We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Bryn Carter-brown a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Bryn, appreciate you joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

When people first hear the name “What She Said” many immediately think of Michael from ‘The Office’ but the name actually came to fruition for a few reasons.

One was the fact of whenever my co-founder and I hear of great referrals from friends, there was a common phrase used, for example, – “Do you remember the therapist Sarah referred? She said she was so thoughtful and kind and really dove in with her on her trauma…” There was the commonality of “she said” this or “that’s what she said about so-and-so” and so when we thought about what name best fit how women refer others in their lives, what she said had such a strong fit.

On the other side – we like to be a bit cheeky. I actually have been a freelance writer for quite a while and in all the different companies/groups I have been a part of that focus around women, I have focused on flipping words and phrases that usually have been used in a derogatory manner against women to make them more complimentary and powerful towards women. We have an interview/podcast (soon) series called ‘Only Fans Of…’ where we interview women leaders and founders and business owners. We have a fireside monthly chat with myself and my co-founder Emily called ‘That Time Of The Month’ where we discuss our mission and the world and how we can keep supporting one another. You get the gist – but taking back these words and phrases within our company is one reason so many women resonate with what we are doing I think, they are also tired of how our society continues to downplay and dismiss women – and so here we are taking back a bit of our power through our words.

Bryn, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’ll start by saying – I wasn’t always a founder. I spent the majority of my 20’s in corporate jobs – working in advertising/marketing and copywriting and real estate. I openly admit now I never felt like I truly fit in with any of these positions so when the opportunity came to push myself to trying something on my own terms, I decided to take it.

When I turned 30 I kind of had the “ah-ha” moment that my passion had always been with helping the women in my close circles and in my community. While working I was also modeling and picking up freelance writing gigs – through this, I got to meet some of the most creative and inspiring women for which I felt truly lucky. One was my girl friend Shayla – an amazing stylist who styled me on a shoot. After some conversation we both realized how many women we knew in the creative fields in Denver (where I am located) who didn’t know one another but were constantly asking us both to connect them so we decided to try making a networking experience unlike the typical boring here’s-my-biz-card have a glass of wine networking events we were used to. We wanted it to be like hanging with your girlfriends on a Sunday afternoon while getting to shop and get a tattoo and have someone do your makeup. We called it Safeword and our first event, word of mouth only, brought in around 450 women.

From that experience, I decided it wasn’t just enough to have these quarterly meetups but also saw how many of these women were businesses owners really yearning to have a space/place to grow alongside other founders so I decided to build a women’s co-working and community space called Charley’s (Her Name Was Charley). I purposefully had the space designed by an all-female architect team and the interior space designed by a woman because I wanted the space to exude what I was trying to accomplish: a space that felt warm, inviting and safe.

Unfortunately, I opened my doors 9 months before Covid hit so, when that happened I made the hard decision to close my doors because even with the idea to pivot to online, the whole intention of the space was to be in the physical presence of other women to grow alongside personally and professionally.

I then took a much needed break (for 3 weeks let’s be honest once you have ideas flowing they never seem to stop) – but it was during that time I had a lot of women in my network reaching out asking me if I could support their new business endeavors. A lot of these women were being let go from their corporate jobs or were making the hard decision to stay home and take care of their families but had to still bring in income so were taking their skills and venturing out on their own. When I asked how I could support them they all said the same thing – referrals. Please refer me to your giant network. Well this got me thinking, and I started doing research. I started taking notes of how many of my friends texted for a referral during the week. I kept track of all the women’s groups I was a part of on socials and just how many women trusted the other women in the group to ask for referrals (it was hundreds of asks on the daily). It wasn’t surprising to see this – women have been referral databases for the longest time, for themselves, for the others in their lives – they find a good service person, they have that relationship for life.

But how the sharing is done currently is a nightmare – no one wants to have to go back to a post from 4 weeks ago and scroll for hours trying to find the dentist someone referred.

That’s when the idea to build tech to support the referrals (the consumers) to the amazing businesses. What She Said is the data driven community referral platform for women and non-binary owned businesses and their networks. For consumers, think of us as every woman’s little black book. And for the businesses, or women owned SMB’s (small to medium sized businesses) think of us as your home base online.

It’s more than technology, it’s a movement. The current referral system is broken and does more harm to businesses than good – we are trying to bring humanity back to how we do business by building a platform that supports both the consumers (whom we refer to as the businesses’ hype human) and the business (and the human behind it).

No one more star ratings.
No random strangers on the internet trying to tank your business.
No pay to play trying to find what you actually want and need.

Just refer who you love, have an inclusive community help you find what you need and every hard working business owner gets loved on by their customers and by us because running a business is hard enough and we want to make it easier all around.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

Ah the how we met story :)

I tell this story often to people but it just shows the authenticity behind Emily and I and the brand we are building.

So, at the same time I was throwing Safeword events, Emily was throwing badass women’s networking events too called The Feminine Collective with her friend. Now a lot of people immediately assume we were competition with one another but alas, that is never how we saw one another. In fact, I was always of the mindset that I hope in every city there are a ton of great events going on that cater to different humans where they feel comfortable holding space.

That being said, we actually had huge professional crushes on one another haha people constantly asked if we had met one another because we have similar demeanors and we had met a few times briefly and had supported one another’s events.

Right when Covid happened, Emily also had to shut down her event production company because, well, events were illegal. We had made plans to grab dinner…6 months out? Maybe longer? But it was after I had taken my hiatus and came back to Denver sitting on this idea.

Well we ended up getting dinner and after a few glasses of wine (all about honesty here) – we both asked each other what we were working on next. I told her the idea I had to build technology that supported referring women-owned businesses and she immediately said – ‘Oh my god! That’s so amazing, like how cool!’ etc. to which I replied, ‘right?!’

Next day, minus the wine, she texted me and said she meant what she had said at dinner – this idea really lit a fire in her and if I was open to it, she would like to join me in building this concept.

I was 1000% in and that is where it all began.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Emily and I are the only full-time employees on our team. We have a team of 10 incredibly smart, hard-working and passionate humans who constantly blow us away with how dedicated they are to our vision and how much each of them brings to the table. We are fully remote which means a lot of team management is self management – because most of the team work on other projects and with other clients, we try our best to have a weekly schedule that aligns with their schedules and keep it consistent so they know what to expect every week. Startup life can be tricky – and many days are not the same as the next but Emily and I can handle the craziness of the day-to-day and we work really hard to support our team as much as they support us and the community.

We start our weekly meetings with whole human check-ins – how are you doing, what are you working on this week and how can we (the team) support you? We have always said we want the team dynamic to feel like it truly belongs to the team – they run a lot of the meetings, they bring any and all ideas to the table on how to make the company grow and how to continue to help our community flourish and, they know we understand that everyone has crappy days and you don’t have to show up as someone you are not that day. Our society expects a lot out of us and demands we show up 100% day in and day out at work and the reality is, that isn’t life – Emily and I have found that giving our team the space to be truly themselves encourages them to do whatever they need to do for themselves and we support that.

What She Said has gotten to this point because of all of these incredible humans who want to be a part of this movement – and I couldn’t be for thankful or grateful for that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://whatshesaidinc.space/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whatshesaidinc/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/what-she-said-inc
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhatSheSaidInc

Image Credits

Halle Nicholas – Reah Agency
Betsi Ewing
Ajay – Miss Money Shot
Samantha Levin
Melanie Sanchez
Galina Pikheeva