Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren Mullins.
Hi Lauren, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I fell into entrepreneurship during my first year of college because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. The only thing I was sure of was that I loved volunteering with causes I cared about & I liked watching people build businesses, so I leaned into that curiosity (which I would encourage everyone to do no matter their age!) & started a non-profit at age 18 which spawned into a for-profit company at age 23. It’s safe to say I was hooked. After selling my first company, I took a break from entrepreneurship because I wanted to find the next thing. The next thing ended up being Personality Pool, which is an HR tool that allows companies *specifically companies that hire for customer-facing roles* like hospitality, retail, and call center (if your employees are interacting with your customers, we are for you!) to screen their candidates by personality first. If you had asked me 5 years ago if I thought I would be the CEO of a tech company, the answer would have been heck no! Ha! But I am thrilled to be here.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, has it been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road has been just about anything but smooth! But I can with 100% certainty say it’s been worth it. I could talk about any and every variety of struggle. Name a topic & I am sure I can connect it back to a struggle, ha, but I have learned (and continue to learn) that there is always a solution. You have to keep that mindset when any problem comes up & if you are planning to be an entrepreneur, they will come up. The most recent struggles I can touch on are raising venture capital in a rural part of the country & finding our first customer. Both were a challenge. However, I am thrilled to say that we were the first business in the state to receive a matching investment from Launch TN, based in Nashville. That was a huge turning point for us. I have been lucky enough to have a great relationship with the Launch TN team from the beginning of the business, thanks to the earlier relationship I developed with Sync Space (the launch partner in Kingsport). Launch has championed us through all our iterations and growing pains, so having them as our first significant investors made perfect sense. We were also lucky enough to share an attorney (shout out to Chris Trump, who is local to Knoxville & the best attorney a startup could ask for) with Pierce LaMacchia (CEO of KBREW). Chris connected the two of us & Pierce quickly became our first customer, now an advisor & investor in the company. I cannot express enough how important it is to find early customers willing to pilot with you & provide feedback. We owe a lot of our present-day success to Pierce & his team.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I think I touched on “having no clue what I wanted to do” in college, which led me to start a non-profit and eventually start my first business. But, between those two things, I had to get a “real job” to support myself. I have lived many lives to be only 33, haha. When I graduated from college & began my first big-girl job search, I realized I had nothing particular to put on my resume! I looked like every other person with a bachelor’s in business and no real work experience to speak of. It was almost impossible for me to find a job, and I kept thinking, “If I could just get to the interview and show them my personality, I could get this job.” The fact that you can’t showcase your personality at the beginning of the application process doesn’t make sense. Especially in sales, customer service, and any customer-facing job, personality is the most critical factor in who you choose to hire! I am proud of what my team & I have built and of being a small part of completely changing the recruiting landscape. Personality Pool not only makes it easier & more efficient for recruiters to screen candidates, but it also gives those candidates who don’t look as good on paper a chance to shine differently. That excites me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.personalitypool.com/home
- Instagram: @personalitypool
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/personalitypool
