Female Founders: Joelle Flynn of FunkkOFF! On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Celebrate little victories! We’re always looking forward towards the big goals and celebrating those victories. Take time to find 1 victory a day and celebrate it! It might be a great email you received, some recognition you’ve received or an unexpectedly positive zoom call with a new connection. Celebrate those little victories along the way!
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Joelle Flynn.
Since she was 14, Joelle has been exploring interesting ventures in light of her entrepreneurial spirit. After earning her degree in consumer economics, Joelle became the youngest stockbroker at Bank of America. She co-founded, built and sold a FinTech company, co-founded a non-profit in Orange County that empowers young girls to discover their limitless potential, and is now doing the same for people everywhere with her patented and trademarked invention, FunkkOFF!®
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
Absolutely! My “backstory” and career path are very simple: I am a lifelong Entrepreneur. I started working at the age of 14 ½ on commission selling clothes and paid my way through college. At 22, I became a stockbroker for a decade and managed $350MM in assets I hunted down. I also founded and sold a FinTech company, dabbled in real estate and started a nonprofit to name a few ventures. Bringing us today: I needed a product on the market that was not available, so I invented it, multi-patented and trademarked it! FunkkOFF!® Inc.’s revolutionary, flagship product, FunkkOFF! TeethRefreshers®, finally hit the market in July of 2021!
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
This question is a hard one to answer and I rarely get stumped! Every day is interesting! Hmmm… I would have to say the most interesting story that has happened since I began leading my company is that a casting director hunted me down and asked me to consider being a part of a new reality show based on entrepreneurs with great ideas that invented a new consumer product.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I’ve spelled my own company’s name wrong many times! FunkkOFF!® Inc. can be tricky to type!
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
There are two women!! The first is my Mom! My Mom was the greatest Entrepreneur in my little eyes growing up and still is today. She built and ran her own real estate company in a time where women simply did not. She faced so many barriers and I watched her hurdle over them one at a time. She always told us girls, “You can be ANYONE you want to be in this world. Your potential is unlimited!” The 2nd is Sonia Hounsell of course! Sonia is my lifelong friend from 7th grade and Co-Founder of FunkkOFF!® Inc. Sonia is an amazing business partner to help me navigate our company through. Sonia has every quality and more that you would want in a partner. She is supportive, incredibly hard working, intelligent, kind, creative, fun, award-winning brand marketer, forward-thinking, in sync, thinks outside of the box and is a great plate-spinner every day! I am grateful for these two women for these reasons and many, many more!
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
Now we’re talking! It’s my “WHY”. Empowering women starts with providing resources, equally, to women and men and changing the way that business and funding are taking place. Did you know that only 2% of funding dollars go to women-led companies? Here. Yet, almost half of the world’s entrepreneurs are women? Here. Let’s change that now, please!
So, the question really is this is not what is holding back women from founding companies, but rather, why are there so many funding and professional barriers to entry for women founding their own companies?
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
Learning what you can achieve professionally starts at a young age. If you hear about, learn from, and see someone like you rising to entrepreneurship, you follow. When I grew up, most of my schoolbooks talked about the leaders that were almost always male. My bosses and fellow stockbrokers were almost all male.
My “WHY” is to create Entrepreneurial centers for high school girls where they can learn skills necessary to be the founders of tomorrow!
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
Listen, I have 2 daughters and a son. I want them ALL to be founders and wake up doing what they love on their own terms! There are some traits, however, that I believe women naturally possess more often than men and that’s why more women should become founders!
(In no particular order because these usually occur at the same time for women!): Multi-tasking, problem solving, empathic, communicative, decisive, forward-looking, gracious, empowering, agile and the best list-makers in the world! Have you ever been to a circus and watched a professional plate-spinner?
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
Great question. Shows like Shark Tank have made Entrepreneurship look glamorized and as easy. All you need is one, great idea and then you simply get funded on TV by a Shark! Voila! Since 2010 when I came up with my idea for FunkkOFF! TeethRefreshers®, most responses I hear are, “You should be on Shark Tank!” Building a new company, a new brand with a new product is just incredibly hard and time consuming. I’ve heard it been said that it takes a good 20 years to have an “overnight success”.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
I believe what you are asking here is if everyone is cut out to be a founder AND a leader. I believe everyone has the potential to be a founder of something — an idea, a product, a business. But, I do not believe that everyone is cut out to lead.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Outsource Early. As an Entrepreneur and Founder, I thought I had to have my little fingers on everything and every decision. You don’t. You will burnout. You need to find good business partners to work with. Ease off the reigns and let them help you achieve your goals.
Finding good business partners is hard! It’s like you’re dating a company most times. Their website looks good, they seem professional and capable of helping you, so you hit it off and start dating! Halfway through the courtship, you realize that they cannot deliver on your goals that you mutually agreed upon and you have to go back to the dating pool! It can be not only frustrating but also a huge stall in momentum for your business. Have a short trial period with review time for all important partners you bring on and always have other options to consider as you grow.
Be ready to get punched in the face several times a year. Nothing ever, ever, EVER goes as planned. And, the punches REALLY hurt! COVID is a great example of this for everyone. But, if you really look back at how you think a call would go, how a presentation would be received or how you think a business relationship would grow — nothing every goes exactly as planned. Expect the unexpected and just lean in knowing it’s coming and get back up!
Slow down to go fast. I always thought it was speeding to market and getting there faster than your competitors were the only ways to achieving success. I am most creative and successful when I take time away from my computer to go for a run, meditate or journal the process through my next steps. Making important decisions in a company are almost always worth a pause and a slower pace to work through a decision. This time spent will be the catalyst to excel you farther and faster into your company’s future success!
Celebrate little victories! We’re always looking forward towards the big goals and celebrating those victories. Take time to find 1 victory a day and celebrate it! It might be a great email you received, some recognition you’ve received or an unexpectedly positive zoom call with a new connection. Celebrate those little victories along the way!
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
FunkkOFF!® Inc. gives back to a Girls on the Run Orange County (GOTROC), a nonprofit I helped form that empowers young girls to recognize and find their own strengths. It’s an amazing after school program for girls in grades 3rd-8th which teaches social, emotional, physical, and behavioral skills to successfully navigate life experiences.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Move 5 chess pieces a day towards your goals. 5 emails, 5 phone calls, 5 goals written down, 5 visualizations of what you hope to achieve, 5 notes of gratitude for someone who helped you get where you are, 5 minutes of meditation for yourself to figure out your next step. Just move 5 chess pieces a day.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I feel very blessed to be able to talk with you! Thank you for this opportunity. Sara Blakely, of course! Sara has been my inspiration from day 1. She created a product that she needed but wasn’t in the marketplace. She not only invented her own product but Sara patented it herself! She created a new lane, a new category, and did it while selling fax machines during the day to feed her company, Spanx. Sara went up against a male-dominated industry and in 2012 became the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire!! Sara built her company on grit and grace and with one, brilliant idea and a LOT of hustle!
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this
