) Teach art.Yeah.⁓ Was it your own, you know, it was just your own business? were used to, or did you work at a school? Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (10:30) No, so I taught at Georgetown Prep, which happens to be where Kavanaugh and Gorsuch went. So that was, I was the only female teacher, well, there were two female teachers in the entire school. One was 60 something, she was the English teacher, and I was 25. I was always getting in trouble for, like, I wore clothes to teach art in and.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (10:37) right, right.

Matt Gregory (10:50) Wow.

Penelope Finnie (10:56) Anyway, and then at the same time I taught at a school called the Field School, ⁓ which is in Washington DC, still exists as well, but it was the opposite of Georgetown Prep. It was the sort of, at the time it was at DuPont Circle and a very open-ended school. And then at night I taught at George Mason University and I taught a course called Visual Thinking there and that was interesting because... At the time, George Mason was the fastest growing university in the country. ⁓ And I think there was a lot of government funding going into it. And most of my students were ⁓ Army brats.

Matt Gregory (11:41) Is there something, so I saw you kind of shudder a little bit when we were using the word career. I'm wondering if like there's something deeper about like the choices that you've made professionally that's like, it's not really about a career.

Penelope Finnie (11:58) Yeah, no, that's a really good point. It isn't about a career. It's about... Because I don't think I've ever made a decision like, this is the smart thing to do for where I want to go, because A, I don't know where I want to go. Still trying to figure that out. And I'm 66, almost 66, by the way. So... So I don't know where I want to go. And it's more about what's interesting.

Matt Gregory (12:34) Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (12:36) So is that sentence kind of the answer to how did you get from teaching art to working at Ask Jeeves? like how did that?

Penelope Finnie (12:45) when I was teaching art, we were living in Washington, DC and Baltimore. But then I also started doing film work ⁓ in Baltimore when our daughter was about a year and a half years old. I did wardrobe and that kind of thing for film. And so I was in the union, and I thought, ⁓ this is really fun. It's kind of episodic. Each day is different. You don't know what show you're working on, or what ad you're working on, or what movie you're working on. ⁓ And so we moved to California during that. And I thought, I'll just transfer my union membership. Not an option. I can't remember what the issues were in the union. So I thought, well, I could paint. But I knew one person in all of California. And I thought, well, if I start to paint, I'll still only know one person in all of California. So. ⁓

Matt Gregory (13:27) Hmm.

Penelope Finnie (13:45) My husband, this was 1990, he was a multimedia analyst. And nobody really knew what multimedia was at the time. I didn't. ⁓ And ⁓ it was the year that Photoshop, Illustrator, Macromedia Director, which you guys may or may not have heard of, ⁓ Avid, digital editing, ⁓

Matt Gregory (14:10) Mm-hmm.

Penelope Finnie (14:12) It was the year that all those came out because it was really the year that images became available on computers. so 1990, 1990, 1991. So I went to my husband's boss and I said, hey, if I take, cause it was the Bay area, if I take classes in Photoshop, you know, I'll kind of tell Charlie, my husband,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (14:18) What year was that? 1990.

Penelope Finnie (14:38) who's taking these classes and why they're taking these classes. Because nobody understood what Photoshop would be used for. Desktop publishing did not exist. all design, which I had done when we lived in New York, you used the straight edge and you used a wax machine and you printed things out. It was all cut and waxed to do layouts. ⁓ So I understood all of that piece. So I had enough background to understand what you're actually doing with these tools, but digitally. ⁓ So they said, sure, take these classes. ⁓ I just became, and I really never touched a computer before that. I think when I was teaching, I used a word processor, you know, but that was it. And so I brought, my husband had an Apple at the time. one of those boxes that had ⁓ the giant floppy disk thing. Yeah. And ⁓ he wasn't using it. So I brought it home and started playing around with it. because of somebody he knew, Bill Gross, Bill Gross went on to become a huge name in the internet space. But he was developing children's software. ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (15:39) Yeah, I remember those.

Matt Gregory (15:41) We had one, too yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (15:42) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (16:05) called Knowledge, the company's name was Knowledge Adventure. So I went and I worked for Knowledge Adventure from the Bay Area, it was based in Los Angeles, and developed Art Adventure for them, and then ⁓ Jumpstart Toddler.

Matt Gregory (16:17) Mm.

Penelope Finnie (16:20) I mean, we really didn't have email, so I would go down there, you know, once every three weeks and everything was kind of done on paper and then we had artists there that would design it. at the time TED was just starting and it was invitation only. So you had to be invited to go to TED. And I think it was the second or third TED was in Kobe, Japan. It was the only time that they ever tried to do one outside of Monterey when Richard Saul Wurman ran it. And so Charlie was invited because he was a multimedia analyst. I went with him. And remember Jane Metcalfe, who started Wired Magazine, was up on stage. And she was talking about getting online. I remember writing in my little notebook.

Matt Gregory (17:01) Mm-hmm.

Penelope Finnie (17:08) get online, question mark, you know. And how do I do that? And I came home and got AOL and got my little 56K modem, probably was slower than that, but,

Matt Gregory (17:09) I'm gonna do that.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (17:10) ⁓ How do I get there?

Penelope Finnie (17:28) and I remember coming back to Bill Gross and saying, so what are we doing about the internet? How are we going to make these products connect to the internet? And he looked at me like I had five heads. ⁓ But I started going to Internet World in San Jose. And Internet World, I think, was in one room that probably held maybe 200 people. I mean, it was tiny.

Matt Gregory (17:52) Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (17:52) Is that your term, Internet World, or is that, was that a thing? ⁓

Penelope Finnie (17:54) No, it was a big show. At the time, it was tiny, but it became a huge show. And ⁓ I met Hank Duderstadt there. Hank lived in Oakland, and ⁓ he was a programmer. And so he had started the Berkeley Cyber Guild. And so we started meeting at the

Patrick Dyer Wolf (17:59) ⁓ Okay What a name.

Penelope Finnie (18:24) at the Berkeley Marriott down in their lobby because we just needed a place to get together. Of course, there was no Wi-Fi. There was nothing. But anyway, we started teaching one another how to ⁓ code for the do HTML.

Matt Gregory (18:41) Mm-hmm.

Penelope Finnie (18:42) and what FTP was. And he would bring me, here's the floppy disk for FTP. Anyway, but I had started this little company in my house called Jack of All Trades, and we were doing interactive laser disks. That was one of the things I learned how to do, which was the size of a record. ⁓

Matt Gregory (18:48) you Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (19:06) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (19:10) because I did a class, how to do an interactive laser disk and had started this program called Children of the Crane ⁓ about the bombing of Hiroshima. And, ⁓ and so I'd been doing that, but then we, I had like, two other people working with me and we were doing stuff for Hartford and we started doing, and we started working for The Well. The Well was the first ⁓ online community, I suppose, and it was based in Sausalito. And we were the web developers for The Well, I guess. Any? Yeah.

Matt Gregory (19:50) Penny, I don't want to ⁓ make you lose your train of thought because this is a fascinating story. But one theme that I'm seeing already is it seems like you've put yourself in a place where you've just gotten a ton of opportunities through being curious, being open to new things. Is that like... Is that tiring for you at all or is it just energizing to like go after one thing after the next?

Penelope Finnie (20:24) a little bit of both. But I think at the time, when there's no pressure, and I've often said this to my kids, it's like sometimes from the outside, you can see things more clearly than you can from the inside. And so if you were a programmer-programmer and you're at Internet World, it could have felt...

Matt Gregory (20:31) Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Penelope Finnie (20:49) felt overwhelming, because you're like, wait, is my whole world changing? How do I respond to this? That kind of thing. But for me, was like, huh, this is new. And it felt like magic to me.

Matt Gregory (21:01) Yeah. the creativity that you brought in as a painter, as somebody who ⁓ liked that sort of creative expression, it seems like you found that in lots of other places too, like in technology and all these different companies. Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (21:17) Exactly, Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (21:19) I I forget what word you used at beginning. You said you were the least ambitious person. I don't know. I mean, maybe it seems like you were way ahead of the curve in many ways and just at the forefront of a lot of things, but also just in the old mid-century...

Penelope Finnie (21:24) Ambitious. Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (21:45) concept of a career was like, you get your job and then 30 years later you get a watch. that is not what you're doing. In the first transition piece between being an art teacher and working at Ask Jeeves, you said like 15 things. It's like you're not sorry. I'm just saying like it's, you know.

Penelope Finnie (21:52) All right. Right. Yeah, sorry, it's been, like wah wah wah.

Matt Gregory (22:04) No, no, it's awesome.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (22:10) I don't know if ambition is the right word or whatever, it's just you're so... You seem to have an indefatigable spirit or something about you that's just finding the place where you're... Yeah, combination of creativity and whatever else can be applied.

Penelope Finnie (22:32) Well, I mean, I really did think the internet was this kind of, you know, when I started looking at it and being like, I remember the first, when we were at TED in Kobe, Quincy Jones. was playing on the stage, And there was this amazing jazz musician in Tokyo. And they were doing a concert together. And everybody thought, this is unbelievable. You know, and they, because they could hear one another and we could see both of them. And now that just seems like, what? But when you started seeing those kinds of things, it's like,

Matt Gregory (23:02) Hmm. Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (23:12) wow, this could really change everything. And I remember when I started sending my first emails back and forth and being like, my gosh, this is incredible. it was like, this is gonna change the world. So there was an excitement there. ⁓

Matt Gregory (23:30) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (23:32) I then did start, I mean, I went to my husband's. investment bank, we actually made a video about this, you know, I to my husband's investment bank and it was like, would you like a website? And they were like, why would we want a website? And then I think it was the Mill Valley Film Festival asked us to do a website and they were going to be the first film festival in the world to have a ⁓ website and we did that for them. ⁓

Matt Gregory (24:00) Mm-hmm.

Penelope Finnie (24:03) Stanford University, the business school, we got hired to do the business school website. And I asked them later on, I was like, why did you hire us? And they said, well, as far as we can tell, there's 25 web developers in the country, and you were the closest one to us. So it was early days. So the ⁓ Ask Jeeves how that happened was I are The school had an auction ⁓ and I decided, well, I can auction off a website. And so I did. Nobody knew what one was. so, but there were two VCs that, you know, who had kids in the school and they both bought the website. So I ended up doing their businesses websites, ⁓ the companies they'd invested in. And ⁓ One of them, Garrett Gruner, called me one day and he said, have you ever designed a character? And I said, this was 1995. I said, no, but I am an artist. part of, I think the one thing I really enjoyed about doing websites at the time was try to make a website that doesn't look like an engineer did it. ⁓ And well, that was hard when it was only text, because in the beginning, websites were only text. And then they had color.

Matt Gregory (25:25) What does that mean though, Penny? Like, is that like more human or more like, what do you mean when you say an engineer didn't do it?

Penelope Finnie (25:31) Well, oftentimes the colors they would use, like, you can't be serious that those are the colors you've chosen to put, or that that's the font that you chose. You have terrible taste. Or is that the font, you know, because in the beginning you couldn't even put pictures there. So it was just even, or you really couldn't lay it out. you know, so, ⁓ yeah, so trying to make it maybe more human and just have a better design sense, bottom line. And so.

Matt Gregory (25:35) Hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (25:37) You have terrible taste. Yeah, yeah.

Matt Gregory (25:59) Yeah. Got it.

Penelope Finnie (26:03) So he asked if I'd ever done a character and I said, no, I haven't. But I'd love to try." And he said, well, I want to design this ⁓ website. He said the internet search is going to be a big thing. ⁓ That's the only way people can find things online. And I would like to create a friendly means for people to do that where people can actually ask questions. Because people aren't going to understand the whole thing of doing search words. for most people, that's going to be ⁓ a problem. So he said, I'd like it to be a butler and I'd like the butler to be named Jeeves because that's kind of the most famous butler. And so because of PJ Woodhouse's books.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (26:47) Are you a fan? I love those books.

Penelope Finnie (26:50) I knew of them. I'd seen this. There was a show that and so I was like, okay, it might be a little problematic because I'd learned all of this in my, I don't know, whichever classes I'd taken. was like, the licensing of Jeeves. But I said, let's, yeah, well, yes. But I said, you know, let's.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (26:54) Yeah, yeah. public domain.

Penelope Finnie (27:14) Let's make Jeeves be 55, 60. Let's make him be a little, because the real Jeeves in the books was 35. Let's make him a little paunchy, which the other one wasn't. Let's make him bald, which the other one wasn't. All those kinds of things. Yeah. Yeah. So.

Matt Gregory (27:29) Totally different guy. No relation.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (27:30) Yeah, it's just different, different Jeeves, different Jeeves.

Penelope Finnie (27:35) did not draw Jeeves. I then went out to find, I was like, OK, this is what we need. I went out to find an artist to do it. artist after artist couldn't find anyone. I was beginning to think, well, I am going to have to draw Jeeves. And then one day a friend said, there's a guy named Marcos Sorensen. Marcos has been doing, he does cartoon characters. But there were more kind of Martian-y kind of things. He had just done a swatch, watch? ⁓ And anyway, I emailed Marcos and told him what I wanted. And at the time, I was on AOL and he was on CompuServe or something like that. And the reality was you couldn't send images between the two. ⁓ And so he faxed me.

Matt Gregory (28:22) Crazy.

Penelope Finnie (28:25) the Jeeves, I still have that original fax. And it came out of the fax machine. I looked at it. was like, oh my god, that's exactly what I had in mind. And so no notes. Yeah, no notes. Seriously, no notes. And that was 1995. Jeeves didn't start until 1997. And I was hired at that point.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (28:34) No notes.

Penelope Finnie (28:50) And Marcos wasn't, and they've been trying to kind of copy. ⁓ like when they were doing the decks and everything to start the company, they tried to kind of copy. And Jeeves was just getting, I have some t-shirts that they designed from, know, and I was like, nope, that's not it. But I, so I started coding the main website, And yeah, worked, I can't remember my various roles, ended up as a chief creative officer there. But we started with four of us. And this, okay, this is how early it was. was a, Debbie Chen was there. And Debbie, so every day, so we. For those who don't know, you would ask questions. You would say, know, what's the population of London or whatever. And we actually

Matt Gregory (29:38) you

Penelope Finnie (29:41) hired editors who, you know, there was one person who focused on music, one person who focused on restaurants, one person who focused on movies, TV, etc. And they would, as the internet was growing, they would literally be finding all of these websites, you know, and so we'd have a compile at the end of each day where we would ⁓ take, you know, take it all and put it into the search engine and do a compile. But Debbie would then take the hard drive and put it in her backpack pack and drive it, ride her bike to our ISP. Because if we had tried to upload it, it would have taken like a week. So every day the hard drive was taken, put it in the backpack pack and driven up to the ISP to be uploaded.

Matt Gregory (30:23) be too much.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (30:33) so manual and hands-on it sort of evokes like a just like the internet was just a few tubes. A few pneumatic tubes you know like in a bank or something.

Penelope Finnie (30:41) It totally was.

Matt Gregory (30:45) What strikes me though is that it's from a user experience perspective, like the way you interact with like an AI agent, it's the same sort of thing, right? That you guys designed with Ask Jeeves.

Penelope Finnie (30:46) What? Yeah, well, I mean, there was an article in the Atlantic, like a year ago, it was like, was Ask Jeeves the first chat GPT? And, you know, and, you know, I think it kind of was. But you know, it was imperfect. mean, we had all kinds of natural language. We had all these linguists that worked with us, you know, and we started to understand slang and all those kinds of things. And it would feed in and try to decipher what people were saying and try to bring back the right answers. then we always had a search engine beneath it. So.

Matt Gregory (31:34) Yeah, I'm going to try to distill something right now and I might completely miss the mark, but I'm to try. So Penny, I think I was starting to get here with an earlier question that I asked. You're at the birth of something huge, right? Like you're in midst of something big and it seems like you've done this many times. So there are all these different emotions that come up, I would imagine, in a moment like that. Like there's a curiosity, there's an energy.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (31:40) Let's go.

Matt Gregory (32:04) There's, you ⁓ and you've already said like, you're not like, ⁓ again, what was the word? Ambitious. You're not ambitious. For some reason I'm having ⁓ some blindness to that. I'm wondering like, are other, like having been involved in creating other things, other businesses myself, like there are other emotions that crop up like imposter syndrome, fatigue.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (32:11) Ambitious?

Penelope Finnie (32:11) Ambitious.

Matt Gregory (32:31) you know, ⁓ comparison, like all these different things that are like not really constructive, right? They're not really helpful when you're trying to do something new or put yourself in. Do you have those feelings or do you just like, is it just like you're just so driven by curiosity that you just hop in?

Penelope Finnie (32:49) Well, one thing about doing something that nobody's ever done before is, ⁓ Having imposter syndrome doesn't exist that much. And I did know, I mean, we would hire people from like, Procter & Gamble and stuff, and all these big brand people. And I'd be like, they don't know very much. Because nobody knew anything about the internet. But there's also this thing, and I've thought about this a lot, which is like,

Matt Gregory (33:16) Yeah. Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (33:24) I brought in our CEO, Rob Wrubel he, Rob had been, I think the COO at Knowledge Adventure, the company, the ⁓ children's software company. And I would call him literally every day and say, Rob, gotta, this is it. You gotta come be our CEO. And it meant he was gonna have to move his whole family from Los Angeles to Berkeley. ⁓ And, but it never, and you know, of course he had a lot of anxiety about that, you know? Like, I've got to uproot my family, I've got a pretty good job here, why would this internet thing, is this internet thing gonna, is it real? You know? ⁓ But, but in my mind, it was like, this is gonna happen. It's just gonna happen. And there was no, it was oddly like no doubt in my mind that it was gonna happen.

Matt Gregory (34:00) Yeah. Yeah, but I've

Patrick Dyer Wolf (34:18) Hmm.

Matt Gregory (34:19) seen you have that confidence in other and we're going to get into other ventures that you've worked on. And so I think that it's a skill that you have that like, you're able to like see those things and have confidence. And I'm wondering like, for people that are listening that are founders or entrepreneurs that are trying to create something new, like there's just like this natural curiosity and energy that you have that I think is, is really that leads like if, if you think about it, like the experience that you developed with Ask Jeeves, like it really isn't that different from, you know, what it's like to ask a question to an AI agent. So like there's something like very intuitive and creative about what you did to create that, you know, many, many years, many years before open AI and all of these, you know, ⁓ AI agents. And, and so I, I think that there's something powerful here that like, want I'd like to maybe leave for other entrepreneurs. Would you encourage entrepreneurs to kind of put their blinders up or try to forget about their resume? How can they tap into this curiosity and creativity? Is that a hard question? It's an impossible question, I'm sorry.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (35:35) Be born that way.

Penelope Finnie (35:37) No, but I do think, no, but here's the thing, and this is, I liken this back to painting. If you start a painting and you know what the painting's gonna be, it's gonna suck as a painting.

Matt Gregory (35:53) Hmm.

Penelope Finnie (35:53) It really is. It's going to have no life to it. It's going to have no energy. It's going to be dead on arrival. ⁓ And I learned that in college and in graduate school. But if you go to the blank canvas and just go, let's see what happens here, it's going to come into life in a different way. And I think.

Matt Gregory (36:00) Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (36:20) And this is going to get very woo woo, but I think there is this channeling that happens and you have to kind of follow the things that are offered to you and not prejudge them, think. Not kind of say, yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (36:36) Hmm.

Matt Gregory (36:36) or yourself, Like prejudged them, prejudge yourself. There's this openness.

Penelope Finnie (36:44) Exactly. And yeah, and not everything is going to be a positive experience. That's for sure. But it's going to open some things that are... I was on a podcast, I was talking about it a couple of weeks ago, ⁓ called Live Into Your Brilliance, and they asked for a ⁓ quote.

Matt Gregory (36:45) That's super cool. Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (37:11) And I think my quote was something like, we think we're in control, but we're not. Which is that same kind of thing, which is the things that are happening are out of our control, you know, but the way we respond to them is in our control, you know, and, ⁓ and so, but you get, you're given these kinds of amazing opportunities all the time. It's whether or not you see them or not.

Matt Gregory (37:40) Yeah,

Penelope Finnie (37:41) You know?

Matt Gregory (37:43) yeah. Pat, I'm wondering, that resonate from a music perspective with you? Like in terms of your...

Patrick Dyer Wolf (37:50) yeah, I mean I was hesitating to jump in and just relate everything to music, but yes, totally. It's like, you know, I feel like it's not always a leap into the total unknown when you're songwriting or creating music. It's like finding the right balance of comfort and unknown. It's like, you know, so people can follow the path with you. You're like, see, there's, this is, you know this, you know this, but now look at this. And it's always finding that bridge. ⁓

Penelope Finnie (38:14) Exactly, yeah. No, it's like, and what it sounds like you're saying, Pat, is like when I used to do a painting, I haven't painted in a while, but you do one, it poses questions in a way, a painting may pose questions, then so there's that continuity. The next one you're sort of trying to answer those questions, but it poses more questions, and it's, you know, there's that action and reaction, and it sounds like maybe music is that same thing.

Matt Gregory (38:45) Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (38:48) Totally. I mean, it just seems like you have been able to, in a multi-polydisciplinary way, apply these things, apply these wisdoms to, you know, other, I mean, should we get to some of the other many items on your resume here? I don't know.

Matt Gregory (39:03) Yeah, yeah, we should. should. Yeah. I guess I'm wondering like what

Penelope Finnie (39:04) ⁓ god.

Matt Gregory (39:07) I was actually going to ask. So from a transition ⁓ perspective, like what sparked you to think about leaving tech and going into building a chocolate cafe?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (39:19) Obviously.

Penelope Finnie (39:19) So that happened. obviously. my, you know, startups oftentimes take a lot longer than you think to get them where you need to go. No other executives stuck around Ask Jeeves as long as I did. They kind of came and went and came and went and came and went. But ⁓ I was like, I got to get this to being profitable. And we hit profitability and... ⁓ I think around 2002, and that was just the most insane, you know, I mean, we went public in 99, you know, within six months, the stock was at 108. Anyway, it went from 70, we were priced at $14. At the end of the day, ended at 70, it opened at 77, I guess. By the end of three months, it was at 185. And then, at the end of that year is at 85 cents. So I mean, can you imagine what that was like? So a lot of people, I was like, But yes, I was like, let's get this thing to profitability. We did that when we added ⁓ Google AdWords, I believe. Overnight, we became profitable. And ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (40:35) Hmm.

Penelope Finnie (40:39) But I was pretty exhausted at that time and had been doing a lot of traveling because, you know, the UK version of Jeeves, we always had to keep, you so was going to the UK a lot, worked with Michael Ovitz because he was Jeeves' agent. And so I'd go down to LA and hang out with him. were trying to do, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was a big show at the time. We wanted to do a Jeeves show. So we were constantly talking to studios about that.

Jeeves was the mascot, not the mascot, sponsor of the Lakers. Anyway, there was all this stuff with the Lakers. Yeah. Anyway, but so I was pretty exhausted and we went to France with our kids for spring break and we were in Southern France in Saint-Rémy and we went into a chocolate shop that somebody had recommended. Joel Durand was his name. And

Matt Gregory (41:15) I remember that actually.

Penelope Finnie (41:39) It was, I didn't like chocolate that much. But, and this guy made this amazing chocolate, really simple, not truffles or anything like that. But he had, you know, he would put saffron in it or he'd, or he would say like, this is from, you know, Venezuela, Venezuelan chocolate versus Madagascar chocolate and all of that. I was like, hmm. So I bought a bunch and, but it was so kind of cozy and cute. And as we were leaving, I said, that seems like it would work well in Berkeley, don't you think? And ⁓ of course, the kids were like, yeah. And ⁓ they were like, let's start a chocolate shop. And so I went back and I mentioned it to the friend who had recommended the place. And she said, well, then you have to meet this guy named Seneca. He knows more about chocolate than anybody in the world. So we started talking and we were like, would be kind of cool to create like a wine shop for chocolate. Berkeley seems like the perfect place to do that. And at that point, you know, I'd spent so much time either on a plane or in front of a computer. And I was like, it'd be really nice to do something that is in the community, you know, that's not, not virtual. ⁓ So that was the original plan.

Matt Gregory (42:54) Mmm.

Penelope Finnie (43:05) And I was like, okay, I'll help design, let me get back to my art roots, I'll help to design the stores, or store, it was just gonna be one. And I'll help with the business plan, but I'm not running this thing on a day-to-day basis, because that's done. I need a break. And so, you know, there were some younger people than I that were involved, and one of them wanted to have a, she was like, let's bake everything. Okay. So it started growing, you know, and it was like, well, we have to do drinks. I was like, okay. You know, so started to evolve, we've got the whole espresso coffee thing going. We've got the whole bakery thing going. We've got the whole wine store for chocolate thing going. And that was kind of. gonna be it. And we, it was a very, I wanted it to feel like it had always been there. So it felt kind of like an old log cabin. And Matt, you were at the original one. And it, yeah, and it did feel like it had been there a long time.

Matt Gregory (44:07) It really did. It was such a magical place. And I feel like you get a little snapshot of Penny's artistic sensibility behind her, but it just had like a very cozy, well-designed feel. ⁓ So totally had that experience.

Penelope Finnie (44:22) Yeah, we wanted you to feel like you'd even I think we made the floor so that when you walked in from the from the sidewalk it had a I wanted it have that old grocery stores wooden floor sound you know ⁓ so you feel like you kind of step back in time a little bit. Anyway

Patrick Dyer Wolf (44:41) Sounds like the anti-corporate, ⁓ just like the anti-chain store. ⁓ And even, you know, there's a lot of coffee shops that aren't necessarily big corporations or chains that are just like kind of hard surface, ⁓ glossy, not a place where you want to spend time. This sounds like the opposite. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (44:48) Totally. Very glossy.

Penelope Finnie (45:03) Spend time. was, which was a bit of a problem because you didn't have people that would spend time, like way too much time. Actually one of our beloved guests who would come when he was, he seemed to be filming a lot in our.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (45:09) Spend time. Ha ha ha.

Penelope Finnie (45:26) area was Philip Seymour Hoffman. And he used to come and ⁓ sit there for hours, know, ⁓ doing his whatever he was doing there. ⁓ We actually had a drink that we kind of named after him. It was a triple espresso, ice triple espresso was what it was. We called it the PSH

Patrick Dyer Wolf (45:33) Sure.

Matt Gregory (45:45) Mm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (45:46) Nice.

Matt Gregory (45:47) The other thing just quickly to paint a picture of Bittersweet, the smells in this place were just insane. It smelled so good. It was just like chocolate, baked goods. Bittersweet had an amazing array of baked goods, which probably led to some financial troubles for the...

Patrick Dyer Wolf (45:48) PSH.

Penelope Finnie (45:50) Yeah, PSH.

Matt Gregory (46:13) cafe because there was just so much complexity. Coffee, but it was just it smelled so good in there. My and just like a quick menu item to call out to they had a chocolate Thai iced tea. There was ⁓ chocolate with jasmine tea iced. It was on a hot day in the East Bay. It was an incredible, incredible drink.

Penelope Finnie (46:16) There's so much complexity. ⁓ my god.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (46:40) I'm gonna have to tell my wife about this so she can travel through time and space too.

Matt Gregory (46:46) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (46:48) Well, and Matt came in, well, just one other thing briefly. ⁓ We worked with Blue Bottle. Blue Bottle coffee at the time was ⁓ in a little shed behind a Mexican restaurant, ⁓ like a few blocks from us, and they roasted their own coffee. So this is, it was the beginning of the whole third wave coffee. ⁓ So, they did a roast for us called Bittersweet.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (46:59) yeah.

Penelope Finnie (47:21) And it was at the point where we were spending, I think, $9,000 a month or $12,000 a month just with Blue Bottle. You know, we were like, maybe we should start roasting our own coffee. they were, you know, their status was changing, evolving over time. And so they sold us their old roasting machine. And we, you know, we did start roasting our own coffee. Around the same time, Scharfenberger got bought by Hershey's. And Scharfenberger was based in Berkeley. And so we hired Albert Abrams And Albert had been Scharfenberger's main... chocolate maker and so we brought him on so we started he and Seneca started doing our bean to bar chocolate so we were doing that so one of the things that we you would smell was us roasting the beans you know And then we evolved, we ended up with five cafes over time, which was insane because they were like, and you had five different health departments you had to deal with.

Matt Gregory (48:29) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (48:29) Anyway, the person who never wanted to run the place ended up being the person who ran it with a woman who came in to help Diana Mckfessel ⁓

Matt Gregory (48:39) I just have a question. We talked about Ask Jeeves and being at the creation of something like that that ended up scaling and becoming a technology that's familiar to all of us. Then Bittersweet in some ways is the polar opposite. It's hyper local. ⁓ I remember all the challenges and you just talked about some of them with staffing, with just the insanity of trying to create all these different products every day.

Penelope Finnie (48:56) it.

Matt Gregory (49:09) Like, what did that feel like for you? Like, that energizing? Was it hard? Like, what was it like being in your shoes at that point?

Penelope Finnie (49:19) That was really hard. we did a book when we were at Ask Jeeves. We did a whole series of children's books. ⁓ And I remember when we had to get the books to the bookstore, and I was like, God, ⁓ moving things is a pain, like real things, because doing something digital was so easy. And then you've got chocolate and it melts and you know, it's like wait, what has happened to my life? Everything has a shelf life and the days in Oakland when it would hit 80, which aren't that many, but when it did or 85 and you're like, we don't have air conditioning and we've got, you know, $10,000 worth of inventory here and you know, what do we do about that? Of course, we had all these ideas of, you know, not going to be minimum wage and we're not going to, our tips will go to a charity and all. And then you realize, ⁓ my God, you know, I often wanted to do ⁓ a map for the government, Let's show you how much money we make. Let's show you how much profit we make. Let's show you what each department of the, know, we're California, you know, takes, thinks that they deserve. And there's beyond nothing left at the end of it all. And I was like, does... Has anybody ever shown you guys what all of this does to a small business? It made me almost become a Republican. yeah, so it was, and Matt, you saw it firsthand. was just like, but, and I think.

Matt Gregory (51:02) How much?

Penelope Finnie (51:15) being in the Oakland store where you spend a lot of time at the downtown Oakland store, and you'd see what it did for people, just the community. was such a, ⁓ people loved it. And people loved the drinks. And Matt came in ⁓ to help us figure out, was there a way, to commercialize the drinks, the chocolate Thai ice tea, the chocolate chai, you know, all of these amazing, the coconut, chocolate coconut. And you worked at that for a while, just, and it was, it was really challenging.

Matt Gregory (52:01) Yeah. Yeah, I think. Yeah, So we were looking at whether we could bottle those products and sell them at retail. And at the end of the day, we both we tried like taking what they made the magic that they made in the cafe and putting it into a packaged product, which requires processing and all that stuff. And then we also looked at like the financial reality of it. And I actually think we made the right decision not to do that. I think that like the quality of the drinks went way down when you put it in a bottle. And I think that that's something that like really ⁓ rings true for me with food is like, obviously packaged food isn't gonna go away. Like a lot of people rely on it ⁓ and it's just not gonna.

Penelope Finnie (52:31) I think so. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (52:53) not going to go away, but I think like there's magic to food that you can create in person. And I think that you like at a smaller scale, right? And I think that you really created that with Bittersweet. We had a conversation in our last episode with Rahul Kapkar, who's a chef in LA, a ramen chef in LA. And, you know, he's just so worn out from the reality of running these businesses.

Penelope Finnie (52:59) in person. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Matt Gregory (53:20) But he's been making the same, you know, vegan ramen for 10 years in Grand Central Market in LA. And it's like phenomenal ramen. But it's you can see what the hospitality business does to you. just like it's a tough, really tough business. And the other the other piece that I want to bring up is like, you know, so I worked at the back of Bittersweet and then also in the back of David Edwards restaurant. When we when Penny and I together were at Sensory Cloud in Cambridge.

Penelope Finnie (53:24) Mm-hmm. Yep.

Matt Gregory (53:50) And the people that work in the hospitality space, and I said this in the episode with Rahul, work so hard. There's some amazing, amazing people in that space ⁓ who put up with so much and who don't get paid enough. ⁓ And I'm so glad to have had that experience. And I guess I'm wondering, Penny, like, before we switch gears ⁓ to kind of your next chapters, like, is there anything from the experience of running Bittersweet that still informs

Penelope Finnie (54:04) my God. Yep.

Matt Gregory (54:19) how you build companies and how you lead.

Penelope Finnie (54:24) That's a really good question. I think ⁓ the, and you saw this, the passion that people have for food ⁓ is unmatched almost. I mean, you've been to the Fancy Food Show, I I didn't know it has a different name, but I'm always just blown away. But people just are so passionate about.

Matt Gregory (54:32) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (54:47) you know, what it is that they do and what it is that they've been, the flavors they've managed to get and all of that. And it's so important and they, and I think passion, I used to say this about Jeeves. Nobody has to pay me to do this. I would do this for free. And so I think the passion piece is so important, but in the food world, you really see people that care so   much about what it is that they do, so much about the quality, and they get paid so little. But it is the passion, I think, that carries them forward. So you could call that mission, but I'm not sure it's actually, it's not necessarily mission-based, but it's just...

Matt Gregory (55:18) Mm-hmm. It's like a purpose. It's more of a purpose, right? Like of, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Penelope Finnie (55:30) It's a purpose, yeah. Yeah, it's a purpose and a love, you know, and that drives them. And I think that's been true, you know, I know it's true with what we do right now, that really was brought home to me because yes, was, it's one thing when somebody's being paid over $100,000 for what they do, it's another thing when they're being paid $15 an hour for what they do.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (55:59) I you know just saw updated figures on what the poverty line could be and it's now you know $130,000 for a family of four so I you know the creation of a space, like what it sounds like the Bittersweet Cafe is, ⁓ almost to me, rings of like a public good. Like it's something that people appreciate so much. there could be a realignment sort of like an economic realignment that like, that I don't know exactly all the forms it would take, but that would more support, mean, small businesses is often the object of a lot of people's support and admiration, just ⁓ something that would more encourage and support ⁓ spaces that are special and valued by a community. even the word utility also comes to my mind. Ask Jeeves is also like, A lot of what the internet is and what these services are, it's just like a utility. It's the tubes, it's the mail, it's the phone, it's the whatever. Well yeah, right, let's go to that.

Matt Gregory (57:18) It's the menstrual pad Yeah. I mean, I think we should, I think we should go there. I, I completely agree, Pat, with, with where your head is going with this. And I think as somebody that, works from home, most of the time, you know, I, I often wish that there was a place, you know, in the neighborhood that I live in, that I could go sit at and do work at comfortably. Cause everything is, you know, it's the real estate is so expensive. the spaces are so small and there's outside of the house to really be ⁓ in a community. I think it's just such an interesting, knowing that a lot of workforces have shifted to hybrid or fully remote situations, there's a ton of real estate open. So it's just a weird moment that we're in.

Penelope Finnie (58:13) one thing we would joke about, not really. I mean, I was kind of half serious. Like, what if we claimed ourselves to be a nonprofit? I mean, because you're right, the whole public good thing is like, know, I sometimes thought about that. Like, what would that look like? Or is that even done? Could it be done? Yeah.

Matt Gregory (58:21) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (58:33) Yeah.

Matt Gregory (58:37) Yeah, that's really interesting idea. So ⁓ I guess while we're on the topic of kind of ⁓ more utilitarian ⁓ technologies and things, I'm curious if you could tell us about EGAL ⁓ and what you're doing with that. I know you're the CEO.

Penelope Finnie (58:56) Sure. So ⁓ well, Matt and I worked at a company together called Sensory Cloud. And Matt was the COO there. And while there, I met a person named Tom Devlin. And Tom was our inventor, in-house inventor at Sensory Cloud, and ⁓ had gone to MIT. So we were in Cambridge at the time. We had moved east at this point. And ⁓ my husband and I, during the time at Sensory Cloud, I bought a farm down in Massachusetts, on the coast of Massachusetts. And so Tom turned to me one day and he said, hey, I've invented this product. I filed a patent for it and it was like, OK, what's this? And he said, it's period pads on a roll. And I was so puzzled. I was like, what? Why has Tom invented this product? It was really confusing. At first, I thought I'd misheard him. I was like, what are these pads for? he was like, period pads. And so then he explained to me that his wife Stephanie ⁓ wrote for the Boston Globe, which I knew, and that she had written an article about period poverty. And in it, an activist had said ⁓ period. ⁓

Matt Gregory (59:52) You

Penelope Finnie (1:00:19) period product should be as ubiquitous as toilet paper. And Tom told me he was like, when I read that article, read that line, I was like, huh, I wonder if anybody's tried to make ⁓ a period product that ⁓ was like toilet paper. And so I was like, OK. And so he showed me the patent or ⁓ the design of it. And ⁓ And so I was like, OK, and kind of went away, kind of forgot about it. then a few months later, he contacted me and he said, hey, these mandates, there's mandates in certain states, California and New York, like maybe 10 states at the time, maybe even fewer than that, had passed mandates, had passed laws saying that free period products had to be available in schools. And he said, you know, these mandates are going to start to go into effect soon. So why don't we start this company and I want you to be the CEO. We had just finished raising money for Sensory Cloud, so he'd seen me do that. so I thought, well, all right. Seems like an interesting idea. And I could do it from home. I wouldn't have to commute to Cambridge. it'd be an interesting thing to do. And I wasn't really sure it was going to have legs. I really wasn't. But the more I started thinking about it, And the more I talk to people, particularly young people about it, they were like, my God. So in a way, the energy came from talking to younger people, for me in this case.

Matt Gregory (1:02:01) Mm.

Penelope Finnie (1:02:03) in the space of, you we thought initially, A, that schools were going to be what we focused on and the U.S. was going to be what we focused on. And it's been interesting that, ⁓ yes, schools are still what we are involved with, but airports, Denver Airport called us one day. We met them at a conference and they wanted something for their employees.

Matt Gregory (1:02:32) Hmm.

Penelope Finnie (1:02:33) And so we have this program where we'll do a pilot for three months. This was at that time. And so we said, we'll do a three month pilot and there's a QR code on the dispenser and you can get the feedback from your employees. And then, you know, if the feedback is X, would you expand? And they were like, yes. So, you know, so that was the plan. ⁓ After two weeks, Denver calls us and they're like, we had no idea. This was so needed. ⁓ This is an oversight on our part. And if you've been to Denver, you know how far away it is from everything.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:03:10) It's very far away and the corridors are very long too. Unrelatedly.

Penelope Finnie (1:03:16) They are very... Yeah, no, but so you can imagine if you're an employee and you get your period and you don't have anything, what are you going to do? And so Denver said, we had no idea this was an issue. And they said, we think we need to try this for the actual travelers. So again, we were like, okay, we'll do a three month pilot and do the QR code, get feedback. Same thing. Two weeks later, they're like... We had no idea that this was such an issue. ⁓ We'd like to move this, yeah, to expand throughout Concourse B, which is their busiest concourse, and now it's throughout all of the airports, all of the concourses at Denver.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:03:49) Did- Fantastic.

Penelope Finnie (1:04:03) But it's kind of an interesting thing. A lot of facility managers are men. A lot of people making these types of decisions are men. They have no idea the MacGyvering that women have to go through.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:04:11) Right. Yeah, never considered it before, didn't it? I had no idea it was a problem or a need. Goodness.

Penelope Finnie (1:04:18) No idea it was an issue. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (1:04:22) But I think it's also like, yes, that's true about men. I also think women have put up with it for so long that there's no expectation that there could be a source, a new sort of source of support.

Penelope Finnie (1:04:33) yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:04:38) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (1:04:39) you're so right. well, first of all, it's not something even women like talking about very much. Younger ones may, but it's still, it's hard. And what I really noticed when I started doing this, people my age were kind of like, why are you doing this? And I still encounter that all the time, because they're like, this is your responsibility. You bring it with you.

Matt Gregory (1:04:46) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (1:05:06) I think the fact that it looks exactly like toilet paper really brings the fact home. You don't have to talk about periods. You don't have to talk about menstruation. It's just like, it's just another bodily function. Deal with it in the same way that we, the same reason we have toilet paper, the same reason we have this. Exactly. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:17) Yeah.

Matt Gregory (1:05:19) Well, I just... Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:21) It's there when you need it, in the place you need it, like, yeah.

Matt Gregory (1:05:24) I just imagine when there isn't toilet paper, it's not a good situation, right? And so it just seems so basic.

Penelope Finnie (1:05:30) It's no fun. It's stressful, right?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:32) Yeah. Well, you should have brought your toilet paper with you, Matt.

Penelope Finnie (1:05:40) Exactly. and what's so funny is the minute I would say we don't carry around to people my age, and they're like, ⁓ I actually never thought of it that way. Like I never thought of it as just another bodily function that should be taken care of when you're away from home. And ⁓ then certain facilities managers would be like, well, we have these boxes, they're out by the sink. And we're like, yeah, well, first of all, That's not where you need it. And they're like, well, you could get it on your way in. You're like, but you don't know you need it. And they're like, you don't? So there's a lot of education around that. And then it's like, well, has anybody actually refilled that thing in 10 years? Or does it require a coin? Or they're always jammed? So yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:06:10). Yeah. and... ⁓

Matt Gregory (1:06:25) Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So Penny, this,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:06:29) Yeah, these are expired.

Matt Gregory (1:06:31) this feels like one of those situations where this is like such a basic human need for a huge, huge portion of population. ⁓ and also like, there's like this, you know, people have been putting up with not having this forever. So I'm wondering like, what is that? What is the biggest blocker right now to you guys having this available in every public restroom?

Penelope Finnie (1:06:57) ⁓ It is just getting the decision makers, getting to the right decision makers and getting them to realize that it's necessary. Denver was amazing, know, did it so quickly. The NHS has started to realize, in the UK, yeah, we need this for our nurses. It really makes our nurses work better. ⁓ At the NHS, when we go to the NHS conferences, they've been amazing and allowed us to.

Matt Gregory (1:07:04) Mm-hmm.

Penelope Finnie (1:07:23) put our product in the bathrooms of the conference center so people actually see it. Because when people see it, they're like, duh. This makes so much sense. ⁓ The Association of Luxury Suite Directors, ⁓ ALSD, they're for stadiums and stuff like that. So they've been really promoting us and allowing us to kind of show. ⁓be where we need to be at conferences and we've gone into Mercedes-Benz, they wanted to be the first NFL stadium in Atlanta to have our product because the NFL is trying to get female fans and this is an easy, inexpensive way to do it.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:08:07) They probably just open more bathrooms while they're at it.

Penelope Finnie (1:08:13) Mercedes has a ton, they have a thousand I think for women versus, know. Anyway, but ⁓ so it is finding that person that's like, that can be your champion, you know. And then you realize people are super busy. We're doing a pilot at Heathrow. I think our dispenser sat at Heathrow. for six months before they actually got installed. you know, so that oftentimes that is the challenge. You know, and we, we sell through distributors. So the traditional way, but one thing we've realized, you know, when they're selling toilet paper or paper towels, everybody knows what that is and it's easy for them. They don't know how to sell our products. So we have to do it with alongside of them.

Matt Gregory (1:08:40) installing it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes sense.

Penelope Finnie (1:09:05) And some distributors are reluctant because they're like, wait, are you going to take our account away from us? We're like, no, no, no, no, no. We're here to help you. We're here to make that happen. But that's another group of people that we have to convince that we're there to help, not steal the business from them.

Matt Gregory (1:09:24) It seems like once it's in place, you've got a lot of proof of concept. Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (1:09:30) Oh yeah. And, and there's that whole thing. Like now that people find us in Denver, you know, they make Tik Tok videos about me. It's crazy. Well, the way people feel respected, The way people feel respected and seen when they find the product is amazing. And it's why theft and misuse is really low. ⁓ And facilities managers are always super surprised by that because they're like, nothing's happening to this. And it's like, yeah, because you actually are taking care of people, they feel respected, they're not going to... misuse it as a result of that.

Matt Gregory (1:10:08) Right. So ⁓ I know we're coming up on time here and I just, ⁓ Penny, this has been a really amazing, far ranging conversation, which I just really admire you and the way that you have been open to so many different experiences in your life. I'm just wondering like when going through all this, like what are you feeling as you share all this with us? Like, how does it make you feel? Hahaha!

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:10:40) Sorry.

Penelope Finnie (1:10:41) I mean, in a good way. It is funny. Oftentimes you're just looking forward, like, what do need to do today? it is, thank you for having the opportunity to kind of look back at it. And this is an interesting thing. I'll say this.

Matt Gregory (1:10:50) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (1:11:02) I, after Bittersweet, I was in the Bay Area and I went to breakfast with the former CEO of Ask Jeeves, a different one than the one I had brought in. And I said, hey, I really am interested in getting back into tech or back into work, you know, outside of the food business. And he said, oh, no, no, that ship has sailed. And I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, you're too old. And And I was like, at the time, I think I was 57 or 58. And I remember just leaving that breakfast so discouraged. And then I came east. And it was interesting how the East Coast was far more open than California was at the time to someone that was older. And I think that what I will say is, you

Matt Gregory (1:11:42) in

Penelope Finnie (1:12:01) you do learn so much from all of these different experiences. You know, one thing I will say about EGAL is most of us are over, not most of us, half of us are over 50 and the others are younger. Of course you need the younger people and they have the experience and the energy and different approaches to things. But having older people is also really ⁓ helpful in terms of having had all of these experiences. I mean, all the experiences that Tom has had in manufacturing. ⁓ are so helpful and you know it wouldn't if he weren't 60 years old we wouldn't he wouldn't have had all of those experiences and so ⁓ so i think that that's something that i've also really been ⁓ grateful for the opportunity to keep going you know after after California

Matt Gregory (1:12:56) I love that. And I love, I also have really enjoyed working on multi-generational teams. Like, I think that that like, is a really nice, and also just like, even in the friends that we keep, we like to have, ⁓ you know, we like to have a range of different friends. Like it's just a nice, it makes your life richer. ⁓ And also like, I think what you said earlier in this conversation around, ⁓ you know,

Penelope Finnie (1:13:02) Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (1:13:23) the nature of being at a frontier and that there aren't really those feelings of imposter syndrome or judgment in yourself and other people like that. What that CEO of AskJeeves is said to you, I feel like is something that happens after the first initial founders go away. It's something that people who aren't actually creating new things think. and, and I think that when you are creating new things, anybody is welcome because ideas come from everywhere. ⁓ and it just, it's just a really wonderful space to be in. And I think Penny, like, ⁓ just as like, ⁓ I thank you to you. Like, I feel like you've helped me see that space and I just, I really appreciate that. And I think I hope other people.

Penelope Finnie (1:14:00) That's a really good point.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:14:02) Hmm.

Matt Gregory (1:14:20) who are listening to this conversation hear about those opportunities in that space. Cause I think there's so much judgment that people put on themselves of like, I can't do this or that. Like that's not true. Like you can do anything. ⁓ and it's just like about like trying, you know, and putting yourself there and cause you're probably going to see it slightly different than other people. ⁓ and so I hope people hear that message and what Penny's saying and feel empowered by it. Cause it's, I think it's pretty exciting.

Penelope Finnie (1:14:50) That's a great way to kind of encapsulate it, Matt.

Matt Gregory (1:14:55) Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to share all this with us and ⁓ yeah, good luck with the Egal. If people wanna like follow along with the Egal and support what you're doing, like how can they do that?

Penelope Finnie (1:15:11) So ⁓ Instagram is a great place or LinkedIn. ⁓ Pads on a Roll is our Instagram handle. ⁓ either follow me on LinkedIn or Egalpads on LinkedIn, and Pads on a Roll on TikTok now. We only have 61 followers. But we just started there. ⁓

Matt Gregory (1:15:31) cool.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:15:33) Yeah.

Matt Gregory (1:15:36) Cool, sounds good. All right, well thank you so much. Appreciate your time again.

Penelope Finnie (1:15:42) Yeah, thank you, Matt and Pat. Take care. Bye-bye.