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Steel Roses Podcast
Steel Roses is a podcast created for women by women. Social pressures for women are constant. Professionals, stay at home moms, working moms, we are here to tell you that you are not alone! This podcasts primary focus is providing real honest content shedding light on the daily struggles of women while also elevating women's voices.
All women are experiencing similar pressures and hurdles, and yet, no one is talking out in the open. If these topics continue to only exist as whispered conversations then we further permeate a culture of judgement and shame.
Join Jenny weekly as she discusses topics that effect women in a relatable, honest way.
Steel Roses Podcast
The Galatea Revolution, Building Blockbusters and Transforming Digital Storytelling
Emma's journey with Inkitt has revolutionized digital publishing by creating Galatea and Candy Jar, platforms that remove traditional gatekeepers and let reader engagement determine which stories succeed. Her team launched Galatea with a "start messy" approach, challenging conventional wisdom and creating new pathways for unknown authors to reach audiences.
• Joined Inkitt eight years ago, transitioning from publishing manager to Chief Innovation Officer
• Created Galatea after finding Amazon's publishing model limited their ability to connect with readers
• Built the initial Galatea app in just two weeks using screenshots of Google Sheets
• Galatea uses data-driven story optimization including A/B testing different storylines
• Developed Candy Jar as a vertical video platform that adapts popular Galatea stories into TV series
• Designed the app as a guilt-free escape for busy women seeking 30 minutes of enjoyment
• Emma crafted her unconventional career path by saying "yes" to opportunities and advocating for a role that matches her strengths
• The platform allows authors to publish chapter by chapter and get immediate reader feedback
Download Galatea on the App Store or Google Play Store today and discover stories that will captivate you.
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no-transcript. Joined Inket over eight years ago, initially working hands-on with emerging authors to help them navigate the publishing world. Her dedication to nurturing talent and creating supportive systems for writers laid the groundwork for her transition into product development, now the helm of Galatea. Along with Candy Jar, emma brings user-driven innovation to life, collaborating with engineers, designers and readers to transform storytelling through multimedia experiences. Her work continues to push boundaries in digital publishing, making stories more engaging and accessible for all.
Speaker 1:Emma, welcome to the podcast, thank you. Thank you so much for having me, so I want you to share your story with the listeners how Galatea came to be. But I also think that I want to gush for a second about Galatea, because the listeners might not be familiar. So for the listeners, I want to just give a background. Now for the guests that come onto the show, I'll get emails and I get a lot of queries and I have to research everybody and I always look at people up and I got this email and introducing Emma to me and in the email it mentions the Galatea app.
Speaker 1:Now, the Galatea app is like my I don't know how to I don't know how to phrase this right. It's like my personal little, like secret thing that I do at the end of the day, when the kids are in bed and my husband's asleep and I'm like I just want to unwind. What am I doing to do that? And I found myself immersed in this book app that I came across on Pinterest. Actually, now that I think about it, it was like an ad that popped up and it was, you know, very far from my usual day to day, like I'm in research and I do pharmaceuticals and everything.
Speaker 1:So I found Galatea and I was just totally hooked within like five minutes because of the stories on there and it just grabbed me and it held me and I couldn't stop. I actually had to cut myself off at one point. It was like Jenny, that's enough. So, emma, I just I wanted to say that I I'm so grateful that you guys developed this app, because it's like my little secret, like saying at the end of the day that like just is not anything to do with anything else I do, and it just brings me a great amount of pleasure reading it. So thank you for bringing it into the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love to hear that too. Like I speak to so many women that use Galatea, right, and it's just so fun to understand, like the place we have in their life and what an important place it is, and I think it's so easy on. Like you know, romance fiction on this app. It's easy for people to kind of discount it and be like, oh you know, it's just like fun, it's just nonsense, it's just smut or whatever they might think, but at the end of the day, it's like a really, really important part of escapism and just like disassociation from like the hard lives that these women lead, and it's kind of just like almost like self-care in a lot of ways, which I think is really cool, right.
Speaker 2:It's like I have a million things going on in my life. I'm so stressed out. I have, if I'm lucky, 30 minutes a day to myself. And this is how I spend those 30 minutes, so they can just like be so engrossed in the story and it's not overly complicated, it's simple, it's easy, it's fun. It's all the things that you're looking for in that little pocket of time you actually have to yourself. So I'm so happy that you were able to find that pocket.
Speaker 1:I can't even say enough about it, I really can't. So, emma, go ahead. I want you to just go ahead. Take, take lead here. You can let the listeners know I mean I would love for them to hear the story of Galatea, but anything else that you want them to know about yourself, and we can just kind of take it from there, cool yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I've been at Inkit for just over eight years now, and so when I joined, inkit is a platform, basically that, where anyone can upload a work of fiction and then we have an algorithm which is analyzing reading engagement and reading behavior. And the whole kind of mission behind Inkit which is, you know, the umbrella company that then has Galatea and Candy Jar beneath it is to remove, like, the bias and the subjectivity that exists in traditional publishing and knowing that, like at a big five publisher, in this day and age, you kind of need to know somebody or have an online following or have some kind of connection to even get through, kind of you know, the pipeline. And so we're really trying to create an ecosystem where there's no judgment, there's no bias, it's just like if your book is good and people like to read it, it gets published, right. And so when I joined Inkit, a platform was already functioning within that, but what we were doing was we were taking the top, you know, one to 2% of books from Inkit and then publishing them on Amazon, essentially acting as like an indie publisher from that point forward, but just wasn't working for us in a way where we felt like we were able to kind of scale in like a significant way, in a way where we could feel really comfortable and happy about the royalties we were passing back to authors. It felt like we were really, really confident that we had great stories and that Inka was doing its job of finding the stories, because when we would publish on Amazon, we get amazing reviews and five star ratings and the people that read it loved it.
Speaker 2:We were having a hard time with discovery and getting more eyeballs on it, and we really felt like what was blocking us from that kind of growth is just the fact that Amazon doesn't pass by customer data. Amazon owns those relationships and we wanted more control. We're like we need a way to recommend our new stories to these readers who we know we'd love them, and we need a way to, when they finish a book one, we need to tell them that there's a book two. And we just felt like we didn't have a lot of control in those moments and we wanted to be able to run performance marketing ads, but we need to have those customer insights to be able to do so, and so just felt like we were running into a wall a little bit with that model. And so Ali, who's our founder, um, came in one day. I was like, guys, today, full stop, we're no longer going to publish books on Amazon and we need to find a new way to sell our stories. Right, which you know.
Speaker 2:This was like, I believe, 20 ended 2017, beginning of 2018, and it felt like a huge ask. Right like, amazon is the place where people buy books, especially then, like today, if you look at the books category on like, the Google Play store, the apple store, um, there's like thousands of clones of galatea by now. But when we started, this wasn't a thing right. And so, yeah, basically, we're like, we have to figure this out. We have to find a way to like sell our story that we feel really confident in in an alternate way. And so, yeah, that's kind of was like the thought proposition that we were given um and myself and ali and a girl named Lauren who she actually is my cousin. She works on the content marketing team the three of us just kind of shut ourselves in a small little room. We were working in Berlin at the time. We're like, okay, how do we do this? Right?
Speaker 2:So I started by just doing a lot of research in how people were comfortable consuming fiction romance fiction specifically, right. So I was looking a lot into like mobile games where you have an avatar, for example, that you're taking to like their first day of college, or looked a lot into chat. Fiction was a really popular app back then, or like there was. It was kind of a movement. I don't know if you know, hooked was like the name of an app that was really popular in like 2018 or so.
Speaker 2:I was talking to, you know, like a showrunner that was the lead showrunner on the Young and the Restless for like 30 plus years. She was helping me understand kind of the craft of storytelling in a way that gets people coming back every day, right, that's repetition and retention. So I was just like kind of collecting as much information as I could from so many different sources and then figuring out how do we fit this into one product. So if, as you know, and then figuring out how do we fit this into one product. So if, as you know, you've used galatea, it's gamified in a certain way, right, like you feel, you feel when you end on the cliffhanger. A lot of that is the guidance from young and the restless it's very like that way.
Speaker 1:I have to. I have to interrupt you because because there has been so many nights where it's like one o'clock in the morning and I'm like, all right, jenny, just last chapter. And then you're going to bed and then, sure enough, at the end of that chapter there's a cliffhanger, and I'm like, oh my God, I get so upset. But then I'm like I know, I'm coming back tomorrow. Sorry, keep going. I knew I was gonna gush. I was like trying so hard to hold it.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, that's kind of the origin story is like we needed a way to sell our stories. We felt so confident in our stories and our authors and we're like these are stories that deserve to be seen and deserve to be read and we just didn't have enough access. So we're like we don't know how to create the success and like the ecosystem that exists, so let's build our own Right. And so we did it. It was also just like lots of borrowing and learning from different apps and products. So, you know, we had this countdown timer right that's counting down into the next chapter release. That was pulled because there was an app called Trivia HQ. I don't know if you remember this back in the day. That was just like live trivia contests and they had a countdown timer and that app was trending during the month. We decided to develop this. We're like, oh okay, we can borrow that concept. This. We're like, oh okay, we can borrow that concept. And then it was kind of just like mix matching things.
Speaker 2:I was spending like seven hours a day during those early days just speaking to users or potential users that I knew were going to like the content, to really understand what they needed and what they wanted out of a product and kind of like you know, like what they loved and hated about different products and genres and communities and formats and all of these things that essentially were just like leading up to Galatea, and we were moving really fast. We launched the kind of the beta version of Galatea on the app stores within two weeks. We went in a lot of different variations. You know the first version of the book. It was just a series of Google Sheets, screenshots. The only function the app had was just tapping through screenshot to screenshot, because we're like this is the fastest way to get it out and just see if people like it.
Speaker 2:Um, lauren, my cousin that I mentioned, she actually flew to australia and moved into the house of one of our authors just to be there every day and encourage her to keep writing. Because when we started this app, we only had one book and it wasn't even finished yet. Because we're like we didn't want to wait around until we had this perfect product or this perfect catalog, because we just wanted to move and learn and make sure there was an appetite for this. So everything we were doing was really really kind of like quick and fast and iterative. We didn't have a back-end for a product, so we'd made more than a million dollars.
Speaker 2:It was just like a series of google sheets that were making up this, this product. So it was very chaotic but very fun. Um, I have so many good memories of those like initial months when we were starting Galatea, of, just like you know, such shared purpose of all of us in the room and being like we feel like we're solving a problem here. Everyone we're speaking to really, really wants this. And yeah, that there's so much potential and, yeah, go for it.
Speaker 1:You know I want to comment on something. So I'm glad you actually told your story the way that you did just now, because there's this, this concept that I had started using, like when I started the podcast, because I'm like I've I professionally have done lots of broadcast production. I have a lot of broadcast in my background. But when I decided to do the podcast, I did I spent like about six months or so trying to figure it out at first, you know, doing all the research, like trying to figure out the terminology, what the platforms were like. You know, you do you have to do that legwork. And then I got to a certain point where I was like I got all the tech, I understand the tech, like I understand what I need to do here. I have to just go Like I'm not, I'm not ready by any means and I don't know what I'm going to say next week. But in this moment, if I don't record right now and just post an initial welcome episode, like when are you going to do it? Like when are you ever going to be ready?
Speaker 1:And what I heard you say was that you launched the app within two weeks. You didn't want to wait for perfection. That was starting messy and I've actually said this quite a bit to other folks and I learned it from, like I had taken this online workshop like a couple years back and the bottom line was basically like you're not gonna, don't wait for it to be perfect, just don't wait for that, just rip the bandaid off and go for it, because you're gonna learn as you go. If you wait for perfection, you might not actually ever get there, because you're always waiting for this other thing to get into place before you actually pull the trigger to do something. So the fact that you actually employed this and it was successful to me is something so important to hear, especially like from the entrepreneur perspective, because the entrepreneur life I have my son-in-law bless him starting his own business.
Speaker 1:I'm so proud of him and he and he's he's going for it Like he's starting messy and he's going for it and he's got his space and his office space and he's doing his thing and I keep encouraging him like you got to keep going, like it's going to. It's going to feel really scary and it's going to feel really uncomfortable, which I'm going to ask you about now. How frightening was that in the beginning to just let's just launch it and just see what happens had. I mean, I can only imagine the anxiety, but also like the endorphins that you guys were like running on to pull this through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and just quickly to touch on, like the idea of like just starting as well, before I get into like fears and anxieties and all of that, um, it's the exact same advice we always give to authors too. Right, it's just just do it. I think so many authors they have this idea of okay, I need to have a perfect structure, I need to have my first 30 chapters written, or I need to have the story arc, or I need to, I need to, I need to. It's like all you need to do is publish a chapter, right and on ink it. You don't need a full manuscript. You can write as you go, and so many authors will write and then get like feedback from users and then change the way they write. And so I think, like it's really important just to start. And that's kind of whenever I speak to authors about like, what was the hardest part, they say, like, starting with the hardest part, because they have all these fears and anxieties about like, am I going to be good enough? Am I going to be interesting enough? Are people going to hate it? Can I really be an author? And especially on Ink it, where it's really encouraged for newbies, right, like, we want this. We were looking for undiscovered talent, we're looking for people who have never written a word before, and so that's kind of the whole sense of the community is just giving that kind of comfortability and that access to people who are trying for the first time. So I think that's really really important and really good. Advice in general is just like always, just do something. Just do something, yeah.
Speaker 2:But circling back to the fears and anxieties and all those things, definitely there was, like you know, a sense of pressure and you know we were running out of money in the bank when this happened. Like we were like as a company, we're like okay, this is really really important time for us and I just don't think with our business model, we're going to make it. So we have to pivot, we have to go all in and we'll like this is it right? So there, so there definitely was a sense of I don't I don't think fear is the right word, but just a level of pressure, right. But also that pressure, like you said, it was really intoxicating and it was like this kind of like. It just felt like you were electric, like every time we were in this room, every time we were brainstorming.
Speaker 2:Every user we spoke to and we were getting feedback. It was like no-transcript, a concept they didn't want to be a part of and we felt really unwanted in that community. So then, once we started having these conversations and seeing that the readers did want something like this and seeing that there was a place for us and we could massively change just like publishing and kind of reading in general, that feeling kind of became a lot more powerful than any of the doubts or any of the you know, anxieties and I think even in the end, if, like, if this hadn't been such like a huge success as it has been, we still would have found our pocket. That still. Maybe it was more niche and I think this blew up in a great way. That has been really really monumental to like candy jar and other apps and all of the follow ons. But I think, yeah, it was just this, this, this essence and this feeling of we're doing something right and everyone was telling us that we were doing something right, so that made it really easy.
Speaker 1:I like that you you went with your gut there as what it's really. As you're talking, I'm like translating in my head, like and it and that's what it sounds like to me and I'm translating it also just based on, like, the experience I've had with developing this podcast and I'm like it sounds a lot. I'm sure there were dips along the way where you guys were like, what are we doing? Like I'm certain of it just from what you're saying, because I'm like, as you're talking, I'm thinking about how this podcast has developed. I was just talking to somebody the other day, a former colleague of mine, who is a writer. There's lots of authors that come on this show, like loads of them. So what I do want to say I love your platform for me personally, because this is like my little chocolate at the end of the day, like this, literally is what it is. This is my treat for myself, as you said, like it has nothing to do with anyone else and it's just like my little escape from everything else that I have to deal with. So for me as a woman, like, love it. As a mom, working mom, love it. I hands down, love it From a writer's perspective.
Speaker 1:You're opening up, as you said, a whole pathway for writers, and I've interviewed quite a few authors on this podcast and I always ask about that process Like what is it in the beginning? Like how are you publishing these books? A lot of folks are going through Amazon, but that was one of the things that I liked so much about your app was that I was reading and I remember being like this is an unknown. I remember reading and be like I feel like this is an unknown person, like this is so amazing Because, speaking from a creative perspective, when I was young, I was a creative writer for many, many years and I gave it up because at the time, you know this is you're talking about like the 90s.
Speaker 1:You know, before any of this was really like a thing, and I remember being like there's like no way, like you have to mail. I'm a no name person from New Jersey. I'm going to mail in my little book chapter to a publishing house in New York and someone's going to pick it up Like I don't think. So this is a. You've busted a door open for people to start like fine, tuning their craft and getting their names out there. I mean this is. It's such an amazing service to everybody.
Speaker 2:I'd love to. I'd love to share a story, if that's okay, but just like exactly what we're talking about. Right, and I think my favorite part of this job is like being able to have these conversations with authors and authors be like guess what, emma, I just quit my job, I'm a full-time author. Right, like when the royalties start pouring in and they're like this is my life now. This is something I dreamed of. I just never saw a path to get there and I'm doing it. And so I think a really great story is we have an author named Manjari. She was a reader on Galatea first, during COVID, a lot of people started installing Galatea. They were stuck at home, they were bored, they were whatever. She's from India. She was like I need something to do to occupy the time. So she installed Galatea and was just reading. So she spent about six months on the app as a reader and she's like I feel like I could do this, like I think I want to take a stab at writing one of these books. I've always enjoyed writing as a kid. I'm going to try. Right, so she goes on to Inkit. She like researched and found the path to get them to Galatea. The first step is to put your book onto Inkit. So in 2021, she wrote her book, called Kaylee, uploaded it to the Inkit platform Within like three months or so.
Speaker 2:We like decided, we like like flagged it as being a high potential story based on engagement and feedback and all of the things, and we moved it over to galatea. It did really well on galatea. We were able to then be like we were starting to develop our tv app, candy jar. Um, so we're like okay, this is looking really promising on galatea as well. Um, let's also fast track it to be produced as a tv series.
Speaker 2:So we wrote, wrote the script, we went into pre-production, all while also releasing like books two and three on the Galatea app, which was really cool because then it kind of had like a come up moment both in the book and on video. At the same time, we released it on Candy Jar and then it went huge. Right, it went quite viral. Lots of people are really loving the TV series. And now, as a final step, actually on June 5th, we're having a premiere event in Hollywood. We're doing a red carpet event. We've turned this vertical video into a horizontal full-length feature film, and this author literally started writing four years ago and now we're having this huge premiere event starring her.
Speaker 1:She's flying in from India with her brother and I think that timeline of literally having the courage to write your first word and having a full insanely cool it's amazing, though, too, because not just because of, like, the length of time there, but because this person genuinely, authentically put herself out there and because your group, because of the people that you have at your company, and because of the the message really is everyone can do this and if you're, you know, have the talent for it, and it can be pulled through to tv and movie. Like you don't have to engage with like shady people you don't have. It doesn't have to be an uncomfortable situation. You don't have to put your you know and the real and you know where my head is going here like you don't have to put yourself out there in a way that's like you're uncomfortable with. Like, if you're, you have the talent here and you're putting it on, ink it and then it gets picked up. I mean the it's. It's just.
Speaker 1:It's a truly amazing thing because it's also knocking down these barriers for people in rural areas that don't have access and don't you know, it's always been something that my cousin that used to podcast with me and I used to talk about was it's a lot of like who you know and you know it's, you know everybody who's up at the top, they all know each other, so they're all pulling from their own pools of talent and it's not reaching the rest of us. You are reaching the rest of us. You're giving us an opportunity to put our foot through the door and that's such an amazing thing. I can't believe you guys have built this, but I'm like I'm still kind of astounded that I'm sitting here talking with you. So I'm going to leave talking with you and go talk to my husband and be like I can't believe. I just interviewed this person I love that.
Speaker 1:It's really amazing. It really is. That's fantastic yeah.
Speaker 2:And when I first joined, right, like I was a publishing manager when I joined the company back in 2016. And I got to be the person that was sending out that email, right, and I was a person who was like, hey, guess what? Your story looks really good, we want to publish it. And have no idea who is sat on the other side of that computer, right? And so I would get responses back being like, yeah, that sounds really cool. I want to be like I'm 14, can my mom come? You're like, oh my gosh, yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:Or on the flip side, someone being like, yeah, I'm really interested, but I've been writing this manuscript for 30 years. I just decided to share it with the world. It's a whole never leather like kind of vulnerability. So I think like that got me so immediately bought into, like our vision and our mission of just like completely unknowns, like you said, and just people who are just have a love for writing and who don't have a traditional path there because they don't know anybody to get them there. And it's just completely unbiased, it's just strictly based on reader engagement and it's just like if readers love your story, you're going to have this opportunity. It's as simple as that.
Speaker 1:So if someone's listening and you know they're feeling like inspired by this and they're saying like I want to get involved, I'm just not quite sure, like, what to do here. Do they have to have like a fully developed book or manuscript or anything Like, or can they go? Is it like chapter by chapter, like how would it work exactly? And I'm kind of asking for myself to give me all the details.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. Just go to inkitcom, um, it will walk you through an onboarding experience. It will ask you about your author or reader or what you're there for. And yeah, you don't need any like manuscript, you don't need anything written down yet. You just start right.
Speaker 2:Um, I think there might be a minimum word count of 1500 words or so before you actually hit that publish button, just to make sure there's something there for a reader and also because you have, give a reader a little bit of time to start, you know, engaging with it for it to show up on the homepage and stuff like that, and so there, I think there is a minimum number of words Don't quote me on the 1500, but, like, once you have a certain number of words and it's not a lot then you can just start writing.
Speaker 2:And so many of our authors do this, like intentionally, where they'll write a few chapters and ask users for what they think and what their feedback is, and then, based on that feedback, they'll keep writing, and so it's kind of like a crowdsourced way of writing a novel, and so I think it gets people over the hump a lot of well, what if I make the wrong decision? Well then, just ask, right, like you have this opportunity to ask your readers what they think, and I know some of our like OG authors who have been with us for years, sometimes they'll be like so sick of their male lead character, for example, like I want this guy gone, I think I'm going to kill him off, but like I don't know if it's a good idea. So they'll ask the community right, and the community be like oh my gosh, don't, we're all still in love with him, and so then they have to kind of like pivot and be like okay. So I'm gonna keep kill him mentally, but I'm gonna keep writing because this is what I know my readers need.
Speaker 1:it's really cool, though because with that engagement, you're almost like making it like a choose your own adventure kind of thing, where it's not just like, oh, books are being released, like I mean, I, I have, I bought, I buy everybody's books who come on the podcast. So I have like like stacks of books all over the place and it would be interesting to be able to like read a couple chapters and be like, oh, I would love to see, like I just finished a romance series from one of my other authors that came on. She had a similar like she kind of. She wrote her book while she was in remission with cancer, while she was getting chemotherapy, and she did it as part of like her therapy, just like, oh, I'm just going to throw this out there.
Speaker 1:And then she was, she was ill, so she really wasn't paying attention. She just published it on Amazon and just like, let it, she didn't think anything of it. And then she started getting royalty checks and she was like what? And now she's published like, oh, my God, like I can't even I know I'm going to misquote the number but like loads of books. So that's, I love that. I love that for the users for Inket and for Galatea, and and then I want to hear more about the TV app so Candy Jar. So Candy Jar is based off of the books on Galatea, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have this pipeline right. We call it like our systematic approach to creating blockbusters, which is it starts with Inkit, where anyone can upload their work of fiction, and then moves to Galatea where we're then like testing the story and we actually like have a team called Story Intelligence who works with the authors to A-B test storylines, so like we'll test different intros and outros and just launch them to users and see what people respond to better and what retains people better. And so our stories are like kind of like very, very hyper-optimized. On Galatea, some of our top stories have had like a hundred plus different versions of it, just tweaking things, moving things around, etc. Um, then from there we'll do like the audiobook, which also exists on the galatea app, and now as a final step in that funnel is candy jar, which is now taking the same series and turning them into scripts and then producing them as tv series.
Speaker 2:Um, they're kind of like short, you know episodic. There's like an hour long, it's kind of like an episode, but it's it's a movie like. It's kind of like broken into like two minute episodes for an hour. Um, so it's vertical. We started shooting it vertical and that's been really well received. We've now started started shooting it both ways and coming very soon on candy jar we're gonna have the functionality like turn so you can watch it horizontal or vertical.
Speaker 2:But while we were learning it made sense to do it vertical because it's a lot cheaper to shoot vertical right right, so we can go and learn and figure out how to operate in this film and tv industry which we don't know much about. Like, I'm leading this project and it was completely new territory, right, I've been in publishing for you know. It was like seven years by the time I started with candy jar and I was like this is completely new, but let's go figure it out. So we were able to hire a couple people from production really figure out the system to like replicate these hits on candy jar. We launch a new show every single friday. So every friday there's a new show coming out on the candy jar app and they're all based on, yeah, the books that have done well on galatea.
Speaker 2:Currently, we've been focused more on contemporary because it's easier to film versus like werewolf and paranormal and all those things. We do have our first werewolf chasing kiara coming out on candy jar this summer and we'll see if there's appetite for that as well. Um, in this format and so, yeah, as part of that, it's kind of like the next step in this, this approach to creating blockbusters, right, I think, for an author. There's like kind of three big moments in an author's life, which is like the day you get your publishing deal, the day you hold your book in your hands and the day you watch your movie, and so it's really cool to be able to fulfill all of those moments for an author. And then, yeah, what we're doing on June 5th is now this, this big red carpet event. 500 people are coming. You know we're doing lots of activations at the theater, we're going to have a Q and A panel with the director and the actors and the author, and it's going to be really, really special. So that's kind of like Is that live?
Speaker 1:or can people like virtually watch this?
Speaker 2:It's live currently, I think we'll yeah, it's a good call Like, we're definitely going to have some footage of it, we're going to have a videographer there, we're going to film the Q&A, so we'll be sharing snippets of it, but it's all happening in real life well. So the original version that we shot vertical was, you know, an hour, was about 45 minutes of content. We've now fleshed out this story. It's now an hour and a half full feature length film. Um, you know, use the same director and the same key actors, but we're able to like, just like, make it a lot more full. We spent a lot more money on on the second version of it, so it's a story people will be familiar with, but it feels a lot fuller than the vertical version did.
Speaker 1:I love that You're like really like bringing us on the journey for the whole, like for anything that goes on to candy jar, like you're going to really like close the loop and bring the full, like the journey full circle. That's very cool. So when you started as a professional, did you imagine this Like, did you picture some? I have to ask that question Did you have like a vision Like, did you have a sense? Like I think at some point I will be doing work like this?
Speaker 2:Not at all. No, I think I had no idea what I wanted or what I was going to do, right, and I think, like when I graduated high school, I didn't really I didn't know what I wanted to do. I don't think most people know what they want to do, but you know, you have to choose a school and you have to kind of like figure out your path when you're 18 years old. And so I went to college and I actually ended up they called it jobbing out early. I got, I was doing an internship and I was offered a job at like an agency for an advertising agency. When I was 19 years old, I went to my professors and I was like, what do I do? Like this is a cool job offer. And they're like this is the kind of job offer you would want to have after you graduated. So just take it, you don't have to come to school, you just have to like turn in your assignments. So for the next couple of years I had to just do my assignments and I was working, you know, like 50 hours a week turning assignments. It was 19, um, but I have been ever since.
Speaker 2:But I think, because I was kind of like fast-tracked like that. I didn't really have time to think about what I actually wanted. I was just kind of like thrown into situations. I was just saying yes to a lot of things and you know, I found myself in a situation where I was like 21 years old, maybe 20 years old, I had an assistant who was 40 years old. I was looking around at like the people around me and being like there's women who have been here for 30 plus years and they're doing the same job I'm doing, and do I really want to have the same job in 30 years? Just like a bigger market or a bigger sense of responsibility. But it's just kind of like how did I get here? You know, it was a moment of like what am I doing? How did I get here? And so I think, like up until then, like I said, I always thought I had to have this plan. I always thought I had to have a roadmap to like do the next thing and figure out the next step. I think it got to that point. I was like screw the roadmap. I was like I think I just need to like kind of reset a little bit.
Speaker 2:So I actually left that job and I had a friend who was moving to New Zealand and so she was like, do you want to just come with me? And so she had made that offer when I was still working at the ad agency and I was like, no, I can't. That was my default, as I can't, I have this job. I have people relying on me, I can't. And then the more I started thinking about over the next couple weeks, I was like why can't I? Like I'm 20 years old, I do have a pretty cool opportunity right now, like what happens if I just blow it up right? So, talk to my parents, talk to to some friends. I was like I think I can do this. So I ended up quitting that job and then moving to New Zealand when I was 21 for a year and as part of that I just started saying yes to everything. I was like I think this was my first net. Yes was saying yes, I want to come to New Zealand. And I just became a yes man Right.
Speaker 2:So when I was in New Zealand, I was out for drinks with some friends, talking to a random group of strangers. A guy offered me a job in Fiji. I literally moved to Fiji three days later and managed a resort there for two months three months which I had no business doing, never managed a resort, but I said, yeah, sure I'll do it from there. After I was in Fiji and I came back to New Zealand, moved back to Canada I'm from Canada moved back to Canada for like a year and a half and then, yeah, moved to Toronto. Um, so I was in Cambridge and I moved to Toronto for like to move into a new condo with some friends and then was offered this job at Inkit. My cousin started about two months before I did, so she's like, hey, I'm gonna move to Berlin. I was like you know what? Why the hell not? Like I had to move into a new condo like three months previously.
Speaker 2:But I was like, okay, I'll do it so then I moved to Berlin and started working at Inkit, and then then, yeah, I think that everything within the company too I'm just always so excited to learn about different parts of the business and do new things that I say yes to everything.
Speaker 2:So I've worked on literally every single team across the entire company. I've led the product team, the content team, the engineering team for a while, which I should not have done, but like I was needed there in that moment, and so I kind of just learned through touching a lot of things. What I really like and what I'm good at is like these projects that have a hybrid of content and product and marketing. And so that was Galatea. Right, that was an amazing way for me to get to kind of stretch all of those muscles. And same with Candy Jar it's such a fun way to get to stretch all of those muscles. So I think, like never did I really picture this path, but I think, just as this not really thinking about it too much is what got me here.
Speaker 1:To be honest, you know, your, your story is very unique in the sense that not a lot of women are able to break out of the I should be doing this mold and including myself Like I I'm. I'm actually working on a chapter for a book that's going to get released later this year, but it's a, it's an anthology. It's made up of a lot of women like myself just coming together and producing a book, talking about our lives and how we got to like me and podcasting, for example. The podcast and hearing your story makes me very happy because I have little girls and I hope that you know, I I try to lead a lot by example and and I talk a lot with them. I'm very they're eight, but they like pretty, they're very, they're very communicative and I hope that they see the world like how you did that.
Speaker 1:You didn't feel like tied to I should do it a certain way. Um, yeah, I felt very much like I had to go corporate. That was the only thing that I knew. That was the only thing that was in my, my, my like, my view was like oh, you know, this is the only way I can make money is. I got to go corporate. My, my mind was very settled, Like I need to financially, like scale as much as I can, and so I did all these paths and and I I've been successful in my work and I actually I actually very much like what I do for a living. But I see that there could have been a different path.
Speaker 1:Now, and hearing your story, I'm like, oh my God, that sounds a little bit like how my path would have went, because there was so many instances of, like you know, before I was committed, before I was married, before I had kids, that there could have been an alternate way to go, and I want to highlight that as one one. Like that's amazing that you did this, because it is so unique. And I want to say, I want to highlight it too, because for the listeners, for anyone that's listening that hasn't really committed yet or finds themselves in a situation where you could say yes to something else, it's going to feel uncomfortable and scary, but think of where it could bring you. Like you never pictured you would be doing this and yet here you are.
Speaker 1:But this was brought to you because you were so open to all these other things and trying out all these other things, whereas, like, if someone just graduates high school, goes to college, gets the nine to five, like some people love it, some people are really happy with that, but there's a lot of us out there that are not happy with that and we want and we like crave this, like creative part to be able to just go and go with our instinct, and that's what you're doing and it's such an amazing thing. So I wanted to commend you for that, because not all of us do that. Many of us don't, and it's fantastic that you did that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, too, like it definitely wasn't like my initial gut reaction either, like I was kind of questioning myself for the first year I was doing this and be like, am I throwing it all away? Am I crazy, all of these things? But I was having so much fun. I was like I think for you to be really good at your career and your life and your partnerships and all the things you have to like what you're doing right, and so I think, like I can't imagine ever have taken a path where I'd be like happier in my day-to-day life, right, and I think this job feels like it was like carved out specifically for me. And even within Inkit, I think, like you know, I had this idea that to progress within this company I had to become a manager and I had to be a people manager and then manage them like these levels of hierarchy, that like that's the only way to grow, and I don't get as much joy out of the people management side of things, right, like I love getting my hands through, I love being like an individual contributor, and so I felt like I would always do really well on project and then suddenly be looking around and have like 10 direct reports and start losing bits of what I really liked. And so I was having conversations with Ali, our founder, our CEO of Inkit, and was, just, like you know, having these kind of conversations with him, and I think he's been really, really amazing at being like okay, let's find a path then that gets you up on leadership and gets you like a C-level position, but like that, you still get to do what you're good at and still get to do what's fun.
Speaker 2:And so now, as a chief innovation officer, it's kind of like I get to put together these little SWAT teams. I'm still working with a lot of people. I still like manage them in terms of like on a project level, and we all have a really shared purpose and we're running towards goals together. But, you know, I'm not as bogged down with like the day to day managerial responsibilities, and I think it was just asking and being open about what I liked. I think so many women specifically would just be like OK, this is what I was told to do, so I'm going to keep doing it Right. So I think it's really really important to be like, stay happy and if you feel like you're losing that and you're losing what drives you and losing that joy also just being candid about like, if you want me to be really good at my job, I want to be good at my job, you want me to be good at my job, let's make sure I'm excited to show up every day.
Speaker 1:Ingot itself sounds like a fantastic organization just from what you're saying to me, because one here I'm hearing you felt comfortable enough to raise your hand, which that's not a norm, by the way, like at all. So you felt comfortable enough to raise your hand and be like I don't really love this, I'd like to, I'd like to stay so I'd want to grow in this other area. And it sounds like the leadership was on board, which, again, very unique, and not that it's impossible for listeners I'm not saying it's impossible, but having that combination is important. So, like, if you are at a place where you don't feel comfortable to raise your hand, that might be a red flag to you to say like, hey, maybe you want to look at what you're doing right now. Like, perhaps think outside the box a little bit, but the fact that, emma, the fact that you raised your hand and said, like you know, I know where my strengths are, you have, you have such a strong sense of yourself, like well. So kudos to your parents, by the way. By the way, tell them I gave them a shout out because I try, I'm working really hard on my kids to make sure that they have that, because I want them to know that, because I went through my whole life.
Speaker 1:I was just telling another guest the other day I was 37 when I started to wake up and be like oh wait, I don't want to be a corporate robot. Hold on a second. Like it took me almost my entire adult life well, majority of my adult life to figure that point out. So I I just I need to commend you for that, because of that in itself is very difficult to do, and it's it. I think it's scary for a lot of us to like raise your hand and be like, hey, I'm not really like happy with how this is going. So this is, I mean, the story of Galatea, the story of Candy Jar. I mean you already know how I feel about it and now, like I don't know where my phone is because my kids took my thing, but I already was like I have to download Candy Jar. Now, like, where is it?
Speaker 2:I'll give you a subscription. Hit me up.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited for this. So you have Red Carpet event in early June Galatea so I want the listeners to hear this. So Galatea app, you can download that across your phone. Candy jar also app right, we can download that on our phones, exactly yep app store, google play store beautiful and listeners, I I have to really encourage you to to download galatea.
Speaker 1:If you're not ready for candy jar yet, like I need you to just download galatea, because almost immediately you get book recommendations and then like then and you're like in, that's it, like that's kind of it, and and I didn't know that I liked stories about werewolves and vampires so much, by the way, until I started reading the stories on the app, it was wild, it really was. The way that it sucked me in was like tremendous. So I really I want to thank you again for the app itself, but I mean bringing us through your story and the journey of how this all developed and came together. I us through your story and the journey of how this all developed and came together. I mean it really is inspiring for everybody. So thank you for sharing. Thank you, I had so much fun.
Speaker 1:Listeners, I'm going to link information in the episode description. So, emma, when we are done here, I want you to send over everything that you want me to link in. Guys, again, you can, as you're listening to this, open up the app store and download the app, because I'm telling you you're not going to regret it. I'm like, and you know I won't make recommendations unless I'm really like behind it, and this is like a big deal for me. So thank you so much for hanging out with us today. We will catch you on the next one, take care.
