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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 here in Metro Detroit. And with us today is Mackenzie Cyron, co-founder of Chicago Climate Connect. Now, Chicago Climate Connect is a 501c3 nonprofit that's become a 1,600 plus member community, building critical mass and momentum around climate change in Chicago.
Designed to just be collaborative and accessible to anyone, not just those already working in climate, the group hosts monthly in-person events that connect people across sectors. Beyond this passion project, Mackenzie has over a decade of software product management experience, including her climate tech roles as the former head of product at Cloverly, and now a member of the product team at Aurora Solar. Welcome Mackenzie. Mack, as, right, it's okay if I call you Mack, right? I think we talked about that.
Mackenzie Siren (00:50)
Thank you so much, Lucy. yeah,
Mac and Mackenzie, I use them interchangeably. Mac is just shorter, so people tend to gravitate towards it.
Leslie Youngblood (00:59)
I love Mac and it's so cool. It's like the coolest like name you could have.
Mackenzie Siren (01:02)
People like saying
it, honestly, it kind of started when I entered this stage of my career in software where people, especially like C-levels, loved saying, Max got it, Max on top of it. And I just started adopting it as like, yeah, no, I like it, I do got it. know, this is gonna be fun. Yeah.
Leslie Youngblood (01:07)
Mm.
her.
Yeah
I love it. That's amazing.
like your tagline, your trademark, Max got it.
Mackenzie Siren (01:24)
Mac's got it. It was also
kind of nice too, because growing up, Mackenzie is such a long name. I was like Kenzie and Kenz, which is like a very cute name, and it's a very personal name, and I'm still that way with family. But being Mac at work was like this almost nice differentiator of like, can bring my badass self and sort of reinvent myself a little bit. So yeah, so either one's good, but Mac's great.
Leslie Youngblood (01:31)
you
Yeah.
Yeah.
Love it. You are a badass. I especially when it comes to what we're talking about today, which is start anyway, building impact without permission or profit. So you didn't have a climate degree, a nonprofit background or a business plan, just a deep belief that Chicago really needed a better way to connect around climate change. And, know, you wanted to create an accessible place for others. And in doing so, you've built one of the city's fastest growing climate communities. Now, as I mentioned in the intro,
1600 members strong. So I would just love to kind of go back to the beginning with you. You didn't have that background, but what was the moment that pushed you to start anyways, Mac?
Mackenzie Siren (02:26)
Yeah, I know. It's a great question. So it was now February of 2023. And I'll sort of take you back there. So as you mentioned, I've been working in software product management for a while in a bunch of different industries. At the end of 2022, I was in a position where I was frustrated enough with the industries I was working in, where I wasn't getting the right combo of like scale and impact, right? I was either working with giant companies on big problems, but didn't feel like the mission piece or
Leslie Youngblood (02:48)
Thank
Mackenzie Siren (02:54)
I was working in EdTech where I was helping tutors and learners connect one-on-one or helping women with chronic pain or sleep issues use CPD to help alleviate those and track their dosage and symptoms. I was pendulum swinging. So at the end of 2022, decided I was going to step back. I left my role as leading a small product team here in Chicago and decided I wanted to pivot into climate tech.
Leslie Youngblood (03:21)
Mm.
Mackenzie Siren (03:21)
⁓
I didn't know how to do that. My hypothesis at the time was that if I could successfully pivot into climate tech, I would be able to find that scale and mission in one. And it's such a big umbrella that there were so many different sectors and problems to solve. So as part of that, I did some coursework through a program called Terra.do, which was amazing. Their learning fraction program, which really gave me the language and the lay of the land.
Leslie Youngblood (03:32)
Yeah.
Sure.
Mackenzie Siren (03:48)
then I needed to network and I needed to start talking to people to figure out where does someone my shape fit into a climate organization in a landscape where so many people that are needed are like scientists or mechanical engineers. Like that is not my background, right? So like who needs someone who does software and data? ⁓
Leslie Youngblood (03:50)
Thank you, everyone.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mackenzie Siren (04:11)
So, so many of these organizations were online. So they were global online communities, which were amazing, you know, through Slack, work on climate, my climate journey, climate action.tech, women in climate, thousands of people online. And in 2022, 2023, we were sort of getting out of the core of the pandemic. And I found a couple of peers locally that were wanting to connect locally and talk about Chicago issues. And they were also part of these online communities.
Leslie Youngblood (04:33)
Mmm. Mmm.
Mackenzie Siren (04:38)
And what we realized was like, it was just really hard to do that. We didn't, the four of us wanted to pivot into climate. We were all on our own climate journeys. But because we weren't in it yet, it was really difficult to find inroads to actually talk with folks doing the work or who understood the initiatives or understood the solution space in Chicago. So we didn't necessarily know that an inclusive climate community did not exist yet in Chicago.
Leslie Youngblood (04:48)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mackenzie Siren (05:04)
We were truly hoping to find one. So our idea was let's just get started and we can talk more about that of like just doing it. But let's get started and really honestly we thought one of two things would happen. We would either find the community, we'd get started and then find the community that we wanted and we were looking for and we would just plug into that.
Leslie Youngblood (05:11)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Mackenzie Siren (05:25)
Or we would specialize and we would say, okay, here's the little community group that's missing, right? Like climate tech or software product managers and climate. And it turned out neither of those were the case, which was just the really interesting learning.
Leslie Youngblood (05:27)
.
Yeah, is that, I mean, that's quite shocking to me too. You would think a big city like Chicago, a hub...
Mackenzie Siren (05:44)
Yeah.
Leslie Youngblood (05:45)
would have this type of thing, right? And I think that is though so interesting. And I think what maybe I think women founders, especially, or women leaders, especially think, have an idea and think, it's already been done or somebody's probably already doing it. And but when you poke around and follow that curiosity and that tapping and you find out it doesn't exist and it's up to you to like step into that role, that's really powerful. And so just by asking those organic questions. And I also think what is so
Mackenzie Siren (05:58)
Right. Yep.
Leslie Youngblood (06:14)
wonderful about your story is you were in these big scale organizations and communities right on slack like global and across the United States and so but they kind of feel like okay but at home what can we be doing like in my backyard like there surely there must be something going on because there's this global situation happening and again to pivot back to that locally it's like no there's this huge gap missing here
Mackenzie Siren (06:40)
Yeah, and it's really interesting
too, like climate is a umbrella term, right? That captures a lot of different sectors and a lot of different solutions, spaces and problems and opportunities. And that's part of the problem almost, right? Like people are interested in climate, like, but what? And so I think one of the interesting things here was, I lost the thread of the question that you just asked.
Leslie Youngblood (06:46)
Anymore.
The Chicago base, like there's so much with climate. There is like a huge umbrella. We have this huge global scale coming back to Chicago. Like what could we possibly do? Yeah.
Mackenzie Siren (07:10)
Okay, picked it up. Picked it up.
So...
So yeah, so climate is a global issue, right? And it absolutely needs to be addressed as a global issue. People need to consider the global South and the privilege and the justice components of it. But really what it comes down to as an individual who's looking to get involved.
is local action in a lot of ways. And climate action and climate ecosystems are incredibly different depending on where you are geographically, politically. And that was really it. It's like what's happening in my backyard? know, we're close to the Great Lakes. I know you are too in Detroit. I love the Great Lakes, right? So Chicago talks a lot about water, the river system. They have a long history in it. And then based on the types of industries that you have, the ecosystems are also really different. And so
Leslie Youngblood (07:34)
Yeah.
Sure.
Mackenzie Siren (08:00)
There was just this desire to be able to plug into what was happening here and to be able to get together in person with people because we had enough of the online connection and learning. And there is something very, I mean, transformative about being in a room and feeling the energy of other people who are interested in the same thing as you or have new information to bring to the conversation that you're looking for.
Leslie Youngblood (08:04)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, for sure. I completely agree. I think we...
There's not like a problem or just this mentality today of whether you're a bit like a business owner or a leader was like, have to reach millions and I got to go viral and I got to do this or that. And it's like, it feels when you start doing that, like you have to scale and you got to do this to scale to get all these thousands of customers and leads and this and that. And I found that that can feel very, like you said, impersonal, empty. And then you think about our communities.
that
we love, like you left Chicago and I loved Detroit. like, but what? I'm sure there's people here that I should be meeting and connecting with and helping right here. Why do I need to be looking outside of my own backyard when there's so much impact I could be having here? So I think that's really special too, that you came upon that feeling as well. somebody starting something you weren't, didn't set out to start, let's do a new global arm, right? And why, no, we'll dive more into that and how you've specifically not
decided to scale and grow, right? Like you wanna keep it more contained. But when it came to just starting, how did you guys do that? What did you do, Mackenzie? What was that first step?
Mackenzie Siren (09:35)
Yeah,
so the first step...
was looking at the channels that we had available to us, which were all of these Slack channels, right? And there were, like within these large communities, and I'm sure every industry has the equivalent of these, you know, there's a global community and then there are like, so this is Slack specific, you know, hashtag meet Chicago or Chicago local. So there are these subsets of channels within these large global communities that were Chicago based. And we would see some action in them. But the problem was the folks that were specifically interested in climate and in these communities
Leslie Youngblood (09:54)
You want me to
Mackenzie Siren (10:06)
we're in like eight of them because you were just like.
Leslie Youngblood (10:08)
Mmm.
Mackenzie Siren (10:09)
sort of a spray and pray mentality of the more I'm a part of this, the more I'll figure out what my inroad is, the more I'll learn. And so what that led to, what we could see was just there was no critical mass. Like two people over here in this community would be like, let's get a drink and talk about climate. Two people over here the next week. So we saw this happening and the four of us, so there's myself and then there's Sunil, Michael and Matt, who are the other co-founders. And we just sort of happened upon each other through various
Leslie Youngblood (10:16)
shorter.
Mackenzie Siren (10:37)
inroads to these online communities. We're like, screw it, let's create one Eventbrite. So we went on Eventbrite, it was free. It was known, we knew the brand, we went on, we made an Eventbrite, and we spammed all of the Meet Local sub channels in these Slack communities.
Leslie Youngblood (10:51)
Sure.
Mackenzie Siren (10:54)
and we got a reservation at On Common Ground, which is an amazing restaurant here in Chicago that is aligned in the sustainability goal. So we're like, no one's going to be mad that we invited them here. And so it was a very open umbrella. was like, if you're interested, if you're working, come and talk. And that was literally it. So it was utilizing the Slack communities we were a part of, an observation that no one was doing this well yet through these communities at least, and using a free tool.
Eventbrite.
Suggested that folks show up at a date and time and we had about 30 people show up on our first event and we were blown away And so many of these folks had never met before or someone saw it and like brought a friend, right? ⁓ So that was just the energy in that room was fantastic And there was a lot of interest so my job as one of the conveners was Talking to all those 30 people that night and saying how did you hear about us? Why are you here? Would you want to do more of this?
Leslie Youngblood (11:34)
Yeah.
Hello? ⁓
Mackenzie Siren (11:50)
What communities are you currently a part of? Right? So I
put like my product manager hat on and just like started to basically talk and listen to folks that were showing up to these events. So that's literally how we got started. And the risk is like, we're like, maybe no one will show up and the four of us will have, you know, like a whiskey and, shoot the shit and it'll be fine. Right? Like that's a pretty easy worst case scenario.
Leslie Youngblood (11:55)
Yeah!
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, right. And I'm sure as a product manager, when you saw the 30 people show up, I always will say like, if I'm having a problem, other people are having this problem, right? And like, especially when comes to product development. But when you actually see it, like before you in person, were you guys like looking at each other like, shit, you guys like what?
Mackenzie Siren (12:24)
100%. Yeah.
Yeah, we were like, this is awesome. But I think
the big thing for us was like, this won't happen again, right? Like, is the appetite here to come? And we're like, maybe it's just 30 people. That would be amazing. Every month talking about...
topics that we care about and making inroads and solving problems. So we were like, can this happen again? And that was, so it was over the next three months where we were really like, holy shit, what is going on? Cause we went from 30 people showing up to this restaurant to us renting a side room in that restaurant for free. They gifted it, which is great. All of our, we have very little budget, which we can get into, but all of our spaces are donated and having sort of this umbrella climate mission.
Leslie Youngblood (13:01)
Yeah.
We got it.
Mackenzie Siren (13:15)
really allows businesses to like see themselves and align with what we're doing, which is great. So we got a slightly larger room and we had about like 50 people show up. Then I same thing, just Eventbrite, spam the channels. We had 50 people show up to that one and we were like, what is happening? This is amazing. And then on our third event, that's when like stuff got real and we had like...
Leslie Youngblood (13:17)
Right.
Mmm.
Mackenzie Siren (13:37)
started reaching out to our ecosystem, found some actual event space that was donated to us. MHub ⁓ here in Chicago is an amazing innovation community and accelerator. And we knew some folks there. So they sort of gifted us this really amazing event space with like a stage and lights and a backdrop. And we helped with their help, created a panel of three.
Leslie Youngblood (13:50)
you
Mackenzie Siren (14:00)
women co-founders in hard climate tech. And so we had a panel, we had donated drinks from Wilson Coors because they have a philanthropic wing. ⁓ We had donated event space and then we had like 75 or 80 people show up to this. And that's really when...
Leslie Youngblood (14:08)
Yeah
Mackenzie Siren (14:18)
So that was within three months, February, March, and by April, this is what we were doing. And our jaws were on the floor the whole time. We could not believe it. again, my questions were just like, how did you find us? Like we do not advertise except on these Slack channels. And people were coming that were not part of these communities. So it was just.
Leslie Youngblood (14:36)
Mm-hmm.
Mackenzie Siren (14:37)
So much learning was an osmosis was done then of like, how did you hear about us? Why are you here? What do you care about? So those three months were a complete roller coaster. And that's really like the growth over those three months was what really told us that like, we had tapped into something that didn't necessarily exist yet. Yeah.
Leslie Youngblood (14:54)
Mm-hmm.
When you
asked them, how did you find us? What was that answer? Was it like a friend told me about this smack or what was it?
Mackenzie Siren (15:03)
Yeah, so
it's a couple things. So the tools we use, one was Slack. That was our first one in these communities, right? Another insane learning I had, and it sounds like an Eventbrite promo and it's not, but people use Eventbrite like a search engine. Like if they're looking for something, if they're that hungry for an event or community.
Leslie Youngblood (15:09)
Please.
Mackenzie Siren (15:23)
So many people said, I pulled up Eventbrite, I filtered it to Chicago, and I put the word climate in, and you're the only thing that popped up. And I was just like, wait, what? Of course you can do that, but it had never occurred to me that people were doing that on a regular basis. So we...
Leslie Youngblood (15:31)
Get outta here.
Wow.
Mmm.
Right.
Mackenzie Siren (15:43)
we never went away from Eventbrite. They even started charging at one point and we were like, I don't know, I think people are finding us that way. Thankfully they went back to not charging. So it's a free tool again for us, which is strongly preferred for a 501c3 with zero budget. But yeah, so Eventbrite was a big learning for me. other thing, LinkedIn. So I don't do a ton of social media, if any, but I was looking personally for a way to be
Leslie Youngblood (15:52)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Mackenzie Siren (16:11)
able to show engagement in climate, because I didn't work in climate. And remember, during this time, I was trying to pivot into climate in my day job. So I was like, I'm going to post about these events, obviously. Then we ended up starting Chicago Climate Connect official org on LinkedIn. And I think one of the ways we got word of mouth, and I was just recounting this with someone the other day.
Leslie Youngblood (16:19)
I'm here.
Mackenzie Siren (16:35)
Our first couple of events, we asked people to sign in using a form. We don't really sign folks in. ⁓ but it was like, scan this QR code, fill out this form to tell us who you are. And part of that was we had a list of organizations that already existed, like those specialized siloed, like clean energy leadership Institute, you know? Yeah. So we just had to listen. I kept adding to that Google form. It was really unsexy, but what I would do after our first couple of events was say,
Leslie Youngblood (16:40)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mackenzie Siren (17:03)
on LinkedIn, know, hey, we had this amazing meeting. Here's some pictures we brought folks together from. And then I went at all these individual organizations. ⁓ So it didn't feel like it didn't feel disingenuous. didn't feel like it was like because it was true. It's like we brought 30 people together and they represented members from like 10 specialty organizations. How cool is that? That ended up getting a lot of eyeballs on stuff. And we kind of fell into that. That was not the goal.
Leslie Youngblood (17:13)
Mm-hmm.
bright.
Mackenzie Siren (17:30)
necessarily, it was more to like track like who's here and what are they interested in. So it was really word of mouth and so it folks either hungry and looking for this and just happening upon us and then it was a lot of like LinkedIn and like a friend told me sort of thing. The other thing was like having something that was easy to cross post. A lot of folks were bringing this into like their
Leslie Youngblood (17:36)
Yeah.
sure.
Mm-hmm.
Mackenzie Siren (17:51)
like booth school, like MBA program, Slack group, or, you know, and like posting it there. So yeah, so was really, really organic, but it was very fast. And I think that was the impressive thing.
Leslie Youngblood (17:55)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, well, I think that's really important for listeners to hear. It's you, we don't have an advertising budget. Don't, I mean, yes, okay, it can be stressful when you're operating from zero, but I often think that like it.
forces you to be more creative and you're just out there in the early days, especially you're testing, right? Like, what is this gonna resonate? Is this gonna work? What is the best method? And so when it comes to those platforms that already exist, then they're free, take advantage of those as much as possible because those can be truly powerful machines for you. don't need to spend $5,000 right now on Facebook ads. You need to be posting on LinkedIn, like I said, and using Eventbrite or
You know go joining other communities right to kind of like promote whether you're doing products or services etc And so I think that that's really fantastic That that's what you utilize and is really cool As you were growing it. Did you ever feel like? I hate the word. I hate the phrase imposter syndrome because I feel like it's not it's just something that we always ask women right and like not guys ⁓ but like
Mackenzie Siren (18:56)
Yeah.
Bye.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's more about the
fact that like the system wasn't created for us in the first place. So actually what we're feeling is completely valid. ⁓
Leslie Youngblood (19:14)
Exactly. Exactly.
Yes, right, 100%. And I just
feel like it's like a made up term to make women feel even less like welcome at the table, right? Cause like you've done the work, like you need to be there. any room, right. So anyways, but like, were you ever like, what am I doing? And how did you kind of work through those feelings of not imposter syndrome, but of like fear or like.
desire to really do a good job, but not knowing like the path that was before you, trust, I guess, like how did you trust yourself?
Mackenzie Siren (19:51)
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, I started an organization called Chicago Climate Connect and didn't work in climate. That was, like, some people would say, like, that's sketchy. That's, bad advertising, right? But, like, it...
Leslie Youngblood (19:59)
Right! I love it, baby! That's us!
Mackenzie Siren (20:08)
Yeah, so that was a thing. I'm like, people are gonna show up thinking I'm in the system and can like help them find jobs. And it's like, it's shocking to people now, because I do work in climate and I have now for years, which is amazing. But it's always shocking to people when they're like, oh, I feel like this organization has been around together. Oh, you only been around forever. Oh, you only started in 2023. And what do you mean you didn't work in climate when you started it? So that was absolutely part of the problem.
Leslie Youngblood (20:15)
Yeah.
What?
Mackenzie Siren (20:35)
was it was like hard to find these communities when you were outside of it, right? So starting it felt a little weird. So that was definitely a piece of it. I mean, there's also such an amazing history of community building.
Leslie Youngblood (20:39)
I'm going to sleep.
Yeah.
Mackenzie Siren (20:48)
Like
in every city has their own, you know, like grassroots community building organizations. And it felt a little weird kind of starting something without doing all of my homework. Right? Like, like I want to be able to like give kudos to all of those that have like built these communities before me. I know that they must exist. I should find them because it's going to be offensive if I start something on my own. we just had to get to the point where
Leslie Youngblood (21:00)
Mmm. Mm-hmm.
Mackenzie Siren (21:14)
We needed to start something because we wanted it and be open.
where if we learn something new, we would pivot. And I think that was the big thing where it's like we've full heartedly, we're like, I mentioned earlier, if we find a community that fits this need, we will dissolve and we will go that way, right? And so I think that was a big thing too, which was like, and that gets into the monetization piece as well, like we're still open to potentially doing that because the goal is.
Leslie Youngblood (21:35)
Right.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mackenzie Siren (21:45)
the outcome, the impact. The goal is not to have a 501c3 called Chicago Climate Connect, right? Like the goal is to bring people together to talk about and solve hard climate related problems and find community and support each other. So I think like a big piece of it was just like going in with no ego.
Leslie Youngblood (21:46)
right.
you
Mm.
Mackenzie Siren (22:04)
and
no massive expectations for what this could be or plans. And that allowed us to like, just be very open to new information and feedback. And if someone came up to us and it was like, we already have this going on, or I think you should really talk to so-and-so because you're like standing on their shoulders and you haven't given them credit, right? Like absolutely, right? So I think it was just, it was easier to start.
Leslie Youngblood (22:08)
Yeah.
Mmm.
Right.
Mackenzie Siren (22:28)
because we were trying to be as humble as possible about it and as open to what we were going to learn about what was either valuable or what already existed. But yeah, and so I think that, almost like the learner's mindset, where I could be like, it's okay that I'm not in climate. It's okay that I don't have a background in community building and that I haven't done all my homework because...
Leslie Youngblood (22:31)
you
Mm-hmm.
Mackenzie Siren (22:48)
I'll change if I need to, we'll pivot. And I think that was like what made it a little less scary is that like there was very little ego involved. ⁓ And it wasn't like a brand we were trying to like actually, we weren't actually trying to create a brand. We were just trying to name it something where people would know what it was. We're in Chicago, we wanna talk about climate, we wanna connect, like that was it, yeah.
Leslie Youngblood (22:49)
Bye.
them.
Yeah.
Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah, I love
it. ⁓ I wrote down, but I'm like, always feel like in the great episodes, there's like a phrase or something that I want to like put on a hat or on a t-shirt. And so I wrote down, remove the ego, release the fucks. Because I feel like that is so...
Mackenzie Siren (23:22)
amazing. Yeah.
Leslie Youngblood (23:26)
That's recipe for success right there, right? Like that's so spot on Mac where it's like, you're like, what are people gonna think about me not being climate? Or what if we do this and it doesn't work? Or what if there's another group that's out there doing it? Okay. Like, you know, and yeah.
Mackenzie Siren (23:39)
Yeah. What if we leave an organization out? Like, and this was
like, this is a thing like at the beginning where it's like, we were responsible for collecting all the organizations, making sure people came. And that's actually not a thing. Like people will find their own way in. It's not our responsibility actually. Right? So yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what just let it, that's honestly what makes it fun and brings joy as well. Right? It's just like my...
My ego is not wrapped up into this. This is something I get to participate in creating and help grow. It's not actually like about me or about the brand or anything like that. Yeah.
Leslie Youngblood (24:05)
Yeah.
Hmm. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
I love that. Now I would like to move into the monetization or like truly lack thereof because you've been intentional about not optimizing for money or scale. Has that created pressure? How do you handle it? And what was like, what are the decisions behind that Mac?
Mackenzie Siren (24:20)
Yeah.
Yeah, no, it's a great question. So I, it'd good to start by saying like, there's lots of ways to monetize, right? Like a ton of ways. Yeah, exactly. The typical way, the one that everyone immediately goes to for something, the flavor of what we've built here is you should charge for events, right? Oh, interesting. So the first one is you should charge for events. It's like a $5 ticket or whatever, right?
Leslie Youngblood (24:37)
Mm-hmm. You can monetize anything these days, right?
⁓ I was thinking membership too, like Charis, remember? Mm-hmm. Yeah. membership. Yep, yep,
Mackenzie Siren (24:59)
And some membership's an interesting one, though. So you should charge for events. We started free. what we realized, the value of what we were bringing together, and again, this kind of happened by accident and we learned it, was this large, inclusive umbrella that can bring people in from a variety of backgrounds, a variety of experience levels, and a variety of communities in Chicago. And so. ⁓
Leslie Youngblood (25:20)
Yeah.
Mackenzie Siren (25:22)
That inclusivity and accessibility is actually one of the differentiators between us and these like membership orgs that already frankly exist if you're in the space. And depending on what we talk about and where we're located, so we move all over the city based on...
Leslie Youngblood (25:30)
you
Mackenzie Siren (25:38)
donated event space and partnerships. We try to cover all types of topics. Like again, climate's a massive umbrella. We will talk about like venture capital and accelerators. We will talk about hard tech. So like I built a carbon machine that pulls carbon out of the air and shoves it into concrete. And like, that's so cool. Let's talk about it more. We talk about composting, green food systems, so much, right? And so not all of those things are
gonna also appeal to everyone. So our groups are very different. This is why we've grown so quickly too, I think, is for the first year and a half, about 50 % of our attendees, we get about 100 folks to show up a month to an event, about 50 % of them until recently, when I think we've like getting towards the point of a little more saturation, we're new there for the first time. Like.
Leslie Youngblood (26:07)
Yeah.
Wow. ⁓
Mackenzie Siren (26:27)
And again, that's like from a product perspective. I'm like, you're telling me we're retaining 50 % and we're like acquiring 50%. And again, all word of mouth with no budget.
Leslie Youngblood (26:30)
Right? Yeah.
Mackenzie Siren (26:36)
To be able to grow and truly bring folks together across a variety of topics, a variety of communities, it's having freedom and where we have an event, the size of that event. We've been in small places on the South side that could only have 40 people in it. And we were like, amazing, we wanna bring this to the South side. We wanna talk about compost, right? Like, bless you. And we don't wanna have to worry that we'll only have 40 tickets to sell, right? ⁓
Leslie Youngblood (26:50)
Mm-hmm.
Thank you.
Right. Right.
Mackenzie Siren (27:02)
And we want to be able to bring folks in that are interested in climate but don't necessarily have the $5 to spend as a risk where maybe this will be a dud and they won't mean anything. Like they won't mean anyone or won't lead to anything. for us, accessibility and inclusivity and our ability to be flexible with.
Leslie Youngblood (27:12)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mackenzie Siren (27:19)
locations and topics and to stay open to anyone, literally anyone who wants to come was really, I think, an important part of the value that we're providing and central to the ethos of what we were trying to build, frankly. So that was the first one. Then there's membership. When there's membership, the...
Leslie Youngblood (27:22)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mackenzie Siren (27:42)
The question is, what is the value someone is getting for that membership? And then we have to start thinking about what does that mean? Is there exclusivity? Are there member events? Is there a directory? Do people only get access for that? Now we're getting into product development. And frankly, mean, the reason we haven't done that is there hasn't been a clear signal of what would be valuable to people from a membership capacity. Really, the value that we're bringing is
Leslie Youngblood (27:45)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
True.
Hmm.
Mackenzie Siren (28:09)
an opportunity to regularly get together and openly network and connect with people. That's really the bulk of the value. And we're open to other potential ways that we can do that. We have a community event calendar, and I've become a repository for people setting up one-on-ones who are like, Mac, I'm looking for four people who I can do informational interviews. So I've kind of become that person. So there's definitely something there. But again,
Leslie Youngblood (28:15)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
that.
Bye.
Mackenzie Siren (28:38)
What would be appropriate for membership? What is the value? And will that start distracting from our ability to like...
build roots and ecosystems. Like really we're around trying to bring a more like centralized and inclusive approach to climate in Chicago. Will membership work against that or for that? And if we charge for that, what does that mean? So these are like bigger questions and frankly, they're all secondary to like what we're actually focused on. The other thing that came up around monetization kind of regularly and pretty early on was we should franchise. We should open.
Leslie Youngblood (28:55)
Okay.
Mm. The mission. Mm-hmm.
Right?
Mackenzie Siren (29:11)
Atlanta Climate Connect, Seattle Climate Connect. And now, frankly, like the coast, especially some of the larger cities have groups like ours already. Right. And I think it's actually interesting. Some of our community members that come from the coast are like, I've been looking for a community like this to replace the one I left in D.C., you know. ⁓ But there is this need for a lot of folks that maybe aren't on the coast or in larger cities to want to build something like this.
Leslie Youngblood (29:18)
Is there?
⁓ nice.
I'm here.
Mackenzie Siren (29:37)
And I think the very clear answer there is the localization piece. What works here and what has worked in our ecosystem and what people get value out of is gonna be totally different ⁓ in Atlanta. And I just spoke with someone from Moab yesterday who...
Leslie Youngblood (29:44)
I'm
Huh.
Yeah.
Yes.
Mackenzie Siren (29:57)
had been to a Chicago Climate Connect when we first started and now wants to start a community like it in Moab, Utah. And we had a 45 minute conversation last night around how we got started and where I think the differences might be in terms of like the community feel, the size. And.
Leslie Youngblood (30:12)
Mmm.
Hmm.
Mackenzie Siren (30:17)
So it's sort of like, it's a product problem of like, what, try to be everything to everyone and be nothing to no one sort of thing. And so I think like we're toying and I'm having these conversations, but like, there's definitely an opportunity to put more of a playbook of our learnings together that we can share with other people. And sure, there's maybe the potential for folks to use the climate connect phrasing as part of their naming, but like I...
Leslie Youngblood (30:23)
⁓ Right.
Bye.
I love
Mackenzie Siren (30:45)
don't want to be responsible for trying to figure out how to create an effective, valuable climate ecosystem in Moab. I don't know Moab. It should be done by the folks in Moab. I don't know Atlanta. It should be done by the folks in Atlanta. And so that was the other thing where I'm like, no, I think there's so much to be done here in Chicago. Like this should be the focus. ⁓ So those were sort of like the three main levers. So we get a lot of donations. We want to get better about funding just generally, getting maybe a
Leslie Youngblood (30:59)
Mmm.
Yeah, sure.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Sure.
Mackenzie Siren (31:14)
couple larger corporate donations or something like that. ⁓
Leslie Youngblood (31:17)
Mm-hmm.
Mackenzie Siren (31:18)
there's always the potential for attendee donations. We have a Venmo, you know, like, and so we can, we're gonna play with some of that because, you know, we get, we get a lot of donated events based drinks, our speakers donate their time, but we wanna make sure it's sustainable long-term. You know, we're like paying for our website and paying for name tags. It would be great not to do that. But also I think it also supports the inclusivity piece of I wanna be able to offer
Leslie Youngblood (31:23)
Sure. Right.
Right.
Mackenzie Siren (31:46)
speaker stipends. There are certain people that we would love to be able to put on a platform and raise their voice where they can't afford to come downtown on a weekday, you know, to like spend a couple hours. And so we want to be able to pay for Uber or babysitting or whatever it is. So there are some things around funding that are important that I think support our mission. ⁓
Leslie Youngblood (31:58)
Yeah. Right.
Mm-hmm.
Mackenzie Siren (32:13)
but monetizing it through the community isn't necessarily our first choice. And we haven't done that so far.
Leslie Youngblood (32:22)
Yeah, I think that's really important for anybody listening to that wants to start a 5013C and you don't have to immediately go to the members. It's like there's like you said, there's no harm in asking, asking a space, some restaurant to donate space or asking to get drinks donated or asking speakers to donate their time, right? And you don't have to have.
the product or the plane built before you fly it. Like you're still going and you'll still be learning these valuable things because how would you know you didn't want to franchise unless you had these conversations and actually like contemplated like Atlanta or like because at first there's going to be endless good ideas, right? Like an endless good ideas at the surface that may end up becoming bad ideas or not where you feel called to do at this point in time. And I think that's really important to Mac is how you're very much like owning like I don't want to do that.
Like as the founder of this business like mmm. Yeah, that's could be great like good for you But like no, that's not what we're going to do right now
Mackenzie Siren (33:21)
Yeah, and I think it's like still approaching it with that original openness of like, things can change. Like we haven't put this in concrete, but it's trying to balance how we run the business with what our goals are and what we're seeing the value is in the community. so like, yeah, it's a trip. It's definitely.
Leslie Youngblood (33:25)
Okay.
door.
Right.
Yeah.
Mackenzie Siren (33:44)
an ongoing conversation, but I think it's one we have pretty often. And if something changes or there's an opportunity to come up, we might experiment with that. But right now, with what the community is telling us is valuable and what works for them, this would be.
Leslie Youngblood (33:45)
sure.
Mackenzie Siren (34:01)
working against that. And that's kind of it. It's like, and this is the interesting thing too, like I guess from like my product lens, I'm like, we have to continuously build value for people. And if we got into the membership model, like it would probably be more like that. And what I realized is like, that's actually like not really true. People will build their own value if you give them a space to sort of come together. And so that's what we realize is like our hustle to get donated space, to put some programming together, if it makes sense, to get some drinks and libations and be
Leslie Youngblood (34:09)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
you
Mackenzie Siren (34:30)
welcoming hosts that like care if this is your first climate connect and how did you get here and do you know anyone and let me introduce you to someone. That's the value and like we can do that for free mostly so we don't want to monetize until we really need to until it makes sense.
Leslie Youngblood (34:39)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, I think that's fantastic. Now, it's kind of like pivoting a little bit more to just like in general, but I would love to know, Mack, what is a myth about climate work or even entrepreneurship that you'd love to just bust wide open?
Mackenzie Siren (35:03)
that's a great question. I'll start with myth about climate work. guess, I mean, this is cheesy and to the folks in the space, this is like so, we say this all the time, but every job is a climate job. Literally every job. Climate touches everything, right? If you are working in a non-climate organization that uses computers.
Leslie Youngblood (35:17)
Mm-hmm.
Mackenzie Siren (35:23)
Right? ⁓ Those computers are decommissioned. They go somewhere.
Leslie Youngblood (35:23)
Sure.
Mm-hmm.
Mackenzie Siren (35:28)
You know, ask
where they go. There are green programs out there that keep electronics out of landfills, refurbish them for folks. There's a group called PCs for people that do that. If you're working at a school or a hospital, there's an amazing group here in Chicago called Greener by Default that helps work with institutions to make plant-based foods the default in cafeterias, right? And again, not eliminate choice, but just make it
Leslie Youngblood (35:34)
Yeah.
Wow. Wow.
Mackenzie Siren (35:56)
default and make more options or eliminating food waste or composting. ⁓ There are greener ways to code, literally code, that use less electricity and like so there
Leslie Youngblood (35:57)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Wow.
Mackenzie Siren (36:08)
there are ways to be a climate advocate and champion within any role, any organization. And so I think like, and I definitely had this idea that like, I needed to work in the climate space. I needed to be in climate tech to have like a green job.
Leslie Youngblood (36:23)
destroy.
Mackenzie Siren (36:25)
That isn't true. And so a lot of people want to get into climate work and I want to continuously help those folks because we need lots of smart, passionate people working on these problems because it is the problem that we're up against right now. But there are so many actions that can be taken by people that care in their roles that they are in right now as parents, as, you know, corporate workers, as, you know, like whatever. So I think that's the biggest myth that's sort of useful to talk about on a regular basis.
Leslie Youngblood (36:26)
you
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mackenzie Siren (36:53)
man, okay, maybe it's this, that like, don't even, this is maybe bad to stay on Seriously, I business. I don't consider, I'm still weird to think about myself as an entrepreneur.
Leslie Youngblood (36:53)
Mm-hmm. And then what about entrepreneurship? Is there a myth on entrepreneurship?
But you are.
Mackenzie Siren (37:09)
I know, I know.
But like when I was doing my pivot too, people were like, you should start your own thing, you should start your own thing. And I'm like, I don't wanna do that, right? Like, and it wasn't necessarily about community, was like, you need a climate tech startup. And so maybe it's this, maybe it's the fact that like, you don't need to identify yourself as an entrepreneur to be able to see a problem.
Leslie Youngblood (37:27)
⁓ I love that though, Matt.
Mackenzie Siren (37:32)
see an opportunity and like start small and see if you can fix it. Right. And then you sort of land there. Like this again was not my goal. was like, I'm going to start something and like found it five, and see three. That was not the plan. So, and again, I still like, I'm uncomfortable identifying is that I get reached out all the time on LinkedIn is like, you're a founder. And I'm like, why are you talking to me? so like that, that's it. think.
Leslie Youngblood (37:42)
Thanks
Wow, I love that. I think that's
so powerful and so true. Right? Like it can look like whatever, whatever your journey and whatever your path looks like. So I think that's fantastic. I love busting that myth. Ooh, that's a good one. Okay. Now another kind of like a deeper one for someone sitting on a big idea, but waiting to feel qualified. What would you say to them?
Mackenzie Siren (38:05)
Yeah.
Hahaha
get started, get started as soon as you can and start small. Like, and this is again product brain, like iterate. I was just talking with someone yesterday who's interested in sort of building a different flavor of climate community here in Chicago. And he immediately started talking about real estate downtown. And I was like, that would be amazing. But like, can you...
Leslie Youngblood (38:22)
Yeah.
Yes.
Mackenzie Siren (38:40)
rent a room in a coworking space first, right? Like, can you get, he's like, I want 10 people that are interested and then I wanna look at real estate. And I'm like, you, right? And I mean, it's such a great idea and there's a model there and it could work, absolutely, right? But I'm like.
Leslie Youngblood (38:42)
Mmm... Uh-huh.
for his business and he wants to like, ⁓ buddy. Yeah.
Mackenzie Siren (38:57)
That's a lot of risk and that's gonna be a barrier to entry. The bigger you have these things of like, need to have space and I need to have a list of this many people that are interested, the longer it's gonna take you to get started and the more excuses you're gonna have to like not get started. And so I think like getting scrappy and figuring out what does a pilot look like? Like how do you, and like not be embarrassed about that. Be very clear with people. This is a pilot, this is my idea. I want you to sign up for this. We're gonna try it out, I want feedback.
Leslie Youngblood (39:00)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yes!
Mackenzie Siren (39:26)
And like, you're gonna be on the ground floor of building something that could be really cool. And so I think it's just like, what is the smallest thing you can do to like start proving out the value of what you wanna build? Because the less risk involved, then the faster you can move. And then it also really helps with that like ego piece. Like if I've invested in a lot of money in a physical location or something else, that better fucking work.
Leslie Youngblood (39:35)
Mmm.
Yes.
Mmm.
Yeah.
Mackenzie Siren (39:54)
Right? Like otherwise I'm going to look like an idiot and like my partner
is going to yell at me about wasting a bunch of money. Right? Like, right. But like, that would close me down to hearing feedback that like the physical location isn't the thing or this is wrong location or like any or all of the above. So I think it's just the start, the smaller you start, the more you can actually react to real time feedback, that agility of the, like the value you're creating for folks.
Leslie Youngblood (40:00)
Yeah, well, a lot of money.
Mmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, I love that. think that's fantastic advice. As we wrap up, Mac, will you please tell everybody where they can find you and connect with you and Chicago Climate Connect?
Mackenzie Siren (40:30)
Yeah.
Yeah. So ChicagoClimateConnect.com is our website. There is a form there that you can reach out to us on. There's also an event page, a Ways to Connect page. We're also on LinkedIn. So Chicago Climate Connect has a LinkedIn organization that you can follow. It also has a group. So Chicago Climate Connect has a membership group, free.
Leslie Youngblood (40:49)
Thank
Mackenzie Siren (40:50)
And if you're in Chicago, you visit Chicago, you went to school in Chicago, if you have any connection to Chicago and you want to join that group, please click apply and I will approve you. If you are not in Chicago or have any ties to Chicago, which I'm sure some of your listeners will definitely fall into this. ⁓
Leslie Youngblood (41:06)
Mm-hmm.
Mackenzie Siren (41:07)
I would be happy to talk with you about how to potentially start your own group. But again, we're trying to keep it hyper local. So we even moderate who is a member of that group to make sure that it's folks that are sort of dedicated to the Chicago space. So those are great ways. And I'm the only Mackenzie Siren on LinkedIn. So I'm always happy to talk to people. Feel free to reach out.
Leslie Youngblood (41:25)
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It was a pleasure speaking with you and diving in. And I just love everything that you've been able to build with Chicago Climate Connect. I love the story and like how, you know, like you don't have to be an expert in what you feel called to do. And I just think that is so important. And to be able to drive real local change is just incredible. ⁓ It was such an honor, Mack, and I hope you have a great day and I know we'll be in touch.
Mackenzie Siren (41:54)
Yeah, Leslie, thank you so much. This was a pleasure. Bye.
Leslie Youngblood (41:56)
Cheers, bye.