Editor’s Note: This transcript was created using AI transcription and formatting tools. While we’ve reviewed it for accuracy, some errors may remain. If anything seems unclear, we recommend referring back to the episode above.
Episode Trailer
“People that succeed ultimately just persevered, didn’t give up, and didn’t take no for an answer. Of course there are many other factors—it gets complicated, I understand that—but I think one thing is you just have to keep going.”
“Just do it. I know that picture looks different for everyone, but just freaking do it. Once I made that choice and knew I was going to stick to it and I was like ‘okay this is it, like I’m doing the thing,’ then you just run with it.”
“I like control, I like predictability, I like to know what’s going to happen. I have also tried to appreciate the randomness and the unpredictability and just be okay living with that, and I’m getting better.”
“Take the risk and step up to the plate, especially if you’re in a room or a company or an industry full of males mostly. You’ve got to put yourself out there, and I found it every time to be worth it.”
“Lean on your network, ask for help. People are amazing, they’re very generous, and so I appreciate that so much. And you know, then you try and give it back to others too. I do love chatting to people—if you’re listening, feel free to reach out because I’m passionate about these topics.”
Introduction
Welcome to another episode of the Women in CRO series by VWO podcast. This series is an ode to the contribution of women in the CRO industry.
Before we speak to our special guest for this episode, here’s a quick summary of who we are and what we do: VWO is a leading experience optimization platform that helps fast-growing brands optimize their digital experiences. Using our latest product, VWO Insights, you can understand user journeys and identify conversion roadblocks on your website and mobile apps.
So without any further delay, let’s jump right into the conversation.
Guest Introduction
Shweta Sagar: Hi everyone. On today’s episode we have a very special guest who has been a source of inspiration for many, particularly women, encouraging them to pursue their passions fearlessly.
Please welcome Haley Carpenter, the founder of Chirpy. Haley specializes in user research, experimentation, and client relations, having worked with leading organizations in the CRO industry. She is determined to break the mold, think outside the box, smash boxes, and hash out whatever it takes to run Chirpy—a top-notch business offering CRO consulting, execution, and training.
Visit mychirpy.com to know more about her amazing work.
Main Interview
Personal Journey and 2024 Update
Shweta Sagar: Hi Haley, welcome to this Women in CRO podcast. How are you doing today?
Haley: I’m so excited to be here. Thank you so much for taking your time out. I really appreciate you accepting this invite and taking your valuable time to speak with us today.
Shweta Sagar: How is this year going so far for you? Anything interesting that you would like to share with our audience?
Haley: I am having a great 2024 so far. I wrapped up some amazing engagements in the back half of last year with Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruise Lines, and then rolled into a brand new engagement immediately at the beginning of January, which I can’t share the name of, but it is awesome as well. So yeah, I have no complaints so far.
Shweta Sagar: I think you recently completed one year as well, right? I was just going through your LinkedIn and I noticed that you have just completed one year with Chirpy. First of all, congratulations for that, and it’s so good to see that you are already collaborating with different brands altogether.
Career Journey and Background
Shweta Sagar: Let’s talk about your journey. Could you please help our audience know—is this something you always wanted to do from your childhood, or is this something that randomly happened? How does your journey look like?
Haley: This is one of my favorite questions, so I have a modified version. I did know what I wanted to do, but it came later than childhood. So I went through college, didn’t have anything particular in mind, as I think is true for most 18-year-olds these days.
I really just landed into this industry by accident—that was random, a little bit, which I can explain. But once I got into it and into CRO specifically, I knew immediately that I wanted to go out on my own, and that’s what I was going to seek out to do every step of the way. So I landed in this by accident, though.
My senior year of college, it was I think February or March—graduation was in May—and I knew that I wanted some type of job part-time through the end of school. Extra money’s nice, and if it happened to lead me into something full-time at the end of graduation, amazing.
So I just went on the internet, as people do, looking for gigs. Found an exec admin assistant role that was open locally at a PPC agency. I had never heard of PPC in my life. I did not know about digital marketing. I knew absolutely nothing, but I got an interview. Googled all the terms before my interview, googled all the things, tried to learn as much as I could, ended up getting that job, started part-time as an exec admin assistant in March of that year.
That really started me on my journey. So after I graduated college, I didn’t want to be an admin—I wanted something full-time. And ultimately CRO—a role in CRO at the company came open. PPC was never my jam, I was never interested in that, which is what the agency primarily was, but they had a CRO lane. So the job came open, CRO seemed fascinating, interesting to me, seemed like something I would want to do, got a coordinator role, and literally started from the bottom and now we’re here.
So worked my way up as high as I wanted to with that company. Had my sights the whole time—like I said, from day one of starting there—knew I wanted to work for myself. Had my sights set on working at CXL agency while I was at Hanapin, like essentially that was—I knew that from day one as well, because there are differences in what the agency I was at offered versus CXL.
So ultimately went to CXL, knew the titles and everything that I wanted there, and always had a path at least a step, if not two ahead, trying to curate specific skills, specific experiences, even trying to curate experience at different types of companies. So then ultimately ended up at Optimizely, worked through roles there, and then in January of last year decided it was time to go out on my own. And so now we’re here.
Philosophy and Life Principles
Shweta Sagar: Round of applause for your journey—it’s very inspiring. Taking that risk, experimenting with your life is what makes sense, right? Because we are never sure what will come to us till the time we are not experimenting with our life. So round of applause for you taking that risk and then completing this one year with Chirpy.
I was going through your post and I saw that you mentioned somewhere that someone told you that year one is all about not quitting, right? It’s really fascinating how impactful words can be on our lives. Are there any sort of philosophies or principles that you live by or that have actually shaped your life, which you would like to share with our audience today?
Haley: Oh, I have so many. I actually—yeah, I get really inspired by words. I definitely choose what I intake and digest very carefully versus what I shut out, which can be a struggle sometimes.
A fun fact: I think part of what got me to a headspace to start on the journey was actually a personal endeavor, which started with Sober October in 2022. I did a whole month of that, that got me into seriously doing yoga—this circles back, I promise—into seriously doing yoga for about a year, which obviously part of yoga is the mindset, your mental space, energy, all the things like that. And so I did a lot of thinking around what I was feeling and learning and hearing in yoga.
This is maybe the fun fact: I ultimately put a mini, small whiteboard on my refrigerator, and all of last year would curate sayings and words of wisdom on that whiteboard. I think I ended the year with probably I don’t know, 15 sayings on the board, which I took a picture of and then wiped it clean for this year. But a lot of those did help me, and then definitely talking to people.
So like the one about year one isn’t quitting—that came from my dear friend Sarah Eddie (shout out if she sees this). I actually met her at the spring conference through the platform Winter here last year, here in Austin. We’ve become good buddies, and she does similar things to me—she’s a consultant as well—and she told me that year one is about not quitting.
And so that was my goal for the year. I had started out ambitiously, of course—you have a revenue number you would like to hit and other things—but some days it is just damn hard and you’re like “what am I doing?” And so I wrote that on my wall also. I went, I came home, I wrote that on a giant sticky note, taped it on my wall, and remembered that all year. So I think that probably applies even this year. Hopefully not in year three—that wouldn’t apply anymore. I’m not thinking about quitting, but there are some days of stuff.
So that’s a really good one. I was also really inspired by Rachel Hollis’s podcast. I heard an episode—this was also early last year, I believe—where she was talking about in business, similar vein of thought, that it’s about not quitting. Where people that succeed ultimately just persevered, didn’t give up, and didn’t take no for an answer. And so I think—of course there are many other factors, it gets complicated, I understand that—but I think one thing is you just have to keep going.
There is a conversation I would say to have there around how much runway you give yourself when you start a business. I’ll say people had always told me: give yourself more runway than you anticipate that you will need. That is true. I was like “no, I’m gonna—you know, I don’t need more runway, I’m gonna be fine,” but give yourself more runway.
But yeah, those were good ones. And then I can’t remember the exact phrasing of this, but one thing from yoga was that randomness is a gift, or I think it was like “enjoy the mysteriousness of randomness,” something like that. Because I’m very much a—I like control, I like predictability, I like to know what’s going to happen. That is far from the reality of owning a business, I think. And so that gets to me sometimes—it got to me a lot last year. So I have also tried to appreciate the randomness and the unpredictability and just be okay living with that, and I’m getting better.
The Story Behind “Chirpy”
Shweta Sagar: I’m curious to know—how Chirpy, like why Chirpy as your brand name? It’s very fascinating to be honest with respect to the CRO industry. So what does this mean exactly with respect to your business, and how did you decide why Chirpy?
Haley: Good question. So this is not a dis on any other agency—no one else in the industry—it is just my lane for me. But how I came up with it is I wanted to stand out, I wanted to be different, but I also wanted it to be memorable and fun and not jargony and not boring.
So I was like, I don’t want it to be “CRO blah blah blah,” “conversion rate blah blah blah,” “conversion blah blah blah,” you know, all of those types of things. I don’t want typical agency branding type—color branding, I don’t know—branding colors. I just wanted to be different. I wanted to reflect me as a person, what I stand for, what I try and be, which is hopefully fun and uplifting and lighter.
And so yeah, I wanted something different, which then led me to this lane of kind of one-word, buzzy, fun names because I did want a one-word name. And then ultimately just landed on Chirpy. It took me a while to get used to saying it because I was like “is this stupid? Like, people are gonna be staring at me saying Chirpy in calls, like that’s weird.” And it was weird at first, but you know, I was stuck to my guns and I kept it. I was like “this is what we’re doing.”
And then, you know, same thing with the colors—fun, different, bright—and same with font choices, everything. So I’ve heard good feedback on it. I think it’s landing and resonating and sticking out, which was the goal, which has been good.
Shweta Sagar: I think personally you have achieved your goal of what you wanted. So basically it should be funny, it should be fascinating, it should not actually be boring, because Chirpy as a brand name actually caught my eye and I was actually looking forward to it—what is Chirpy? Like, why Chirpy? So when before this podcast, I thought that this is going to be my first question whenever we start talking about Chirpy—like, why Chirpy?—because it’s a very cool name to be very honest, and it can be presented in a much better way. So it’s very refreshing and very cool to be honest.
Haley: Thank you. Yeah, I also wanted it to be memorable because there’s just so many similar names out there in CRO and acronyms and so on and so forth. And so I wanted something sticky and something where even if they didn’t remember what Chirpy was or who I was, like “Chirpy? Oh yeah, what was it?” Like, you know what I mean? They would have it in there, so…
Client Challenges and Disagreements
Shweta Sagar: While building your brand, your own brand, have you come across any teams or any clients for that matter who are not convinced with the ideas or let’s say the CRO strategies that you suggest? And if yes, then how do you deal with these kind of clients?
Haley: Always. There are always disagreements in CRO for a variety of reasons. It kind of depends on the reason. But I think one—I’ll preface it by saying I’m not scared of those conversations. It’s something that I’ve worked really hard at in my consulting skills and practitioner skills to be able to gracefully handle conversations like this. Don’t get me wrong, I have failed many times along the way, and no one’s perfect, so I still have things that I want to do better every single day, especially with these types of conversations.
But I think one of the biggest things is first and foremost, like understanding the pushback, because sometimes it’s just—or often times actually—it’s just a matter of maybe misunderstanding or knowledge gap or something like that. And if you can teach someone or explain something, oftentimes that will clear it up pretty quickly. And especially in the CRO world, things are very technical, they are very in the weeds, there’s a lot of things to know, it’s multi-disciplinary, a lot of terms. So I really think knowledge is a big one.
And second to that, trying to bring people along with you and not trying to impress them by sounding overly complicated, over-complex, throwing out a bunch of fancy words and sounding pretentious or like that. That’s definitely a strategy I’ve seen some people have. I don’t think it works well—it’s not my approach.
So with that said, there are certain topics that I’m very strongly opinionated about that if someone disagrees, I will not flex on my stance for whatever reasons I have. Sometimes you just agree to disagree, and especially as an outside party working with an in-house team, there’s only so much you can do.
So sometimes you agree to disagree. Sometimes part of the conversation, especially from a consulting side, is offering up your recommendations, your solutions, your explanations, and then letting them decide what to do and saying, you know, “You can choose the path here. Most importantly, just choose one—have a decision made first and foremost,” and then you can get into the nuance.
But usually you can come to some kind of middle ground or resolution. And someone—another phrase that someone told me once is “have strong opinions held weakly.” That was Matt Bishel that told me that (shout out). So you know, with that said, I’m opinionated, I’m a strong personality, I’ve worked hard to show up to the table in a particular way. However, I’m not afraid to say I’m wrong or flex on things either. So you know, sometimes I’ll go to their side and that’s fine too.
But I think just discussing, being willing to have discussions—I think “debates” sounds too harsh in this case—but just being open-minded and figuring things out is important.
Communication Strategies
Shweta Sagar: While discussing or while connecting to your clients, before you see that the client is not sort of agreeing to what you’re saying, what are the first few conversations that you want to have with them? Or let’s say, what are the conversations which actually help you understand that this client is not agreeing to what I’m saying, and then you follow all the steps that you mentioned earlier?
Haley: Good question. So I think one of the first things that I’m cognizant of is that if you do disagree or if they disagree or you feel there’s pushback somewhere, is not to come at someone or a team as accusatory or defensive or calling them out. It’s simply just “I want to understand, I just want to dive a little bit deeper, get some more perspective and context on this,” because I have absolutely been wrong in my interpretation of pushback from teams or decisions of teams, which commonly happens when done in writing. A lot of teams communicate in Slack. I would say oftentimes for situations like this, in-person calls are great because that communication often turns out differently.
But you know, having that discovery angle and then pivoting and going off from there as you need to. And so if it is just a knowledge gap situation, talking them through that again—not in a degrading, accusatory, looking-down type of way—but just “I want to walk alongside, we want to be on the same page,” and “I just want to be helpful” type of angle.
And then, you know, sometimes I would say on the other end of the spectrum, things escalate—maybe not in an aggressive or harsh type way, but you know, I would say sometimes at the beginning, or often at the beginning, if there’s a spectrum of the starting point and the end point, and let’s say that end point is where it kind of gets not aggressive, but you’re not making progress—that beginning point, you usually start with a little bit more honey. And if that’s not landing and things aren’t resonating and you’re not getting to the right place or you’re not agreeing to disagree for whatever reason, and you still just need to get something across to get something done, you got to take some of that honey away a little bit sometimes.
And that’s where you sometimes just need to be a little bit more direct, not sugarcoat something, and just be very to the point, maybe even a little bit blunt. There’s nuance to this—don’t just go out and try that in every situation; you can get yourself into trouble. But sometimes that’s necessary too.
And I would say especially as a female, a lot of these things that I’m saying, I would say, are some of the hardest things to do, skills to develop, skills to practice. There’s a lot more intertwined, I think, as a woman for these skills and some of these client-facing situations. And I’m certainly not saying I have it all figured out and I’m perfect—it has been very much a work in progress over every year that I’ve done this job. But even things like therapy and crying on the other end of the line and figuring out next time—there’s a lot of behind the scenes that goes into it.
But if there are people that—you get scared or anxious or whatever—just don’t give up, just keep trying. I had someone tell me once that “you’re not going to go to jail, you know, if someone gets mad at you or if you screw up.” Too badly it might not have the best outcome that you wanted or it might not be ideal, but you’re probably not going to jail. So that helped me for the first like year or two of working. I think that was Sam Kerr—shout out to her if she’s listening.
Risk-Taking and Professional Growth
Shweta Sagar: You’re not going to jail, so explore as much as you want, be upfront, whatever you want to say, just say it out loud. Because I strongly believe that we all make mistakes and we all sort of learn from our mistakes, right? Because till the time we don’t make such mistakes, we will not understand what we are doing wrong, because every time we cannot be right.
Haley: Correct. Have to be able to make—have to be open to failing, have to be open to putting your ego aside, which is really hard sometimes, even for me. People that have worked with me I’m sure know this. But it’s something I had to work on, and I like the saying of “fail forward.” So we’re going to fail for sure, but just make sure you’re going forward—that you learn something, you can try and improve something.
I’d say also, especially to women out there, there is absolutely an element of what seems like risk-taking. You have to be willing to take risks, small and big. So let’s say there’s an opportunity—let’s say you’re on an account team or an in-house team, and you are presenting a potentially controversial or debatable or less than ideal results or topic or something—something that won’t just be like an easy, breezy topic of conversation. Let’s say your boss asks you, “Hey Susie, do you want to try and present this in the board meeting? Great learning opportunity,” or “I would love to see you try and do this,” or something.
There’s a choice there that I’ve seen some people make where you say no because it’s scary, anxiety-producing, you’re probably gonna lose some sleep over it, you know, it’s a little bit of a risk, it could go really badly. Then there are other people who are like, “Yeah, absolutely, heck yeah. I’m gonna do my best, I’m gonna prep, I’m gonna do everything that I can. I know it still could turn out badly, but I’m willing to do it and put myself out there.”
And I would say, I guess this is more of just my hope for people because I don’t think there’s enough talk about it, is that: go for it. You know, take the risk and step up to the plate, especially if you’re in a room or a company or an industry full of males mostly. You’ve got to put yourself out there, and I’ve found it every time to be worth it.
Shweta Sagar: Through that, because till the time you don’t take risk, you will not be able to understand how much capable you are, right?
Haley: So another saying—this one is from Elena Verna (shout out to her)—I read in one of her posts once that if it’s between you and a man for a task, the man will be much more likely to volunteer, probably, and you know, he might even only have 50% of the capability and the qualifications to do that task, but he’s going to raise his hand as if he’s at 100%. The woman will be too scared to even consider raising her hand if she’s not at 100% at that moment.
And Elena’s post, I believe I’m quoting this correctly, was a woman will be let’s say three times more prepared than the man, and she just doesn’t know it, but she didn’t raise her hand because she wasn’t at 100%. So the man got it and he wasn’t even as prepared. So it’s like, always raise your hand, always step up, because at least in the conversation relative to men, it’s like you’re going to be prepared, I promise. Like, just do it.
Shweta Sagar: Because take risk, see your capability. And I also believe that all the opportunities that you get as a women—I will talk about myself here—because I never say no to any opportunity because it actually helped me shape my life, right? So as for myself, I might fail, anyone can fail, right? But every time, each and every time that we are taking a risk or we are saying yes to an opportunity, we are sort of learning something from that one, right? And we are improving to the next opportunity that we are getting.
Haley: So yeah, every time you do it, you prove to yourself you can do it. And I think that’s one of the biggest things is proving to yourself. And then the more you prove it to yourself, the more you have the experience. Anyone that tries to doubt you, tell you, tells you you can’t, whatever, is you can be like, “You know, I’ve got this. You know what I mean? Like, you can’t tell me what I can and can’t do. I’ll show you and make my own freaking decisions,” you know?
Common CRO Misconceptions
Shweta Sagar: Every time that you meet some new clients or let’s say the team of the client, team members who are not aware of CRO, right? What is CRO? Because I have met many people in the industry, like different industries, who are not aware of CRO only, right? So what are the biggest misconceptions you have found out with respect to CRO that people have currently?
Haley: So many, so many. One is that it just applies to marketing, which is so far from the truth. So part of trainings that I run is explaining this concept in detail with visuals about how it usually starts in marketing, how it then goes over to product, and how it can be extrapolated out to other teams in the org and the ROI associated with that and the different options you have there. But that’s one.
I think another one is—I would say this more from a perspective of talking to people outside the industry, like family, friends—like, “Oh, so you’re in IT then?” or like, “You work on hardware or something?” Like, they just—”You run ads,” and you’re just—sometimes no matter how much I explain it, it just takes a while to land for people outside the industry, which is super fair because it is, you know, complicated. But I have improved my layman explanation of it over the years.
Shweta Sagar: Would you mind sharing it with the audience as well, so that someone trying to build something in CRO, they should be aware what is the layman explanation to this, so that they can make their family understand about this?
Haley: So the explanation that has landed for me recently is: let’s say a business has a website or a mobile app, because those are the most common things that people interact with every single day. So let’s say you have a website and you’re trying to buy a product on that website from a business. What I do is make it easier for you to buy that online—better experience for you—but not just you, everyone, which then makes the business more money over time. So I help the business make more money from their digital experiences, whether it be the website, app, whatever.
The second piece that I add is because a lot of people, you’ll say, “Oh, you know, the Google ads that you see that are sponsored or the Facebook ads, things like that.” I’ll be like, “I don’t do that. I do not do that. I do not like those.” And I was like, “A business wants as many people to see them and interact with them as possible, right?” And they’d be like, “Yes.” Like, “Okay, well, I don’t bring people to you. I don’t like get traffic, but I better convert more of the people that you do have on your website or your app or whatever it is,” so to get more transactions out of those existing people, for example.
And usually that combination of explanation lands. They might still think—they might be like, “Oh, so then it’s IT,” or whatever, but they just like conceptually don’t know the difference. But I’m like, “It’s fine, you at least kind of get what I do.”
Advice for Aspiring Women Entrepreneurs
Shweta Sagar: As a woman, I want to hear from you, being an entrepreneur—what one advice would you like to sort of give to all the women out there who are planning or let’s say dreaming to start something of their own?
Haley: Okay, one advice? Oh, so many. First and foremost, just do it. I know that picture looks different for everyone depending on your life circumstances and what you’re able to do and not do right away, but just freaking do it.
And I will say that making that actual choice was probably the hardest thing that I’ve done so far relative to this entire journey. Once I made that choice and knew I was going to stick to it and I was like, “Okay, this is it, like I am doing the thing,” then you just run with it. But I think that was the hardest point of getting to it was the decision.
So you know, decide. And then sometimes people start part-time and do things on the side, keep your full-time gig—totally understandable. You don’t even have to aim big as a side hustle in the side to start. Like, do one thing. It doesn’t even have to be recurring. Do a project and prove to yourself that you can do it, because the more you do it, the more you prove to yourself you’re like, “This is…” But you know, do that, or in my case, I was able to just start full-blown. Grateful for my circumstances, and I was able to just jump ship and go 100%, feet first, I guess is what they say, and do it.
But I think just make the choice. And I think people are so much more capable than they give themselves credit for.
One tip, though—I’ve had a couple people ask me about some topics related to starting or what the beginning stages of a business look like. I am only a year in, so know that I am—you know, I have not exited three times. I am well aware that I am new to this too. But just from my conversations, know that if you do decide to do it, whether you just want to be the solopreneur or you want to grow a big team, that you do have to run the business in addition to the actual work, which may seem obvious, but I think some people are surprised by what that entails.
So before you jump into it, I would say also do some research, talk to people, make sure you fully understand the numbers, run your numbers in your personal life, how that’s going to stack up to the business, what you need to bring in. I would say this is more if going, you know, full-time, the full-time option. But understand the numbers, understand what you’re getting into, because I’ve had some people be like, “You know, is it HR, sales, marketing, finance?” All the things. You’re like, “Yes, yes, it is all of the things.” That is you, and you’re running the account work or whatever your technical—the actual work is.
So I love that. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. There are of course options like you can outsource, hire people or vendors or whatever. But I always just like—I just feel so bad when people get into it and they just don’t realize beforehand what it is. And some people don’t run the numbers either, surprisingly, before they jump in. And I’m like, “Okay, I don’t know how that happens.” Run the numbers—that would be another thing.
Support Network and Family
Shweta Sagar: When you thought of starting Chirpy, you thought and you were like, “Let’s go ahead, let’s not wait for anything.” I am sure that there must be someone in the family, friends who have supported you in that decision, right? So would you like to sort of mention them on this podcast to give them a shout-out that they have actually helped you and sort of supported you at that time and then you are here with Chirpy completing one year?
Haley: This is a good question. So there have been so many people who have supported me. My husband is absolutely number one, and my dad has helped me a ton. Stepmom, stepdad, mom—support. Other friends, like yes. However, and then of course other people in the industry and friends—so many people that it would not be possible without this help and guidance and the willingness of people to give their time, information, trust.
So there’s definitely that. I do want to say, though—I actually gave this suggestion to someone a couple months ago—when I decided to go out on my own and I had made that choice, I did not share that with a soul other than my spouse, okay, until I was already doing the work, until I was already out on my own, till I had already quit my full-time job.
Because there is a large possibility that even your family, friends, whoever will poo-poo on your dreams and talk you out of it for whatever intent—maybe they’re projecting, maybe it’s legitimate concern, whatever. Just don’t tell anyone unless it’s like, you know, a really close circle of people, unless you know for sure they’re going to be team you and support your choice. Like, don’t even—I was telling someone, I talked—don’t even tell your parents until you’ve already started the thing.
And then what happens is then they’re on board, or if you accidentally tell someone before and they are not on board, then you start it, you get things rolling, and then they come around and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, yay, like okay.”
But yeah, you know, with that said, lean on your network, ask for help. People are amazing, they’re very generous, and so I appreciate that so much. And you know, then you try and give it back to others too.
Final Message for Women
Shweta Sagar: Before wrapping up the first segment about your journey, I have a last question where I want to understand from you if you have any sort of message for women facing challenges in pursuing big dreams for that matter and excelling in what they believe or what sort of careers they want to be in currently, right? Any words of encouragement or advice if you’d like to just tell them?
Haley: Oh, aside from everything I’ve said already, genuinely I think the biggest advice is find a core group of people. Like, I think the thing is like the top five closest people around you should be very intentional, and you know, positive, uplifting, whatever you want them to be, and they will influence you most. Don’t get upset if I misquote that, but it’s something to that effect—the top five people.
But even around that, so I think about that all the time on a personal level, professionally. And then when you have that, I would say pick some podcasts that inspire you and give you some direction. Pick books that inspire you and give you direction. Talk to people, because genuinely—I know I have all these sayings and things that I have spit out here, and it might seem silly—but truly I have taken action and made life choices based on these inspirations and things that I’ve learned and people that I’ve talked to. And I think in some cases, maybe a lot of the cases, that was the stuff that helped me overcome blockers and barriers and uncertainties, doubts.
And yeah, I just—I think exposure to certain things and knowing what’s possible, learning things maybe aren’t as scary as they seem, or whatever—yeah, just allow things to inspire you and come into you, but also seek them out. You know, keep your eyes open too.
Oh, also make a dream board. This is my last one, probably. I have a dream board—I’m staring at it right now. I stare at it every single day. I’ve made a dream board for years. It sounds ridiculous if you’ve never made a dream board—please make one. It’s still early in the year. But that is so real. Like, I’m not even kidding you. Over the years, like I will put things on my dream board, so many have come true. I take things off when they come true. Stacks of things that have happened.
So make a dream board. It doesn’t have to be fancy—just, you know, write it down, stick it on the wall, cut it out of magazines. But yeah, I’ll leave it at that.
Rapid Fire Round
Shweta Sagar: Now moving on to our next segment, it’s going to be a very fun segment, so it’s a rapid fire round. Rules are very simple—you have to quickly answer the questions, right? No pauses, no breaks or no thinking around it, just spit it out whatever comes to your mind. Ready?
Haley: Yeah.
Q: Three apps that you can’t live without? A: RunKeeper, Spotify, Google Calendar.
Q: One thing that you would like to change about the CRO industry? A: Get everyone on the same foundational level so that we can take it up from there as a group.
Q: What’s the most random fact that you know by heart? A: About myself or just like life in general? Life in general… So I’m growing a Monstera plant, and if you have holes in the leaves like Swiss cheese, that’s a plant flex—it’s called double fenestration, I think. And I was told that that’s a big deal if you have a Monstera plant.
Q: Your guilty pleasure TV show or movie? A: What would you even call them? I call them like trash TV shows, but you know, Love is Blind, Too Hot to Handle, Love Island—that’s like a guilty pleasure. I’m not proud of it, but it’s… yeah.
Q: If you had a podcast, who is the first person that you would invite on the show? A: If it was a work podcast, I would do Baaz St. John. I have followed her for a couple of years and I find her so inspirational—I would love to talk to her. And if it’s a personal one, as in like not a professional podcast, I’m very into cooking and the food world and food shows and things like that—YouTube, Food Network, it’s like what I grew up on. So honestly any chef—Dave Chang, Emerald, Bobby Flay, Joshua Weissman, Sam the Cooking Guy—like you name it, I would love to talk to them.
Q: Three books that you would recommend to our listeners? A: “Untamed,” “Believe It,” “How to Do the Work”—Glennon Doyle, Jay Shetty, and Nicole LePera.
Q: What is one superpower that you would like to have? A: I don’t know if this is a good thing, but being able to flip off my brain or at least my anxiety—that would be nice, just intentionally do that. Maybe while watching Love is Blind and Too Hot to Handle, you know?
Q: One thing that you are tired of explaining to your boss or client? A: Oh, right—not client because you have… the value of CRO.
Closing
Shweta Sagar: So that’s it, Haley, from my end. Thank you so much for your time today. It was lovely having a conversation with you. It was very candid, and you really being a sport and just answered every question. Thank you so much for that. I really appreciate you taking the time out for us and speaking to us today. Before wrapping up this podcast, any questions or anything that you would like to sort of tell us or our audiences for that matter before sort of wrapping it up?
Haley: I don’t think I have anything else. However, I do love chatting to people. Feel free to DM me on LinkedIn, email me—Haley@mychirpy.com—if you have questions, you want to chat about things that I mentioned here. Like, if you’re listening, feel free to reach out because I am passionate about these topics.
Shweta Sagar: Thank you so much for that, Haley, for your time and for all the conversation that we had today.
Haley: Oh, yay! This is one of my favorite things I have ever done. You’re such a good interviewer. I appreciate this, so thank you.
Shweta Sagar: Fine, thank you. Bye-bye, take care.
