TRANSCRIPT

Mary Kay Ziniewicz is the founder and CEO of Bus Stop Mamas a tech platform that instantly introduces employers to off-market talent moms. As someone who's interested in each job marketplaces, I wanted to get her on the pod and find out more, and she joins us now from Minnesota. Mary Kay, welcome to the show. It's nice to have you.

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:01):

Excellent. So tell me about the origin story of Bus Stop. Mamas great name, by the way. And how did it all get started?

Speaker 3 (01:10):

We got started at the bus stop, actually, so hence the name. My husband was actually literally, yep, waving to the kids on the bus. That's exactly how it got started. And I started standing out at the bus stop when my daughter was 10 for the first time. My husband was the stay at home parent for our daughter for the first 10 years of her life. So he was the one standing out there. And then he liked many people who opt to stay home with their children. He was feeling kind of sad. He wanted to be around adults, he wanted to exercise his other talents, and importantly, he wanted to contribute to our household income. All of these things make us full people. So he went back to work. And then I brought my business in-house prior to Bus Stop Mamas. I had a consulting firm where I worked with law firms around the country doing branding and business development.

(02:07)
So not in this space at all. So then I got to stand out at the bus stop for the first time with all these other incredible mamas who exited their careers to care for their children and who had exceptional credentials and were all waving to their kids as they took off on the bus. And many of them had attempted to go back to work many times, but got quick rejections, no rejections at all, thought there was no one who wanted them anymore, thought they were irrelevant and their self-esteem plummeted. And I knew otherwise. I knew that if the people I worked with had an opportunity to meet these ladies, they'd hire 'em in a heartbeat. The problem was they never got through. So that's what I went about fixing. I knew it needed to be fixed. I knew employers needed them, and I knew families and moms in particular needed to work.

Speaker 1 (03:06):

And it started in 2019, you said, I think?

Speaker 3 (03:08):

Yep, yep.

Speaker 1 (03:09):

Okay. So the first couple of months of the business, how did you get started? How did you actually get your name out there? How'd you get people to come and join the site? Give me some insights on that.

Speaker 3 (03:19):

Yeah, so it was pretty incredible actually because we haven't spent a dime on advertising moms talk when they like something. So we have the best possible ambassadors that talk rapidly when they love something. So our moms have grown all through word of mouth and so have the businesses. So we are a double-sided marketplace. We have moms, we have businesses, we need both to operate. Moms are our supply businesses, employers are our buyer. So word of mouth has been our only method. So we started in 2019 and I just pretty much started with calling a couple friends saying, Hey, you want a job, don't you? And then calling a few other friends saying, Hey, you're looking for somebody, aren't you? And I just started introducing. So that's what our model does is our model makes introductions and we promise moms that she's going to get through, which is a promise that she likes because her only problem was she never got through before. And now we say, mama, you're going to get through, you're going to meet that decision maker, and we promised the decision maker, you're going to meet off talent, off market talent, talent that you haven't met before. So that's what we do. We do introductions. We're not a staffing agency, we're not a recruiter.

Speaker 1 (04:59):

We're

Speaker 3 (04:59):

A platform that makes introductions.

Speaker 1 (05:01):

I want to come back to that, dive into more into that, but how big is the platform today? How many moms do you have on there? How many jobs? Give me a sense of how big you guys are.

Speaker 3 (05:09):

So we have about 19,000 over 19,000 moms in our network, and we work with about 800 companies, businesses as large as Boston Scientific and as small as a two person operation.

Speaker 1 (05:24):

Now is it kind of regional at this point? You're based in Minnesota, I think you said on our email exchange you had a lot of Minnesota moms on there, but give me a sense of the geography of these folks.

Speaker 3 (05:33):

Yeah, so we're national. We have our highest concentration of moms and businesses is in Minnesota. That's where I am. Our team is all over, including India. So we do plan to expand and we have moms in every state. Our concentration of moms is high in every state as it is in Minnesota. And we work with businesses everywhere. So depending on the job. And the need really depends on the traction in our

Speaker 1 (06:04):

Are a lot of the jobs, remote jobs is that the majority,

Speaker 3 (06:08):

Many of them are remote. Our remote jobs go quickly. So that's why it is important for moms to join the network because when you're in the network, you get first dibs on the job, so the jobs come first to you and remote jobs go quick within

Speaker 1 (06:29):

Seconds. Okay. Yeah, it's any job online that's three or four x of the regular jobs in terms of the number applies. So that makes sense. Okay. So you said make an introduction. So walk me through that process. So employer posts a job or a project or something and what happens from there? Walk me through that experience.

Speaker 3 (06:51):

Sure. So it's very easy for an employer to post a job. So that part is very simple. They enter their job description, we have specific prompts they fill out, and then those jobs go out once a week to our mamas through an email, Hey, mamas, here are our new jobs for the week. And moms review those jobs. They decide if they have an interest, the skillset, and if the schedule meets theirs. And if it does, they simply click introduce me. And then as soon as they click introduce me, they're introduced to the decision maker.

Speaker 1 (07:29):

Okay. And what does that look like? Is that an email or giving me a sense of how that actually looks like?

Speaker 3 (07:34):

That's through an email introduction. So Chris, meet Susie, here's a little bit about Chris and his business. Here's a little bit about Susie, just like you probably sent out a few of these earlier today, saved a couple. We're all familiar with that. People in the business world have sent them, have received them, and that's exactly what we do. It's all automated. The introductions are automated, and then from there it's up to one or both of them to follow up. Doesn't matter who goes first. And then that introduction is in the hands of the moms and the employer and we're done.

Speaker 1 (08:15):

That's cool. Your site is, you custom build it, is it a job or software on there or,

Speaker 3 (08:22):

Yeah, so actually as the story goes in 2019, December of 2019, my daughter was 12 and I looked at her and I said, Lily, it's time to start bus stop. And she asked me what I needed and I said, I need a website and I don't have any money to pay somebody to do it. And she said, I can do it, mama. So Lily built my website when she was 12, that was 21. And hardly anything has changed except for the backend tools. So that has become very sophisticated since then.

Speaker 1 (09:00):

This dashboard, is that for the candidates or the employers? Do the employers have a dashboard they log into and

Speaker 3 (09:05):

Yep, employers have a dashboard and moms have a dashboard.

Speaker 1 (09:08):

Gotcha. Okay.

Speaker 4 (09:11):

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Speaker 1 (09:52):

Walk me through the pricing for employers. How does that go?

Speaker 3 (09:55):

Sure. So we have three options for employers. One is what we call pay to post, and that's for employers who have one-off jobs. We hire one person, smaller firms that don't need a lot of talent, and then we have, so they pay once we are a flat fee, we don't have a fee after a hire. So employers know exactly what they're getting into, what they're getting, and it's one and done. So pay to post, we have a price for part-time price for full-time. Then we have our subscription, which is for employers that want to post up to four different job descriptions a month. And that is one fee. So one and done. You can do it monthly, you can do it multiple months up to you. And then we have our enterprise, which is, and you might be looking on our website right now. Our new launch is for January one, so we're speaking now in December, January one is when this new pricing model goes into effect. We have basically the same thing, only we've reduced our prices in some areas and we've heightened them in other areas. And all of that has been determined through feedback and testing. So

Speaker 1 (11:30):

As, as a job marketplace, as you get older, as you grow and you become more credible and trustworthy and things like that, you could raise prices each year. It's definitely doable. You're adding, you're basically sensing, you're adding more value every year anyway because you're just growing overall, your whole database. So makes sense. I

Speaker 3 (11:47):

Know we were kind of upping our price and lowering our price at the same time of an interesting science. We keep balancing it and we believe that this year we, we learned a lot over the last four years and we nailed it for 2020.

Speaker 1 (12:04):

Is there one product that is more popular than others? Is it the single posting or

Speaker 3 (12:09):

I'm currently paid to post is our highest stock.

Speaker 1 (12:13):

Gotcha. Okay. Let's see here. Tell me a few success stories. Give me a couple of personal mom success stories and give us some inspiration there.

Speaker 3 (12:26):

Sure. So one of our earliest moms with us in 2019, and she was having trouble applying for jobs, getting responses. She learned about the step Mamas saw a job that she thought, no, this is kind of above what I think I can do. But she went ahead and clicked on it anyways, and she got a return response from the employer within a couple of hours. And the next day she had an interview and by phone and within a couple of hours, this mom, she was looking for work for a very long time. Her self-esteem was not very high. She has four children. She didn't think she would ever find a job that fit her crazy schedule. So this was back in 2019. The company that hired her is CRG Consumer Research Group, and she was hired in a part-time position, and she is now a part of their executive board and she works.

(13:54)
So she progressed her job as her children advanced, and that's the bus stop mamas model. We talked to employers about the motherhood career pathway and thinking about how do we keep women in and how do we help them grow their careers because women do have babies. And this is a technique that has never been done before and Covid actually helped with this. We talk about moms as in three plus segments, car seat, bus seat, driver's seat, and beyond stepping a career in those ways as our children mature, how they need us flexes, car seat, bus seat, driver's seat and beyond. If you're a parent, probably understand our children do mature and they need us in different ways, and before we know it, they're gone and we can do whatever we want. Woo-hoo. It's an incredible journey and it's a journey that we are hoping that employers of excellence can get their heads around how this is a great opportunity for everyone. So CRG actually, not only did this mom advance to being a part of their key decision making executive team, the owner of the company is now on my advisory board.

Speaker 1 (15:27):

Very cool. Very cool. What do employers tell you about the site? Do they ever offer

Speaker 3 (15:32):

All the time. So there isn't another site like ours. So the big value to employers is not only do they gain access to this exceptional talent, they also get their brand in front of their buyers, their key decision makers in the household. But what we typically hear from employers is, oh my gosh, I can't make a decision between these candidates. They're so great. That's our biggest complaint is how do I make a decision? Sometimes employers hire more people than they have planned on because they can't make a decision. So in our old model, that was always good for us because we would get paid per person. In our new model, we don't necessarily get that same thing what plan they're on.

Speaker 1 (16:36):

Very cool. Two more questions for you Mary Kay. We certainly appreciate your time today. I'm going to get some advice from you. So first advice for moms out there. I mean, give me something they could take home today if they're looking for work. What do you typically say to someone when they're a mom and they're trying to find something out there?

Speaker 3 (16:55):

Yeah, I always want to encourage moms that you can do this and that you are needed and wanted. And don't forget that you are doing incredible things every day, every day. And you have skills that employers want and need. In fact, most of the employers that come to us say, this is a perfect job for mom. We want her. So it's either a job that they have determined is excellent for you, or it's an employer who says, we absolutely want more women under our roof and we want her. They want you, mom. So I want moms to know she is needed. She has exceptional skills that are needed and are looked upon as being exceptional skills by employers who post on our website and just do it. You can do it.

Speaker 1 (17:50):

Nice. Awesome. I also wanted to ask you about advice for anyone looking to build a job marketplace. What have you learned in this five year span about running essentially a two-sided marketplace, employers and job seekers? Give me some advice there.

Speaker 3 (18:07):

Well, that one is a tough one. I think there's a lot of stuff out there. There's a lot of players out there. It's a hard question to answer because if it's a startup, it is a saturated market.

Speaker 1 (18:28):

Let me ask, lemme rephrase the question then. Did you make any mistakes in the beginning that looking back now you think, okay, I should have done that differently, maybe something like that?

Speaker 3 (18:37):

Yeah, a ton of mistakes. That's all I do is make mistakes. So fortunately I've made a lot and I've learned a lot. We've revised our model, our pricing model several times. So initially, I can't even remember the first model that we did. I guess my advice is don't be, don't think your first idea is the best and that there are ways of modifying and you have your great idea, but the pricing model is essential for success. And so many people get committed to how they want their business to operate. And even when I was a consultant, the same thing was true different, but same, similar thing, figuring out how to charge for your services is really challenging and testing it is important. And don't be afraid to go by what you feel is working because everybody has an idea about what you can be doing. And I listened to a lot of ideas and I kept going back to my own, but it was after I listened, I doubted and I learned

Speaker 1 (20:02):

How are you marketing to employers? That's always a challenge for any national board like that, but give me a sense of what you're doing around that.

Speaker 3 (20:10):

Yeah, that's again all word of mouth. We hope in 2024, not hope, but we're planning to advertise in 2024. We have money now to do so. So we're going to experiment on a few different ways to reach out. Up until now, I said we haven't spent any money. We haven't, but we leverage social. We don't purchase any posts, but we leverage it all the time on both for LinkedIn, for employers basically, and Facebook and Instagram for

Speaker 1 (20:47):

Mamas after five years. It's pretty cool. You haven't had advertised yet, I mean, do you have a sense of how much traffic do you have on a monthly basis? 10,000 monthly visitors? Is it more or less?

Speaker 3 (20:58):

Yeah, it all depends. We recently were on Fox nine news and every time we get some media attention, that's been another real great play for us because we're mamas there is interest in talking about us. So we've really benefited from that from the media attention. So when we have a media piece, our numbers go way up. We get new mamas. There's a lot of sharing on the internet with just the piece flying around. We might even been, that might've been how we got introduced, I'm not sure. But yeah, so those numbers are all over the place. We have constant visitors to our site on job day, which is Tuesday. Our numbers are way up.

Speaker 1 (21:52):

What's job day

Speaker 3 (21:53):

Tuesday.

Speaker 1 (21:54):

But what is that?

Speaker 3 (21:56):

That's when the jobs go out to the moms and they're email.

Speaker 1 (21:59):

Okay, so you do, okay, explain that to me. Yeah, we talked about that. So you have one day when all the jobs come out each week.

Speaker 3 (22:07):

Yep. So that's why I mentioned it's important that moms are in our network because the moms in our network get the jobs first. So jobs come off hot off the presses, go to the mamas Amazon Tuesday, and then moms start clicking.

Speaker 1 (22:25):

Oh, I see. So if they've done the network, they see the jobs and then because on your site too. So after they see those, then you put 'em on the actual publicly viewable website.

Speaker 3 (22:35):

Those are after. Those are leftover jobs. So those are the jobs that the employers are still waiting for more candidates. When we have different agreements with our candidates or with our employers, depending on the job, we kind of know when a job is going to get really high traction. So we'll recommend that an employer put a cap on those introductions. So when there's an introduction cap, they'll cap. Because we ask our employers to follow up with each mama. That's part of our code of conduct. So we don't want them to get overwhelmed with introductions. And we know from the way our model works that within the first three introductions, the employer is going to hire somebody

Speaker 1 (23:24):

Three.

Speaker 3 (23:26):

And so we'll typically cap it anywhere between 10 or 20, depending on what the employer requests. We let them request it, and if by some chance they say, Hey, undo it, we undo it. But so far, usually it's like this. So to answer your question, the jobs go out to the mamas in our network. So we have about 19,000 mamas in our network. We also have mamas on social that follow us, but they don't get this first and then they go up on our job site after they go out to the mamas. Mamas start clicking on Tuesdays. Tuesdays.

Speaker 1 (24:04):

Very cool. Well, Mary Kay, it sounds like a very personable experience for both audiences here. So I give you credit on launching something that puts a little human touch back into the job search process, and I wish you well tell the audience how to connect with you and the website.

Speaker 3 (24:24):

Sure. So excuse me. Our website is Bus Stop Mamas MAMA s.com. So there's two S's in there. B-U-S-S-T-O-P-M-A-M-A s.com. You can reach me on LinkedIn, you can connect with me there, Mary Kay Zeitz. I make it a real easy name to just spell. So it's Z-I-N-I-E-W-I-C-Z. I'm probably the only one on LinkedIn with that name. But yeah, you can connect me with me there. You can give me a call if you want. (612) 396-9653 is myself. And yeah, we are always looking to talk to new employers. We work with employers of every size and we are in growth mode. We save employers a ton of money. So we are an exceptional tool to include in the toolbox. So when an employer is seeking diversity, we're your game to have included in that recruiting toolbox and we save a lot of money.