Lizelle van Vuuren

Biography

Lizelle van Vuuren is a serial entrepreneur and the Co-founder and CMO of Undock, an end-to-end meeting platform built for the future of work. Lizelle is a brand, marketing and technology leader and joined Undock in August 2020 to accelerate its leadership, team and growth.

Prior to Undock, Lizelle comes from an extensive background in software, technology and is the Founder of Women Who Startup that launched in 2012, a learning platform for entrepreneurs. Lizelle’s unique background in technology, design, marketing since she was 19 years old makes her a focused leader on technology, innovation, brand and marketing and a dynamic community builder. Lizelle has launched several startups, brands and small businesses and her personal passion is to connect people through the power of technology.

As a Personal Story Architect, I was thrilled to speak to Lizelle about the way she has boldly built her story. Many eye-opening points of life opened up through our discussion. Get ready for a phenomenal conversation that highlights being the best version of yourself!

Highlighted topics:

what causes a company launch
humanity within businesses
constant creativity that stems from youth
seeking community rephrasing aloneness
messages from the heart of entrepreneurship
deep love of storytelling
anchors of what serves evolution, provides great meaning
changing the world to better than found

Key Words:

Perpetual entrepreneur, technology, marketing, small business, performance, reflection,

Ways to connect with Lizelle:

@heylizelle Twitter
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizellevanvuuren/ LinkedIn
heylizelle Instagram

The Queen of Entrepreneurship

Stephanie C

I’m having this conversation with you because I want to highlight people who are absolutely owning their story and building bold personal stories.

At what point did you decide to dive in to an entrepreneurial space, build it and know that it was the right path, correct fit for you?

Lizelle v

I talk to a lot of people about how they ended up in entrepreneurship, interviewed 1000s of entrepreneurs that happen to be women, because of my Women Who Startup community. I started my career at 19, working in technology as an intern. Nine years later, I was fried, cooked to the bone. I couldn’t imagine going to get another job. When I initially got that job, it didn’t feel like a job. I got the gig at an internship fair, clicked with the person that was hiring a designer and my career evolved into marketing, then director of marketing, then more product marketing and so it went.

Uncovering Humanity

At the end of 2011, I had to figure out, what do I become January 1, 2012? I no longer had a job and could not picture going back to a job that was exhausting. It was very natural for me that I was going to launch my own company. I finished my MBA and launched my first company in 2009. I was working full time and worked on my MBA full time, I don’t recommend that to anyone unless you want to punish yourself to death. It’s probably the same thing as building a startup, like working in the enterprise and studying full time. Absolute madness.

To me it was very organic, like, holy shit. January 1, 2012, I started my first company, a marketing services agency, working with small businesses. I didn’t want to talk to people in technology, I just wanted to engage with consumer driven small businesses. I wanted the humanity back, was exhausted, wanted to be near and dear to the humanity of business.

I also freelanced alongside my career since I was very young. Launching a business is different than just freelancing, working on your own time or for others on a service exchange of your time.

Youth Driven Ties

So, 19 is young, yet you are someone who digs deep and rolls, rolls, rolls. If you look back, to your younger self, do you see components that tie into what you’re doing now?

I have performed since the age of four years old. Performance arts, ballet, drama, theater, you name it. Having great confidence to perform in front of people. I went through high school, and performance arts kind of saved my life. When I moved to this country, having turned 16 just after my arrival, I didn’t go to school for several months because of the school year differences from South Africa to the United States. I skipped a year and never attended 10th grade, they put me right into 11th grade, and only had two years in high school. It was challenging to move at such a volatile age, madness especially since I had to study in a different language.

Previously I had been an avid, extreme athlete, sports was everything. I was a tennis player, a top 2% swimmers, I was very prestigious and tennis was like my life. I played team sports, netball, similar to basketball, in South Africa and much of Europe. But when I moved here, I lost all of that, was pretty alienated. I entrenched myself into theater and performance arts. Mind you, I was always very creative, painted constantly as a child, on canvas or anything I could find. Would draw anything from sight, look at Mickey Mouse and just draw it.

Lots of creativity from a young age, but performance was who I was. My mom joked at dinnertime, I would be a character, have a million different accents, would impersonate, be in constant performance. The last two years of high school, I enrolled in many facets of performance arts: I was an actor, a stage director, a writer, did monologue performances, group theatrics. It was an anchor to get through high school. I told myself I was going to become an actor and not much of that has changed.

After high school, I went to CU Boulder, majored in performance art and minored in psychology. After my first year, I was intimidated by the school size, overstimulated and couldn’t get anything done. I took a year off while living in Boulder and started to visit Denver, drove myself down to explore, walked into the Denver Art Museum, and the Art Institute of Colorado. I thought I was walking into another little gallery because they had a student gallery in the lobby. Two hours later, I found myself in a deep talk with an admissions counselor. Four weeks later, I enrolled and finished a four-year Interactive Media Design program in less than three years.

Applying Creativity to Business

Throughout this trajectory, of school and career choices I got my internship and worked in technology. That shifted me to apply my creativity in business, then nine years later I was fried and burned out. One of the first things I did when kicking off my new chapter as a small business owner, was to seek community. Yet the moment I did, there were no women in the room. Going to technology conferences, meetups, events, and tech chats, before you know it Lizelle was onstage, performing, speaking.

That’s when I kicked off Women Who Startup and then women showed up. It started to take shape, started small then grew and grew. Eight years later I was on stage in front of hundreds of people, delivering messages from the heart around entrepreneurship, but also around finding joy in life; what makes you happy, finding community and not being alone. A lot of that stems from my much younger self. I was an only child for the most part, I have a step siblings and half sisters but grew up mostly as an only child. Performance was organic for me, because I was self-entertaining, right? Constantly creative, my own best company.

Deep Love for Storytelling

It’s a lot of what I do today. My mom always smiles, giggles and says, well, it’s a good thing you studied that mixed bag of things. You are all of that, you are creative, you perform, speak, and deliver strong messages. The last couple of launch events at Undock, we made little movies to present and position our company to people. What it boils down to is: at the core, I have a deep love for storytelling, because that’s how we connect as people. And what’s greater than that?

Bingo! Exactly why I reached out, you are speaking my language. I can check the boxes of every single thing you just said. What is so important is that from day one we lean into what feels right for us. Even though you got into CU Boulder, within a year, you realized it wasn’t resonating.

Oftentimes we have to switch, shift and explore a little. You had one day of exploration in Denver and then you jumped right in. The name of the game is: listen to that core voice and trust it. When we do we land in the spaces that we’re supposed to, versus living in structured spaces that you hope are the right things. We also often live by codes, it’s okay if you have your own code but we must decode the spaces that don’t belong to us…or that are someone else’s.

I am all about people living a colorful life, dimensional-izing themselves, owning that strong voice that supports strong positions. You do that! Every time I experience you and I love that.

Have you been in a position where someone has tried to take that voice away? If so, how did you react?

Ok, that’s deep, a heavy hitter. Um, we just turned into the Oprah show.

Well, it’s a vulnerable space to tap into for sure. It’s hard work, but the best work!

Exploration

I’ve had many check ins with myself throughout life, reflected on what is holding me back, who is and why is it? As you mature, why continue to allow anyone to hold you back? As a much younger person, I didn’t know. Shit, right? You’re running through the mud, doing your best. I like that you use the word explorer. I’m definitely an explorer, a person that constantly tries to refine my experience. What I’m building, how I’m building, all those things.

As a young person, I had an interesting juxtaposition of parental input, my mom has always been a tremendous love and support, nurturing and uplifting, saying: you can do anything, kiddo. Whatever you set your mind to. My father and I, who are estranged, had a challenging relationship. For better or worse, as I grew older, realized that some people fail at all sorts of things, but especially young people. Becoming parents, they fail at wanting to give you the space to be who you are. Instead, they hammer into you that it’s not good enough, you’re not this or that enough. I got a lot of that from a very young age.

I went years thinking I wasn’t tall enough, smart enough, beautiful enough, skinny enough, straight enough, because I’m very gay. (Haha!) I wasn’t feminine enough, I was such an adventure child. Right? I was the epitome of a tomboy, why couldn’t I just be the epitome of childhood? Hungry for exploration, climbing trees, eating berries out of trees, riding bicycles and all the joys of life. God forbid I was a girl, like no shit. Girls are badass. Girls can be whatever they want to be!

A Bite out of Life

The rebel in me started at a young age, a vulnerable person, hungry to take the bite out of life’s experiences from every direction: school, sports, adventure, riding my bike, learning to skateboard and building ramps with the girls and the boys. So adventurous, right? My friends were tons of boys, they just loved me. We would run around the neighborhood, cause havoc, build forts and do crazy things. Very disciplined, my sports were important to me, I wanted to be the best. I grew up living with my father for most of my childhood until I lived with my mom. Naturally parents and adults in our childhood shape us, and we have to unlearn a lot of shit throughout our lives.

Adulthood is parenting your inner child and your younger self. Trying to heal from your fucking traumas, figuring out how to move beyond those things that anchored you into who you became, but not who you are. And constantly evolving.

Bravo to all of this! Your honesty, sharing of the deep space of your history is so important for people to hear, that we have to fight, to own what is us. When we do, we win. I believe you’ve won.

Thank you. That’s very kind.

I want to turn the lens to Undock. As someone who has led their path, developed new products, services, we know you create based on your audience’s needs. Can you speak to two or three things that are important to you personally, that you’re weaving into the development of Undock?

Perpetual Entrepreneur

A perpetual entrepreneur, I’ve worked on my own ideas and other people’s. Undock is the brainchild of Nash, he came up with this concept, how to solve for availability, in a much better technological way. We met mid-summer 2020, a tumultuous year, when we also lost our 16-and-a-half-year-old dog Suga (pronounced “Shugah”) in May, the cornerstone of my life since I was 21. Naturally, grieving is a complex dimension of the human experience because it works different for everyone. A constant thing that you’re dealing with, it evolves over time.

A taxing year on everybody’s psyche, and working like a dog to make sure I supported the Women Who Startup community serving up resources for them to get through the pandemic, to be connected and to thrive. We went from one event a month to five or six a week, I gave everything I had. By summertime I was running on empty. Losing something or someone you love, so dearly, you reflect. Time that I share, the things in the people that I love, I was really reflective of: what are you doing with your life/ what am I doing with my time?

I take constant inventory, are we on the right track, or not? On a typical Saturday morning, hanging out on Twitter, I said hello to a founder and shared his company. It was Nash and Undock in the very early stages. I wasn’t really looking, but always paid attention wondering, is this what’s striking the chord for me?

I’m energetic in that regard, knowing that things show up when they’re supposed to and know they don’t when I’m not open to them.

The Root of the Cause

I hadn’t been open to a lot of new explorations because I was so inundated with Women Who Startup, struggling to fundraise for it. 2018 and 2019 were hard fucking years. Then I met this guy talking about time, and I’m like, oh, shit I’ve been thinking about my time forever. For me, it was immediate. If there’s something I could work on, that would give great meaning. . .and its technology. (I love technology. A startup. I love startup mode.) It seemed like a good match, all those dots connected. It was one of those Founder-Market-Fit moments that don’t come along every day! Who are the people? What is the product, the timing, then at the root of it all: the meaning, the substance. Reflective of time, he talked about giving people their time back. I was like, holy shit, should I build technology that empowers people to make time for what’s important? I’m thinking: never, ever neglect to make time for what’s important. Nothing is given, remember death. It’s absolutely a facet of this wonderful life experience.

It wasn’t dark or heavy, it was raw and real. I wasn’t having that level of conversation with Nash, but that’s where I was, where my heart, mind, and energy was. When going through a tough time, I tend to create some of my best work. In early 2019, I went through a lot of health changes, the impact of years of stress and lots of autoimmune realities which I was likely born with. I launched Lizelle & Co, my first apparel company. It was meant for me to write nostalgic little stories, create fun apparel around them. An anchor to give myself something to look forward to.

This was different, my health much improved, I capable of a lot more. All the things I could have been doing, of all the people that could have liked one of my tweets, Nash got my attention. It was meant to be, it was probably energetically already in motion.

I believe that if you’re open to new possibilities, new growth, then the universe will do its job, will make the connections, the stars will align, will put you in the position of opportunity. After a couple of weeks of us talking nonstop, having amazing mind shares and things of that nature, the three of us clicked. I committed, and dove in.

Openness is one of my key words because we NEED to be open. People struggle to find their purpose, they often ask, does everybody need to have a purpose?

It’s not like we’re fishing for it. My belief is it’s about being open. A self-awareness that supports us when purpose comes at us, we then see it when it appears. I suppose it’s also vulnerability.

That’s what you’re talking about. Living in an open, self-aware space, things come to you and you know it is the right fit. This is purposeful because it is your mindset. You can fuel a business or project because it hits you in the right way. Thus, it becomes purposeful.

Thank you.

Manifesting the Future

We don’t do one or two things, and then call it a life, an example is our president who is 78! If you look in the next 10 years, what’s kicking around for you, that might be a possibility?

When it comes to the companies I’m a part of building, I see the future because the manifestation becomes so vividly strong. It’s hard for me to predict my future. I have visions of how to shape things, that the stronger those are the more we carve our opportunities towards achieving. I have a very bad concept of time. I’m constantly losing myself in time. I like to be really present, if I’m not in a good headspace I’ve got to keep bringing myself back. When you’re building businesses, you’re thinking long into the future, and reviewing the past and all those things. As a human, you review the past, live in the present, and hopefully curating a good future outcome.

When thinking about the next 10 years, damn, I believe wholeheartedly that, I will continue to improve from a health and wellness standpoint, to become the best possible version of myself. It requires discipline on a daily basis, to stretch and exercise, eat well, meditate, go for a walk and do the things that makes me the best version of myself. I want to continue to do that for the rest of my life. Top of Mind, health, all those things.

When it comes to Undock, I see us building this for many years. I would love it to deem itself into a wonderful successful company, where people have great pleasure learning, growing and innovating with us. There’s so much impact that I myself, and the people that I’m building it with want to create in the world, it’s the reason we work so hard. We’re also built for the load, engineered for the grind.

We want to change the world to be better than we found it. For me, becoming an investor is something I’ve always thought about. But first I want to build some more. Build Undock into a great, successful company.

It’s hard to say that you feel lucky to be building a startup, it’s such an oxymoron, because it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s very challenging, extraordinarily exhausting but wonderful at the same time. You’re like, holy shit, that’s what life is all about. Both the light and the dark in the same moment. A good life experience.

In 10 years, I hope I’m still around, have more to share. I have so much more to learn. I hope I’m healthy and so is my family, our company, and community. Gosh, I hope that I’m creating a lot more impact, than I’m capable of doing today, fiscally, energetically, intellectually.

I’m putting my money on you.

That’s very kind.

I love your line: Be the best version of yourself. You talk about the pieces you have to fulfill if you’re going to grow this business, if it’s going to be progress, and you say everybody’s doing it, yet they aren’t. What you are saying is the absolute fuel that people have to hear. People have to have that self-awareness. Commit to self-care and have a focused mindset to be the best that they can and that means turning that lens back to themselves because if they shred themselves, it’s over.

Yeah, it will be game over!

We have to believe and trust in the things that we want to move forward with. Those are all key pieces.

Like you wearing a, Be Kind sweatshirt. . . you live simple profound sound bites. It is about: Live it. Hear it. Say it. Wear it.

That’s the beauty of these connections. Thank you, I’m very honored and super grateful for this.