Leaders In Payments
Women Leaders in Payments: Carly Brush, SVP of HCM at DailyPay | Episode 340
Carly Brush's career trajectory is nothing short of inspirational, a true testament to the power of resilience, innovation, and mentorship. In this enlightening podcast episode, Carly Brush, SVP of Human Capital Management at DailyPay, delves deep into her fascinating journey from an aspiring fashion designer to a key leader in the fintech industry. Her story is one of navigating through professional hurdles, leveraging mentorship, and constantly stepping out of her comfort zone to achieve growth.
Carly's story isn't just about success—it's about the growth that comes from challenges and the invaluable role of mentorship. She provides candid insights into overcoming professional hurdles, including a pivotal project failure at DoorDash, and underscores the importance of stepping out of comfort zones. Carly also offers practical advice for young women eyeing a career in fintech, emphasizing collaboration, continuous learning, and the satisfaction of working with dedicated colleagues. Tune in to gain inspiration and actionable wisdom from Carly Brush as she discusses her remarkable career and contributions to the fintech landscape.
Carly Brush's career trajectory is nothing short of inspirational, a true testament to the power of resilience, innovation, and mentorship. In this enlightening podcast episode, Carly Brush, SVP of Human Capital Management at DailyPay, delves deep into her fascinating journey from an aspiring fashion designer to a key leader in the fintech industry. Her story is one of navigating through professional hurdles, leveraging mentorship, and constantly stepping out of her comfort zone to achieve growth.
Carly's story isn't just about success—it's about the growth that comes from challenges and the invaluable role of mentorship. She provides candid insights into overcoming professional hurdles, including a pivotal project failure at DoorDash, and underscores the importance of stepping out of comfort zones. Carly also offers practical advice for young women eyeing a career in fintech, emphasizing collaboration, continuous learning, and the satisfaction of working with dedicated colleagues. Tune in to gain inspiration and actionable wisdom from Carly Brush as she discusses her remarkable career and contributions to the fintech landscape.
Thank you for joining us during this special series running throughout the month of July, focused exclusively on women leaders and payments. We've got great content this month, focused on mentorship, career advice, getting out of your comfort zone, having your voice heard and much, much more. A special thanks to our contributing sponsors, stacks Payments, nuve and MAP Advisors, and to our episode sponsors, nmi, dailypay, g&d and Ingenico, as we continue our month dedicated to women leaders and payments today, I welcome Carly Brush, svp of Human Capital Management, or HCM, at DailyPay. We've got a great episode ahead, so let's get started. Hi Carly, thank you for being here and welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast and, more specifically, thank you so much for participating during Women Leaders in Payments Month.
Speaker 2:Honored to be included. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so, if you don't mind, tell our audience a little bit about yourself, maybe where you grew up, where you went to school, where you currently live, a few things like that.
Speaker 2:Sure, I grew up outside of Boston, in the chilly suburbs of Boston, massachusetts. I studied psychology at Penn and business at Harvard, and I've had a variety of roles throughout my career, which I'll tell you a little about later. I currently live in Manhattan with my husband, two young sons and a corgi named Potato Laka.
Speaker 1:Nice, I love it. So tell us about your role today and a little about DailyPay.
Speaker 2:Sure. So DailyPay is an earned wage access provider and we're the market leader in a relatively nascent, burgeoning and growing industry. 86% of large companies find that it's crucial to offer earned wage access and DailyPay is the most trusted provider of that service. We're on a mission to help everyone who works make the most of each day. I, in my role, lead our HCM business. That includes our core offering of earned wage access and some additional things that we're working on that are coming soon to better support our employer partners as their trusted partner.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, before we get into the meat of the conversation, I'd like to do a little icebreaker exercise and I'm going to ask you a kind of a this or that question, so something like do you prefer early morning or late night? And you just answer it, and then we move on to the next one. So it's kind of a quick hitting kind of session. So are you ready to get started?
Speaker 2:I think so.
Speaker 1:Okay. Do you prefer summer or winter? Summer, for sure, cats or dogs, dogs, apple or Android, apple Coffee or tea, coffee, books or movies, books, beach or mountains, both Chocolate or vanilla, chocolate, texting or calling.
Speaker 2:Oh texting.
Speaker 1:The city or the country.
Speaker 2:Ooh city.
Speaker 1:Okay, and last one pizza or pasta Pasta, awesome, okay. All right, thanks for doing that. Hopefully that helps everyone get to know you a little better. All right, so let's go ahead and jump in and talk a little bit about you. So, when you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I always wanted to do something creative. When I was really little, I wanted to be a fashion designer and I would make clothes for my stuffed animals, and when I was older, I made jewelry. This ended up I mean truly by coincidence was what I ended up doing in my first real job after college, doing product development in the jewelry department at Macy's. But it was truly a coincidence and I think the longer I've been in my career, the more I've found that you can be creative in other ways without having an official creative job.
Speaker 1:Right, right, okay. So the next question. I'm going to tell you that, my answer to it. So the first paying job that I ever had. My mother actually worked at a small college and that summer, I think I was like 15. I washed pots and pans in the cafeteria at this college. So from every day during the summer, from 10 to 2, I was washing pots and pans. So that was my first job. What was your first job?
Speaker 2:And I bet, when you had that job, you wished you had earned wage access.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm sure I did.
Speaker 2:My first paying job besides babysitting obviously was I was a lifeguard at Boston Sports Club's indoor pool in the winter, which was the only season I didn't play sports, and luckily I mean it was the only season I didn't play sports, and luckily I mean it was cold but I was inside, but luckily I'm pretty sure I never had to go in.
Speaker 1:Well, that's good, all right. Well, let's continue on with your career, so maybe catch us up between Harvard and where you are today.
Speaker 2:Sure. So I mean I think I've kind of took the long way to get here, which I think has been for the better. I've done kind of a whole host of different things, started in consumer products. I ended up at OXO, the kitchen gadgets company. If you've ever used the three-in-one avocado slicer, that was my baby, the first thing I ever invented.
Speaker 2:I really became fascinated with the concept of innovation when I was there and as much fun as I was having, you know, making kitchen gadgets and roasting turkeys and creating turkey basters I really wanted to tackle tougher problems and apply the innovation frameworks that I had learned and perfected at OXO to business new business, new venture building. So I went to business school, which is how I ended up at Harvard. While I was there I spent the summer at Apple working on iPhone product marketing. So definitely never Android, very much an Apple person For a product. I was a product nerd and so it was really a big thrill to work on what I kind of view as the ultimate consumer tech product. But for me it wasn't scratching the itch that I had to build businesses kind of from the beginning, scratching the itch that I had to build businesses from the beginning, and so I ended up at a firm called InnoCite, which is the consulting firm founded by Clay Christensen, who's the father of disruptive innovation and small firm industry agnostic, got to work on a bunch of projects across automotive technology, media and even fried chicken, and the work was super interesting. The people were amazing but eventually kind of wanted to get back to an operating role, and when I was looking for that role, I was trying to find something that at the time felt really unique, although I think you kind of it's easier to find if you know what you're looking for. But I was looking for a role where I could be innovative and build something new, but not be the only person doing it. Because I was in an innovation department. I wanted to be at a company that was constantly innovating, and I found that at DoorDash.
Speaker 2:Obviously, the food delivery platform joined during a period of hyper growth and was in a really cool role where I was in a startup within a startup, helping to build out our drive business, which is the third-party delivery business. So little known fact if you order from Chipotle on the Chipotle app, it is a dasher most likely bringing you your food, and that all started several years ago when we were building out the drive platform and so really really interesting opportunity to work on something nascent, build a business for new verticals within that extending that capability. So took the skills that the company had learned the capabilities of bringing milkshakes to users before they melted and extrapolated that to building a new business of delivering kind of anything to anyone. So pet food, jewelry, prescriptions, auto parts and did that over the course of a few years, really zero to a hundred, and it was such a thrill to kind of build a massive business doing something no one had ever done before, doing something the company had never done before, and it really played to my love of problem solving and testing and learning and kind of fell in love again with a different kind of product development, of creating new products that are not necessarily ones you can hold in your hands but ones that are creating change for people in how they live their lives.
Speaker 2:After four years I was ready for my next challenge and after a brief stint at a live shopping startup, I found DailyPay through a personal connection and when I met the team I was really excited about so much about this opportunity, the team, the mission, the state of the business, the hyper growth it was experiencing and the opportunity and it's been such an honor to build alongside such talented leaders. It's not necessarily the easiest job I've ever had, certainly new challenges every day, but I really have been just. I wake up every morning just so excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Great. So that brings us up to today. So obviously you've been very successful throughout your career. So what are some of your guiding principles?
Speaker 2:Okay, I think about and I think maybe I'll share more, like I think about more values. So the first one that I try I mean I try to prioritize these things, like as I've kind of made all these moves that maybe don't seem like they fully link together, I'm always kind of looking for a few things. The first, and probably most important, is growth, always be learning and not shying away from hard problems. So I mean I, probably more so than many people, seek the hard problems, I'm always like what's the next hardest thing that we can do, and then doing that with great people.
Speaker 2:Collaboration is really, really important. I think I'm at my best when I'm working with others. I'm kind of a better editor than I am a writer, so to speak. The team is super important and then, as a leader, helping my team to develop, giving them opportunities, helping them grow and then kind of externally having an impact. So it's really important to me and I'm definitely, you know, especially kind of after some of the things I did earlier in my career it's really important to me to be in a role where I'm building something that is has an impact on the world Not necessarily I'm not carrying cancer, but the impact that we have at DailyPay on our users and the things that you hear people say, the way we're able to solve for people in their real time of need it's really inspiring.
Speaker 2:It just makes me feel like the work I'm doing, makes it really meaningful. And then, lastly and this kind of probably goes way back to the beginning is being a believer in the product. You know I'm still a loyal fan of every company I've ever worked at. I'm, you know, probably one of DoorDash's number one customers, for better and for worse, and I think it's. You know, it's really hard to kind of get behind a product you don't believe in, and so that is always a criteria that I follow.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, let's talk about your journey to becoming a leader. Were there some pivotal moments or experiences that helped shape your path to becoming a leader?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think I mean there's becoming a leader is. You know, it's first about becoming a manager, and I sort of made that transition back in consulting, where I distinctly remember my very first manager role. I was lucky enough to have an extremely strong person on my team, which is like the easiest job ever. All of a sudden you can accomplish twice as much without doing any extra work, and so that was a really empowering transition. And then I think, if I think about a more formative experience is when I had team members.
Speaker 2:You know, the first time I had to manage people that were struggling and I have an extremely high bar. The people I worked with had an extremely high bar and at the end of the day, as a manager, your team's work is your work and we have to work twice as hard to help the team develop. But that can be even more rewarding and satisfying. And so you know, I think probably those two experiences early on had a pretty big impact on me as I've evolved into a leader and kind of taken on, you know, more scope and more had to influence more people.
Speaker 1:Okay, and what do you think have been some of the biggest challenges that you faced and how did you overcome them?
Speaker 2:that you faced and how did you overcome them? I think about, like when jobs that I find the most interesting are hard and the problems that I like to solve are hard problems, and like. Part of that is that you won't like we will not succeed in everything you do because you're making many bets under the assumption that it's impossible for everything to work. Obviously, that would be great, but, having had a few opportunities, I spent probably the biggest one. I spent my last year at DoorDash incubating a consumer pharmacy delivery offering. So super interesting problem, but you might notice that that is not an offering that exists in the app today.
Speaker 2:We had done a really small pilot. The initial signal was positive, but once we poured more resources into it, we realized that it was going to be a lot slower and more expensive than we anticipated and that it's really difficult to get people to change their habits around something that they only do once a month. So we ended up sunsetting the project. Huge learning was something that I kind of already knew, which is that any new venture has an inherent amount of risk and it's critical to de-risk as much as you can before going all in In that test and learn phase, being data driven. Being intellectually honest about the results and I mean failure can be uncomfortable and disappointing, but as a leader, part of my role was to process that, but also to help my team to process that, move past it and ensure that, like, we can continue to get our best work done.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's talk about stepping out of your comfort zone. I think it's something that's a little bit of a cliche, but I think it's important to talk about it, especially during this month. So can you share any experiences where you had to step out of your comfort zone to achieve growth, and then what impact did that have, sort of, on your professional development?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the summer before I started at DailyPay, I worked with a coach. I was kind of trying to figure. You know, I had a transition point in my career trying to figure out I had I said I have young sons and I had, you know, in becoming a mom, kind of trying to process what kind of career do I want for myself as a new mother, as a female executive? And my coach was amazing. But the program required a lot of introspection, which is just not something that I enjoy. I was not the kid keeping a journal by any means, so I really kind of forced myself to step outside of my comfort zone, dive deep and think through what made work meaningful to me and what my core values are, which allowed me to create a framework. That made it extremely obvious when I got that daily pay offer that it was the right choice and the confidence to hit the ground running from day one when I got here, even though I mean, as you can tell from my background, payments and fintech was an entirely new industry for me.
Speaker 1:So do you think that stepping out of the comfort zone for making that decision is something that, over the long term, that you'll kind of remember and go back to and know that you went through it once, that going through it again will be okay?
Speaker 2:Oh for sure. I think I read Adam Grant's newest book probably around the same time, and I remember just kind of taking away from that this idea that it's all about progress and it's not about where you start, it's about the trajectory at which you can grow. And I think you know, kind of knowing that and reminding myself that you kind of to be good at something, you have to be bad at it first. You have to practice, and I think that has been incredibly important to me. I also think that it keeps it. You know it keeps it interesting.
Speaker 1:Right, right. Well, let's talk about mentorship. I think this is an important topic. So have you had many mentors in your career and, if so, how did they influence your decisions? And second part of the question is how important do you think mentorship is overall to emerging leaders?
Speaker 2:I think mentor can be kind of a loaded word and you know it feels like this elusive thing that is hard to find and if you find the perfect one it will unlock doors. But when I think about mentorship I think I've had a lot of more unofficial mentorships. You know, not people that would say I'm Carly's mentor, but people who influenced me and taught me in a way that I reflect on to this day. Some of that's in the moment tactical feedback.
Speaker 2:Mentorship is not always obvious but it can be really impactful. Edits and comments and questions and sort of just the way you interact with people up and down in an organization can be really impactful and the best kind of mentorship because it helps you think critically and you know eventually you kind of. The thing that happened to me is you know, you hear, you hear people ask questions enough times and enough meetings that you start to ask them of yourself and you know kind of the concept of self-mentorship what would this person say if they were here? And kind of turning the light back on yourself can help you. If you can't necessarily find a specific all-star elusive mentor, you can do it for yourself and I think the unofficial mentors I've had along the way have allowed me to pay it forward and become a mentor to others. But even in those relationships, I think every mentorship goes two ways.
Speaker 1:So do you encourage your team to find mentors outside the company? Is there any kind of formal thing that you think about, or is it much more of a casual thing that you work on just as part of being a leader?
Speaker 2:I think it's both. I think there are a lot of really great mentor programs. I just actually finished one where I was a mentor as part of a charity that I'm involved in. I think it's if you have an opportunity to take advantage of that, do it. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain from taking advantage of the opportunities that are in front of you. I think I would not want people to feel disappointed if they didn't have those opportunities and see where you can find them in the organizations. The thing I always tell people when they start at a new company or even just in a company just trying to develop, is the relationships you build with the people that you don't work with day to day can be so impactful and to find time to connect with people, not just to get the work done, but to build relationships in your org, outside of your org, because you never know who you're going to click with and what you can learn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think you said something there that was interesting a little bit ago about kind of the. It doesn't have to be a formal kind of relationship, right? You're getting influenced and getting mentorship from people when you don't even kind of realize it, and I think that's something that people need to think about, because you don't have to have a formal program, you don't have to be considered a mentor or mentee and have a schedule that you're going to meet once a week or once a month or once a quarter. I mean it doesn't have to be that formalized in my mind to be a mentor or get influenced by people and again, it could be even books or movies or people on the web, or whatever it may be.
Speaker 2:I think yeah, I was going to say Substack has been the best mentor I've ever had.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, there's just a lot of ways to consume kind of knowledge. That doesn't have to be formal mentorship, although there's nothing wrong with formal mentorship, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I mean at least the way technology is these days and with all the social platforms, there are so many people you can learn from. It would be impossible to learn and consume everything that's available. So don't feel like pressure to read every single book on business that HBR puts out, but there are some great ways that you can learn, and even just in tiny doses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. Let's say someone's coming right out of college, young woman graduates. She's interested in getting into this payments fintech world that we work in, and she comes to you and says Carly, I'm interested in this industry for a career. What type of advice would you give her to be successful?
Speaker 2:One thing that it took me a few years to realize is when you start in your career and I think, especially kind of coming out of high school and college, where, for the most part and I think this has probably evolved since I was in high school and college, but you know you're kind of responsible to do all the work for yourself, and when you go into the workforce it's totally different. You still you don't need to obviously own your own outcomes and do the work, but it's much more collaborative and it's okay to ask questions and ask for help because, and especially in a quickly evolving industry no one's going to come out of school as an expert. You're going to have a lot to learn, and so does everyone else. So I think it's helpful.
Speaker 2:One thing that I like to remind myself and remind other people of is that we're doing things that no one has ever done before, so there's no secret right answer that somebody else knows and just isn't telling you.
Speaker 2:If they did, they would tell you, and so I think like reminding myself of that, reminding my team of that, can be comforting, because you don't have to feel like, oh, I need to have all the answers in order to be successful. But my answer might be the right answer, because no one else here has a better answer than you, than I do, and I say I but I mean you as as a young person coming up and just fresh out of school. And then I think, lastly, you know the work, you know this is a we're trying to do hard things and you know the hard thing about hard things is that it can feel overwhelming, but in the end of the day the work always gets done and so kind of for me at least, that has been a helpful mantra in times of overwhelm that no matter how overwhelming it feels right now, it's going to get done. Right now it's going to get done.
Speaker 1:So you're relatively new to the payments and fintech world. So how did you kind of go into it to learn about the industry? Did you do anything specific?
Speaker 2:I have a close friend actually a former employee of mine from my DoorDash days, who left DoorDash to go work at a payment startup and so before I started I sat down and had coffee with her and I was like tell me everything.
Speaker 2:And she sent me some really great sub stacks and just kind of, as I was ramping up here, if I had a question I would just ping her. I wasn't embarrassed to ask her for help, but even asking the people here there are some true experts at this company on really specific components of the payments landscape and kind of figuring out over the first few weeks who to go to with what kind of questions and really just letting my team help me ramp up and tell me what I didn't know. I say to everyone explain it to me like I'm in fifth grade, so I got a lot of crayon descriptions. And explain it to me like I'm in fifth grade, so I got a lot of crayon descriptions. But kind of constantly asking questions, reading a lot and not being afraid to say, hey, can you help me with this one?
Speaker 1:Right makes sense. So let's wrap up with one final question who or what inspires you to keep pushing forward in your career?
Speaker 2:I really love solving hard problems with awesome people. That gets me out of bed in the morning and some of my colleagues would say it keeps me slacking late into the night, because I just I think it's really fun, and so also everything I said before you know around having an impact. But you know, at the end of the day, work is really interesting and I'm doing it alongside really great people.
Speaker 1:Okay. Well, before we wrap up, is there anything else that you wanted to discuss? I want to make sure that we cover everything, so is there anything else you'd like to cover before we go?
Speaker 2:I think just thank you so much for having me, and I think it's been a real honor to kind of enter this industry. Everyone's been very welcoming and I'm really excited about what the next few years are going to bring.
Speaker 1:Well, carly. Again, thank you so much for being on the show. I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:And to all your listeners out there. I thank you for your time as well, and until the next story, a special thanks to our sponsors for helping make this month possible, especially our contributing sponsors Stacks Payments, nuve and MAP Advisors, and to our episode sponsors NMI, daily Pay, g&d and Ingenico. To learn more, visit wwwleadersinpaymentscom.