Dive into this electrifying episode of Mick Unplugged as we sit down with trailblazer Suneera Madhani, the powerhouse entrepreneur who transformed a seismic idea into a multi-million dollar venture. Thriving on her mission to bridge gender disparities in leadership, she's empowering women globally to redefine success on their own terms. From revolutionizing the fintech landscape with her innovative business solutions to founding the impactful CEO School for aspiring women entrepreneurs, Suneera's journey is a testament to vision, resilience, and transformative leadership. Fasten your seatbelts as host Mick Hunt unpacks this whirlwind entrepreneurial saga, sparking inspiration and limitless potential! Takeaways: Authentic leadership and embracing your true self can transform not just your business but your life. Entrepreneurship is about execution, not just ideas. Build habits that align with your goals. Women's unique perspectives and empathy in leadership can fuel incredible success and innovation. Sound Bites: "You can't manifest your way to success; you have to take action every day." "There’s no such thing as a billion-dollar idea. It is a billion-dollar execution." "Decide if you're ready to get in the game—isn't it more fun to play than to watch from the sidelines?" Quote by Mick: "Think of solutions to problems people don't see yet. The game-changer entrepreneurs see the future before it arrives." Connect & Discover Suneera LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suneeramadhani/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suneeramadhani/ Website: https://suneeramadhani.com/ Follow Mick On: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mickunplugged/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mickunplugged/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIPaMel-Fb4zQmCSZDPHu4A LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mickhunt/ Website: https://www.mickhuntofficial.com Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mick-unplugged/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: Who is Suneera Madhani and what is her mission?
She's the founder of the CEO School and is on a mission to close the gender gap in leadership by equipping women with the tools that they need to succeed on their own terms. Get ready for a conversation with the visionary, the empowering, the unstoppable, Orlando's finest, Sanira Madani. Sanira, how are you doing today, dear?
I'm doing great, Mick. Thank you so much for having me. And I loved the intro. So I wish you could be my hype man, like always just hanging out wherever I, every room I walk into.
We'll record it and you can just play it before you walk out. How about that?
Done and done.
There it is. There it is. So, so there is so much that I want to get into. And I, you know, I'll make unplugged. We talk about your, because that thing that's deeper than your, why that's like your real purpose, your real reason to do what you do. And as someone who's an inspiration to many, what is scenarios? Because what's that deeper than your wife thing that keeps you doing what you do?
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Chapter 2: What drives Suneera Madhani's entrepreneurial journey?
Oh my goodness. I'm going to give you like the most basic answer is, I wish it was so much bigger, but truthfully, it's my family. Like it's as simple as that. It's my family. I grew up as, you know, daughter of immigrants. So my parents are Pakistani. They immigrated to the States in the, in the seventies and, you know, just didn't have opportunity back home. My, both my parents weren't educated.
So they came here for economic opportunity and And, you know, I was born in Chicago. They met in Chicago and got married in Chicago. And it's a beautiful love story, but they worked, you know, extremely hard, just like most immigrants do. And their story is, you know, it's so inspirational of just not being educated, not having family, not having the resources to really then
you know, deciding that entrepreneurship is the path to success for them. Because if you're not educated, there's not that many options for you to really have the American dream. And so I feel so grateful for their journey, the risks that they took. And my brother and I were for the beneficiaries of that. And their American dream was for that
my brother and I would have an education, something that they didn't have, that we would have opportunity to be anything that we wanted to be and to live our lives to our best. And so that was the American dream for my parents. And I feel so grateful for that. We did both go to University of Florida. I was the first in my family to graduate from college. I got...
two degrees in finance and marketing, minor in leadership. So education was so important in our family that we were going to succeed. And I would have all the opportunities through that. And so my parents were just a huge influence in our lives, but I got to see my parents work really hard. We had small businesses from convenience stores, so very traditional businesses. And
We had convenience stores, but, you know, my parents worked their way from, you know, working in the convenience store to owning the convenience store to then building their small business empire. And it was, you know, we were a middle class, upper middle class family, but we just had this value system of family, hard work. We're at the dinner table every night.
And I'm just so grateful for this opportunity. And I think a lot of kids of immigrants, We don't take, you know, that for granted. And so you kind of have this pressure without like, it's not that my parents ever pressured us to become entrepreneurs, which I'll share with you, like how my story ended up, but it was that feeling of like, I didn't want to let any opportunity go to waste. Right.
Like I felt privileged to have opportunity. And so I think with that, naturally, it was just ambitious as a kid. Naturally, I got to see I worked with my like in my parents' businesses every weekend. You know, after school, my dad taught me how to do payroll at the age of 14. Like I was stocking shelves like we had such an integrated work life family. dynamic.
And so I learned a ton and I look back as an entrepreneur now and I got my MBA, like growing up, I got my MBA and post-college, I did go down the corporate path. I did go down the finance corporate path and ended up finding myself just
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Chapter 3: How did Suneera build a billion-dollar company?
And instead of the banks and everyone taking percentages on top, the small business just paid the direct kind of like a wholesale rate with Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express. So they saved a lot of money by not paying the extra percentages. And instead, we charged a flat monthly subscription based on their volume. So if they did...
million dollars in volume this was your subscription so it was like a capped subscription and our exchange was that we were going to provide awesome software and tools to help grow their business so that was the founding of a company it was stacks uh was my first business i mean there's so much to unpack to share kind of 10 years of the how right like i didn't i didn't go to ceo school i
I had never raised capital before. I was 25 years old with no money in my bank account to go talk. How do I even get a meeting to go get a sponsor bank? So a lot there that we won't be able to cover in 30 minutes here today. But the thing that I always share with every entrepreneur is... why not? Right.
So I think that like, there's so many barriers to like, when we have big ideas and we're like, we can do the things we, our mindset is what stops us from even putting our first foot forward. And so the success over the last 10 years only came from me showing up every day, putting one foot in front of the other and then solving today's problem.
We overcomplicate, you know, we have to be there at the end, but if you just bite that elephant, like one bite at a time, that's how I was able to, to go build it. And I know it's, it's very easy to say post it's done. It was a lot of hard work. I didn't have the network. I didn't go to an Ivy league school.
I'm not pale male or still, and I'm at a golf club or like, I have this network that I can rely on. And so if I can do it, I really do believe that like anyone can have a big idea and go execute. And even if it's a small idea, even if it's just whatever the idea is, just uncap yourself. I didn't know I could go build a million dollar business, let alone a billion dollar one.
And if I had thought about it, that is going to be a billion dollar business. I don't know if I would have gotten started. I just wanted to go solve a problem. And I got really excited about solving the problem for my customer. And every day I put the right people around me to help me solve that problem. And so that was the journey with stacks and it was beautiful.
I've learned so much in, in my own self and my own journey as a leader and my own journey as an entrepreneur and a CEO and And I'm at it again. So my brother and I are building our next FinTech called Worth. And so we're building the business credit score now, which I'll share with you in a minute, but we're back at it because we love solving problems. And there's so many problems in our space.
And I do believe in an equitable financial landscape for everyone. And now that I've been on both sides, I can't unsee what I see. And so someone's got to go solve it and it has to be us. Like, so if you have something you're passionate about and then you have to go, like, you see a problem, don't be the one that's complaining about it.
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Chapter 4: What was the innovative business idea behind Suneera's success?
But let me show you where this is actually going and where the future is, because that's how you get the investors. That's how you get the VC, because it's like, oh, crap. Not only did we not see that, but now that you've shown us what you just said, we can't unsee that this is where the world is going or this is where things are.
And so for every entrepreneur, everyone that's thinking about starting a business, Like literally think of solutions to problems people don't see. Because if you just solve a today's problem, there's thousands of you, right? And then you're competing with the other thousands of you.
What most people don't see and the entrepreneurs that get it right, they see the problem that's 10 years from now that we can start solving today. Or we can see the solution that you're going to need in five years, even though you don't see it today. And to me, Suneer, and I want to get your feedback on this or your insights on this. It's not just mindset, right? Everybody can think.
Most people keep it up here. But what Sanera did was put action behind it and built the habits to do that. So, Sanera, how do you go from mindset, if you're an entrepreneur, to actually putting things in place?
I love this question. And I do believe like you can't manifest your way to success. Like you have to take action every day. So I fully support that. But I do think that the mindset part is that that's a huge part of it too, especially as a woman. I think that women and men just have different natural thinking tendencies. And we are very much in our head as a species.
Like we are very much in our head. We stop ourselves. We're huge perfectionists. I'm going to reread an email a hundred thousand times before I hit send, right? in. And so I do really emphasize that the mindset part of it, like we do have to, I think men are more prone to trying and failing and it's okay. And they'll get back up. We are very afraid of failure and it's definitely a mindset shift.
So the first thing I think is also just taking action, but knowing that it's okay to fail. So you're not going to get it right on the first try. And it's a series of actions and that's the consistency part of execution. a huge part of what every message that I share, you know, there's no such thing as a billion dollar idea. It is a billion dollar execution.
Every day is execution and steps to take action. I think you have to make a decision. You like draw a line in the sand and you're like, am I an action taker or am I not? Okay. And you have to mentally, if you're getting ready to like, are you ready to play? Or are you not? Are you going to sit on the sidelines?
So there's two kinds of people in this world that the ones that are going to be in the arena and the ones that are going to sit and watch from the seats. And I know the kind of person that I am and I want to be, and I want to play. I want to be in the arena. I know I'm going to go down. I know I'm going to have to get back up.
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Chapter 5: How can entrepreneurs turn mindset into action?
And they're like, I kept getting invited for coffees or for like to fermenter chats. And there's only so much how many, you know, where, where I can share, here's how I did this. Here's where my knowledge is. Here's how I was able to go meet the investor. Here's how I applied to pitch competitions. Here's how I like skirted into that network room that I wasn't invited to.
And then I ended up getting this deal done. Right. So there's this, like, there's this, business playbook and conversation that I think men naturally have had for so long, whether it's on the golf course or whether it's at stadiums or at the games or at poker nights, women, I mean, we're new to the workplace. Let's be honest, right?
It's been less than a hundred years that we've actually been in the workforce and Less than 50 years that we've been able to even open up a bank account that we don't have to sign. Like we don't have to have somebody else sign for us. We are now entering this arena. Right. But without that support, without the team, without the network. And so.
I felt like that was really needed in the conversations around success. Like it wasn't, there's not gatekeeping. It's just, how do we get more information to say, this is how we do it. This is how I was able to learn from somebody else or somebody else doesn't have to make those mistakes that I made. And so that was really the start of where CEO school came about was it started as a podcast.
I was bringing the community. These conversations were happening on LinkedIn and on Instagram and on social. And we're like, let's bring these conversations. and learn from actual women who have made it to what we call the 2% club. So women who have not the, how I built this.
And we've, we have some amazing stories of like the biggest successful entrepreneurs, but what about the woman who has crossed that $7 million point in her business? And she's a service-based agency. What about that e-commerce shop that like, how do we actually take tactical advice from women who've been there? And to be honest with My entire career, I was, I call myself a man in a skirt.
So I was like always trying to fit in to the boys club and it's not my fault. It's just what was there. And I wanted to just not with human tendency to want to be at the table. And I realized that I lost so much of my authentic femininity. I my like natural instincts, my empathy, how I lead is different.
And I have two male co-founders and I felt like I was trying to be something that I wasn't just to kind of fit into this mold. And really when the success of the company took off was when I was, after I became a mother, after I leaned into my own leadership and who Sanera was not what Sanera was trying to be and emulate. And so I feel like with the armor off, I feel like I was able to
When I could show up authentically as myself and lead in my energy, things really started to shift for me and for the company. And so I've just really encouraged that for women to not try to fit the molds. And those are the conversations that weren't taking place. And so CEO School started as a podcast. It's going to be five years this March. of 2025. So it started during the pandemic.
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