On today’s episode, we’ve got a truly amazing guest, Divya Gugnani. She’s the CEO and Co-founder of Wander Beauty, CEO and Founder of 5 SENS, Founding Partner of Concept to Co, and—wait for it—a mom to two pre-teens AND a newborn. How does she do it all? You’re about to find out!
Divya shares so many gems on everything from feeding her family to trusting your intuition and making the most of each day. She’s refreshingly real about how she manages it all behind the scenes, and I know you’ll walk away with tons of practical advice.
🌟 The Power of Intuition
One of the key themes Divya discusses in this episode is the importance of trusting your intuition. Whether it's making a business decision or handling a personal matter, following your gut can often lead you down the right path. Divya shares how listening to that inner voice has guided her through some of her most pivotal moments.
“I’ve always trusted my gut, even when it didn’t make logical sense on paper. There were times when I felt strongly about a direction, and it turned out to be the best decision. Your intuition is there for a reason—listen to it.”
🏃♀️ Grit and Resilience
Divya also dives into the significance of grit and resilience in both entrepreneurship and motherhood. She talks about how staying motivated, even when things get tough, has been crucial to her success. Her perspective is a reminder that perseverance is key, no matter the challenges you face.
“There were days when I wanted to quit, when nothing seemed to go right. But it’s in those moments that grit kicks in. You push through because you know there’s something bigger at the end. Resilience isn’t just about bouncing back; it’s about moving forward.”
🧩 Finding Your Niche
Finding your niche is another critical aspect of Divya’s journey. She discusses how identifying and carving out a unique space in the market was instrumental in building her brand. For aspiring entrepreneurs, this is a vital step toward success.
“The market is crowded, but there’s always room for something different. I found my niche by focusing on the unmet needs of busy women like myself. When you truly understand your audience, you can create something that stands out.”
🗓️ Time Management Hacks
As someone who wears multiple hats, Divya offers practical time management tips that help her stay on top of her game. From setting priorities to delegating tasks, she shares her strategies for making the most of each day.
“Time is the one thing you can’t get back, so I’ve learned to be ruthless with it. I prioritize what’s important and let go of what’s not. Delegation is key—don’t try to do everything yourself. It’s okay to ask for help.”
🏡 The Reality of Support
Divya is refreshingly honest about the support system she relies on, both at home and at work. She emphasizes that having help is not only okay but necessary to manage her many roles. This transparency is a breath of fresh air for anyone trying to juggle it all.
“I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without a strong support system. At home, I have help with the kids, and at work, I have a team I trust. It’s not about being superwoman—it’s about being realistic and setting yourself up for success.”
📣 Marketing Yourself Effectively
When it comes to marketing yourself, Divya shares valuable advice on building confidence and crafting your personal brand. Whether you’re aiming for a promotion or launching a new venture, she explains how to present yourself in the best light.
“You have to believe in what you’re selling, especially when that’s yourself. Confidence comes from knowing your worth and communicating it clearly. Don’t be afraid to showcase your strengths—everyone else is doing it, and so should you.”
🧘♀️ Being Grounded
Finally, Divya talks about the importance of staying grounded amidst the chaos of life, work, and motherhood. She offers practical advice on how to maintain balance and keep yourself centered, no matter what life throws your way.
“Staying grounded is essential. For me, it’s about carving out moments of calm in a busy day. Whether it’s a quick meditation, a walk, or just a few deep breaths, find what grounds you and make it a priority. Balance isn’t a destination; it’s something you have to work on daily.”
As a mom who’s successfully navigated the challenges of entrepreneurship while raising a family, Divya’s unfiltered insights are going to inspire and empower you to take on your own challenges – be it at work or at home – with confidence.
Listen to the episode
Want bonus tools and takeaways?
Connect with Divya on Instagram here or LinkedIn here. Also, subscribe to the newsletter here.
Rather read the full interview than listen?
[00:00:00] You know, the dream of having it all a thriving career, an active social life, present time with your kids in adventures and travel, but how the F can we actually do it all? Welcome to the new modern mom podcast. I'm your host, Barbara Migdal, a former tech exec turned entrepreneur and mother of two. My superpower is creating order out of chaos, and I want to help ambitious moms feel enabled to do the same.In each episode, I'm interviewing VPs, C level executives, and founders to learn the real proven strategies they use to find work life fulfillment. Together, we're building the playbook for the new modern mom.
Hey, everyone. Today's episode features a truly special guest, Divya Gugnani. She's the Powerhouse CEO and co founder of Wander Beauty, CEO and founder of Five Cents, founding partner of Concept2Co, and on top of that, a mom to two preteens and a newborn. Before our recording, [00:01:00] I hadn't met Divya personally, but wow, after our conversation, I seriously want to be her best friend.
Divya is full of insights on everything from feeding her family and trusting your intuition to making the most of each day and investing in yourself. She's refreshingly open about how she manages it all behind the scenes, and I'm confident you'll come away with plenty of actionable advice.
Let's get started.
Welcome Divya. I am incredibly excited for our chat today. So am I. I'm so excited to be here. So Divya, today we are going to be talking about what we have to do in order to effectively cut through the chaos of motherhood and career. I think it is apparent in how you show up in work and life that you are an absolute powerhouse.
And I want to know how you've taken your professional superpowers and applied them to your personal life. We have no shortage of topics to talk about today, so I want to get straight into it. Can you please share for those of us who don't know you a [00:02:00] quick elevator pitch both personally and professionally?
Absolutely. So I am an entrepreneur, an investor, and a brand builder, and a mother of three. I started my career in investment banking and then Pivoted to private equity and venture capital, invested in late stage companies, invested in early stage companies, and then I've spent the majority of the last 20 plus years launching brands, building brands.
I'm a five time CEO and co founder and founder, and I love to spend time with my children and I'm super passionate about entrepreneurship. So motherhood and entrepreneurship are my two big passions in life. I can relate to that. You are a mom to three, a 12 year old, a 10 year old, and a four month old baby, you are currently the CEO and co founder of Wander Beauty, the founder and CEO of Five Cents, and a founding partner at the venture capital group Concept Co.
Wow, that's a lot. Can you set the stage for what [00:03:00] life looks like at the present moment? Give us the good, the bad, the ugly. I have one word to describe my life, busy. So it is packed every single day and the only way I can make all of those things work is by being highly organized. So my day to day is very scheduled, orchestrated.
There's not a lot of time that's kind of open and free. So I wake up in the morning. And I start my day with my meditation. I've been meditating since the seventh grade. I love it. It grounds me. It centers me. It allows me to tackle the challenges of the day. And I get busy working, cleaning up my inbox very early in the morning, taking a little bit of me time.
I then wake up my day. The youngest one, the baby, I nurse her in the morning and then I start all my video meetings. And I kind of work through the day and I have breaks scheduled for pumping, scheduled to be with the babies, scheduled in the afternoon to do homework with the kids when we're in the school year.
Right now we're in summer mode. So it's a little bit different, but I [00:04:00] essentially schedule everything. I schedule time to work. I schedule time to be with my children so that I can spend that quality time with them. And it doesn't like fall by the wayside. If things get hectic at work, I schedule time to invest in myself, which I think is the most important and best investment.
Anyone can make is to invest in themselves. So I schedule time to exercise, schedule time to read. I schedule time to do things that I need to do. And not everything happens every day, but I make it a priority and I kind of ebb and flow my schedule so that I can do the things that matter most to me in my life.
So I have a lot of questions on all of that we're going to get into, but to start, I'd love to touch a little bit on your recent move from New York to Miami. Thinking about a move like that with an established support system that you're leaving behind requires a lot of planning, adapting, resilience. How have you had to change your support system since you moved and with the [00:05:00] addition of a new baby?
Who makes up your village now? It is a big adjustment and I did zero planning This was a spur of the moment like spontaneous move. So I had been living in New York basically my whole life I grew up in Long Island. I lived in Manhattan after graduating Cornell and doing my undergraduate education first job at Goldman Sachs in New York City Basically carried on my career there for many years with a small break going to Boston to my masters at Harvard.
And I came back and I just always lived, worked and played in New York City. I had two of my older children in Manhattan as well. I raised them in the city and And during COVID, I just found it incredibly challenging to live there. I left Manhattan for a while, went to my house in Long Island,
managing a family and a career is hard and managing a household is a whole separate full time job. So I went back to Manhattan and I was in the city and I just felt I felt like the walls were coming in on me. I just didn't feel like New York was safe the way it used to [00:06:00] be. I didn't feel like my kids could enjoy the experience that they were having there.
And I owned a place in Miami and I came down here just to, for work for a few days because I needed to. And I was like, I love it here. The New York city stress melts off my body when I arrive, when my plane lands in Miami. And that's the best part. A conscious choice I made for myself and for my family for us to reset our priorities and what we were doing in our lives.
So to live a healthier lifestyle, to exercise more, to be outdoors more, to spend more quality time as a family. It was almost the fact that I had such a support system in New York and had extended relationships there that almost made me so busy and made me feel like I was pulled in so many directions Um, allowed me to make this conscious choice to move to Miami to then actually start from scratch and prioritize things in a different way and not have as many distractions and complications and commitments that I had in New York because I knew less people here.
I [00:07:00] had less. work commitments. I had less everything. And so it allowed me to actually prioritize my family and the things that are most important to me, like my health and my wellness. And I reset everything. So yes, I don't have the village that I have in New York city. I have built over the last four years, a great group of friends, a lot of entrepreneurs and wonderful, cherished relationships for my children and their friends and the families.
of those children that are friends with my, with my children. But at the end of the day, it's not the huge network that I had in New York. It's not the support system, but it was a conscious choice to actually have this time to really invest and double down on my health, my wellness, and my children.
That's such an interesting perspective and I love the concept of a reset because I think regardless if you have a massive support system or a small one, a lot of times it feels like life is just moving at such a high speed and you don't really have time to make those conscious decisions to reprioritize things in your life.
And so this was like you said, a [00:08:00] really fresh reset for you, which sounds like a good move. Yeah, I was working in Manhattan every day, work. Every day you go to work, then in the evening you have work commitments, then you have work events to go to, then you have social commitments, then you have so many friends that you've had.
I have college friends, I have business school friends, I have work colleagues. I was pulled in so many different directions that I didn't feel like I was giving myself the time and energy I deserved, and I was not giving my children the time and energy they deserved. And I felt like that is something I needed to reset badly.
I'm sure that wasn't an easy decision. And again, just setting up all of the infrastructure when you move is very difficult. And so tell me, what did you have to reset, childcare, schooling, household help, everything? So I, I had a place here, however, it was not suitable for my entire family to live. So I had to find a new home, which is a process of first renting, then buying something and going through that process.
I had to [00:09:00] obviously find new support at home, which is. Never easy because you want to find the right fit and you want to find someone that works well with your schedule. And just make new friends and build new relationships. And my kids were in new schools and that's a lot of adjustment. But I, I tell you, I think that it's an amazing experience because you go through it together.
My son is super excited. Super outgoing and social, and he made friends instantly and has built a great network here. My daughter is more introverted and less social, however, she's super happy here. And I just feel like overall, we spend more time here as a family together than we ever did in New York.
And so just having that quality time to be with them has been amazing. Um, phenomenal in so many ways. And just having all the things that make me happy, like swimming in the ocean makes me happy. Spending time at the beach makes me happy. Fills my cup. It fills their cup like being outdoors and having that sunlight and having that, that [00:10:00] outdoor time.
I didn't have all of that in New York City. Maybe other people do because their life is a little different than mine and their work schedule is a little different than mine. And so I feel that I work really well here. I've made a lot of great entrepreneurial relationships here. I get time to focus on my work without being distracted as well.
Amazing. And now you do have a new baby at home and I'm curious because a lot of couples kind of go through this roommate phase, right? After having a baby and are just kind of playing like the logistics and survival game. So how are you fitting in time with your partner now in the midst of juggling everything on your plate?
So it's so fascinating. Carl works a lot of hours. So if I think I have a busy schedule and I'm investing and running Wander Beauty day to day and have my passion project five cents, which I spend a little time on it as well. I. Genuinely admire how hard and how much he [00:11:00] does. So he's working a lot of days from seven o'clock in the morning to 11 o'clock at night, especially during the summer when people are taking vacations and.
Um, he is not available to be present on a daily basis due to his work commitments in terms of family life. But when he is present, like post five o'clock when he's home from the hospital or six o'clock, he's amazing. And on the weekend when he's not, he works weekends sometimes, but if he's not working a weekend, he's around and he's a hundred percent in tune and dedicated to the family, which makes him An amazing partnership.
No one can do anything alone. It takes a village. We all know that. So whether your support system is you're a single mom and you have family and friends and a caregiver that are helping you, or you're in a relationship and you have a partner that's helping you, we all need some sort of help. We can't do it alone.
You want to go fast, go alone. You want to go far, go together. And so. The long game is to just all pitch in and it really is not [00:12:00] just him. I think that having children with a big age gap actually was a blessing to me. The older two, the 12 year old and the 10 year old are very independent. I, I work a lot.
Carl works a lot. And so they learned to do a lot of things on their own. And be self sufficient. And I think that's a great lesson to learn. I have no shame in saying that my kids do a lot of things by themselves. And manage a lot of things on their own. And when my son wants to join a basketball league, he does the research to figure out which league he's joining, where it is, what needs to get done.
There are things that I literally don't have time to do. In my day to manage and they have learned to carve their own path and find their own way. And yes, the logistics of taking them there and making it happen and being present for their sports is very much my responsibility, but sometimes the research gets thrown on them and that's a good experience for them to learn, to find out things.
If they want to go somewhere, they research it and tell me where they want to go. If they want to go on a vacation, they do the same thing. So it's very [00:13:00] important to have that, that everybody's pitching in when everyone pitches in. No one person feels overloaded. So I feel like when Carl's present and around, he pitches in tremendously.
When the kids are home from school, they help me. If I have to get on a call, or I have something going on, my daughter will give her little sister a waddle. Or my son will pick her up and burp her. I just have An amazing support system within my immediate family. I don't have an extended family here. I don't have cousins.
I don't have uncles. I don't have aunts. My father passed away. I just have my mom and she's also not super physically active when it comes to the baby. She's healthy and well, but she's got a shoulder issue and she can't do kind of daily things that a grandmother could do with a baby, but she's around and she's present.
And even just having her energy and being able to talk to her, that mental support is super important. We underestimate. The fact that we need mental support and physical support. We need people to physically help us deal with the tasks and the responsibilities we have, but we also [00:14:00] need the mental support.
And having that mental human connection of having my mom came to visit me for a few months, having her around just to talk to was like 90 percent of my mental health was like, I survived by having someone to vent to. Absolutely. So I know you like to cook and even clean. So I just want to get granular here because I think those two things are so dreaded by so many people.
So talk to me very specifically, like how are you meal planning for your family? So I literally sit and make a list. At least once a week, sometimes twice a week, depending on how busy I am. And I figure out what meals I'm going to make for dinner, for lunch, for the kids.
Like my daughter still takes lunch from home for school because she doesn't like to eat school lunch. My son loves school lunch and is happy to spend all my money at school. Having two school lunches and snacks and cookies and whatever else he can get his hands on. And the baby is just having milk right now.
So she's [00:15:00] easy for the time being, but pretty soon she's going to be having solids and I'm going to be planning her meals as well. And Carl and I like to eat dinner at home pretty much almost every night. Together as a family and obviously lots of different palates and different tastes. My daughter loves lime chops.
My son loves shrimp My daughter won't touch shrimp. So I'm a short order chef in some ways. So I basically plan what I'm going to cook for a few days I make a comprehensive grocery list and I send that list and have someone Take care of it. Or I order it all online and my husband picks it up at curbside delivery.
So on his way home from the hospital, he'll just stop and pick up groceries and everything will be ready for him. And then I come home and I do a lot of the cooking and prepping and the meal planning and all that. And then I have someone who kind of clears up for us after dinner. And then the kids kind of help out in all of that too, because they need to pick up their plates.
If we all chip in, it's less work for everybody. Definitely. And personally, I love cooking, but at the end of the day, I'm exhausted and it's hard to find [00:16:00] joy in cooking. So how have you found joy in this still? Are you doing anything that makes it easier or simplifies it for you? Yes. I think I definitely I have basic food groups I want to attack and I really try and have a heavy fruit and vegetable based diet.
So I make sure the kids are eating fruit a few times a day. I'm eating fruit on an empty stomach. So this is an old Indian Ayurvedic belief that you should always have fruit on an empty stomach because you get the most vitamins and minerals and nutrients from it. And it's also pre digested in your mouth as you chew it so that the digestion is very simple and easy for your sister.
And so just. Not only is that great for your digestive system and your health, but also in terms of energy. So I need a lot of energy to get through what I need to get through in a day. My children need the same thing. They have sports, they have activities, they have school. And so giving them fruit on an empty stomach when they wake up first thing in the morning, and then when they come back from school, their snack is always [00:17:00] fruit on an empty stomach.
That really helps with the energy. Piece of the equation. So I think that going heavy on fruit, going heavy on vegetables, eating the rainbow, eating lots of different vegetables in lots of different ways is important. I mean, my kids literally only want to have Caesar salad and cucumber, but I'm constantly reinventing ways to put vegetables in what they normally eat.
Get them in more servings in any which way I can get them to try new things. I mean, I tried for years to try and get them to have sushi and now finally at 12 and 10, they love sushi as much as I do, but it took a long time. I think offering them different foods consistently has made them better eaters.
and has made them have better nutritional value in their diet. I also just, in general, stay away from processed food. I know that it's a crutch and as a busy mom, a lot of us find that's an easiest snack to give our kid or pack for lunch. And that's fine. That does happen. [00:18:00] This is part of life. We're all But I try my very best to minimize the amount of processed food that actually comes in the house, period.
So it sounds like you have kind of your set frameworks right on how you're organizing the meals for the day, the snacks for the day that make it a little bit easier. So I love the fruit concept. Obviously my kids eat nonstop fruit and I love fruit, but I hadn't heard that tip on the very first thing in the day on an empty stomach.
So I'm going to take that. Um, with me, it's also really good for their digestion because when you combine different elements, like if you, when you combine carbohydrates with fats or you combine carbohydrates with proteins, the digestion in your body slows down. So when you. Have them. When you eat protein alone, then the digestive juices in your stomach can attack that protein and digest it well, versus having it with a carb, which then slows down the digestion.
So it's like thinking about how you eat and how you combine your foods can also allow for optimal dis digestion and [00:19:00] better energy. I am loving this mini wellness lesson. I didn't know it was going to come out of today. Thank you. I do want to chat a little bit about the fact that you do have a new baby at home and as an entrepreneur there really isn't such thing as maternity leave, right?
And so I'm curious how your postpartum experience this time around has been different than your first two and specifically, what did you set up differently knowing from your past experiences to make this easier for you and easier of a transition? So it's wild how different my postpartum experiences have been.
When I had my son 12 years ago, I was working full time and I had just sold my company. To a large acquirer and I felt completely responsible to be at work and be present and I Basically, no time off. I was in the hospital for a few days, was home, and was back in the office. And [00:20:00] actually, I brought a nurse with me to work, and I was in the office with the newborn baby with a nurse working every day, which I don't think was a great idea on any level.
It was not a great idea, period. But at that time I felt that pressure. I felt that responsibility. I felt like I needed to be present. I had just sold my company. There was a lot of integration that had to happen. I felt I needed to be around and I just made it work in the way that I could make it work.
However, when I had my daughter, I did not go back into the office and I started working from home, which I think is an amazing thing that I did. So I'm still working, but I transitioned out of my role. at this large corporate company. And I decided to pursue my path back into being an entrepreneur. And I was working a lot and I was raising two kids under the age of two.
However, I was doing it on my own terms and that was incredible and amazing. So I was able to schedule calls around my schedule and not a corporate [00:21:00] schedule and meeting the demands of other people around me. And so I felt strongly that That experience, while chaotic of having a two year old and having a newborn at home and still working, was more manageable because I was doing it on my own terms.
And that was challenging, but rewarding. And I could nurse as much as I wanted. I would just put my earphones in. And back then we weren't doing Zoom calls. And so if I had in person meetings, then I would find coverage to have somebody watch the baby so that I could go and do a meeting. But those were rare.
And those were choices I was able to make, and I was able to control my destiny. However, when I had ARIA, I had this intention that now I have a well established, almost nine year old company at Wander Beauty. I should be able to take maternity leave and have an amazing leadership team to lean on. And just the way things worked out where we had some leadership changes, I ended up not being able to take a day.
And I ended up working through the whole thing and it was a choice and it was a choice that I made because I [00:22:00] felt it was needed. And I had told myself that, Hey, I'm going to get through this busy period and I will take time off and I will take that time off. Perhaps in the summer or in the fall when I have more bandwidth to do that.
So it hasn't happened yet. I had a baby in March and my plan is that I will take some leave and I will take that leave probably in the fall when things are in a better place where I actually can take that leave. And I struggled with that decision because I feel strongly that you have to lead by example.
And I wanted to also show my team that you can have a baby and you should take time off. Unfortunately, just the way things happened with the changes that we made. In our leadership team and the support that was needed for me, I wasn't able to do what I wanted to do at that time. However, I've kind of shifted it out.
And the reality is I also cut down my schedule and said, I'm going to take mission critical meetings only. And the rest I'm going to manage on my own. And I often take calls with my team and I'm nursing. And I'm like, this is what they see in the call. They're like, my head is like kind [00:23:00] of cracked up sideways while there's a baby underneath the camera where you don't see it.
Um, and you know, they've been incredibly amazing and supportive of this experience. And there are times where I have to shift things out because of feeding schedules or whatnot. And. And it's been wonderful. It's just been having a very strong, solid team and having their support has made this work experience very pleasurable.
I love to work, so I enjoy what I'm doing. And to me, it doesn't feel like work. So it is a choice that I've made. Have my postpartum experience be that I'm working. I feel like we have to touch on mom guilt because you kind of alluded to it when it comes to finding space for both personal loves your children, but professional passions.
Like you said, you also love your work. How have You've seen mom guilt appear in your life, and how has that changed as you've had multiple kids? So, it's ever present in my life. I feel that you can do everything, but you can't do it at once. When I'm at work, I'm present at work, and [00:24:00] I love what I do, and I feel like I'm doing a great job.
When I'm with my kids, literally my computer is away. My phone is away. My computer is away. I'm like sitting and making bracelets with my daughter for her business and he says accessories. Or I'm sitting and doing math homework with my son who skipped two years of math and I'm still sitting here trying to figure out his math homework.
So it's it's, it's. Really, I try to carve out time to dedicate to particular activities and focus on them because I find this notion of, often my kids get angry with me, which is completely, I'm being vulnerable and honest about it, is that whether they come home and they're having their snack and I'm sitting on my computer and trying to sit with them while they're having their snack, or they're eating dinner and I can't eat dinner at that moment because I have a Zoom meeting and whatever happens.
Last one on my schedule. I'm sitting with a computer like they get annoyed because they know that's not the right behavior. I When I'm eating at the table, we have no devices. And so there are times I need to break those rules because There's mission critical work that has [00:25:00] to get done and so I have to be on my phone or I'm answering a slack message or I'm on the computer, but in general, all of our meals that occur together as a family occur without any devices from anyone.
So, I even make my daughter take her Apple Watch off because I find it annoying that she keeps looking at her Apple Watch while we're eating. I think putting devices away while we're with our kids is so difficult, but there's so many benefits to it. And because then we're modeling that behavior also that we're like multitasking and we're not paying attention to them.
And then they think that's okay when they're doing their homework to be multitasking and not paying attention to their homework. So I tell them like when I'm working, I'm really focused on working. I closed the door in the home office and I'm on a zoom meeting and I'm present in that meeting just like I'm present with you.
I'm not on my phone. I'm not checking email while I'm talking to you. I'm engaged in this conversation with you. Do few things, but do them well. So that means that I wasn't multitasking and checking emails. So I'm going to have a hundred emails by the time we finished this conversation, but then I'm going to dedicate clear time to just do that and not do anything else.
[00:26:00] Definitely. I want to back up a little bit to your previous career you mentioned in the corporate environment. Thinking back to this time period, I want to talk about how you made that decision to leave. Personally, I went through a very similar decision making process and I know many people in the community have reached out to me being like, how did you make that decision?And so given that you went through a similar transition, I would love to know if you can share, what are three questions? You think you should be asking yourself before you move on from a corporate role to pursue a passion and a more entrepreneurial role? I think that you should vet the idea very well before you leave your established career to go jump into something.
Yes. Yes. Yes. You can move into a business and have it fail and learn a lot from it and can be a wonderful learning experience. But I say, if you've got a stable job and you've got benefits and you've got a work schedule that's normal and decent and you [00:27:00] decide to move into an entrepreneurial path, I would say heavily vet the idea, number one, before you do anything.
So make sure you do surveys. You get feedback on whatever your product or services that you're launching. Make sure you understand that you are filling a gap in the market and you are. innovating, not imitating what's out there. So put a rigorous testing process through your idea. Number one, number two, pitch that idea to your target market group and whatever that target market is and see what feedback you get to make sure that this vetted idea that you have actually has a customer group that is going to attach to that product or service.
So that I would say. And then three, I think that. only work on things that you're tremendously passionate about. And you can be tremendously passionate about your corporate job. I have had a corporate job before and been very passionate about what I was doing there. And so if you're excited and enjoying, and you feel every day, [00:28:00] you are learning and growing, make sure that whatever you're doing in your career is truly moving you in the right direction of learning and growth.
So if you're learning and growing and you're If you have a professional career and your corporate job and you are planning an entrepreneurial endeavor and you feel like you're going to learn and grow more, make that jump. But if you are unsure of that, then I would second guess it. So personal learning and growth I think is critical for our success in any role.
If you're going to do really well at something, you have to be learning and growing. Otherwise you're not going to do well at it and you're going to be passionate about it. Or find fulfillment, I think. Correct. There is, I feel, a hot debate right now on whether you should make a career decision within a year of having a baby, and I would love to get your take on your opinion here.
You should make decisions whenever they feel right to you. There's no right time. Was it a right time to move to [00:29:00] Miami? I have no idea. Should I have done it at the beginning of COVID versus the end of COVID? Who knows? You make decisions when they feel right to you and they feel right in your bones.
Always remember that your intuition and your gut never guide you the wrong way. And so sometimes we have a hard time tuning into our intuition and our gut. And often what I tell people to do is to just close your eyes. Where do you see yourself? Do you see yourself as an entrepreneur? Do you see yourself in a corporate job?
Where do you see yourself in five years? Where do you see yourself living? Where do you see yourself working? What are your goals for five and 10 years? And then almost work backwards to take the steps today to get there to that end process of that five and 10 year outcome. So after having Successful business venture after a successful business venture.
I need to know your secret sauce. And I want to dive into some of those inherent qualities that have made you successful. And [00:30:00] specifically you exude confidence and extremely well thought out communication. And it feels like so many women have bigger aspirations, whether that is in a corporate path or as an entrepreneur.
And you recently shared on social, you have this experience as a hiring manager for a role at Wander. And during the interview, you asked a candidate, why should I hire you? Yeah. Which. By the way, I, I love that question. I'm definitely going to steal that for my own interview playbook. But anyway, this got me thinking about how important it is for us to continuously work on marketing ourselves better.
So what are the three things you think are most important to get across when you're advocating for yourself, whether that is marketing? showing that you deserve a promotion or should be hired at a new company or pitching a brand new product because you want to go on your entrepreneur journey. So I think it's different in different contexts.
So I think [00:31:00] if you're interviewing for a job, I think that showing What you can do, how you can move the ball forward in the organization is very important. What are your unique skills and talents that don't exist in the organization that are going to make the pie bigger and make the opportunity of the business larger?
So any hiring manager can see how you coming into this role are going to incrementally drive the business forth. and drive it forward with your unique skills and talents. So I think that's the case that you need to make. When you think about yourself, you said as a role, as an entrepreneur, how you kind of think about your own growth.
I just think that success to me and advocating for yourself is built over time. I was an introverted, shy person who used to hide in the kitchen every single time my parents had a party. I never saw myself as the person who would [00:32:00] pitch to investors, raise angel money, raise venture money, raise private equity money, raise family office money, build and sell companies.
If you told me at eight years old that would be my life, I would have laughed hysterically because I was an introverted, shy person who had zero confidence. And I genuinely believe that there are two characteristics. that I haven't gone deep in, like that really have helped me. And then over time by demonstrating small incremental amounts of success, I've built confidence.
So confidence was built incrementally over time with each successful venture that I've had. And it's come long and hard way. I used to model behavior and just watch people. So my first job at Goldman Sachs, I used to just watch the manager directors pitch to clients. I used to watch them negotiate with clients.
I used to just be a sponge and soak it all up. So I think a hallmark of what is important as you're building [00:33:00] your life and your career to get that confidence is to be intellectually curious, I want to learn everything. I invest in myself, as I mentioned to you before, I invest in making sure I feel well, I have good energy, I have good mental acuity, and I'm constantly learning and growing.
I'm reading, listening to audio books, I'm networking, I'm meeting people. All of these growth experiences are are allowing me to grow and learn. And that intellectual curiosity is fueling it. So that's one piece. The other piece is sheer hard work. I am incredibly hardworking. And I don't know, there are a lot of people in this world that are very lucky and work very little and have achieved tremendous success.
I use my father as an example. My father never worked hard and he built a business and he was in the right place at the right time. And it did incredibly well. And then that kind of luck ran out. And that was kind of over. But for me, while I've had success and I've had failures and I've learned [00:34:00] from both of them incrementally, the ball in my career has moved forward because I've continued to work hard.
And I've continued to achieve new things in different ways. Sometimes your career stagnates if you don't have that inherent quality to work hard. Absolutely. And I think the intellectually curious piece as well, right? Because I think a lot of times you think those types of opportunities to learn are just going to kind of fall on your lap, but you have to either advocate to raise your hand at work to get those opportunities, or like you said, carve your own path, learn from others through audio books.
Thanks. Through blogs, through sub stacks, there's so many opportunities and it's kind of just building your own curriculum to get you there. So speaking of that, you also have carved a path in the VC world. And I feel like coming from a VC backed startup background myself, working at a VC always kind of felt like a dream role.
And I think becoming a partner at a [00:35:00] VC has a lot of different factors, right? Like relationships, having successful exits, but it also means you have thorough understanding of the space in general. So what resources would you recommend to anyone who's starting to think about becoming more knowledgeable about the investment space, whether that's a It's the VC route or just in general investing for financial growth.
It's a combination of two things. One, it's listening to podcasts. It's reading books. There's so many books out there on founders and growing businesses and how to invest in them and how to do deals and how to be a venture capitalist. There's a lot of resources online on YouTube. Podcasts, books. There's a wealth of knowledge out there where you can literally give yourselves an MBA education.
Today, content is available everywhere in many different platforms and you just have to take advantage of it. There's actually courses that are free at MIT and other universities where you can actually just take classes on investing, take classes on entrepreneurship and [00:36:00] understand the ecosystem. Truly, I think you learn from doing.
and from meeting people. So the more people you meet, the more people you network with, and the more experiences you gain from those conversations, the more you grow and learn in a specific area. So a lot of my experience as an investor has been from investing. So I did my first investment in the year 2000.
It's been 24 years. I've invested in 74 companies and I have Learn from all of those experiences. I have learned about what I look for in a founder, what deals work well for me, whether I do product based businesses or services or marketplaces or tech or healthcare, all the sectors and spaces where I like to invest in.
What is my philosophy every year for my investment fund? We spend time in December every year thinking through the areas and the intersection of where we want to invest. So all of these things are all built. And if you have [00:37:00] initiative, all the resources are there. And reaching out to people on LinkedIn and telling them, Hey, I would like to have a 15 minute coffee with you, or can you get on a 15 minute call?
And these are the three things I'd like to discuss with you. When you boil it down to something, a very clear, concise ask, people are more willing to help you. When you say, Hey, I'd like to get on the phone, like, About what? No one has time for that. But if you make it very clear about what you want to discuss in a limited time frame, you're more likely to get yeses when it comes to networking.
That's a great tip. I cannot wrap up our call today without going back to your schedule, which you shared in the very beginning. Your life seems like a game of extreme context switching. And I think many working moms. resonate with that. So you mentioned you schedule out your day, but I would love to get more specific.
Are you using specific apps to help you schedule? Are you using AI tools? Like how are you managing [00:38:00] your day through time management strategies? All Google calendar and to do lists, which I do either. You can use the Microsoft app, which I personally don't like. My husband loves it, but I use notes. And I literally, I have a list of things that I need to attack and it's all broken down.
So it's. per company. So what do I have to do at Wander every day, which is my most important day job of keeping women gorgeous on the go. What are the tasks that I need to do for my investment fund? What are the tasks I need to do in my personal life for myself? Then what are the tasks for the children?
And then what are the tasks of five cents, my fragrance brand, your mood bottled. And so I break down per category, what needs to get done. And I really don't give myself long lists of things to do because I can't get them done. I have too many meetings during the day to get long list done. I typically prioritize three things a day.
And say, what are the three things I can get done? So I'll give you a perfect example. Today, my son's immunization forms had to get delivered to a school. So I dealt with all the stuff for the doctor. I printed them out. I knew before I start work today, [00:39:00] the school opens at eight. I need to be there eight and drop off the forms.
And so that's done. And my daughter wants a new iPad. So I have to research that. I'm going to the Apple store. I have time blocked in my calendar after work is done to go to the Apple store, research what new iPad she's going to get so that I can order all of that. And then. Luckily, I have someone who will place that order for me.
So certain things that I need to do personally, I do them. Everything that doesn't need my physical touch is actually done by someone else, which is a very important lesson I've learned in growing my career. I spent many years of my life doing everything. And feeling like a martyr that like, why hire someone to do that when I can do it?
And why hire a virtual assistant? And X dollars per hour to do stuff that I can do. No, I need all of that help. I have three children and I have a career and I need all of the work that I do in a day to be work that actually has to be done by me. If it doesn't have to be done by me, then usually someone else does it.
So that's helpful. I also needed to go to school this morning cause I had to meet with a teacher otherwise, [00:40:00] and discuss my son's schedule. If I didn't need to do that, and it was just the forms that had to get dropped off, like I would have gotten someone else to drop off the forms. I think that goes back to setting up that support system, right?
It's so critical. You cannot do it all. And I mean, that's my fundamental belief is I do feel like you can have it all, not all at the same time, to go back to what you said previously, but you definitely cannot do it all. So thank you for being so transparent about that. I did notice as well that you often really lean into quotes or mantras for inspiration.
Yes. So I'm curious, at this season in your life, Four month old, you're postpartum, you're running businesses, you're managing two older children's schedules. Are there any that are really speaking to you that are getting you through day by day? So there's something that I read about no zero days. That really resonates with me as a mom of three kids and a career mom.[00:41:00]
So if I have a goal every day of getting some sort of physical activity, I make sure there's no zero day. So if I'm really super busy and I just don't have any time to exercise, so that 45 minute class is not happening or that 20 minute workout in the gym is not happening. That 15 minutes swimming is not happening.
Like it's not happening. I make sure it's a no zero day. I will literally do jumping jacks for a minute. I will do sit ups. I will do plank for one minute or two minutes. And to me, that's a no zero day. So I may not have met my full goal. It was not a zero. To make some incremental progress in your life, no matter what.
That's an incredible lesson and I think something that's so tangible for everybody to really see. Thank you. Take with them back at home. So thank you for sharing that. I love to read to my daughter That is something that I personally enjoy that bonding time of us My little baby is like starting to see pictures and images and be intrigued by her surroundings And [00:42:00] I love to read her a few books a day And so I try to do that in the morning or do that in the evening before she goes to bed and there are days Where I'm super busy and it does not happen So, hence, I tell myself no matter what, I'm like, I may not read four books or three books or two books, but if I get a few pages in, it's a no zero day for me.
I'm taking that back with me as well, thank you. As our last question, I want to ask you what you consider to be your professional superpower and how you've seen that show up in your personal and family life. It's a combination of two things. It is genuinely my work ethic. I, I can outwork anybody because I focus and get tremendous amount of things done.
And I think the other piece is my attitude. I think just having a positive attitude takes you very far in life. If you look at every challenge and every obstacle with the glass half full and have a good attitude about it, you can get through anything. [00:43:00] I have faced many challenges along the way. I recently had a complete fiasco traveling.
My husband and my two daughters and I were supposed to travel to New York. I'm an American citizen and went through TSA pre check with my two daughters. My husband's Canadian and he went in the priority line. We went in the TSA pre check. We got to the gate. They were like, ma'am, you need to board the plane.
You need to, I'm like, my husband's not here. I had been calling him for 20 minutes. I couldn't reach him. And they're like, no, you're getting on the plane. Cause I had to get on the plane. They gave a seat away, stand by to someone else. He did not make it on the plane. So here I am with an infant and a 10 year olds.
The luggage was checked under his name. He wasn't getting on the plane. He had the breast milk. It was beyond disaster. It's every mom's worst nightmare when you get on the plane and. You literally don't have milk for your child for a three hour journey and you're like Is this breastfeeding thing going to work out or not work out on this plane [00:44:00] ride?
Regardless, in the face of adversity, just having a positive attitude, I was like, I felt like crying and I did cry. So let's just throw that out there because human emotion is a real thing. However, I just had a good attitude with the rest of the way. I got my tears out of my system and I was like, okay, this is awful.
He didn't make it on the plane. Who knows if he's making it standby, which by the way, he didn't even make it stand by. He never made it to New York. And. He just, he was going to fly back the next day after Father's Day anyway, so he was. Like, I'm on standby, it didn't work out, he, he went back home. He then realized that I actually had the keys to the house, so he's locked out of the house.
Because he passed the bottles of breast milk through a flight attendant. He like, went there and was like, she needs the milk, so I'm like, okay, we will get it to her. So I got the milk. And I was like, okay, now I have the milk, and now I'm just gonna make the best of this. And I had a great plane ride with my daughter, and she's like, mom, I won't touch my iPad so I can help you the whole time.
And she did help me the whole time and we made the best of it. And just, you [00:45:00] can, if you have a good attitude, everything is just easier. That is so true. Divya, how can listeners connect with you after this episode? So I'm at DGugnani, D G U G N A N I on Instagram and on TikTok. Amazing. I absolutely loved our chat today.
Thank you. Me too.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the new modern mom podcast. I hope you can use the story shared today to simplify the chaos of career and motherhood. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe to this podcast. Give us a five star rating and leave a review. Please connect with me on LinkedIn and follow new modern mom on Instagram.
I know you're busy and I so appreciate your support for my mission to help more moms find work life fulfillment. And I have good news. The playbook doesn't end here. To get bonus strategies, tools, and takeaways from this guest, sign up for my newsletter at NewModernMom. com backslash subscribe. I [00:46:00] promise you'll be filing this under a must read.
Author
