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Serious Lady Business is the podcast where we dive into the serious—and sometimes not-so-serious—realities of being a female business owner. Host Leslie Youngblood keeps it real about entrepreneurship as we dive into the hard lessons no one warns you about to the surprising wins that make it all worth it. Tune in for honest conversations, unfiltered insights, and stories that prove you’re not in this alone.
Leslie Youngblood (00:00)
Welcome back to Serious Lady Business. I'm Leslie Youngblood, your host, feminist, and founder of Youngblood MMC, a marketing media and content agency, and meet Nancy Yaklich today. She's a powerhouse innovation leader who transforms cutting edge tech into business gold. Recently promoted to the Caterpillar's Building Construction Products Retail Transformation Team, Nancy now leads innovation and incubation efforts that are reinventing how the construction industry engages
with customers and technology. At Caterpillar, she's revolutionizing the construction industry with renewable energy solutions and AI platforms targeting a staggering $355 billion market, slashing time to market by an incredible 68%. Her retail transformation initiative promises to redefine how contractors access equipment, services, and solutions. Now, Nancy's career is defined by jaw-dropping results.
Nancy Yaklich (00:47)
you
Leslie Youngblood (00:57)
as if the things I didn't share weren't enough. Cargill, her $45 million Innovation Hub scaled digital farm platforms that kept America fed during COVID-19. At Verizon, her data-driven strategies generated $6.6 billion in revenue. And when crisis strikes, Nancy delivers. Her contact tracing app kept 90 % of the U.S. meat processing plants running during the pandemic. Just incredible, Nancy's secret weapon, a laser-focused
approach that balances bold innovation with practical execution. Armed with Oxford AI credentials and an uncanny ability to see around technical corners, Nancy doesn't just predict the future of business, she builds it. Prepare for a fascinating conversation with a true visionary who turns impossible tech challenges into tomorrow's breakthrough solutions. Nancy, welcome to Serious Lady Business.
Nancy Yaklich (01:48)
Thanks, Leslie. Wow, what an intro.
Leslie Youngblood (01:50)
Well, wow,
what a career, Nancy. just there's so much that I would love to dive into with you, but we'll take it step by step. And today we're talking talking hard hats and high stakes and how women are rewiring the world's biggest industries. And what I love so much is you're not just participating in deep tech, but you're disrupting the legacy sectors within it with your intelligence, your grit and your strategy. And now my first question
is you've worked across industries from ag to clean tech where innovation isn't just exciting, it's essential. What drives your approach to innovation across such varied landscapes?
Nancy Yaklich (02:29)
Yo.
If I had to boil it down, it really comes to finding new customer problems and solving them, right? That's where really innovation comes from. It's really understanding and getting connected to customers. And they could be customers that you do business with today, but more importantly, customers you don't do business with today. And just having conversations and understanding where they have pain points and then really listening to them and then developing a solution and then finding ways to test that before you actually commit to developing a prototype or any other kind of
Leslie Youngblood (02:35)
Mmm.
Nancy Yaklich (02:59)
assets or resources that you need. But it all starts with the customer and whether that is in retail, because I've done this work at Best Buy, or whether it was in healthcare again at United Healthcare or Cargill, it all comes back to the customer. At the end of the day, know, businesses want to develop new products and new services so that their customers can be more efficient, maybe expand into new markets, and the only way you can do that is to truly understand your customer.
Leslie Youngblood (03:26)
I love that where it all comes down to customer, right? And solving those problems. How do you stay close to customer to learn and discover problems, especially with some of bigger organizations that you've been with like Best Buy? These aren't startups where, you know, maybe you're on the ground level. And so I would love for you to speak to how that innovation is captured in staying close to customer in those instances.
Nancy Yaklich (03:49)
Yeah, so obviously in retail it's really easy. You just go into a store and you're able to kind of walk around and just talk with customers there. In other industries, let's say like in agriculture or even in healthcare, right, you've got to find unique ways to find where these customers are. One of the things I did when I was at Cargill, I was actually a founder myself at Cargill, didn't go very far with my idea because I had to pivot it to something that I wasn't really truly invested in.
But you just find a way to connect with them. I was focused on understanding problems in the small to mid-sized dairy farmer, family farms, and what kind of challenges that they're facing, and whether or not Cargill could bring a new solution, a new product, a new service to them. And so what I did is, you know, if you think about dairy farms and milk, it's processed. A processing plant has to have some sort of accreditation. Farmers, dairy farmers might have
to have some accreditation as well from the state. So I just reached out to a lot of different states where I knew a lot of these farmers were and got lists and then just started cold calling. And you'd be amazed that when you pick up the phone, even today when you pick up the phone and you say, hi, I'm Nancy from Cargill or I'm Nancy from whatever company, I'd love to spend 20 minutes with you to understand what kind of problems you're having right now. Most companies, or most customers are like, wow, somebody from that big company really wants to hear me.
Leslie Youngblood (05:12)
and hand in
Nancy Yaklich (05:12)
And they just have really open conversations. Sometimes you can rely on your sales team to kind of bring in some of that information. But at the end of the day, it's just being really creative and kind of figuring out where they hang out, whether it's in the real world, let's say at a Home Depot or at a retail store, or if it's online somewhere and finding unique ways to connect with them.
Leslie Youngblood (05:34)
love it. I think that's such great advice. Just pick up the phone and call. What a novel idea, especially, right? But to truly understand and connect with them and that goes such a long way, even outside of an email, right? Because you can email till the cows come home, speaking of dairy farm, right? But to just pick up the phone and say, hey, I'm curious. Can I solve a problem for you?
Nancy Yaklich (05:49)
Mm-hmm. Right.
Leslie Youngblood (05:56)
mind-blowing, I feel like, and so simple too, right? It's something that anybody can do that's out there listening, that's trying to understand if what they're working on for a product or service is valid or solving a problem that they think it's solving. So I love that.
Nancy Yaklich (06:10)
I think sometimes
when we think about how we interact with customers, I think sometimes we might over engineer things, right? We might say, let's do this great survey. Let's get a focus group. And I'm not dishing any of those two methods. I think they have appropriate uses as well. But at the end of the day, if you're really an innovator, if you're looking to build a new product or a new service, you actually have to go and do it. You can't really outsource that. You have to hear that pain. You have to hear that elation when they actually walked into a store and everybody in the store,
Leslie Youngblood (06:21)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Nancy Yaklich (06:39)
knew them because they've done so much business or they're part of the community or whatever it is. And you can't really outsource that. You can't really outsource that.
Leslie Youngblood (06:47)
Right. Yeah, yeah,
I love that. Nancy, tell us about one project that really clicked. Were the business and tech aligned for the customer in a super powerful way? What's one that stands out to you? I know amongst the many that you've worked on.
Nancy Yaklich (07:01)
Yeah, so I actually have two that stand out and one is a sort of that COVID that contract tracing app. And it wasn't just me. I we had a team at Cargill who basically kind of put everything aside and said, we've got to figure out a way to keep our plants open, to keep our partners and our vendors who come to the plants safe. And so we all kind of pitched in. And it was one of those, know, Apollo 13 failure is not an option because it really wasn't an option. And it's
It's sad that I say this, it, or maybe it's a different way to say it, but that was like one of the best times because you were working on something that was so critical and so meaningful, it just kind of elevated everything. So that's a special one that I'll always keep in my memory. And the other one, again, I'm going to go to something that we actually found here that I can't really talk about, but it was kind of an aha moment that my team and I kind of came across. And let's just say we've had some challenges.
Leslie Youngblood (07:40)
you.
Nancy Yaklich (07:55)
internally to kind of sell the idea, but we're getting traction with the customers we thought we were going to get traction with, and more importantly, other folks as well. And so people are starting to scratch the head going, wow, I guess they were onto something, weren't they? Right? And those are the kind of things that I like, where it's kind of something unexpected. organizations like, well, that's not really in our portfolio. We would never do that. And then when you kind of show them the math, they're like, wait a minute here. Maybe we should.
Leslie Youngblood (07:58)
you
Yeah.
Mmm.
Yeah, that must be so validating, right? To be like, well, no, I told you this, right? Is it the traction in those, I guess, quantitative results that they're specifically looking at, Nancy? Whether it's you're working in a large organization with multiple stakeholders or whether you're working and you're pitching a client, right, to demonstrate those results. Is that what you feel like is really that game changer, like post mover, I guess, if you will?
Nancy Yaklich (08:24)
Okay.
It is, and I think sometimes, you know, in large organizations, they think like this type of work, this type of innovation work has to be really futuristic. And it doesn't necessarily need to be, right? I think McKinsey, and I might get the model wrong, but there's this notion of, you know, kind of incremental, which is really core, like can I make the product a little bit better, faster, more efficient, whatever it is. And then there is sort of this adjacent, like what adjacent markets can you go after that you don't necessarily play in but might have a lot of opportunity. And then obviously there's that
Leslie Youngblood (08:55)
Mmm.
Nancy Yaklich (09:17)
futuristic which is that transformational things. And so a lot of times people focus in on let's say the core and they focus in on the transformational. But I find that oftentimes there's a lot of opportunity in that middle space. Because nobody wants to deal in the middle space. Think about it. When you select your seat on an airline, what do you do? You do either the window or the aisle. I'm the weird person who selects the middle seat. You know why? Because nobody wants it and I can get as far up or as far back in the plane as I want.
Leslie Youngblood (09:20)
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's true. It's like middle child middle seat Met messy middle the middle does get bad rap mansy, but there's so much opportunity there especially as the middle child I feel like Right I love that like and you don't have to be let go from like zero to a million in terms of like an idea or a product like you can start with just
an important tweak to make something better or to serve something that isn't being served right now. So I think that's so that's amazing. So tell me a little bit about you built a proprietary gen AI platform at Caterpillar and have several more interesting AI products that you brought to market with Cargill. Tell us about those and what makes a good AI solution actually usable in the real world.
Nancy Yaklich (10:10)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, so the thing that I was trying to build here at Caterpillar actually had to put, I had to put it on the shelf due to market conditions. Again, customers were interested and I got a lot of feedback, a lot of market traction as I was testing the concept, but some external factors kind of came into play that basically told me that this is not the right time. And I think as someone in this space, you have to listen to the market, right? ⁓ And so that one's kind of off on the side. But I would say just like any other kind of
Leslie Youngblood (10:51)
Thank
Mm-hmm.
Nancy Yaklich (10:59)
really starting with your customers and trying to understand what problems do they have that aren't being solved. And then you look at, well, can new technologies, not just AI, and I know that's the buzzword these days, right? But can new technologies actually help solve them, be more efficient? And so some of the things I worked on at Cargill were, I would say, game changing, right? We used AI, and they have an awesome data scientist team, like really great. And we worked on
Leslie Youngblood (11:01)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
you
Nancy Yaklich (11:28)
a number of products that, you know, identified early onset of, let's say, diseases in flocks of chicken, right? Think avian flu or diseases that might crop up in, for pig farmers, like swine flu, right? Making sure that, you know, the environment was appropriate to raise the pigs and that we're not seeing any
Leslie Youngblood (11:38)
One hour.
Hey.
Nancy Yaklich (11:52)
We're not hearing any sounds or we're not seeing anything that would indicate that there's some illness. Animals just like humans, when they don't feel good, like if you have a dog or a pet and they're not feeling good, they kind of look different and they act different. Well, the same with when you're raising a large flock of chickens or you're raising pigs. So we use sound and then we use vision and then we use AI models to really understand what does a healthy flock sound like and what does an unhealthy flock sound like?
Leslie Youngblood (11:57)
Yeah.
No.
Nancy Yaklich (12:20)
As we are getting those sounds that are kind of indicating that there's something wrong in here, we can help that farmer kind of identify there's something going on. Maybe you should start separating them. Kind of hard to do with chickens. But with pigs, it might be a little bit easier. But the best AI thing that I worked on at Cargill was this thing that internally was called Topline, and then it got rebranded as Equine Health Monitor. And it used computer visioning and AI to monitor and assess
Leslie Youngblood (12:32)
Yeah.
Nancy Yaklich (12:49)
horse's health based on their top line, which is really their core. It's like where the saddle sits. ⁓ And so it was an awesome kind of thing. It was iPad based. You'd use the iPad to basically take an image of that top line. And then you would put the horse on a regime, a feed, and exercise. And then over the course of a couple of weeks, you come back and you take another picture, if you will. It's like the horse had a personal trainer, if you will, and a nutritionist. And then you come back and you just kind of monitor it.
Leslie Youngblood (12:54)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nancy Yaklich (13:18)
computer visioning was so accurate that you could see where muscle was being built and, you know, yeah, it was like the awesomest thing that I've worked on that had AI involved.
Leslie Youngblood (13:28)
Wow, that's fascinating. and I'm sure something like that takes time, right? And like you said, maybe the market fit isn't right. How do you balance that speed to market with governance and strategic alignment when working with emerging tech like that, Nancy?
Nancy Yaklich (13:43)
Yeah, I've kind of, over the course of my years of working in this space, I've kind of developed a model that works kind of really fast, if you will, right? It's all based on lean startup, agile, and design thinking. So what's the minimum amount of information that I need to prove something out, and how am I going to get that? And I'm very stingy with, let's say, spending corporate dollars or investment dollars, and I find ways to be more creative.
and make those dollars go fast. And then I look for the data that I'm going to need that will prove that this is a thing or this isn't a thing. And before I actually kind of set out and do that, I set out my plan and if I'm in an organization, let's say like a Cargill or a Caterpillar or Best Buy or whatnot, I educate the senior leaders on it, right? And get them to understand why I pick those metrics as the threshold and how I'm going to actually prove that this is a thing. And at the end of the day, it's
Either, you know, I prefer to either go or no go. The worst thing you want to do is have something be kind of in the middle because you're like, there's a lot more testing and, right, that middle is a little bit of a problem that time because you're like, I don't know, maybe, maybe not. So you've got to try a lot of things out. But that's what I've actually done here is kind of put together a model to indicate whether or not we were onto something and we should invest further to, you know, whether it is concept testing,
Leslie Youngblood (14:41)
I love you.
That middle. That middle.
Nancy Yaklich (15:06)
in market using digital techniques, digital marketing techniques, or then securing funds to actually go build prototypes. But it's got to be super fast. And you always have to have your pulse on the market because market changes, even in the B2B space, not as quickly as the consumer space, but you still have to find ways to keep connected to them. So when we have conversations or when I have conversations with customers, I'm going to bring up some of the things that we
Leslie Youngblood (15:22)
Mm-hmm.
Nancy Yaklich (15:34)
have in development and say, what do think about this? just again, it's kind of a pulse check. Yeah, we're still on the right track or, ooh, there's something else happening right now that, you know, maybe we need to slow something down or maybe we need to pivot.
Leslie Youngblood (15:40)
Yeah.
Right, I
love that. That makes so much sense. It's so simple, but it makes sense. And I want to go back to your process and when you're talking to stakeholders and being able to prove out that process and go or no go. I'm sure you've secured over $45 million in innovation funding. Would you say that's your secret to getting execs to say yes to these big ideas? Like it's having all those proof points and, you know, okay.
Nancy Yaklich (16:10)
Yeah.
It's
not only the, I'll say the hard data, but it's also like some of the soft data, right? So as you're kind of getting out and getting that data, right, you're going to get a lot of the qualitative and quantitative data. And so sometimes, you know, if I'm talking to the finance person, right, I'm going to start talking about like what's the return on investment, how's this going to scale, where do I see the market, what's the TAM, SAM and SOM, right, what can we capture. If I'm talking to maybe somebody else,
Leslie Youngblood (16:36)
Thank
Nancy Yaklich (16:39)
I might interweave maybe some quotes that I've gotten from a customer. So, you know, they bought it, they rented it, they love it, and here's what they say. So, it's kind of like, you know, two different sides, but really supporting the overall kind of concept and approach to scaling it. But at the end of the day, if I'm going in for, let's say, my initial round of funding for an idea, it's got to be really about the hard math, right? It's the hard math. So, I've got to find ways to develop a method
Leslie Youngblood (17:00)
Mm-hmm. ⁓
Nancy Yaklich (17:06)
methodology and a concept that is valid within that industry that will prove that this is a thing so that I can get a senior vice president or even a CEO to basically take out their checkbook and write a check.
Leslie Youngblood (17:18)
Yeah, didn't say green light, go, go do it. So, and I would love now, I feel like that's a perfect segue, being a female in this space, right? You operate in sectors not traditionally led by women, there's women, I'm sure, but how do you navigate that, Nancy?
Nancy Yaklich (17:21)
Thank
to have to chalk that up to being raised in a family with three brothers.
Leslie Youngblood (17:40)
Nice! I love you!
Nancy Yaklich (17:41)
So I've always been in tech, right? I've always looked at those things that are a little bit more, I'd say, of cutting edge or emerging. And there are more women in tech these days. There are more women in a lot of places that there haven't been before. ⁓ And I think it's our job to kind of support them as they're kind of going through their career as well. At the end of the day, because I've been in tech, it's not what gender you are or
Leslie Youngblood (17:50)
Hmm.
you
Nancy Yaklich (18:08)
how you want to approach that or how you self-identify, it's whether or not you can deliver. That's really what it's about. Like if I was a software programmer, it wouldn't matter if I shaved my head and, you know, wore punk t-shirts and whatnot. At the end of the day, can I deliver the code and is it quality code?
Leslie Youngblood (18:14)
Mmm, sure.
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Yeah, I love that. Tell me a little bit like your perspective on companies, like what's one way they can support and elevate women leaders in AI and tech innovation roles themselves?
Nancy Yaklich (18:37)
I think a lot of companies are doing a lot of great things. have employee resource groups and whatnot. If I think back, I think it was maybe last year or a year and a half ago, Amazon came out and said, we want everybody to learn something about AI. So as emerging tech comes out, think corporations have a bit of a responsibility to help their employees, women and men as well, or those who identify differently, to get the skills, the knowledge that they need
to operate in a different environment. So just offering training programs to understand what it is and what it's not. And then there's going to be some other folks who are be dialed right in. like, man, I really want to understand. I want to build the next chat GPT. Awesome. Everybody's going to want to do that. And I think just kind of supporting that. I also think that a lot of organizations have these things called hackathons or innovation weeks or whatnot.
Leslie Youngblood (19:18)
Mm-hmm.
Nancy Yaklich (19:30)
giving a lot of play towards some of the emerging tech. But again, it's not tech for tech's sake. It's really understanding what the problem is and then maybe positioning the problem up there and then having different teams kind of go and address the problems in different ways. But giving their employees the opportunity to dial in, roll up their sleeves and kind of work with it in a real world environment, right? So you get a little bit of training but you get real world application and it might work, it may not work.
Leslie Youngblood (19:38)
Yeah.
Nancy Yaklich (19:58)
and you just go from there.
Leslie Youngblood (20:00)
Yeah, no, I love
that you say that because whether you can do that too, whether you're a big Fortune 500 company, a Caterpillar, or you're a startup, even earlier today I was having a conversation with...
one of my employees, and she's contracting, was like, you need to do more on chat, GPT. I mean, and so whether you are in a big organization that could do hackathons, or whether you work with contractors, or you're building a small team, it's like you need to be focused on what's emerging and how you can take advantage of that to better your business.
but better serve your clients and solve the problems that your clients are experiencing or your customers are experiencing. And I believe the statistic is women are using AI 25 % less than men right now, even though it stands to benefit us both equally. And so I think especially for women to not be nervous about exploring and to give them opportunities and remind each other, whether you're in a corporate setting or independent or running your own thing, to explore.
and check that out because you never know how that's going to come into play in the future, whether developing a product or pitching a client or hiring or all the things really. I mean, we are on the precipice of such change, I feel like, in how...
in technology with AI, in quantum computing, all the things. It's just mind-blowing and it can feel, I feel like overwhelming for anybody, let alone a woman that's not necessarily considered just how tech savvy, but to still be encouraged to read the articles, explore it, play with it, take a course because they're available and out there.
Nancy Yaklich (21:31)
Yeah, matter of fact, I think on LinkedIn every so often there's somebody who posts about the free courses that Google offers on AI. they have a vested interest. Obviously, they have a model. They want people to use the model. So I get it. And I was an early adopter. Claude's my best friend. But I use all of them to understand what makes the best sense. I've got some colleagues who've actually developed their own little agents as well.
Leslie Youngblood (21:43)
Right.
I applaud.
Wow,
yeah.
Nancy Yaklich (22:00)
So it's nothing to be afraid of at this moment. I think you need to, to your point, you need to be aware of it. I think you need to experiment with it so that you can understand some of the challenges it brings to the table, because there are a lot of challenges with it, but also what the benefits are. And I remember back when the early days of the internet, the same thing was happening, right? It was like, my gosh, my gosh, are you online? No, I'm like, well, maybe you should be.
Leslie Youngblood (22:09)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nancy Yaklich (22:27)
Even if it's just to read an online publication, it doesn't mean you have to do transactions through e-commerce, but you need to be involved in it because sooner or later, it's going to envelop the way you actually do certain things, whether you do your banking or you can order your groceries online or whatever it is. It's going to infiltrate nearly every way you live.
Leslie Youngblood (22:30)
them.
Yeah, right, except you had to wait like two minutes for a web page to load back in the day. You know, like just bear with the loading. It's okay, it's worth it. Just stick around. Now, Nancy, tell us, is there any sort of framework or tool you swear by when vetting a new idea to determine if it's worth pursuing outside of anything that we've already sort of touched on?
Nancy Yaklich (22:55)
I know.
Right, right, right.
I, you know, I'm a real practitioner of, let's say, lean startup. Some organizations call it a little bit different, but it's like, what's the smallest thing that you can build to get the evidence that you need? And it's really about the smallest thing. And sometimes the smallest thing is literally, I'm gonna draw something on a piece of paper and we're gonna have lunch and I'm gonna show you something and I'm gonna get some feedback and we're like, awesome, great, she loves it. Or, man, she doesn't love it without, you know, spending a whole lot of money in it. And so I think,
Leslie Youngblood (23:24)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Nancy Yaklich (23:41)
know, really being creative. And matter of fact, the team I'm working on right now, I'm trying to get them to think a little bit more broadly about how we go and gather, let's say, voice a customer. I don't have to necessarily do the traditional things. Let's take a non-traditional approach to see if it works. If it doesn't work, that's okay. That means it's one less thing you need to, you know, focus on. You have a list of maybe there's focus groups, there's surveys, there's ride alongs with salespeople, there's what
Leslie Youngblood (23:48)
you.
Nancy Yaklich (24:10)
So just kind of like mark them off. And it doesn't mean, you know, you were, let's say, stuck with it. You tried for a certain amount of time. You have an idea of what it's going to deliver. And if it doesn't deliver, great. You just put it on the side and move on to the next one. So you've got to be comfortable with kind of that iteration and knowing that you don't know everything and that's okay. The methodology or whatever methodology you use is all about understanding and getting the evidence through validated learnings so that you can actually
Leslie Youngblood (24:23)
Yeah.
Right.
Nancy Yaklich (24:39)
prove your case.
Leslie Youngblood (24:40)
Mm-hmm,
and to think that and to go and expecting the first thing you do will probably be wrong in some way, right? Or it's not going to be the product you go to market with at the end but it's at least something like you said like the MVP the minimum viable product or something that you can run with to see to take out and start asking questions and so you don't just spend a lot of money on that or a lot of time right and that's why they say fail fast
Nancy Yaklich (24:45)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Leslie Youngblood (25:03)
in like that product world, right? And that's okay, that's what you want because it means you're gonna get closer to what you need to do. So Nancy, yeah, yeah.
Nancy Yaklich (25:03)
Right, right.
At Cargill, I just want to share this with you, but at Cargill
we had a word for that and I've actually brought it here. We said the first pancake. So if you think about your first pancake when you're making pancakes, right, never comes out perfect. Might be a little bit too soggy, probably is maybe a little bit too burnt, but you got a pancake. And then you take it from there. So I, you know, I say, hey, it's the first pancake, that's okay, right? It's not the last pancake. The last pancake has to be a little bit more perfect, actually as perfect as it can be, you know, maybe for the
Leslie Youngblood (25:27)
Yes.
Nancy Yaklich (25:38)
but your first one is going to be like, that's okay, maybe the dog wants it, you know?
Leslie Youngblood (25:43)
Right? I love that. The first pancake. I love that. I love that analogy. Nancy, you've done so much with your career. You've driven so much innovation. Tell us about a time that you feel like you took a big risk. What happened and what did you learn from that?
Nancy Yaklich (25:58)
Yeah, you know, there's been so many. I would say that probably the biggest learning or aha that I had was when I was working, let's say, in the health space. And I was part of a startup, a med device startup. what I learned from that opportunity was really to understand your customer. We completely got the customer wrong, like night and day, night and day.
Leslie Youngblood (26:21)
Mmm.
Nancy Yaklich (26:23)
a handheld ECG as accurate as what they have in the hospital and we were positioning it as a consumer product and clearly it was not. Where in retrospect we should have positioned it as a product for a cardiologist to literally rent out to their you know cardiac patients to monitor their heart health on a regular basis but completely missed the boat on that one. So that one taught me understand your customer take as much time and really dig
into it. The second thing, big aha learning thing I got was when I was at Best Buy. And again, it was on the health platform. And that was really understand the ecosystem of that solution. And obviously in working in the healthcare space, there's a lot of different players, right? You've got, let's say, the devices, the med devices, you've got the pharmacies, you've got the, you know, UnitedHealthcare's or the payers, and then you've got the healthcare providers, right?
And so really understanding that ecosystem and who's going to pay for what. That's the other thing. Who's going to pay for what? Follow the money, understand the ecosystem, but more importantly, really dial in to those customers. Your customers are never going to tell you you're wrong. Just let them lead you to where they want you to go.
Leslie Youngblood (27:26)
and that's it.
Yeah, I'm laughing
because I feel like no customer is going to try not to hurt your feelings. Where's a family member or something? No, it's good, but a customer is going to be like, this sucks. They're not going help me.
Nancy Yaklich (27:47)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, this sucks or
or you know, I'd love it if it wasn't blue. It was like, ⁓ okay, great. We were just trying to do one color, but now we okay product line extension. Awesome.
Leslie Youngblood (27:57)
Right, blue. Noted,
yeah, right. it's so interesting. so then again, Nancy, like with the risks and then you just made a recent move, how do you know when it's time to make a move? Tell us a little bit about that and how you navigate that too.
Nancy Yaklich (28:17)
Yeah, so.
When I make a move, is usually because there's some interesting things might be happening in that industry. Like when I moved from Cargill to Caterpillar, I saw the juxtaposition of sustainability, innovation, and construction, right? All kind of coming together. And then moving from electrification and energy solutions or services to building construction products,
Leslie Youngblood (28:33)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Nancy Yaklich (28:44)
That was really driven by the SVP. The SVP that I had in the previous unit totally thinks like this, like go do, figure it out, first pancake, although he doesn't call it the first pancake. And so, you know, talked to him and, you know, understood what he was trying to do here and I'm like, you know, I did a lot of that stuff at Best Buy. And so it kind of clicked, but it's finding, you know,
Leslie Youngblood (29:06)
you
Nancy Yaklich (29:11)
Where is there potential disruption and then where is there the leadership that supports this type of work? Because the one thing that you'll find in any organization, small to large, when you do this work, that is if you don't have that executive support, it doesn't matter what you're going to find, what product you're going to bring to market, it's just not going to happen.
Leslie Youngblood (29:18)
Thanks
Yeah, no, that's so true. mean, right, you could have a million ideas and if you don't have somebody that believes in any of them or one, then right, that's frustrating. So it's great that there's like a culture of that to drive that forward. Nancy, I'd love to ask you this. You said this just a minute ago, like disrupt, right? Like you're a disruptor. Have you always been a disruptor? Do you consider yourself like a disruptor?
Nancy Yaklich (29:53)
Yes, if you
ask anybody who's known me for a long time, they would say, yeah, she's like a catalyst or a disruptor or, know, yeah, I've never been one to follow the mold. Never, not so much. It's boring. To me, it's boring, you know, so.
Leslie Youngblood (30:07)
love that. Well, think, right,
I always say like you can't disrupt from the inside, right? Like, and so you have to be on the outside to see the problem and you have to be curious to see it. So I love that in that when you're a kid, it can feel.
Frustrating in a way right to feel like an outsider or disruptor But when that is such an asset like as you move forward whether you want to start your own business or go into the corporate world lean into that curiosity lean into that that desire to poke at holes at things and question and be like well No, it could be done a better way and you know, you're just a wonderful example of that and I think that's so fantastic and I'm sure it makes you a wonderful person to work with too because you are
encouraging that type of culture. And I would love to hear a little bit of your thoughts on how you balance visionary leadership with staying grounded in people and in culture.
Nancy Yaklich (31:00)
Yeah, I think, you know, at the end of the day, much like everything starts with a customer and a customer is a person, all of this stuff is really about people, right? I don't program. I'd love to be, well, I used to back in the day, but not anymore. So, you know, you have to work with a lot of different people to bring your vision to the forefront. And I find that, you know, in some organizations, you know, they're kind of, I'd say, kind of stuck. And so they're looking for maybe people
who
have a different opinion, a different viewpoint, to kind of maybe broaden or give them the opportunity to think out of their norm, if you will. And so just kind of being that champion and being very crisp and clear on what I can bring to the table and how I think and why I think this way, ⁓ you know, you find others within the organization that are like, wow, there is somebody else here like me. ⁓ And you know what? They're in a different group.
Leslie Youngblood (31:37)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
you
Nancy Yaklich (31:55)
we kind of share the same kind of thing. So yeah, I've been fortunate that I've had the opportunity to actually build innovation teams and that's always fun because you get a lot of different people with a lot of different ideas and it's just amazing on how y'all kind of click and gel and then you kind of come together to bring something to life that nobody ever thought was going to happen.
Leslie Youngblood (32:07)
Yeah.
Yeah, that is amazing. It's truly, it's like, yeah, watching a miracle in a way. Like, wow, look what we created. This is amazing. Us from all us different people coming together and we did this. mean, that's just incredible. Any, everything, just drives not just business forward, but people and the camaraderie and the feeling and the innovation forward, right? Which is really comes down to people. So Nancy, when you're, when you're not in these high pressure risk situations and innovative developments, like what's something
Nancy Yaklich (32:20)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Leslie Youngblood (32:45)
that grounds you or centers you outside of work.
Nancy Yaklich (32:47)
you
Well, what grounds me, I love art as you can see. I'm a big Beatles fan, that's actually, that's George Harrison, that's Ringo Starr, and that's George Harrison again. So I love the art fairs here in the Twin Cities, and they don't happen in the wintertime so much, but we're getting into that season, and I just love to go and curate. I live in a high-rise condo, so my walls are kind of sparse, the number of walls that I do have, because we have a bank of wind.
Leslie Youngblood (32:54)
easy.
Nancy Yaklich (33:13)
windows
for one wall. So I look at myself as sort of like an art gallery and I try to figure out like what am I going to put up, know, maybe for the next six months, you know, because it's a change of seasons or whatnot. So I've been able to cultivate, you know, not very high priced stuff either. mean, you know, there's an artist that I found years ago. He passed a couple of years ago. He painted on silk batik, like so beautiful. And then when, you know, when it moves around, it has
Leslie Youngblood (33:36)
Wow.
Nancy Yaklich (33:41)
different kind of hue to it and you can see different things. So I always look for unique things like that. I'm getting into plants. When I lived in South Florida, I was into a lot of tropical kind of plants. Kind of tough to do here in the Twin Cities, but you know.
Leslie Youngblood (33:53)
you
Nancy Yaklich (33:56)
And I also got into orchid growing when I was down there, so I continue to do that. I always look for, you know, the next big orchid that I can get my hands on and make sure that I don't necessarily kill it, if you will. I've got some cats that seem to like plants as well, so got to watch out for those guys.
Leslie Youngblood (34:05)
Right way.
Yeah,
for sure. Now, was George your favorite Beatle, Nancy? He was. I like George, too. has got everyone, I mean, everybody has a favorite Beatle. Do you have a favorite Beatle song? What's your favorite Beatle song? I'm thinking of Child. Yeah, what mood am I in? Well, I think that's...
Nancy Yaklich (34:14)
He was, yeah, yeah.
⁓ I have many favorite Beatles songs. Yeah, what mood
am I in? Yeah.
Leslie Youngblood (34:27)
But it's so wonderful
though, like art and plants and music, right? Like what, that's all innovation and risk, right? Like what's riskier than, you know, doing those things too. And I love how you've translated that into innovation in tech and AI within this more male dominated field. So I think that's just incredible and something that anybody listening, right? Like indulge those passions, right? Like we're multifaceted people, right? And to remember, even if you find yourself
Nancy Yaklich (34:36)
See you later.
Mm-hmm.
Leslie Youngblood (34:55)
getting too deep in work or too deep in what you're doing like pull yourself back and try to not wreck it up but rebalance i guess in a way right like outside of it because all that stuff makes you a better innovator in your work too for sure nancy what advice would you give to a woman who has a big idea but doesn't yet know how to turn it into a scalable business
Nancy Yaklich (35:02)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Well, it depends on where she might be on the process. I would say start now. ⁓ I would say in every public community in the US, there are groups that you can find that will cultivate and support you. There's a lot of women groups out there. There is this group called Tech Ladies that you might want to connect with as well if you want to do it in an online environment. you know, I think probably in the, it just seems like there's just more kind of
Leslie Youngblood (35:21)
Mm.
Nancy Yaklich (35:44)
innovation and startups and small groups that want to support entrepreneurs and people who have an idea. Sometimes you might feel like you need a co-founder. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Like I said before, I'm not a coder. I love tech. So if I want to do anything techie, I have to find someone who can code. Hint, hint, no. So I would just go on Google and start Googling.
Leslie Youngblood (35:56)
Mm-hmm.
Nancy Yaklich (36:10)
meetups ⁓ and what I've noticed here in the Twin Cities, there's more meetups around AI, what it is, how companies are using it. We have a great med tech environment here in the Twin Cities, Medtronic, Austin Scientific, a lot of other companies as well and they're all using it as well as UnitedHealthcare and some other companies as well. So there's a lot of interest around emerging tech. There's a lot of interest in sustainable tech as well or clean
Leslie Youngblood (36:11)
No, you can't.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nancy Yaklich (36:39)
tech. So just kind of find your tribe and you can find them online. Reddit is another place that you can find groups of people that can be local. they all want to meet up. So it's an online environment. But at the end of the day, they'll meet you at a pub for a beer and then talk about what are the great new things that you've seen in one of the AI models that you've been using.
Leslie Youngblood (37:00)
Yeah, love that makes me so happy too. I love that as techie as we are today. They're really nothing replaces that human to human connection like in person and you can pick somebody's brain and last week we talked with Tanya Couture and she did all sorts of accelerators and I asked her what was her favorite what were her favorite ones and it was always the ones that were in person. Right so you could actually be in a room with other founders and other like-minded people to ping ideas off of right there's something to be said for that person a person.
as wonderful and as amazing and as advancing as tech is in our lives that that is so key to keep in mind and especially in an entrepreneurial journey and a professional journey you need people that get it or that you can bounce ideas off of for sure so I love that.
Nancy Yaklich (37:43)
Because you know as
an entrepreneur you're going to go through peaks and valleys and a lot of times there's more valleys than there are peaks and so you're going to need you know your buddies to kind of prop you up and say hey we've been there you're going to get through this don't worry just just keep slogging keep slogging.
Leslie Youngblood (37:49)
Mm-hmm.
I love it. Don't give up. Keep going. I love that. Any final thoughts, Nancy, as we wrap up here today?
Nancy Yaklich (38:06)
I would say the final thought for anybody thinking about doing anything, I would do it now. I would not put it off. you know, I think we are in a time right now where there's just so much opportunity, tech and non-tech, to do something, you know, and build your own equity in a business that you own.
Leslie Youngblood (38:25)
Yeah, I love that. Don't wait, do something today. you don't have to eat the elephant in one day. You have to do little things, right? But start doing one little thing today. I think that's priceless advice. Thank you so much. Now, Nancy, tell everybody where they can keep up with you, your LinkedIn, any websites before we wrap up today, too.
Nancy Yaklich (38:31)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. You see how my name is spelled? Yeah, it's a little bit of a tough speller, but I've gotten used to it. That's usually where I post. I'm not on social as much for a variety of reasons, because the companies I typically work with have a little bit of restrictions on social. So I try to keep those separate and apart, if you will. But I'm always on LinkedIn. I like to post things about AI. With a tinge on health care, I really think there's a lot of opportunity with
AI in healthcare to make not only our lives better, but also the doctors and their nurses lives lot better. They've been burned out for the last couple of years because of COVID and we're losing a lot of them and that'll have a lot of impact on us. But yeah, just keep an eye out on what I do on LinkedIn and maybe there'll be some surprises in the next couple of months or so. Maybe, don't know. You never know, right? You never know.
Leslie Youngblood (39:36)
Ooh, I like that. yeah, right, you never
know. And we'll also drop Nancy's LinkedIn link in the show notes here. Thank you so much for joining us today, Nancy. It was a pleasure talking with you. And thank you, everybody, for joining us for another episode of Serious Lady Business. Bye. Thank you. Bye.
Nancy Yaklich (39:39)
You
Thanks again, Leslie. It was great.
Bye.