Full Transcript – Tina Sharkey – Wild Business Growth Podcast #290

This is the full transcript for Episode #290 of the Wild Business Growth podcast featuring Tina Sharkey – Social Media Pioneer, Brandless and iVillage. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Tina Sharkey 0:00
Thank you. We love you.

Max Branstetter 0:17
Thank you. Thank you. Welcome back to the as if that was one word. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome back to the Wild Business Growth podcast. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting. And you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is Episode 290. It is getting hot in herre and today’s guest is Tina Sharkey. Tina is a serial entrepreneur, an advisor, even a college professor who is a pioneer in the social media space literally the term social media, as well as co-founding iVillage, co-founding Brandless. And we talk in this episode, everything from Sesame Street, all sorts of Sesame Street stories to the idea and forming Brandless as well as time management, your most productive hour. And of course, Tina’s favorite Sesame Street character, which you will never guess which one. It is the Shark-ey. Enjoyyyyyyy the showwwwww! Aaaaalrightyyyy we’re here with Tina Sharkey. One of the I know this gets overused but one of the pioneers in the online space and I’ll even say offline space as well. Tina, really excited to speak with you cover all sorts of things today. How are you doing today? Thanks for joining us.

Tina Sharkey 1:51
Thrilled to be here. And I’m doing fantastic, actually. Perfect.

Max Branstetter 1:55
Perfect. Fantastic, Actually sounds like a, a wonderful poem that could turn into a miniseries. I don’t even know where I’m going with that. But really excited to talk to you about some of the brands that you launched some of your advising stuff as well. But before that, can you share the absolutely crazy story of how you ended up getting a job with the Sesame Street group?

Tina Sharkey 2:20
Oh, yeah, that is actually a crazy story. So I had the privilege. Well, I was one of the cofounders of a company called I village in the late 90s. We built the company, we were taking it public, it was fantastic. We were largest community of women online, we built a bunch of sub brands, it was wonderful. And before that job, I had the privilege of launching alongside an extraordinary team something called q2 which was an outgrowth of QVC and was led by Barry Diller and our CFO was a woman by the name of answerde vini. That’s an important data point. So now I’m at a village, I was living in this apartment building in New York City across from Lincoln center. And I got a message that the building was on fire and trying to remember the name of the jazz musician, but this jazz musician, very famous, who lived in the building, had a halogen light over his piano and it caught a sheet music caught on fire. And the building was on fire. Very, very large building. And I had a King Charles Spaniel that was in the apartment. So I was freaked out and I went flying uptown I village at the time was on 22nd Street. And when I got to the building, across from Lincoln Center, the first like, I think five floors of the building as New York buildings can be was industrial, you know, commercial space. And then above was the residential. And in that commercial space on the ground floor was a deli. And there were all these people that were huddled up because there were fire trucks everywhere. You couldn’t get in and I go into the deli. And there is Ann Sardini, the woman who was the CFO at Q2, who I only found out then was the CFO at Sesame Workshop. And Sesame Workshop was the first three floors of that building. Everyone had been evacuated and everyone was sort of holding vigil to find out what was going to happen to the building. I was running up there because of my dog. And and I reconnected, we had this whole conversation. She said, wow, I’ve been tracking what you’re doing. And I village and you know, we’re really trying to figure out a digital strategy here. It says to me, would you come in and talk to the board? And I said, with pleasure, Sesame Street, I love Sesame Street. And so I went in and I talked to the board. And there I met one of my great mentors Nina link, who was running the Publishing Group at Sesame Workshop. And she said, Would you consider building out and bringing sesame straight onto the open web because they had some CD-ROMs and other things, but they had not at all kind of formulated what their digital strategy was going to be for this next phase, and I said, oh my goodness, like, that is the offer I’ve been waiting for. Since I’m like three years old. I’ve always wanted to go on Sesame Street. And so that began my foray into bringing sesame onto the open web. And I remember running into Joan Ganz Cooney, who was the founder of Sesame Street, in the bathroom of one of our either it was in the office, or it was at a corporate event. And she said, Oh, you know, you’re the woman that we brought in to do this. And I said, Yes, you use television as a way to teach. But I want to do 26 letters in cyberspace. And she said, the baton is yours go. I just thought that was the greatest thing ever. So that’s how I got my job at Sesame Street. And

Max Branstetter 5:58
your three year old self knew that it would exactly be in the online space and internet and everything you’re like, I want to grow up to do that. Now that’s that’s really cool. pinch me moment. And I mean, absolutely crazy scene, it sounds like something out of a movie, or TV show even. And

Tina Sharkey 6:15
I don’t remember what floor I lived on. But it was not a low floor. And when they finally let us into the building, my maternal instinct was I ran to the top to get to my apartment to see if my dog was okay, because there was so much smoke in the building. And I remember getting to the top of the staircase. Many staircases probably like 30 floors up. And I probably had more smoke in my chest from running those stairs and the dog, which was just like leading needed to eat totally fine. Fine. But yes, that was a very dramatic day.

Max Branstetter 6:45
I’m exhausted and stressed hearing about it. But when you look back at that, stop your career on Sesame Street. What do you take from that as being like, most influential to other stops your career,

Tina Sharkey 6:57
the idea of truly doing 26 letters in cyberspace, the idea of what I think I coined at the time was collaborative family edutainment, because what we knew at Sesame, that’s anchored in research, and so much, deep, deep study of every character, every intention, how children learn, they learn best in the company of their parents, they learn best in the company of a care provider. And so sesame was very intentional in knowing that. So not only did the characters represent many of the range of human emotion, like Oscar the Grouch, it’s okay to be grouchy, it’s okay to be in a bad mood, you can still have friends, you can still navigate that. But also this idea of how do we bring parents into the conversation? How do we create a place to extend the learning experience, and sesame was always masterful at identifying popular culture icons, the Madonna or whoever, and bringing them on to the show, which not only young children didn’t necessarily know, those people were, but parents did. And so it created that collaborative family experience and the challenge of how do you translate that onto the open web? And how do you translate that experience? How do you make it fun? How do you make it play was very, very interesting. The other thing that was very interesting at that time was the Coppa compliancy that was coming out of Washington on Children’s Online Privacy Act and early days of privacy. And then how do we create experiences for older children, because Sesame Workshop is not just Sesame Street. And so we created something that in its day was really incredibly breakthrough called sticker world. And it was before the iOS system had launched. But basically, it was a series of apps, where all of the apps had functionality inside of a sticker, a virtual sticker inside of a world that you could build yourself. And so we were really on the vanguard of tools and stem and things like that for children, not just preschoolers, but also elementary school kids as well. And that was very powerful working with such an extraordinary group of educators, a world renowned, timeless group of characters, and a team that was so committed to the highest order bit which was really the education and literacy of America’s kids and global as well. Not

Max Branstetter 9:32
often when somebody says working with quite the cast of characters, they can say, you know, Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch and everybody like that. Quite the incredible Mexico workers they’re speaking of being on the vanguard and pioneering and spaces I think if you look at different stops in your career, you have a knack for really disrupting and adding like a new energy and a new approach to a space and So I want to hit on brandless for a little bit because I think the initial idea for brandless and how to differentiate anything in this crazy crowded space, shout out alliteration. What was the initial insight that led to like, Alright, we’re gonna we’re gonna start this thing called brandless.

Tina Sharkey 10:17
Yeah, that’s a great question. And I have an answer. Because good. But I have a very specific answer. It’s a precision question. We were looking at the millennials, as the next generation of, of major shoppers and head of households, they were becoming parents, they were creating their own household, they were moving out of their parents domains. And at the time, the stat was 78% of millennials do not want to buy the products they grew up with. And that number is a tsunami of consumer habit change. And so people understood that the FY which stands for better for you. So when you think about Whole Foods, when you think about the organics brands, the organics movement, the BF why movement, you know, gluten free, all of these types of things, people really being educated about ingredient palates, ingredient profiles, but the delta between these new products and experiences, and the prices was growing, growing, growing, because major retailers saw that as an opportunity to take price as margins were getting shrunk. So we thought, What if everyone deserves better and better, shouldn’t cost more. And we knew from our world class team who had built these platforms, and knew the rights of line partners, and CO packing partners, that it didn’t have to cost more and that oftentimes retailers were taking price on that, because it was an opportunity to claw back margin because margins were so thin. By the time you look at the you know, the competitive nature of CPG, the combination of this vision that there was a tsunami of behavior and choice change to there was a so much choice, that there was the paradox of choice, people were paralyzed by choice. So this idea of curating things, which was just what mattered both on the ingredient palette, as well as on the assortment palette, so we weren’t just launching skews for the purposes of introducing new and different flavors and different sizes and different colors. We actually said like, this is the best one. And it’s just what matters. We were trying to democratize access to goodness and goodness in, in in size, goodness in ingredient goodness, in better for you more broadly. And and then goodness in price, and simplicity. Because the paradox of choice was paralyzing people, you could go to a big marketplaces and type in, you know, clean shampoo and get 1000 1000 results. Where do you even start? And so that was the the insight, the thinking and the focus?

Max Branstetter 13:01
Yeah, it’s spot. Coming from the millennial consumer standpoint, I can, I’m totally paralyzed by the amount of choices out there. And it’s just like, I think it’s, it’s a really strong insight to start a company around. How did you go about in those early days, like handpicking, curating what is like, alright, this is the product for X category. So

Tina Sharkey 13:24
it was very data-driven, we looked at household Firstly, we hired a great team. So it always starts with incredible people who are masters at what they do. And that was Rachael Vegas, she came in along with Jessica Glendenning. And they built a merchant team who had done this before many of them had come out of target. They built their private label businesses there. And so you start with a great team. Then with that great team, we looked at HHPRs, which stands for household penetration rates. So you’re like, Okay, if you’re going to build an assortment, what is the penetration rate of households on this assortment, and then we would look at what’s called CTS, which are consumption turns, so many households have catch up as an example. But how many times they replaced that catch up, and then we’d look categorically so ketchup would fall into the condiments category, we will look at snacks and say like 99% of households have snacks, and they many of those households would replace them weekly, or every 10 days. And so the consumption turns on snacks meant that we were going to be in conversation in people’s homes with replenishment and discovery. And we would look at what’s the adjacency to that discovery. Whereas ketchup in the condiments space, maybe north of 60 to 70% of households might have some form of condiment, but the CTs on that tend to be more seasonal the consumption terms and the amount that’s used in those sizes. There tends to be a lot of waste. because people don’t go through the whole thing and then expires and things like that. So it was very analytical and how we built the assortment and what the what we call the Attach rates for an attach rate is like, oh, people who buy this also buy this on a regular basis. Because as Rachel used to always say, if you don’t have the things that people are looking for, you want to get the ring so that you get the whole shopping cart for those types of consumable items. And then we would always say to people, if you like this, we’re launching a clean beauty line. And then we would say, because we know a great percentage of our audience are new parents, and they like clean and they want better for you. And they want earth friendly diapers and Nutritionals, and all of that toiletries, etc. We listen to the community, and we let the community inform our roadmap, because we knew we had basically a built in audience that was waiting for these things in a better for you affordable. The right palette and the right products that they were looking to not buy what they had grown up with.

Max Branstetter 16:04
I appreciate the crash course and all the acronyms because it saves me asking the question what each acronym is a sucker for that. Appreciate it. And then if you look, throughout your career after that, if you’ve taken a lot more effort to, you know, be a board member, be an advisor, like give back, share your knowledge, teach students, a little illusion, foreshadowing. But as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, how has it changed kind of the way you approach your day to day now that you are spending more time like advising these other companies? And also, you know, inspiring the next generation of business owners?

Tina Sharkey 16:41
It’s a great question, because as somebody who’s been a builder and operator, most of my career, having a portfolio life, where I’m context shifting, and not operating one thing, and doing it largely on my own versus leading a team, it’s given me a lot more flexibility. But it requires a different level of discipline and a different level of time management and a different level of rigor, because the machine is not pulling me in in the way that a big organization has like its own cadence and its own schedule and its own operating flow. So I now have to create that rigor. And it is definitely more challenging. So I really try and think about, you know, time blocks and time management as one of my top priorities in a way that probably wasn’t as rigorous because I was looking more at the company, p&l and the health of the team and the the strategic roadmap of what we were trying to accomplish. Whereas now my number one resource is time. And I have to manage it really well.

Max Branstetter 17:44
What’s the best way that you’ve gotten better at time management over the years?

Tina Sharkey 17:49
I don’t know that I have. It’s something that I would say is my biggest struggle is productivity in the context shifting. One thing is trying to make meetings shorter, so that I have time in between to prepare and to, you know, follow up and do the notes and the note taking, because I am the team as opposed to being the leader and having the team have those deliverables. Now I am the team. And so I have to make sure that I can context shipped in the right way.

Max Branstetter 18:22
Do you have like a game but I guess it’s like a post game plan for like, you know, minute after meetings over, like, what’s your plan for that to make sure that this stuff actually gels in your head, I’m,

Tina Sharkey 18:31
I’m a rigorous note taker, I use a lot of AI tools, I try and know when my most productive hours are. And I don’t try and create things. I’m not good at creating things in half hour blocks in between meetings. So I have to create my own blocks and schedule those blocks for time for creation, time for manifestation, whether it’s writing, you know, whether it’s creating a new lecture or creating a new talk, writing those types of things doesn’t happen in between. So I need to really do big time blocks for myself and not just let other people fill up my calendar. That’s there, too. It’s not mine. Exactly.

Max Branstetter 19:11
And sorry for that. No, but it’s true. Like, I feel like those half hours between meetings, it’s like it’s good for getting like little tasks done. But like if you’re trying to start a big hairy project, it’s just that it’s not going to work. But I am curious, you mentioned times that your most creative are most productive. Is there like a time of day that you’re like, This is my, my golden hour Tina’s golden hour? So

Tina Sharkey 19:33
great question. I think first and foremost, I need multiple hours. So it can’t be in the short blocks. Second of all, sometimes it’s even on days where I just and it’s very hard to create a day where I’m not doing other things. So unfortunately, it tends to be nights and weekends which I’m trying to shift because that’s just not fair to the other people in my life. It’s the key is whether it’s in the, I’d say the mornings are probably my best, much better than late afternoons, late afternoons I try and, you know, walk or you know, just get up, get away from my desk. And that’s when I do a lot of thinking. But then I have to turn that into execution.

Max Branstetter 20:20
And we’ll turn that into an ad. If you’d like the stories like Tina’s in this Wild Business Growth podcast, you will also love the Podcasting to the Max newsletter. That is where podcasting meets entrepreneurship and some of the worst puns you have ever heard or seen or read an email form actually comes to you every Thursday, short and sweet. And you can sign up at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Now, let’s wrap up in excellent fashion. So let’s execute some rapid-fire q&a. Are you ready for it?

Tina Sharkey 20:54
Oh, always ready. All right.

Max Branstetter 20:56
All right, Let’s Get Wild. So I’ve carved out an hour here for creative. And I’m just going. Alright, what is the biggest thing that surprised you about teaching college students?

Tina Sharkey 21:07
How much they didn’t know? You know, because I’ve always coached entrepreneurs, and I’ve coached board executives, board leaders, on many boards. So because I treat everyone I try and treat everyone the same biggest surprise was, how much retro there was in trying to fill them in on the things that they didn’t yet know.

Max Branstetter 21:28
Speaking of college students, so you are credited with being one of the pioneers of the term social media. Well, how did these words matriculate together for you?

Tina Sharkey 21:39
Ah, great question. Well, I like to make up language.

Max Branstetter 21:43
Same here.

Tina Sharkey 21:45
Social media, you know, I think I’ve always been a teacher. And so when we were creating I village, we were creating a framework for what kind of media we were creating, because ultimately, we were a media company, a digital media company. And so we said, well, there’s news media. And we know what that is, because we were creating conversations with advertisers, marketers and partners. There’s entertainment media, and we know what that is, and what the adjacencies are, and who wants to be there and be around that, then there’s transactional media, you know, media that’s associated with commerce and other things like that. And then there’s service media, which was the sweet spot of what I village was doing, and that’s recipes and lifestyle, and all the things that help you DIY, etc. And then there’s this new framework called social media, and social media, we’re not producing, we’re facilitating. And so the art of creating environments where you’re facilitating the lights are on someone’s home, it’s a clean, safe space. But the content itself is not being created by us. It’s social media. And so I put it in this framework of, you know, news, media information, media, transactional media, service media, and then social media. And that’s where the tonnage is, because those are conversations. Those are both asynchronous and synchronous. Those are co creations, all kinds of other things. And ultimately, we had to explain to marketers that they have to get comfortable in the role of facilitation not producing, and how could they come into these Well, in places where the lights were on, but there was some risk involved, potentially with adjacency with conversations they didn’t know. Or they didn’t understand what role they were going to play in those conversations. And so that was how I coined that at the time.

Max Branstetter 23:35
Oh, that’s awesome. Well, thank you for doing that. I think people need to be reminded to keep the social and keep the two way and friendly interaction there. But last one real quick, which Sesame Street iconic character were you most starstruck by?

Tina Sharkey 23:52
That’s a really hard question. I would say that, you know, when I grew up, and I wish I had the postcard that big word wrote me when I was like five that said that. So I wanted to be on the show that they, you know, unfortunately, I couldn’t be on the show. But I remember writing that and I remember it was a long postcard because Big Bird was really tall. And so that was not a standard size postcard. I have such a memory of that. So Big Bird is like, oh, my gosh, he’s the mom. But Grover is hilarious. And so the comedy of Grover is what I loved. And so I’m very starstruck by that because I love comedy. I love humor is one of the things that makes me me and you can ask anyone who knows me knows that, like, I laugh a lot, and I love to laugh. But then Elmo, Elmo was really ushering in that next generation Elmo wasn’t there when I was watching Sesame Street. And Elmo is so kind and so thoughtful and so inclusive, and yet silly and cuddly. So Elmo was awesome, but I can’t just pick one. I mean, Cookie Monster. I remember when I was hiring the team. meme, I took out an ad when people used to actually place ads in the newspaper in the classifieds for the job section. And the Sunday New York Times, I took out an ad that said, you know, must know the difference between a cookie and a Cookie Monster. And I thought, you know, what else? Could I ever write that and have that be something that was advertising for engineers? At the time, that was great, so I can pick one?

Max Branstetter 25:26
Well, they say you can’t pick your favorite children, and clearly can’t pick your favorite favorite Sesame Street characters, as well. But I appreciate so many iconic characters. And it was really cool that you did ultimately, live out your childhood dream of being on the show in some form. So, Tina, thank you so much. This has been awesome. I know. You can learn more at TinaSharkey.com. And last thing, Final Thoughts. It could be a quote or just one line to end with, or it could be a Grover impression, whatever you want. Send us home here.

Tina Sharkey 25:52
Okay, well, it’s not gonna be a Grover impression, but it will be aligned. You know, now, part of my portfolio life is I’m doing keynotes on things that I’m thinking about. And so the one that I’m thinking about right now is the DNA of modern brands. And so what I’m trying to do is inspire enterprises to think about the world of the stakeholders they live to serve. And so I will end with what I hope enterprises, small, medium, large, public, private, enterprise software, consumer brands to think about the framework of Thank you. We love you.

Max Branstetter 26:30
A framework we can all get behind. Tanks, Tina, as Prison Mike says, for coming on the podcast, sharing your incredible stories and insights. And thank you, Wild Listeners, Tanks, Wild Listeners, for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to Follow the Wild Business Growth podcast on your favorite podcast platform, as well as hit Subscribe on YouTube. YouTube is @MaxBranstetter for visual versions. You can also find us on Goodpods, where there are good podcasts and podcast recommendations. And for any help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com and sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter. That is where podcasting meets entrepreneurship and terrible puns/jokes/puns. And you can sign up at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Until next time, let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!