Investing in Her Future: A Masterminds Interview with Anjali Inman

By Raman Kang

“Without health and family, I don’t care about my business anyway; you need those good foundations first,” says Anjali Inman. Anjali is the Founder and CEO of EstateBox, a company that makes estate planning simple and automated by creating a virtual “box” for documents and assets. “It’s kind of been an idea I’ve been playing around with for a couple of years. The reason that I took action on it is that in September 2019, I was diagnosed with breast cancer,” says Anjali.

Previously, Anjali was a lawyer working with a tech company that specialized in AI. “I think if you’re working with tech, then you’re a woman in tech,” she says. Most of the legal jobs Anjali has had have been with tech companies, working closely with data scientists. “You get your hands into the tech, so I’ve always felt like I was a woman in tech, and then I started my own company and am definitely one.” Anjali’s journey into becoming the CEO of her own company is slightly different from most because she’s also a cancer patient.

At the time of her diagnosis, she had just come off maternity leave and thought she was relatively healthy. “When I got diagnosed with cancer, I thought WTF, right?” As someone who considered her threshold for burnout to be pretty high, she was surprised to learn that she wasn’t as healthy as she thought. After her diagnosis, Anjali spent a considerable chunk of time learning not so much about her cancer but about health, which is why she makes dinner for her family every night as a mom of two. "What we eat is very important to me. That takes priority - looking after my family and our health. Everything else is secondary," she says. “My cancer was my body’s way of saying you are not being kind to us, and we’re going to make you slow down,” says Anjali. As a result of slowing down, Anjali had a lot more time on her hands away from work and was able to think about how she could make EstateBox more than just an idea. To turn her vision into a product people would find valuable, she recognized that she needed help.

Since COVID-19, Anjali has had two surgeries, gone through radiation, and healed from chemo. So she knew she wouldn’t be able to take on all the weight of her company independently. Her husband was also adamant that she needed to be worried about her survival because her cancer was in stage 3. “He said you can’t now just decide that because you’re not at that job, you’re going to make a new one that’s going to be successful and work hours around the clock.” So, Anjali found people she trusted to help build her company, and she did it slow and steadily.

“I looked for people to do my development for a while, nothing ever felt right, and finally I met someone, and it clicked,” she says. After hiring a few more people that also seemed to be a fit, Anjali had her development team. She also had a professional acquaintance turned friend come on as her VP of marketing. I’m just so fortunate that I found and developed these relationships where people can do my company work for me,” she says. “Everyone on my team just makes my life easy - it’s great.”

When it comes to being the CEO of her own company, Anjali says challenges were ranging from little things, such as wasting time doing her payroll to bigger things like culture and openness.“I haven't worked for many vulnerable leaders or people who have just come off as real people, so I think that’s always a struggle when you're in leadership. Do you want to be a leader, or do you want to be a boss?” Eventually, Anjali found a company to do her payroll, which she considers a huge win. Having worked in tech industries led by men that didn’t have the best culture or openness, she made sure to create a better culture for her employees - all while working from home. “I think with me, what you see is what you get, and sometimes I’m sure my employees think I’m just crazy, but they get the real me which is the leader I always wished I had.” Anjali has managed to create a comfort level that facilitates her employees to feel safe enough to confide in her about important things in their lives - something she is proud of. “People I’ve never met in person have told me big things about their life; I am really proud that in the work-from-home environment, I have been able to nurture such a good culture,” says Anjali.

Culture and community are what made joining the mastermind so great for Anjali. One of the things Anjali says she loved about the Mastermind was that there were no pretenses that everything was always so great. “All the women who were there with me were real people with real problems and needed the advice to solve them,” she says. “There were just genuine people in there, and it was a comfortable space to be in and also just a reminder that we can all just be real people. You just get used to chatting with these women, and I was so fortunate that two of the women in the Mastermind class were also in another accelerator program with me, so we saw each other a little more,” explains Anjali.

“I think I’m so lucky because of my background in law, there's so much I know about running a business, but it’s still very lonely,” she says. In her group, Anjali notes some people were playing with an idea for a business, some who had just started their companies, and others who were more established. “It was nice to have a blend of everyone,” she says. Having people within different stages of their business also meant certain things would resonate differently with everyone in the group when it came to guest speakers. Anjali says she learned a lot. She expressed her enjoyment of all the topics and speakers Glorie (Masterminds Lead) brought in, “I really miss our group,” she adds.

During the Mastermind, Anjali also had a moment of being able to give back. When another participant needed to make a “minute book” for her business but didn’t know how Anjali volunteered, she had done “a million” of them and had the skills to help them out. “I just scanned her copies of all my documents and said ‘all you have to do is revise them, this is all you need, then you’ll have it,’ so it was nice to be able to share that way,” says Anjali. The Mastermind also helped Anjali with funding sources that she was able to leverage. She learned about a grant that she could directly benefit from by receiving $20,000 to hire an employee she wouldn’t have had before. She also got another employee covered with $17,000, which helped her move faster within her business. For her, just learning about the funding sources from everyone in the group made the Mastermind worth it. When asked if she would recommend the Mastermind, Anjali says: “do it, as Nike would say.”

If you are interested in accelerating your business or career, learn new skills, and collaborate in a supportive and welcoming group, then reserve your spot in the next Women in Tech Mastermind Series today! Sign up at https://womenintechworld.com/masterminds