Female Disruptors: Nicole Schmidt of Source On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
Vision — Someone once told me that being the CEO is like becoming the Chief Vision Officer. And that has rung so true to me over the years. It’s THE job as CEO to see the journey that needs to be carved out. To see the mountains, beyond the forest, through trees and get everybody to the top. And then you have to tell that vision over, and over, and over, until everyone in the company is reciting your vision back to you.
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Nicole Schmidt .
Nicole Schmidt is the founder and CEO of Source, a national, digital product library and specification platform that connects architects, designers, contractors, and manufacturers in commercial construction. Source is the result of Nicole’s entrepreneurial roots and lifelong passion for construction and design.
Nicole brings ample experience from both design and manufacturing. Nicole holds a BoFA in Interior Design from the Illinois Institute of Art, after which she spent five years at a Portland design firm. From there, Nicole ran her own design studio for three years, working on boutique healthcare and retail projects. Nicole then switched to the other side of the market, honing her skills in sales and business development for both regional powerhouses and global brands.
Source embodies Nicole’s commitment to transparency, efficiency and simplicity. Source launched in February 2020 and hosts standardized data and exportable photos for 160k+ products from 1900+ brands.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
Istarted out my career on the design side of this industry managing millions of dollars of design decisions in excel spreadsheets and post-it flagged catalogs. Those processes still live on today. Then about ½ way through my career I moved over to the manufacturer side and that’s where all the pieces fell, literally, into place. It was a hot summer day and I was a commercial sales rep for a stone company. As part of my sales job, it was my responsibility to drive to every Architectural library in Oregon and dig through their materials libraries to see what samples they were missing, what old samples they had that I needed to pull out, and then spend time 1:1 with each firm telling them about my new products. And while I loved spending time with my customers, this process was so inefficient for all parties involved.
So here I am, updating this library, standing on my tiptoes at 6 months pregnant to pull down my box of samples to update. The library is a mess, as you may expect, and I slip on a stack of vinyl planks, and drop my box of rocks on my head. Expletives ensue. As does the realization that this industry needs to modernize, and badly. Long story short, I start researching, using my lens and past life as a designer to analyze what problems exist, and how archaic this market is. The projects we work on represent 5% of US GDP and the product purchases amount to $500B in the US every year. And these decisions are being made from dusty shelves, 1:1 meetings, and paper catalogs. Not to mention the transferring of information between architects to contractors and other stakeholders leaves so much room for error. In all of this research I begin to comprehend the breadth and depth of the opportunity in front of me as I realize that a central Source of information, pun intended, is just what this industry needs.
So I teach myself to code, just enough to stitch together some existing forms of technology and get the V1 of our platform out the door. We quickly capture 75% of the Portland designer market and about 50% of the interior finish manufacturers, and I realize just how deeply I’m on to something.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
I think with industries as large and antiquated as construction is, that disruption comes in many forms. For us, it has been about changing the process of material discovery. It used to be such a laborious process and included so many people and steps just to make one decision. We are streamlining what used to be hours of work into seconds through the power of technology and centralization.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Setting up our first database in Google Sheets. Ouch. That one took a long time to unwind. It worked great at the time, but we quickly outgrew it and by then, because we’ve grown our catalog so quickly, it was more difficult to peel out. The lesson I learned from that is that sometimes it’s great to do things that don’t scale so you can test and iterate quickly, and sometimes it’s important to do things that do scale so that you aren’t constantly iterating on every edge of the business.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
My first mentor with Source was Caroline Lewis from Rogue Women’s Fund. We met through a program called Xxcelerate here in Portland. She was our assigned mentor for our peer group of women CEO’s and she has been instrumental in my success every step of the way. She has since become an investor in Source and a dear friend. At one of our first meetings with the peer group we were all talking about going after investment capital, and she got right down to brass tacks with us and said, “That’s great that you want to do that, and I will help you all with connections and networking where I can. But 2% of women get venture capital. 2%. So what’s your plan B?” It’s that dose of what I call supportive reality that I love best about Caroline. She’s got my back. Thick, thin, and everything in between. She’s excited for the journey and yet doesn’t sugar coat reality or treat anyone with kid gloves. We need more women (and men) like her supporting female entrepreneurs.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
Focus — One of my early mentors told me to keep the big F word front of mind, and to never forget to Focus. The best thing an entrepreneur can do is keep a To-Don’t list handy. All those good ideas? Great! Focus. Finish up what you’re working on and then move on to the next priority.
Clarity — Communication is key. And being able to communicate clearly and concisely will be important from day 1. I remember a time early on when I had mentioned something off hand, as an idea I was floating around and it was executed on very quickly to the detriment of other priority work. For better or worse your words matter, and being clear with what you are trying to say is important.
Vision — Someone once told me that being the CEO is like becoming the Chief Vision Officer. And that has rung so true to me over the years. It’s THE job as CEO to see the journey that needs to be carved out. To see the mountains, beyond the forest, through trees and get everybody to the top. And then you have to tell that vision over, and over, and over, until everyone in the company is reciting your vision back to you.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
We started the company by delving into interior finishes, and recently we’ve been approached by lighting, plumbing, furniture, and architectural product manufacturers. Getting connected and bringing simplicity and transparency to the supply chain of materials is highly desirable within this industry. And we look forward to doing that for other product categories as we grow.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
Receiving start-up funding as a woman is a huge challenge. When you are disrupting an industry you’ll likely need to try a few things before you get it all figured out. Startups need a certain amount of iteration to truly find proper product-market fit. Due to women disruptors receiving such a small fraction of VC funding, they are constantly performing huge tasks to grow their companies, especially in areas of large disruption. If you’re a woman trying to disrupt an industry, expect to be learning and doing something new every single day.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
Recently, Michelle Obama’s book Becoming. The equity issues that she framed so clearly were very enlightening. And her perspective of prioritizing family and balancing work. She is an inspiration to many, including myself, and her book highlighted so many of her strengths, and the grace and grit needed to rise as a leader.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Share kindness. I know we are all sick of hearing it. Being kind and spreading that kindness and joy is a muscle that we need to rebuild.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“To be humble is to be grounded in who you are.”
-Glennon Doyle.
To me, that means owning who you are, and sharing your whole self with others. To willingly share your accomplishments and failures. Humility is often lumped in with being subservient, and I think that Glennon phrased it best, “A strength when you think about humility being grounded and speaking the truth.”
How can our readers follow you online?
LinkedIn is probably best: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-schmidt-7420516/. Unless you want to see pictures of me playing with my kids, then you can find me on Instagram.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
For more information about Source and it’s on-demand digital product library and same-day delivery service, visit www.tothesource.com.
About Source
Source is a digital product library and specification platform that connects architects, designers, contractors, and manufacturers in commercial construction nationwide. As the decision engine for commercial construction product selection, we provide industry-leading data, on-demand experts and manufacturer connections needed to make fast and stress-free product decisions. Our digital catalog unlocks over 25 million data points from 190k products, making it easier to find, sample and spec the right products.
