Join The Queer Business Famm

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Welcome to the Business Gay podcast, where we talk about all things business, marketing and entrepreneurship. I’m your host, Calan Breckon, and on today’s episode, I have entrepreneur Cat Perez, Cat and partner Marianna Di Regolo, Cats Wife, co-founded Famm Together, a platform that makes it easy to discover and support hundreds of LGBTQ+ owned brands and service providers. Cat is the CEO of Famm and has over 20 years of experience in the product design and startup growth world, where their focus was on creating impactful solutions. Previously, Cat co-founded a tech startup leading product and design to build the number one private affordable care act enrollment platform, which helped over 15 million people access affordable healthcare coverage in the US. Cat’s passion lies in using design thinking to drive growth and innovation, particularly in the impact sector. I’m excited to talk about empowering LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs with Cat. So let’s jump in.

Hey, Cat. Welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

[00:01:50] Cat Perez: Good. How are you?

[00:01:51] Calan Breckon: Good. I’m so excited to jump in and dive in with you. Right before we, we jumped on the recording here, we were talking a little bit about what you’re doing with Famm, and I just. I love it and everything you’re bringing to it. So with that, how about we jump in first with what is Famm?

[00:02:07] Cat Perez: Yes. Yes. So Famm is a place, a website, where you can go and discover LGBTQ owned e commerce brands and mostly virtual service providers. And then we’ve got some Famm faves on there. So curated products that we love from queer on brands. And beyond that, we also have a component of storytelling. We really care deeply about telling the stories of these entrepreneurs and these founders and sharing that knowledge and the learnings with the rest of the community.

So there is a blog section where we do conduct interviews with a lot of the entrepreneurs.

[00:02:49] Calan Breckon: I love that. So, like we were saying just before, this has been attempted a number of times, there’s a numerous amount of kind of queer, I guess you could say, aggregates out there that kind of try and collect these and put them together so that they can support everybody. Why did you decide to create Famm, and what do you think is a little different from what you’re doing than to what’s been done in the past?

[00:03:16] Cat Perez: Yeah, totally fair question, I think, for Marianne and I. So Marianne is my co founder and also my life partner, my wife.

We have very specific professional backgrounds, and so for me, I have a background in product user experience design for about two decades now. And then my wife has experience in marketing and entrepreneurship as well.

We’re very visual people. We also are, we would consider ourselves older queers. Now, I won’t put a number out there because I don’t want to offend anybody, but we are, we are older, we’re not, you know, in our twenties anymore. And so we are very intentional about where we’re spending our money. So values alignment is important to us, which is why the storytelling component to Famm and sharing the stories of these entrepreneurs, not just listing a business, but going deeper is why we created Famm in the way that we did. And then the visual piece is like, I want to see what a brand’s about without having to click into multiple links or websites and have to do that extra work. Because we’re parents of a three year old now and we’re entrepreneurs and life, and we just don’t have, we don’t have time for that. So we are all about efficiency and being able to get a sense of a brand without having to do that extra work is why we’ve created these brand profiles, so to speak, or these kind of visual pages to give people a sense of just what the aesthetic or vibe of a business is before you kind of go into their website.

[00:04:56] Calan Breckon: I love that because my number one love is efficiency. Like, that is one of my core values. So that’s actually one of the things that I did notice when I was on the website is that there was like blog articles and other things that.

[00:05:09] Calan Breckon: You normally wouldn’t kind of find on.

[00:05:11] Calan Breckon: A website like this. And it did outline the story of, you know, who they were, what was going on, and why this business is so important. And I think that that’s actually really smart thing that you’ve done. I mean, I’m SEO background, so on an SEO side that also really benefits the website to get that traffic to.

[00:05:32] Calan Breckon: Build, because at the end of the.

[00:05:33] Calan Breckon: Day, if you’re not marketing it, nobody’s.

[00:05:34] Calan Breckon: Going to see it. Right.

[00:05:35] Calan Breckon: Which I think has been the problem in the past of people not being able to actually get eyeballs on this information, which is so important. So having those stories is so important. What, um.

When did you decide that it wasn’t just going to be the business stuff and that you needed to have the stories and how you were going to marry that together? Because I think that’s very important how you’re doing that, because it’s very intentional and it speaks volumes to kind of how the next generation is consuming.

[00:06:06] Cat Perez: Yeah. Um, there, so there are two things I want to talk about here. So I will say the first is prior to starting Famm in May of 2023. So about a year and a half ago, I was in tech and working at another startup as a founder and chief of products. But prior to that experience and in tech generally, there’s a lot of discussion around diversity, equity and inclusion. Belonging spaces that feel intentional and safe for marginalized people, intersectional folks like myself who are queer and PoC, especially even as you make it to kind of leadership roles. So I think one of the things that I want to touch on is just, that’s another reason why we started to kind of build what we built with Famm and also tell the stories of these entrepreneurs, because we wanted to bring more, more visibility, more business, honestly, more agency and more kind of power to queer entrepreneurs and maybe even the next generation of queer entrepreneurs.

So that’s like number one. And I’m trying to think what my second point was.

Going back to your question.

[00:07:27] Calan Breckon: Yeah, maybe I can jump in because you brought up your past and I wanted to ask, what lessons did you learn from your first tech startup that you’re now bringing into and benefiting Famm with?

[00:07:40] Cat Perez: Oh, that’s such a good question. Oh my gosh. Let me, let me think back to the first, my first pass out of startup as an entrepreneur.

I mean, I think the biggest thing that resonates with me, at least at this point in my career, is like the partner you choose to go if you choose a partner, if you’re not a solopreneur, but, you know, the co founder, so to speak, choice is such an important, important choice. It’s like the values alignment has to be there. I mean, I think that’s something that I’ve always come back to is just if you’re not on the same page there around how you’re thinking about a business and how you’re thinking about the community component of the business and the feels of a business. Like, for me, I’m a feeler for sure.

And so that’s just important to me as making money or, like, the bottom line or any of that.

And so what I’ve learned. Yeah. And entrepreneurship is, like, that’s. That’s going to make or break things. It just will like, and we’ve seen that play out in, you know, in tech and entrepreneurship.

So now, I mean, starting something with my wife, of course, has. Has its ups and downs, but I think because we know each other so well and respect each other and love each other, it actually gives us a bit of an advantage, honestly, in terms of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

[00:09:04] Calan Breckon: Okay. You know, you’re not. This isn’t the first, like, couple duo. I’ve had one other couple duo, and we dove in deep about working with your significant others. So I’m going to pull a little bit from when I interviewed them and how is it really like working with your wife and working, like, so full on together? And maybe let’s also go with what’s a major benefit that you have experienced or learning lessons you experienced through working with a partner that’s different than working with others?

[00:09:37] Cat Perez: Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest takeaway I personally have, at least from this venture with Mariana, is, like, understanding the boundaries of, you know, what hat I’m wearing at any given point in time. Am I wearing my spouse hat or am I wearing my founder hat or, like. And how does that work together? So, I think that’s kind of been a work in progress. It’s much easier said than done figuring out how to give each other grace and how to remember, at the end of the day, how to tackle certain things that might come up where we might disagree. Cause that’s gonna happen with anyone and. Yeah, so, I mean, I think that’s been. That’s been the biggest challenge, and it’s still. It’s still like a learning process for me personally.

But I think the beauty of our relationship is just we. We know why we’re doing what we’re doing. We don’t ever have to question that. We’re always on the same page about, you know, our plans for Famm or I, you know, the community component. There’s never any. Anything that’s off balance there between the both of us and our vision for what we’re trying to do with Famm.

[00:10:58] Calan Breckon: Is there any hard and fast rules you’ve developed since being in this partnership where you’re like, okay, we’ve learned this together. Now we have a rule about it.

[00:11:08] Cat Perez: Yeah, I mean, sometimes it’s like really simple stuff. Like, I feel like communication is always at the, at the core of all misunderstandings, but, yeah, just like, over communicating expectations, questions, intent, all the things that even come with any sort of relationship that you have with a human being.

I think what’s been interesting, too, is we both work from home, and I don’t know, is a three year old considered a toddler? I don’t even know.

[00:11:39] Calan Breckon: I’m one of those gay men who’s like, no kids. Where did it go? So I had wrong, but yeah, sure, I would call it a toddler, but.

[00:11:48] Cat Perez: Yeah, like, even having, you know, our kiddo here a couple times a week and, like, taking breaks from work and also just shutting it down when we need to shut it down. I’ve been, you know, in the startup space for so long that in the early days, I burnt myself out, like, I really did. I worked like 80 hours a week, nights, weekends, compromised all my friendships, relationships back in the day. And I’ve learned the hard way that you can’t do that. And for us, we are so intentional about what we put into Famm and also just creating hard and fast lines in the sand where we’re like, okay, we’re done with this. We’re taking a trip for the weekend.

We are not going to think about Famm or it’s time to spend time with our kiddo. Let’s shut down the computers, and we’ll get to this in the morning. So I think that’s been like a muscle I’ve learned to flex over the years, but, you know, through, through hard and fast lessons, for sure.

[00:12:48] Calan Breckon: I have to agree that, you know, you have to be careful as an entrepreneur not to burn yourself out. There’s, there, there is this old, not old mentality, but there’s this mentality that clearly definitely exists, especially in the tech bro vibes.

[00:13:02] Cat Perez: Yeah.

[00:13:02] Calan Breckon: Where, like, burning yourself out and going at all costs is like a badge of honor. And I think that that’s so doing a disservice to not only yourself, but doing a disservice to your business and the people around you, because it can create such a toxic environment when you’re not rested well, when you don’t feel good, when your brain is so in depth in something, you don’t have the perception to step back and kind of see the whole picture sometimes because you’re so involved.

[00:13:31] Cat Perez: Yeah.

[00:13:31] Calan Breckon: So it’s good that you said that, you know, that’s something important to you, because I know I have very clear times that I’m allowed. My entrepreneur hat is on during the week, Monday through Friday this time to 05:00 p.m. kind of a thing. And outside of those times, it’s also you need to be careful about training the other people around you to also respect those boundaries, especially when you have business partners and other things of being like, hey, no, weekends is weekends. Like, if you need to shoot off a text message or something so that you remember, cool, but don’t expect a conversation to start or emails or jumping on email or this, that, and the other. You need to have that breathing space so that you can show up more fully when you come and you’re doing all that.

[00:14:16] Cat Perez: Yeah.

[00:14:17] Calan Breckon: So in that.

I know that that’s a really great tip to take away for everybody, but do you have any other startup growth tactics that you’ve learned along the way that might help our listeners looking to start or grow their business?

[00:14:34] Cat Perez: Yeah, I mean, I think for us with Famm specifically, and it’s funny because I just had an advisor call with somebody in the tech space around growth and kind of where to focus, because I think a lot of folks bump up against this. Just focus is really hard, and prioritization is super hard, especially when you’re starting something new.

But I think for us, for Mariana and I, we knew, like, community was number one. I mean, I mentioned we have this perception of ourselves that we’re a bit older in the older queers, and so we had a desire to reconnect with community as well. And so when we started Famm, we thought about, you know, these interviews that we would do and wanting to meet these people and to also personally learn from them.

That has been, like, the foundation of what we’ve kind of done with Famm. And so I think that’s been our north Star, honestly, and, like, revenue and all that stuff would come, we would figure it out. But community was always number one, and it still is as we think about the future, a Famm and the next thing that we’re building.

So I would say, yeah, I mean, figuring out your north Star. And, like, I know a lot of folks give this advice, but it’s so powerful. It’s like your. Why or why? Why are you doing this? Why do you care? Why do you give a shit for us? Like, there are some really, like, strong, powerful, emotional experiences that we’ve gone through professionally, personally, where we’re doing what we’re doing with Famm and why we’re building community and why we’re leading with community in a, in an authentic and kind of real way, not in a like, you know, you mentioned earlier, there’s, there’s a lot of other folks who are building similar things and, you know, power to them. Like, we need all the frickin resources that we can get, honestly, as a queer community. So. And I think everybody brings a unique perspective. And, you know, there’s enough pie for everyone. We should be making, you know, as much pie as there, you know, for us. There aren’t, there isn’t enough representation in the business community for queers, especially queers of color.

And so we want to create a community in an environment where we collaborate, where we connect, where we support, where it’s not like cutthroat or gatekeeping. And that’s what we believe in, and that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. But that North Star is really, and your why is, like, really, really going to kind of help you get through times where you’re like, why am I doing this? This is like, such a hard day. The peaks and the valleys, and it’s what’s worth for us.

[00:17:34] Calan Breckon: Yeah, there is always going to be those days of like, why have I do this?

I like the, it’s kind of, it’s kind of like authentic and conscious capitalism approach, which I think people have tried to do, but I think especially right now in the space that the world is in right now, which we can all agree is a very strange place that we are right now.

I can hear queer voices getting a lot louder and a lot louder. And it’s kind of this two sided experience where on one side we want the conscious, authentic connection and that version of capitalism, because, you know, that’s the world we live in right now. It’s just reality. But then the other side of just like, fuck it, we’re here and we’re not taking shit anymore. Almost going back to the stonewall days of being like, okay, we kind of got some benefits, but now you’re trying to push back, and now we’re really going to just get loud and say, fuck you. And I hear a lot of the Gen Z is very. Those vibes, they’re like, uh, taking none of this anymore. And I love it.

[00:18:39] Cat Perez: Yes, I’m here for it.

[00:18:42] Calan Breckon: And so I love that you’re really spending time to invest that into your community that, yes, you’re growing a business, but you’re also growing a community. Because I think that’s truly, in the future, what businesses are going to be. It’s going to be communities of people, everybody benefiting together, because then more begets more begets more.

[00:19:01] Cat Perez: Yes. And we’re seeing a lot of that, too. We’re seeing solutions and businesses. I mean, that’s the one thing that was surprising in building. Honestly, building Famm for ourselves at the onset as a resource was like, wow, there are so many LGBTQ owned businesses, and unfortunately, a lot of those don’t make it past five years, just statistically. And I think that’s because a lot is stacked against them, honestly, at the end of the day, especially as we think about funding. Right.

But, you know, like, that’s. I think that’s been. That’s been something that was really surprising to us, just seeing how many folks in the community who are creating the solutions they’re building, the things that mainstream brands or spaces aren’t creating for them. And you’re seeing it in social media, too.

And I think that’s. That’s such a beautiful, necessary thing, especially during such polarizing and scary times for. For the community, not just in our country, but globally.

[00:20:07] Calan Breckon: Yeah, definitely in.

There is new data now starting to come out through startout.

[00:20:14] Cat Perez: Yeah.

[00:20:14] Calan Breckon: I had Brian on the podcast from StartOut talking about, you know, just the stats around entrepreneurship and queer entrepreneurship.

[00:20:20] Calan Breckon: And how little we actually get, but.

[00:20:22] Calan Breckon: How much we end up doing with it. And I like to think it’s because we were, like, just used to being scrappy. We’re like, well, nobody supports us anyway, so we’re just going to do it anyway. So we’re used. That mentality of just being like, we’re going to get there. We’re going to figure it out. And then organizations like the NGLCC that also, like, a lot of queer entrepreneurs don’t even know about. Like, I didn’t even know about that for so long. NGLCC up here in Canada, CGLCC, and that these ecosystems do exist. But even still, it’s such a tiny fraction of what exists for, you know, the world at large that it’s wild how much we actually can achieve with.

[00:20:59] Calan Breckon: So little in terms of resources for.

[00:21:02] Calan Breckon: Us in our community.

[00:21:03] Cat Perez: Yeah, exactly. And it’s actually really nice to see these accelerators and these funds were very specifically showing up for LGBTQ owned businesses because you go pitch your idea to your typical vc in Silicon Valley. They’re just not going to get it. They won’t understand, and they’re all about market share this, market share that. But, like, they just don’t understand the very unique problems that this community faces. And so it’s really nice to see these funds pop up as well.

[00:21:34] Calan Breckon: Yeah, I 100% agree with you on that.

It’s the old boys club of like, well, if this isn’t going to 100 times, why are you wasting my time? It’s just like, because the world needs more than just shareholder value to keep going. You can’t have shareholder value if you don’t have a world or a community to have this whole roundabout.

[00:21:56] Cat Perez: Yeah.

[00:21:56] Calan Breckon: All right, I got one more big question for you before we head off here. At what rate? Because we’ve been talking about kind of this balance and stuff. At what rate is it too slow or too fast of growth that you are giving yourself that grace to play with?

[00:22:13] Cat Perez: Yeah, it really depends on your circumstances, honestly. I mean, I’ll start with just, like, our specific situation, because everybody’s is different, but we’re completely bootstrapped. We have not taken any sort of funding. We’re not currently fundraising. So we have our own personal kind of budget for this project and this effort, and we have milestones in place in terms of what will warrant kind of the next phase of Famm.

And so a lot of that is. Has that money, right? And that funding, that self funding, has come from working in tech. It’s come from many years of working in that industry.

As someone who was the very first person in my entire extended Fammily to go to college and get a degree and grew up low income, you know, like, I have acquired this privileged over time and over lots of hard work, of course.

So, I don’t know. Like, for us, like, we bump up against this all the time. Too fast, too slow for us. We’ve got a budget. We’re bootstrapped. We’ll see what happens, you know, and then we’ll figure out next steps. If we need to go raise money, then we’ll go raise money. If we decide that it’s just not sustainable, then we. You know, we might call it. Ideally, that doesn’t happen. Ideally, what happens is, especially this next phase of FAMM, which is the mobile app for LGBTQ professionals, FAMM Connect, which is launching in two short months.

Ideally, that will start to help us grow faster than we have with just the website, because now we’re focused on the connection piece, which honestly, organically showed up in all these conversations we had with these entrepreneurs. There were just natural requests for us to connect so and so to this founder for a partnership or, you know, asking if somebody in our network would be interested in talking to them about, you know, a seed round, etcetera. So a lot of this was just happening organically, where people wanted to connect with each other in the community professionally.

So our plan for growth is, like, build this up, focus on the connection, and see what happens. But we have the privilege of being able to bootstrap. Right. And so that determines the pace for us.

And I think for a lot of other folks, it just depends. I know that that’s such a. It’s not a great answer, but it really does depend on the resources that you have. Right. That will inform, like, how fast, how slow to go.

I think I’ve always approached things. It’s like, move fast, ship fast, learn fast, which I think still applies in some ways. But I think there’s a lot of discussion in the product community, in the product world about actually intentionally shipping products and avoiding the MVP, the minimum viable product, and going for the ideal user experience. And because we’re building for the community, safety, intention, all of that is so important. Like, you cannot mess that up, especially with our community. Yeah, no, you can’t. So, like, we’re building at the speed that we’re building, and, you know, if we don’t ship in November, then we don’t ship in November. Right. Because we want to be really thoughtful about this release. But it just depends.

[00:25:58] Calan Breckon: Definitely. No, it’s all. It’s a totally valid answer. What about, um. Okay, last. Last question. What about thoughts on an exit? Is this kind of the kind of project that you just kind of keep going and you enjoy for life? Or is this, like, one day you could sell to some kind of big company that wants to continue this growth and support and build that queerness into their ecosystem?

[00:26:22] Cat Perez: Oh, that’s such a good question.

It’s such a good question.

I would say that that would be nice because, you know, we can’t work forever, obviously, but I would, you know, as I’ve been operating in the past decade of my career and as Mariana and I have both been operating via values, like leading with values first, no matter what company we’re working for, who are working with, you know, just like, picking your investors. Right? You have to pick people who you’re aligned with, or trouble will come up later down the road. And so for me, yeah, an exit would be nice. It would be nice to retire and to support like the rest of my Fammily, but, you know, that person would really have to not fuck it up.

[00:27:19] Calan Breckon: It has to be very.

It has to be very aligned.

[00:27:23] Cat Perez: Yeah.

[00:27:24] Calan Breckon: Yeah. Energies, business, all of it it have to be like kind of the perfect partnership.

[00:27:28] Cat Perez: Yeah.

[00:27:29] Calan Breckon: Yeah, definitely.

[00:27:29] Calan Breckon: I hear that.

[00:27:30] Calan Breckon: I hear those vibes. This has been lovely conversation. Thank you so much for joining me. Where can folks find out more about you and Famm?

[00:27:39] Cat Perez: Yeah, you can visit HeyFamm.com that’s our website right now. You could also sign up for the waitlist for Famm Connect, the mobile app for queer professional networking launching this November on our website as well.

Yeah, you can find us on Instagram. Hey Famm two Ms magical.

[00:28:01] Calan Breckon: I’ll make sure I have all those links in the show notes for anybody who’s interested in checking out more. Thank you so much for taking the time today, Cat. I love to get to know about Famm and chatting with you.

[00:28:11] Cat Perez: Hey, thank you so much.

[00:28:13] Calan Breckon: Be sure to head on over to HeyFamm.Com with two m’s to find all those amazing queer entrepreneur businesses that HeyFamm supports. Thanks for tuning in today. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button. And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, I would love a star rating from you. The business Gay podcast is written, produced and edited by me, Calan Breckon. That’s it for today. Peace, Love, Rainbows.