Mother’s Day Interview w/Kerry Schrader and Ashlee Ammons of Mixtroz
The frequent trips to the refrigerator for snacks precipitating a tripled weekly grocery bill. The constant reprimands to stop surfing the internet while in class. The increasing addiction to video games. These issues are not unfamiliar to mothers (parents) everywhere, especially in times of Covid. While we lament the challenges of today, we dream of a bright future for our kids — one where they pay for their own groceries!
As a mother of two teenage boys, I have enormous hopes and dreams for the men they will eventually become. This weighs heavily against the sometimes bigger concerns about the larger world they’re maturing into. Will they face the same challenges we did and do today? Will they have the opportunity to choose the life and career they want?
Kerry Schrader and Ashlee Ammons, founders of Mixtroz, are a testament to both entrepreneurship and raising your child to succeed. I take heart (and notes!) as we connected to discuss their journey from mother/child to business partners, the struggle for funding, and the biases.
Kathy: To start off with could you introduce yourselves? I know who you are and your story, but my readers may not know who you are, so let us know who you are and what you do.
KERRY SCHRADER: I am Kerry Schrader. I am Ashlee’s Mom, but I look like her very young sister. Depending on who we’re talking to, I don’t even let her call me Mom. I am the co-founder, obviously, of Mixtroz with her. My background is as an HR executive. And then, one day, Ashlee and I had a crazy conversation and here we are. People always say, “How did you meet your co-founder?” I’m like, “I birthed mine. How did you meet yours?”
ASHLEE AMMONS: As you can tell, she’s funny, funny, funny. I’m Ashlee. I’m the co-founder of Mixtroz. I am a former events producer. I started my career in New York. I worked at a luxury hospitality company producing events anywhere from $10,000 upwards of a few million dollars. I’ve worked with big brands over the course of my career, a lot of celebrity driven events, and came up with this idea with my Mom, and we’ve been on this road since 2015. It’s been lots of ups and downs, but resilience is something we were talking about way before the pandemic, so it’s nice to see that we’re still here and still moving forward.
KERRY: And as the person who paid for her career, let me tell you not only did she do the stuff she just said, which was expected to have a job, but she was actually, back in the day, LeBron James first intern, which really gave her the bite into “I want to go to New York, Mom.” Some of the clients that she’s talking about is my girl, Oprah, and Leo DiCaprio, and anybody that you can think of that has a significant sum of money, and I honestly miss going to those parties myself for free.
ASHLEE: My Mom is the best hype man. She’s the best hype man ever, but it’s just because she paid for stuff.
On what it’s like working with family; especially working with your mother/daughter:
KERRY: I have to say this: I never in my whole life ever imagined working with Ashlee, but I knew that she does what it takes to make things happen. Before that she was the President of the freshman on campus, she was a cheerleader on the college campus, she was in that, she was in this, and because of my “your grades or else I’m going to quit paying,” she was doing well on the college campus, too. And so, even with LeBron and them, they all loved her. One of her mentors was there and they were like, “Oh, Ashlee represents us well.” I mean they put her on their Christmas cards, Christmas CDs, she does stuff like I would call and say, “you just talked to…” what is his mentor’s name, Ashlee? The rich one?
ASHLEE: Warren Buffet.
KERRY: I’d be like, “How did he sound?” She’s like, “Rich, Mom,” she’s done a lot of those things and I’ve watched her soar. I saw her go to New York and really like her boss. I saw that, I heard it, I knew what she could do, but we just were never like, “Why would we work together?” Because guess what? Even though I didn’t work for LeBron, I was doing some pretty magnificent things that made the world go around in our stratosphere, our personal stratosphere, so I just never thought of that. But even from the first day to today, Ashlee and I have been 50/50 partners, and one will not work without the other because the piece that she brings is at such a microlevel. Her detail is something that I’m not comfortable with because I like macro and that’s how I’ve made my money. I respect her decisions in her slots that are hers, and when it comes to the things that I own, whether we agree with each other or not, we know those are the best decisions for our company.
ASHLEE: I was going to say, I think she has said a lot. I think that was a pretty good summation of it all. Good job, Mom. Honestly, I was very comfortable in my job. I was in my late 20s, making over six figures, single in New York City. I was living the dream. I didn’t need to do another dream. My mom is more naturally entrepreneurial than I am, and it took a little bit more convincing on my end. I said, “Okay, so let me understand: You want me to leave New York, which means I need to get rid of all this stuff I have in New York. You want me to — not even you want me to, what’s necessary is that I reduce my overhead significantly, so I need to move home in my late twenties for the time since I was college age?” So I thought, “Am I chasing down this new dream and things that come up in life? Maybe it is time to chase down this new dream.”
So we did that, and part of the entrepreneurial process is embracing discomfort. When you’re entrepreneurial, there is just going to be times that you have to do things that you might consider uncomfortable, but you do that because you can see the vision, you believe in the product that you’re building, you can see where you’re going, and that’s why you keep going. You ultimately believe that the thing that you’ve built is going to deliver delight to some market of people. That’s why you keep going and keep doing it.
It took sacrifice, but honestly, I would not have done this journey with anyone else because they say a lot of entrepreneurial ventures blow up because co-founders can’t figure one another out. There’s all this power struggle, and I want to do it this way, you want to do it that way, and people are sneaking around and all of that. But at the end of the day, my Mom is my number one person because since I came into the world, literally, she has always had my back. So that’s never a worry we have. Unless something major is going on I’m not looking at Mixtroz’s finances, which is great because that’s not something that I like to do. I trust my Mom in every sense of the word. I know that she is making business decisions on our collective behalf, not just me, but for the team that we have now. There’s just a level of trust there.
The difficulties of being an entrepreneur:
KERRY: It’s definitely not all those Reels you see on Instagram. Also, I have to shout out — my husband, and I have a son, Zach, that’s 24. In the midst of this, Zach was maybe a sophomore in high school trying to make his life stay the same because he was used to a certain lifestyle — like, “Oh, Mom quit her job, so now we can’t do all the stuff that everybody else had an opportunity to do.” And my husband was just like, “Okay, let me get this big girl: you’re going to quit that job, and then we’re going to take money out of our savings…” and I was the one working! He retired early from a stellar career to be at home. He liked the kids, he liked cooking for them, and I was at work. So, great! Just even that, “Okay, we’re going to quit, we’re going to put our money in, we’re going to do all of these things,” and I will tell you — I just said this to somebody — if I would have had a looking glass to see what this journey was like I know for a fact I would have never took it. Because it’s hard! It’s not, “Oh, this makes sense. You crack the code and if you work real hard and you’re honest and people say they’ll use it and they’ll pay for you, then boom.”
Dealing with pushback and discrimination from investors because of their relationship:
ASHLEE: I can answer this.
KERRY: Okay, Ashlee, make sure you do like Harry did and do not tell who it was. Take the high road like the royals. I’ll be Megan and you be Harry. (Laughter)
ASHLEE: Yes, there was an investor who basically said outright with no filter, “Well, Ashlee, because you’re the Millennial, you’re eventually going to have to be the CEO because you’re the Millennial.” That was the only justification for it. “That’s what people want to see. That you’re the Millennial.” We just looked at him like, what? And this was right before we were in like Me Too, Us Too, Them Too, Black Lives, Women’s Lives, all this. And we were just like, “What did he just say?” We were shook, I will say.
KERRY: And you can even tell them how shook I was because let me just tell you: I have drove a career, a mighty fine career of manufacturing. With 99.9% males, crying was not allowed, so when I cry, generally that means something bad is about to happen — I have to go and like cut myself to cry when the occasion’s right because I don’t cry.
ASHLEE: Yeah, so I mean that was startling, but I will say, even in that situation –
KERRY: I didn’t cry in front of them though.
ASHLEE: Right. But he got a good email afterward like, “Okay, you lost your mind. Don’t be just saying stuff like that. You lost your mind.” Also, you want to beat people to the punch. After a while, the way that you go raising funding or doing some of these different things you have to do inside of a startup, it’s pretty methodical. You’re going to get the same questions over and over. If you don’t start to anticipate what those questions are or where people are going to try to poke holes, you’re not growing. So we would put right in our pitch deck, us as founders, for anybody who has an issue with [us being mother/daughter], number one: we’ve been in this business this long, have not had a major meltdown, killed each other, none of that stuff just yet. But also: if you look at our personality types — we’ve done some exhaustive testing, both Myers Briggs and Enneagram — my mom and I’s personality types, while they’re not the same, they actually complement each other. The way that my Mom sees the world is in a macro way and it makes sense that she would be the visionary, the CEO. And the way that I see it is micro, so it makes sense that I’m much more involved in the day-to-day and micro elements of the business.
The future for Mixtroz and for women, specifically Black women, in tech:
KERRY: The good news is when we built Mixtroz, we built it with a basic thing in mind that has lasted and will last. We want to help people with the oldest art that is around and that’s communication. We want to help real people continue their communication, and, as a kicker, the organizer gets all of that data. But at the end of the day it’s, “I need to be able to talk to somebody like-minded,” or, depending on the conference, maybe it needs to be diverse, or it could be totally random. That’s the beauty because the event organizer can do all of those things. That’s been our overarching mission. We’ve never left that live or virtually.
When it comes to where I see what I’m going to do, two roles, A) I really can’t wait till Mixtroz is self-sufficient because I really want to be out there taking on this glass ceiling thing. I’m so tired of hearing about this damn ceiling, and the Vice President [Kamala Harris]. People [said] when I was in manufacturing, “You broke it! You’re breaking it, Cabinet’s breaking it, all of these people, J. Lo is breaking it.” We’ve got to quit sharing it because as people come up behind us, they’re still bleeding to death. Well, hell, I’m bleeding. We need to dismantle that, so I really want to do a roadshow and talk about and really impact change through investment, by really challenging people. And I can challenge from my HR experience.
And then, I want to be a sommelier in France, drinking wine, tasting the wine, swirling it on my tongue. I don’t want nobody to have my address, including the other person on this line [Ashlee]. My husband and [Ashlee] and her brother can do whatever they’re doing.
ASHLEE: I want to pour back in the ecosystem. Here’s the thing — and I think this is the thing that people don’t want to say — when you’re a founder of color, you have likely built in your business an extraordinary amount of time because it takes a long time to get funded and all that kind of stuff. I am just eager to get to that next phase, this growth phase that we’re entering now, because it’s such an extraordinary amount of time to get to the funding so we could actually build the thing. It’s nice seeing it actually move forward and work. But I hope that we’re able to make the process easier for people who are coming behind us at the end of the day.
KERRY: I think we had a gut check on, “Oh, I want to do this for 500 years and just never live life because I’m doing this,” because we had literally just raised a friends and family round of $200,000 when Black women were only able to raise $36,000. Literally the paper on that deal wasn’t dry and I was diagnosed with breast cancer, with no symptoms, with no anything. If I wouldn’t have went to that mammogram, I would have never known it. My weight was up, so when my weight is up I think, “Yes, you’re healthy as a horse.” That’s how we all think. It really put things in perspective. No matter who we’re talking to or what someone says, I’ll be a closer and I’ll say, “Take time. Whatever you need to take time for, male or female, and get those exams, even if you have got to go to a free place, wherever because if you ain’t here, none of this stuff matters.”
Yeah, I think there’s life beyond Mixtroz. We’re going to have Mixtroz enrich a lot of lives and see it do its thing, but there’s life beyond that.
How they’re going to spend Mother’s Day:
KERRY: Well, all these Louis Vuitton bags I’ve been showing folk around here, and I’m thinking if they all huddle together — I don’t want that little bag. Momma would love that big old backpack. I’m thinking, you know, I’ve been praying, I don’t know what else I can do. I leave it up on my computer, I talk to my son when he comes in. I don’t want no damn candles, I don’t want this or that, I don’t want none of that. You’re all grown. Show me the real things. (Laughter) But, no, I’m really not expecting anything.
ASHLEE: Well, we’re actually going to be having a funding announcement coming up around then, so we’ve raised another million dollars, so we’re going to have our funding announcement coming around Mother’s Day because it’s very timely. There’s not really a lot of other press in the tech world going on around Mother’s Day generally speaking, so that. But, wait — Kerry got to shout out my step-father, her son, all that. I have a partner who is pretty awesome, and we’re actually all staying the night at his house the night before Mother’s Day…in Atlanta.
KERRY: For the record, that announcement: I’m working hard, if not harder, to get them dollars, so that’s like a big gift for the people. I want Louis Vuitton. Instagram story stuff. Okay? Let me see that box come up in here. (Laughter)
Mixtroz is about the art of communication. Whether it’s the first meeting, an ideation session, or facilitating a strategy definition discussion, making sure you have the right people at the table to deliver on the outcomes is key. Mixtroz enables that.
It’s Mother’s Day 2021, and, as I chuckle over Kerry and Ashlee’s remarks, I also remember the moments when two young boys came into my life. It’s bittersweet to know that, in a few short years, they will go off on their own. I’m proud of the men they’re becoming, and I’m equally honored to have the opportunity to help define a future where their choices are based on capability and not the color of their skin. Maybe in my lifetime, but hopefully, definitely in theirs…
