What happens when you've bet everything on your company — and it breaks?

In Part 2, Nichole Lowe picks up where we left off: she's spotted a massive problem in the coaching industry, she has zero technical background, and she's decided to build a tech company anyway. What follows is one of the most honest founder stories you'll hear — no highlight reel, just the real climb.

Nichole walks us through building Zoee from scratch — networking her way into the startup world through a Raleigh-Durham MIT mentorship program, launching a beta that 75 coaches signed up for in seven days, and then watching it all break right before a $500K–$1M investment was about to close. On New Year's Day, at their lowest point, her husband Michael pulled her off the couch, got her on a bike, and rode with her for hours until she had a different answer.

Then, just as Zoee hit its stride — a preferred partnership with the International Coaching Federation, 50,000 coaches reached in a single email campaign — a sophisticated cyber attack hit. A money laundering scheme tied to a large-scale Wells Fargo identity theft. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Stripe shut them down. Nichole and Michael personally covered their coaches' lost income out of pocket, not knowing if they'd ever get it back.

This episode covers:

• What it actually takes to build a tech company with no technical background
• The fundraising gauntlet — and what Nichole said to get a "no" flipped to a "yes"
• The bike ride that saved Zoee — and what it taught her about resilience
• Why she ignored the "$20K paid ads" playbook and built community first
• The cyber attack that forced a full platform rebuild — and how her team stayed through all of it
• Her advice for coaches on the fence about starting their own business
• Where Zoee is going next

"It's not over until it's over. Just because someone says it's over doesn't make it so."

🔗 Find Nichole at Zoee.com | @zoeeapp on social

What does it take to walk away from a safe, successful career — not once, but twice?

Nichole Lowe, founder of Zoee.com, has one of the most unexpected founder origin stories you'll hear. She spent 12 years in the film industry — producing for Prince at Paisley Park, working on Hollywood sets, and narrowly avoiding being on the first Twin Tower on 9/11. Then she pivoted into corporate sales, built a successful career covering the Western US for a major company, and walked away from that too.

The catalyst? Her husband's undiagnosed coronary artery disease nearly killed him — 99% blocked in three main arteries, one week before a trip to Italy the doctors say he wouldn't have survived.

In Part 1, we dig into the personal transformation behind the founder story:

• How a near-fatal health scare sent Nichole to health coaching school overnight
• What it felt like to leave two successful careers — and why she says she was more afraid of staying
• The 9/11 near-miss that changed the entire trajectory of her life
• Her first client session — and the vulnerable, unplanned thing she said that made the client say "you're the person I want to hire"
• How coaching 500+ coaches at IIN revealed the exact problem Zoee was built to solve

This episode is for anyone who's ever been too comfortable to make the leap they know they need to make.

🔗 Find Nichole at Zoee.com | @zoeeapp on social

r. Emily Roedersheimer of Balanced Living Functional Medicine shares how embedding health coaches into her practice — not as an optional add-on, but as the foundational first step — produces a 65% average symptom reduction in just three months. She and Scott cover how she found and hired her coaches (including a smart audition technique), how she structured her Health Begins Here program, the contractor vs. employee question, how to price coaching so you're not losing money, and what's kept her team together for six years.