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We need to Talk Conversations on wellness with Coast FMS Tony Street.

Hello, welcome to We need to talk that.

Every so often you stumble across something that makes your life a little bit better.

And for me, that was in an app that I got recommended actually by a friend a couple of weeks ago, called PAM Personal Admin Manager.

Now this app has a key we founder.

Her name is Nicole Ritter.

Nicole has been over twenty years in marketing and brand work, and she created PAM to help parents like me, especially mums, lighten the invisible mental load of managing a household, which is hectic at the best of times.

Now, what PAM is.

It's an AI and abled assistant that digests school newsletters, emails, WhatsApp, threads, invitations, photos, and calendars so that families don't have to juggle all the admin in their heads.

It's about not just organizing your life, but freeing your mental bandwidth.

Now I have just downloaded this and I've had it for a couple of weeks now, and to my great delight, last night, we're recording this on the very first day of school, going back I got this this is what you've got coming up this week email?

I went, oh, this is so good because.

I don't even know what I've got coming up, and it actually just clarified for me and gave me a bit of order too, a week that I thought was going to be just a mad scramble.

Nicole, congratulations, this app is amazing.

Go you, thank you.

I'm so stoked that for you.

Like honestly creating the app, you know that it was a bit of a passion project.

But every time someone tells me that that's what it's done for them, that it did something in terms of maze my week easier, meant I didn't forget something so therefore got to school and had a crying child and was running late for a meeting.

That's why I did this.

Like, look those people sharing those light little nuggets of what it's done for them.

That just makes me so stoked.

Thinking, what do you think is the big difference between PAM and other merging calendar apps out there?

Because I had one once before that merged calendars together.

But this gives you a different sort of tool, doesn't it.

Yeah, all the difference is that those made fans, so you know, I've done so much research because a we bootstrap, so I was using I literally use the money that we had pulled together to do our bathroom renovation to build a second bathroom.

I was like, we have to get I can only get this right once.

I don't have enough money to do this twice.

So I did lots of them to using lots of questions and found that everyone is using either a wal calendar or Google calendar, but still like sixty six percent of mums in New Zealand were saying they're still either like severely or majorly stressed out of organizing this stuff, So those tools don't work.

What happens is they kind of get everything and mash them together.

But for families, it's such a different like no one's really cared about the family unit.

Everyone just cares about you as an individual, your productivity at work as opposed to going well a family's quite a different dynamic.

And what PAM does, which is quite different to other tools.

As PAM goes, I don't care what channel it is, what format it is, So you can send me a twenty six page long school newsletter as well as you can talk to me and say it's my mom's birthday or Wednesday next week and the kids.

Then you shouldn't pads for football on Saturday.

It doesn't matter what format.

PAM will take all of that and go, oh, I get it and turn it into a really simple calendar for you, tell you what you need to do ahead of time so you don't forget it.

But then also like, but you know, that part's really cool.

But the part that I'm the most excited about is then looping and other people to help support you, so you are no longer the central project manager of your family.

Like it's not hot to have to remind your husband or partner or whoever else in your life what they need to do every day and become the nag of your house or like I didn't sign up for that when I started dating my husband.

No, it's so true.

And I like that part because you can add family members in and I've got a thirteen year old who's now going to have her own calendar increasingly so, and they've all got a different color code, and so I can tell when it's one of their activities and when it's one of my sons.

And it's also got a very good to do list that task to do list.

I like because it tells you when things are overdue, right, and when things are coming up, and it's just that, yeah, it does.

It feels like you've got another person that's just going, hey, don't forget.

This, yeah, and decentralizing it right.

Like So I went to Auckland the other week and for like four days for some work stuff, and I was on the plane, I went, oh, wow, that's a shift.

It didn't even cross my mind to mention to my husband or my mom, who helped school pickups what the kids had on that week.

I just got on a plane and left.

Because they all have HAM too.

Yeah.

Yeah, so they just look at what they needed to do for the day.

You know, there was a teacher only day, there was sports activity, there was a birthday party, and I didn't need to take There was no like handover or briefing session.

Like it's all centralizing HAM.

I'm no longer the household Edmund person.

Now.

I love that you came up with this idea, but it's one thing to have an idea of, oh, this could make things really easy.

It's an absolute different thing to get it off the ground and to have the tech.

No house So how did you get from oh, this is a good idea to the point where you actually had a working.

At So I'm a really big believer and messy action Like it's kind of a bit of a catchphrase.

I use that basically, putting one foot in front of the other, one messy step up together, even it's just an email or sketching something on a piece of paper, If you do that repeatedly, over and over again, before you know it, you've climbed a mountain where the number of like an all you know, like I say this would love the number of people who come unt to me like oh I had the exact same idea.

I like, oh, but I didn't.

You know, I never did anything with it, And I'm like, well, you could have.

I'm really lucky that my background is that I have worked in marketing with digital products for a long time.

The role that I was at previous to doing PAN was actually a digital agency, so I understood the guts of how to create it.

I mean, I was a marketing and brand person, but I understood the guts of what you need to go into a I also understood kind of general YUEX design principles and stuff just from osmosis, from working with brilliant designers and things.

I'm also very lucky that I have lots of very talented friends who were willing to kind of give me help or a nudge here or there with bits and pieces.

But when it came to the technology, the very first PAM I created.

Where there was no technology, I said to a girlfriend, like, I want to create this app.

I've designed it, I have no idea how to build it, but before I do anything, I want to make sure it's really worthwhile.

How would you feel about pretending to be a like AI personal for families?

And she went amazing, And she was a mum who was wanting to get back into work, but it wasn't quite sure what to do.

And so for about a month I had three families, including our friend Anna, sending all of their stuff to her every day, all their emails, all their like flights or their tickets, anything from school.

And she would every night diligently read through the whole list of all their comms and build them out a calendar and like a word dock and.

Send them back to them.

And that was it, And then that proved it was saving people.

A couple of hours a week.

I was like, okay, so I started with that.

And then the next version I did was I found some no code like zero code tools, which is like the ability to build an app without have to actually know how to code.

And I really implore people that there's really there's things are ten times better an hour.

You can literally go to an AI app building tool and type it on the ten lance you can build a proper concept.

You know, you can get quite far with that stuff.

Yeah, and then I and then I went and worked with an agency to build out like the first kind of actual app store version.

And then I'm very lucky that one of my very closest friends is a very talented innovation was and he came as a profounder, and then he went and built the actual, like you know, the scalable version that's in the app store that we have thousands of people using, and that isn't going to break.

And although when we doubled our users in a couple of days, it definitely strained and creeped them struggled for a few days.

But yeah, well you don't anticipate that, And I beat you didn't anticipate at one point you had more people downloading it than Tender and hinge.

What the heck you're beating dating apps?

Yeah, well it's funny because ironically, maybe you need the dating apps before you need PAM.

But yeah, I mean and that the reason that that happened is, yes, we had this, We've had lots of lots of downloads recently, but almost all of our users give us five starts.

So people go in and they kind of go, oh, yeah, I really need someone to help my family life, and they open it and then five.

Minutes later go, oh my god.

And I get these messages from people saying things like, you know, we have messages from I get messages almost on a daily basis saying things like I open this and I cried.

It seems so insignificant, you know, like, oh, there's a gold coin day on Tuesday, and my kid needs to come dress to some random book character thing next week.

But it's Deaths by a thousand carts.

It's this never ending pile of things.

And like when you have multiple kids and they all have their own activities outside of school, and then you have your social life and your work life and your romantic life, and trying to keep all of those things going.

I think you feel like you're failing at everything, and it's so unrealistic and it's so unmanageable that when people go, oh, I'm not dropping balls and I don't have to walk around with what feels like a thousand post it notes in my head, you just feel.

Like, yes, someone else is gonna remind me, and you think they're insignificant.

But no mom wants to send their kids to school on book day and not in a costume.

You want to be the mum that remembers that right.

You don't want it to have slipped through the cracks, and it can if you don't have someone reminding you.

And that's what I like about it.

I think, oh my gosh, it's just it's remind us without even having to look at the app.

It was like the email I got, it just went wow, this is just giving me clarity for the week.

And I didn't even know it did that.

So it's surprising me even you know, two or three weeks down the line.

This is we need to talk with Tony Street.

Where are you at?

Like it's free at the moment, where are you at in terms of how this is going to help you financially?

Because I know that you're in that stage at the moment where you're looking for backers and backers are coming in.

How does that work?

Yeah, So we're in a very exciting stage where we've hit our minimum raise a bound.

It's a very complicated process for anyone who isn't involved in setup.

So we actually have hopefully money starting to hit our bank accounts.

This week next week.

So it's been two and a half years.

I've not made a dollar yet.

It's been two and a half years without a salary.

So that's why my PAM HQ is my caravan as you can see me in right now.

But what's happening is we still need some more investors.

So if there's anything investors out there like, oh, I love to list the PAM.

They're still a bit of room and the investment round.

But what we're doing is I wanted to before we did anything else, I wanted to create a tool that actually did what I was after.

And my whole thing was I want to reduce the mental load on parents, and I wanted to solve the overwhelm of all the stuff coming at you, and I want you to be able to know who's responsible for what and I want you to be able to loopen other people and I don't care about anything else until we deliver on that and people love it.

So now that we've hit that mark, I'm like, Okay, we have to have some kind of financial viability in order to keep going.

So the next so sometime this month.

We will change Pam into a from a completely free product into a freemium.

So there's a big chunk of it that's free, which is basically the Pam brain.

So sending all your emails, talking to Pam, having her create your calendar for you, that part will always stay free?

Is the intention?

Never say always, because start up to change.

And then the idea is that then if you fall in love with Pam, like everyone gets a free two week trial of everything.

Yeah, so if you fall in love with Pam, you're like, I want to hook up my Google calendar, my WhatsApp, I want to add my partner, my mother, I want to be able filter on my children.

Then you pay fifteen dollars a month to hold on to those kind of extra features.

But if you're just using Pam as an individual, have it for free, go for it, like everyone should have less stress in their lives like knock yourself out.

But if you like actually this as well, this is next level, this is this has changing my life, then I hope that people would be happy to then pay fifteen dollars a month.

Yeah, and it's not a stole a lot fifteen dollars a month.

I think I'd almost pay fifteen dollars a week with the way it's helping me.

Yeah, and we hear that from people a lot.

But for me, accessibility is really important.

But I didn't know.

I'm not.

I didn't create pam to as a completely altruistic thing, but I also created it because I cared about six and that's predominantly for women.

Like I was just like of seeing all my friends who are incredibly competent women in their lives, and the biggest thing that they were struggling under was trying to juggle family life coordination and edmund and doing it all themselves.

Well not you know, like some of us have great partners.

Often, I think that men actually get a really bad rap, and I think a lot of it is that they actually just don't have awareness.

They don't know what the mental load is.

They don't know that when you get a birthday invitation.

It's actually not just a birthday invitation.

It's adding it to your calendar.

It's remembering to RSVP, finding that parent's number, RSVP to them, remembering to buy a gift, actually buying the gift, remembering the date of the event, organizing who's picking up and dropping off.

But there's so many steps, and so Pam, actually you take a photo of a birth crumpled up birthday invitation, and Pam puts all those steps into the calendar.

So you go, okay, well, let's div these up.

Yes, And so it gives partners who maybe weren't the kind of primary caregiver the opportunity to opt in as opposed to being dictated to and kind of and the and the parent who does mostly em and just deciding what they're not going to bother telling them about.

Yes and almost falling into that trap of becoming another child that you've just got to give instructions to which no one wants to have aged yeah.

Yeah, And and and you know, like my husband less as common socks, I mean, I adore him, is the love of my life.

But he says that you know, he was the inspiration for him because he was so useless.

Haha.

Well see, now if you didn't have a useless husband, this might never have happened.

So good on him, he's your mused.

Yeah, and he was just you know he I would tell her we had something on and he go, oh yeah.

He wouldn't mentally register it because he knew that I would remind him.

So why would he bother putting in his calendar or mentory restrant because he knew that the day before remind him.

Probably on the day would have to remind him.

And that was using up so much of my bandwidth, and it's and I don't want to have that relationship with my partner, no, you know.

And the other week, my daughter had a doctor's appointment and I hadn't told my I'd mentioned it in passing, but I hadn't told my husband, like time where And he just was outside the doctor's clinic and my daughter goes Daddy and I was like, well, no, no, no, actually, like daddy, and he was part across the road.

He'd seen it in PAM, he'd had a gap between meetings.

He was like, well, I just wanted to come and support her.

Oh see, that's that's really really cool.

And he wouldn't have had the opportunity to do that if we hadn't have Pam, because I wouldn't have told him about it, you know, Like I know.

You're listening to we need to talk with Tony Street.

So what does it mean for you as a business owner as a founder now?

Like it must be pretty exciting to think, you know, I've been in a salary job and now I've created my own business, like this could potentially be well it will be, I suspect very life changing for you and your family.

Yeah, hopefully, I mean that would be amazing.

I'm just very much looking forward to a paycheck, my first paycheck in a couple of years.

Because we've been we've been living lean, but we knew what the big vision was, you know, like.

What I wanted to create and how large this could be.

I think for me, what it's meant more than anything else is I've been able to just sounds really cheesy, but for my entire career, I've always been told to kind of stay in my lane.

I have a lot of big ideas.

I have a lot of energy and a lot of ambition, and there's been a lot of that's a great idea, but that belongs to this department, So you can't go there like just kind of pull back, or if you're going to do it, maybe like give them the idea run word or you know that sort of thing where being a startup founder, I just got to like this, just spread my wings and like go for it.

You know, like anything that I put my energy into would build something and be able to really really rely on my intuition.

So I did all the original designs for a PAM and I'm not a trained designer.

I haven't done any UX courses, but I know what simplicity means, and so I have broken so many rules around how you should design things by going no, if you make me click three things to do that, it's you using it too much mean to Like I want you to imagine, it's ten o'clock at night.

I've just been dealing with two screaming kurds getting them into bed.

I'm exhausted aff to day at work.

I've just down the couch with a glass of wine and I've just got a twenty six page school and you did that.

Don't make me think.

Yeah, I just want to go oh, and now I get this almost like arrogance go, I don't even to deal with you.

Fought it to Pam like ha ha like almost like evil, like wicked, laugh.

Like I know what you mean.

Because the first couple of emails I thought it, I was like, I don't even have to read this.

I know what it's about, and I'm not going to look at all the extra stuff because Pam's going to sort of for me and I know exactly what you mean.

And just things that, and it's Pam's actually caught stuff that because I I have ADHD.

So people will sometimes say to me, oh, did you create Pam, because you're really good at m and I'm like, no, I was the mom who never had any of the things that you were meant to have At school, I dropped every ball and felt awful and was running around with my ass on.

Fire all the time.

And so I had a just a routine ultrasound, not another baby, I'm well past that stage, but just for something.

And so I sent the appointment to Pam.

And on the day of the appointment, I was like, oh, yeah, the pay there's two Pam had sent to me, Hey, remember to drink a lead before your appointment.

There is no way I would have read that one line at the bottom of this email.

I would have turned up to my appointment and they would have turned me away.

Wow, and it to me weeks to get the appointment right, and so just that stuff going, Oh, it's just all those kind of balls that always got dropped all the time that just derailed your day and just that doesn't happen to me anymore.

Like I get to turn up now and be the parents.

I hope.

People are like, oh, wait, so what day is that?

Like football day?

I'm like, ah, and I just without having any of it use my brainsposts, I just know.

Yeah, you know, because you're getting reminded.

I finally just want to ask that moment from where you were at work like normal employee and now you somehow had the guards to start and go out on your own, knowing that you were going to not have a paycheck for a while.

And I'm sure you'll be able to renovate that bathroom now, but in fact, what did that take?

What was that moment we went right here we go?

So there are like and I was thinking about it the other day, like people ask about your origin story and I think there's no one, there's no one, just from moment.

There's all these little micro moments, right, and I think I'm really lucky my husband's hyper supportive, right, And so he was like, I was like, I don't know if we can live at one page, and it's like, ah, we'll make it work, you know.

He was like, I lived on way less than what we had as ocurre to'll be fine.

I was like, Okay, we don't.

Need a new power.

We don't need over these holidays.

You know, we don't need flash new shoes.

We can live on it, you know, having a super supportive partner.

And I know that that's a luxury.

Not everyone has that.

But I think the thing that made me go, actually, yeah, I've got this.

I can do this was when I got accepted into my first incubator.

And I recommend anyone.

Who I get lots of people content me going I've got this idea.

I don't know where to go with it.

And the first thing I say.

Is boil it down to the nugget, like, get it down to the smallest rain of gold.

That is the idea.

Don't try be the next Google Calendar, or don't try and be the next I don't know, Tinder.

Please don't be out of tender and then start by talking to people like I invite some girlfriends over for wine and cheese and said, I've got this business idea I want to take you through.

I swear it's not Amway or are born or any of that stuff.

Come of a chat and they all fell over themselves when I told them about the idea.

And the next thing I did was I posted it on like a Facebook mummies group that I was part of, and people just loved it.

So you can you can kind of test your idea and.

Lots of safe ways before you quit your job to make sure that you're really onto something.

But yeah, then the accelerate.

So then I got I applied for an incubator and these are free.

There's a really good one at the Ministry of Awesome.

Do the remote around the whole country and basically you get all the support and all the structure around you that you need to do a startup.

And after ten twelve weeks of doing one of these things part time, like it's not full time, you can do it while you're working, you will know that the end of it.

If you have a bible business idea.

And you did that and then you knew yeah, And.

Then I was like, right, okay, I'm out.

I'm pretty much job Like, there's enough, there's enough in this that it's worth me, you know this, because what is it?

You know, there's a really awful success rate about startups and how many actually go the dustines and stuff.

But I think if you think, if you get to the point where you're like this could really work, you kind of have to go for it, because like regretting it forever and then seeing someone else in twelve months time doing the idea that you had will just kill you.

Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's if you can.

I was really lucky and that my skills meant I could still just some contracting work, so in the early days before PAM was all consuming, I was able to get paid.

You know, I knew if I worked a certain number of contracting hours a week, we could kind of keep the bits paid.

Well, Nicole, I think this is magnificent.

I love the app, and I think the more people that get to know what it is and experience it for themselves, no doubt, you'll get more investors.

And I look forward to seeing where it goes, and I look forward to that paid option because I think it's just a no brainer and so good for Jahimir Mary to be doing this as well.

What a great example you're setting.

Yeah, I think so to.

Like I think I am not a technical person, you know, Like I was really proud when I hooked up my second screen in my office the other day and my husband and co founder person themselves, and like, dude, you're the founder of a technical business and you're excited that you manage your second.

Screend for your laptop.

Yeah, so you don't.

I think this preconceived notion of what you need to be to be a founder is absolutely rubbish.

What you need to be is you need to be gutsy.

You need to be willing to like actually put yourself out there, and you need to be willing to take messy steps like do the uncomfortable and put one foot in front of the other and ask people for help.

There's pretty much no one out there who won't give you fifteen minutes a good time.

We need to talk well, Coast FM's Tony Street.

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