Stairway to CEO

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What it was like growing up in Buffalo, New York as the second of five childrenHow at a young age he always appreciated the hard work he put into yard work or shoveling snow, getting to see the transformation he was able to makeWhat it was like going to Cornell University, being the first one in his family to leave his hometown, changing his major to business, and getting connected to the CEO of SC JohnsonThe opportunity he was given as an undergrad student to intern with SC Johnson, and continue working for them for 16 yearsHis experience leading the plant-based food and beverages division at WhiteWave Food for brands including Silk, Horizon, and So Delicious What qualities he thinks makes a good CEO, and how to grow in the CEO roleHow stumbling into business allowed him to find his passion, which is helping brands grow in their purposeWhat he looked for in building his initial team at Yasso The things that make or break a CEO transition How he practices and builds resiliency, with his head, heart, and body Why he believes taking care of yourself is taking care of your teamExclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get a 30 day free trial with Rewind HEREUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastTo Find Out More:https://yasso.com/Quotes:“The way I broke through was I found my way through playing football, so I went to Cornell playing football and being a good student and good athlete, but football really broke me through.”“I was just watching how much my parents worked to put me through to that moment, to get me into Cornell and to support that. And then I wanted to make my mark. I wanted to be part of whatever the Shiesly folklore was, I wanted to be part of that chapter.”“Walk in their footsteps, know who they are, know their business, understand what they're trying to get out of their life, even beyond the business.”“People and how they're going to feel when they're brought along is important and then sharing that vision.”“Make it more about them versus about you and what you want to get done”“We can debate the how, but let's agree to the what”“If you believe in that conviction, you fight for it. And that was where I was willing to go down and be fired for that conviction. Cause at the end of the day, I'm going to die with my plan, no one else's.”“I think a fallacy in a business is that margin comes later. But I think margin matters now.”“It was very important for us to be more than a dessert brand. We wanted to be more than things that are sold on a stick, so we had to migrate that brand from dessert to snack.”“If there's something that as a founder keeps you passionate and keeps your juice going and that you want to be involved in, put it on the table, discuss how that's going to go with the CEO and how you manage your way through that.”“I would ask both sides, really do your homework, know each other, know people that know them informally, informally inside of work, outside of work, how are they in the good moments and the tough moments.”“I'm really all about take care of yourself, prioritize that. Whether that's a workout, whether that's yoga, swimming, meditation, make sure that's there because you're going to need that, and your team's going to need to feel your energy day in, day out because sometimes you're going to have to give it to them and you can't give it to them unless you have it.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:Her life growing up in Pasadena, California, with dreams of becoming a marine biologist, and her first entrepreneurial journey of breeding bunnies and selling them to local pet storesWhat it was like going to a boarding school in Connecticut, being far away from familyHow leaving college she was unsure of what she wanted to do, so she decides to go the investment banking routeHer experience working at Goldman Sachs, and how it provided her with the skills needed to continue in the investment world The important things she’s learned in working in early startups, that the people you have around you are the most important, and facing personnel challengesWhy she feels it important to have a Co-Founder and do partnership coaching together How she and her co-founder's internal look into their own nutritional health led to the realization that current prenatal vitamins wouldn’t do everything they needed, leading to the idea of NeededThe challenges of product development, from testing the vitamins, focusing on perfecting the product, and getting it validatedThe bad advice given from a board member, and how it taught her to always listen to her gutThe limiting beliefs she had to overcome in fundraisingWhat's next for Needed, from new products and Needed Change Makers, a collective of 100+ practitionersExclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get a 30 day free trial with Rewind HEREUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastTo Find Out More:https://thisisneeded.com/Quotes:“I'm someone that's very motivated by big problems, but also I am motivated when you can see a step-wise path of how you can actually solve it.” “The people that you work with matter so much.”“Life is too short to have people exhaustion lay on you.”“It was helpful to have both because I think she pushed me in ways that I had so many fears that maybe wouldn't have taken to the next step. And then I forced us to do partnership coaching from day one.”“We were just surprised in seeing the gamut of issues that they had, from fertility to hyperemesis all throughout pregnancy, through postpartum depression and the list goes on, but nutrition was never spoken about as like a tool that could help them.”“We both did some pretty extensive nutritional testing for ourselves and found we were both very nutritionally deficient, which led us to be like if our picture looks like this, and if we were going to be pregnant at this point in time, it really isn't an optimal picture, and prenatal supplements as they exist right now, wouldn't get anywhere close in terms of filling in the gaps for our needs.”“We wanted to be supported better when we were mothers one day.”“There was a problem that captivated us both as it mattered for our lives going forward and our friends, and we felt that we could make an impact to make it better.”“We were looking to make access to that optimal nutrition support much more accessible, both through better products and through better education around the issues.”“You need to remember as a founder to listen to your own gut.”“My toughest part of fundraising was figuring out how I could reconcile the two of, we absolutely have a big vision, we’re going after a big problem, but how do you paint that story in a way that doesn't feel out of integrity for where we are right now?”“You need to give yourself whatever you need, such that you can continue to sustain and be able to meet your needs, and I think that can often be forgotten as part of the entrepreneurial journey and lead to burnout.”“Just stay authentic to yourself. Find areas where you have a growth mindset, keep improving, but if you can continue to do things that are in line with your true self, that's the right path to be on and that's what you need to look for.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:-What it was like growing up in Northeastern, New Jersey as the youngest of four to a single mother, growing up as a tomboy hanging out with her older brothers-Her first job working as a dog groomer at the age of 12, setting her own hours and rate-The funny story of how the DMV messed up her driver's license, making her 21 at the age of only 16-How her hippie ex-boyfriend introduced her to being a raw foodist and over the years came up with the idea for her first company, BluePrintCleanse-How going to Puerto Rico to learn more about being a raw foodist inspired her to help more people and come up with a juice cleanse-How BluePrintCleanse was acquired, and years later her partner and her decided they weren’t done doing business together-How noticing the positive effects of functional mushrooms gave her and her partner the idea to start Earth & Star and enter into the white space with RTD beverages-What its been like bootstrapping the business during COVID, to now raising funds-The key things she’s learned in building her companies, and how its important to adapt from your original idea-The challenges of fundraising, and how pushing through the difficulties is hard, but having someone take a risk is rewarding-How she’s grown personally as a leader, and how sometimes it's all about not taking things too personal-Her full transparency in how she feels about the beverage space, and what she would’ve done differently to launch the company-What’s next for Earth & Star, trying to establish themselves as a leading functional mushroom brandExclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:-Get a 30 day free trial with Rewind HERE-Use the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HERE-Get 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastTo Find Out More:https://earthandstar.com/Quotes:“I always appreciated the sort of hustle of the restaurant and hospitality world, because there’s a direct line of what you earned because that’s how hard you worked.”“I just thought, we’re supposed to have access to so many things, and these people don’t know about this until their last method of trying.”“We wanted to take the everyday products that people use, all the habitual products, and make them super-premium, very delicious, very consumer-friendly, and then beautiful packaging, and then boost everything with functional mushrooms.”“We’re presenting a product that is so powerful when it comes to health and specifically your immune system, during a time when everyone needs that more than ever.”“I think this business will end up looking quite different from how we started, to where we’re going, but that’s part of being an entrepreneur.”“Part of being an entrepreneur is having a business idea and it usually evolves into something else based on the circumstances and you have to figure out how to navigate and not be afraid to change up your strategy or offerings.”“Don’t think you have it all figured out from the beginning.”“I wish I would’ve known or realized that the functional beverage space and the beverage space, in general, is beyond crowded and somewhat impenetrable.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What it was like growing up in a small suburban town in Detroit with entrepreneurial parents, creating friendship bracelets and earrings and selling them to friends and familyHow the fascination with babies at a young age gave her the desire to be a pediatrician, but once she got to college and began taking advanced science classes, it led her to explore other passions and interestsHow after college, her main goal was to just find something fun that she loved doing, and knew that one day she would end up creating something of her ownHow couch surfing in college while doing two internships and making connections led to dinner with Tyra Banks, and landing a dream job at Victoria’s SecretHow she finally decided to take the leap into entrepreneurship after five years of building a customer base with her blogHow being inspired form women like Martha Stewart gave her the determination and mindset to build a brand that was mass enough to go into Kmart or TargetHow helping a friend pick paint samples online led to a terrible experience and sparked the idea of selling paint onlineThe challenges and experiences she faced in raising a Series A of $8 million dollars, from supply chain challenges, to team changes, and moreThe lessons learned in hiring the right person and fit for the teamWhat she's learned in keeping the conviction of her business and how that keeps her focused on the main goalExclusive Deals from our Sponsors:Get a 30 day free trial with Rewind HEREUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastTo Find Out More:https://www.clare.com/ Quotes:“My father always told me ‘whatever you do, don’t ever work for someone else your whole life, you need to have your own business’ and that was just ingrained in my mind.”“You don’t need to have it all figured out in college, you just need to be pursuing a path that’ll give you options. Choose a path that can help build skills that are applicable no matter what you end up doing in the long run.”“I pretty much spent all of my free time watching HGTV, buying coffee table design books, and consuming and reading everything design.”“It was less about starting a business and more about following this passion than anything else.” “I started making friends with all the home editors and getting to know people in the design community and little by little I built credibility, and I built a name and I became really respected. It just sort of grew from there.”“It’s the squeaky wheel who gets the grease.”“I always had a plan, but I didn't have the steps in between. I didn't have the granularity of the plan, but I knew I was gonna start my own business. Once I became an interior designer full-time and started my design firm, I knew that I wanted to build a brand and have physical products.”“Paint really felt like a broken buyer journey”“Part of the blind optimism as a founder is just believing you can do it.”“The further along you get, the harder fundraising becomes, even if you are the next hot startup idea in the beginning, you have to demonstrate that you have a business that has potential or else you will lose people very quickly.”“Fundraising is like a game of FOMO. You're hot or not, and there's not a lot in-between.”“Just being able to show up in a room and be your true self and not feel doubted, you know or feel like people are questioning your ability to build the business that you're building, and be able to focus on the stuff that really matters.”“Maintain your conviction in what you're building. You are going to be met with so much rejection, so much skepticism. So many people who don't believe in what you know to be true, remain unwavering in your belief around your business, what you're building and just never lose sight of your mission because that's what will keep you grounded and keep going even when things get really hard”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:His early life growing up in Livingston, New Jersey, being an outgoing kid with an entrepreneurial drive, and how being a hustler at summer camp got him kicked outHow his entrepreneurial drive came from his serial entrepreneur fatherHis experience going to college in a co-op program where he got hands on experience in marketing and banking but realized it wasn’t the career path he wanted to takeHow in working with the company Way Up led him to meeting not only his wife, but his Co-Founder, MichaelHow registering for his wedding and watching friends and family members create registries for their baby made him realize the white space in the baby category How he determined his Co-Founder would be a good fit, what to look for, what things they draw the line on, and why it's more like being siblings than it is best friendsSome of the challenges they’ve faced in having to educate people on why they should be excited about the baby and toddler categoryHow during challenging moments, they concentrate on surviving instead of thriving How to keep talent and how to make good hiring choices How he gets through dealing with imposter syndrome and how he's faced it during fundraisingWhat’s next for Lalo and the plans to expand the brand into every room of the houseExclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceoUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastTo Find Out More:https://meetlalo.com/Quotes:“Entrepreneurship was something I saw from a pretty early age and was something I always just felt that I had it in my bones and in my blood.”“When I was watching my friends and family going to fill out their baby registry, I realized you don't know what you need, why you need it when you need it. it's a complete black hole.”“Becoming a parent is one of the most common threads amongst humanity. It doesn't matter how rich or poor you are, where you are, where you're from, what you look like. It's such a shared experience of people who are incredibly vulnerable.” “Instead of focusing on one product, what if we could develop products that span different milestones of what both parents and children went through together to make that shopping experience that much easier from the overwhelming experience that it is.”“Being a co-founder with somebody is more like having a sibling than a best friend.”“When you have a co-founder, it’s a partnership. There has to be a division of labor to ultimately steer the organization and strategy in the best direction possible.”“We wanted to build a brand that wasn't for one issue or one type of parent, we wanted to build a brand that could be for many different types of people.”“We're not here to confuse you. We're not here to play games with you. We're just here to shoot it to you straight.” “If you survive long enough, you'll end up thriving”“Being a founder and having a company is not just hard when the company goes hard, right? Like you bring your personal self to work and you bring your work self home.”“Mentally ensure that you're ready and the people around you are ready, because it's a roller coaster. It's the best roller coaster, it's so much fun, I wouldn't trade it for the world. But it's a ride and you just have to be ready to persevere.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What it was like growing up in Northern New Jersey with entrepreneurial parentsHow he knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur at an early age by selling candy to kids at his summer campHow he created his own major in college, studying Consumer Psychology and how he uses it today in running CarawayWhy he moved back in with his parents after graduating college to start his first company, Wannu, an all encompassing shopping platformHis time working at Mohawk group and how being in a “mini CEO” role inspired him to build a brand of his own in the kitchen space.How one bad experience in the kitchen gave him the idea for Caraway and creating non-toxic cookwareHow he took a different approach to his go to market strategy and how it worked out for CarawayHow he had to repack nearly 10,000 sets of pots and pans at the warehouse that had arrived damaged just three days before launchThe advice he has for new entrepreneurs looking to start chasing their dreamsExclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceoUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastTo Find Out More:https://www.carawayhome.com/Quotes:“I always found it fascinating why people purchase or why they choose the brands that they ended up buying from.”“I had a lot of great learnings and I’m super happy I did it because I wouldn't be where I am today without having to take the leap.”“Goal setting is super important. As an early manager, it wasn't something that I think I communicated super well in my head. I knew what we wanted to achieve as a brand, but couldn’t pass them down.” “We put in place a robust goal structure where everyone at the company knows what we're aiming for from the high level, but also on a quarterly basis, and what they need to be doing to help contribute to those higher level goals.”“I couldn't shake this thought that, why is something that we're cooking off of that is touching our food so potentially dangerous, and there must be a better solution out there.”“I decided to launch a kitchen brand, starting with cookware and wanted the main tenant to be focused around non-toxic materials and implementing better manufacturing processes in the space.”“It was important to kind of convey the bigger vision that we're looking to tackle, and so we go by Caraway”“Results aren't always instantaneous and success can’t always be measured right away. Fundraising and building a startup can be really difficult.”“I felt like all the no’s we got were just fuel to the fire and, eventually they would pay off.”“Just because it's a no now, doesn't mean it's a no in the future.”“We wanted to get into a marketing segment that our competition wasn't in and influencers is a tougher category than running a Facebook ad because you have to go and build those relationships. But just the lack of competition there we wanted to pursue it as a launch strategy.”“For us, really how the product lives outside of cooking was tremendously important.”“We want every touch point to be something unique and something you remember”“I really encourage anyone thinking about starting a business to focus on what you think is best for the path that you take. Just because others are fundraising doesn't mean that you have to, or just because they're advertising on Facebook or Instagram or going direct to consumer first, doesn't mean that you can't go to retail first.”“I think the best brands and companies are typically built around doing the opposite of what most others are doing. If people haven't seen it before it probably means there's a big opportunity there.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:Her early days growing up, excelling in school and graduating from college at just 18 years oldThe challenges she faced in selling bullet proof plates as a young teenage girl, helping run her father’s businessThe key takeaways she learned during her time running her dad's business and working in performance marketingHow meeting a former CEO of a major beauty brand inspired her to create BubbleThe importance of doing research in a company, and how listening to your customer is keyHow she created a community of thousands of teenagers that helped her learn what her customers wanted and continues to listen to them todayHow she catapulted the business towards success with inbound requests from major retailers after just two weeks of launchingHer advice for entrepreneurs looking to get started and grow their businessTo Find Out More:https://hellobubble.com/Exclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceoUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastQuotes:“When I was 16, my dad gave me the opportunity to run his business. My dad is an amazing inventor and super smart, but had no idea about anything related to business and business development, sales, and administration or anything.”“I had a really great role in actually being able to experiment, learn, and do so much that I just completely fell in love with performance marketing, testing, looking at numbers and conversion rates.”“I found myself starting from scratch and building a really big operation in London when I was 21 and I was running it for about four and a half years.”“Look at the other person and look at how they perceive or see certain things you say.”“Scale slowly, don't scale too quickly”“Everything that happens is for the best, and if it wasn't, you learn, which is also for the best.”“If I'm not going to think about it in three months from now, it probably doesn't matter that much and it's not worth obsessing over or taking it personally, and I should just move on.”“I felt like there's a really big gap in skincare and specifically in skincare to young consumers.”“When COVID happened, we knew we had to find a way to create a community. And we also want to be able to support our consumers, our future consumers, because it was a year before we launched.”“We are listening to our consumers constantly. So every possible problem they told us that they have, we're working on fixing.”“We all take risks, that's part of being an entrepreneur, but how do we take a risk by truly understanding how it could impact us?”“Research research research. That's what I would say the most important thing in everything we've done is just constantly research and listen to our community. Not think we know it all, not think we are always right, but to truly listen to what consumers are saying and build our strategy based on consumers.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What is was like growing up in Minnesota with a snail farm in his house How the passion his parents had for side hustles gave him the passion for entrepreneurship and pursuing his own companyHis time working in investment banking and how it was a blessing in disguiseHow he launched a reading game app for kids, and how this experience taught him a tough lesson about distribution The thought process of going through the shut down of his first tech company after three years of hard workHow he landed his first contract with Rolls Royce, and the challenges and sacrifices made in building his software development companyThe inspiration for Malomo and how wanting to protect brands ability to grow gave them the idea for the businessWhat he’s learned about fundraising and how it’s an art that takes a lot of momentumHis advice for up and coming entrepreneurs, and why it's important to just get going because speed always winsExclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceoUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastTo Find Out More:https://gomalomo.com/If you're building a brand and interested in checking out Malomo you can get 30% off your first three months by going to gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceo.Quotes:“I had to figure out a way to separate what the company's successes and failures are from what my personal successes and failures are.”“In software, people think they're buying a product, but they're really buying a service.”“You want to shield the team from that stress. And you also don't have an outlet for it. You kind of have to eat it and bottle it up and it keeps you up at night.”“One of the stigmas of entrepreneurship is you always have to project success and momentum to grow.”“We talked with some clients and asked what some of their problems are on post-purchase, what are things that come to mind and the number one response was tracking.” “Being able to proactively alert customers and give them transparency into when orders have arrived has a massive impact on how they view a brand.”“One of the biggest things that we saw was that companies built way too much, way too early, and didn't release it fast enough.”“If something goes wrong, we'll notify you and also notify our internal resources and try to resolve those things quickly, but we're also trying to engage and keep you excited and motivated for that purchase to arrive and give you utility beyond the package.”“Fundraising is very much selling vision and storytelling and focusing on how your market evolves over time or changes because of the product of the service that you built or introduced.”“Momentum in fundraising is everything” “You have to be very good at learning things really quickly and being able to do things quickly. The hard part is, at a certain point you have to be irrelevant to the business and you have to stop doing and actually start.”“Just go start, get something in front of folks and get feedback. Don't wait for it to be perfect. If you wait, you'll lose, speed wins.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:Her life growing up with entrepreneurial parents in San Francisco with dreams of becoming a rower in collegeHow her time at Wharton business school wasn’t fulfilling so she changed her major to study liberal arts and history How her time working for a natural foods company taught her a lot about creating products and gave her skills she now uses to build Copina CoHer experience starting her own blog to learn marketing in a different way and to talk about her struggles and passions and how it eventually led to the creation of Copina CoHow struggling with cystic acne led her to search for a better remedy with healthy, natural ingredients over antibiotics and toxinsHow being plant based herself, she struggled finding a collagen supplement which led to many months of research and product samplingWhy she chose the name Copina Co, the mission behind it and the importance of being a community centered brandThe struggles she faced in launching three weeks prior to the pandemic and was forced to become a DTC company but now sells in Erewhon and Urban Outfitters The exciting plans coming in the new year with Copina Co Exclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceoUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastTo Find Out More:https://copinaco.com/Use code: stairway15 to get 15% off your order!Quotes:“I like to be someone who chooses the road, not taken.”“It's a real spiral that people don't realize that stress, digestive, health, skin health, all of these things are linked. We don't talk about these things. Mind and body are inextricably linked."“I realized that I had to change how I looked at my own health, how I looked at beauty, it wasn't about just getting clear skin, it was about chasing optimal health for me.” “It's really helpful to be really specific when you're starting a company, and to have a laser focus on something and I've always been focused on sustainability.”“Our products use plant botanicals that are high in certain vitamins and amino acids that help your body make more of its own collagen. It's about supporting your body's own natural collagen production.”“I've always focused on growing Copina Co organically, but very much community centered.”“I've realized in running my business that doing is not the same thing as getting things done.”“First thing in the morning, I do the big project. I do the thing I don't want to do. I do the hardest thing. And that's how I keep getting stuff done.”“I always advise people, especially if they're starting new, if you can, stay in your job no matter what, because I actually think that there's so much more pressure if you don't have any other income streams coming in, to absolutely get something done.”“I think that it's important that at the end of the day, build your brand and tell your story.”“There is always a blue ocean. There's always room for an uncrowded white space where something is drastically needed.”“Stay true to yourself and think about how you can bring joy to others, but also bring joy to yourself. Do something when it's right, but also ask yourself ‘why’ instead of just following the crowd.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What it was like growing up in New Jersey throughout most of her younger life, to moving to the UK in highschool and having a shift of realizationHow growing up she knew she always wanted to be in a boardroom and rise to the top in a company, but learned in her later life that entrepreneurship was something she could achieveHow she showed up to her friend’s interview for Ralph Lauren and ended up landing her dream jobHow burnout and following her gut led her to move to Argentina, where she eventually fell in love with herself, life, and her husband How taking an adventure and getting her face shaved while on a trip to Japan gave her the idea for HanniHer experience raising her first seed round and how just calling everyone she could helped her in fundraisingHow she manages moments of self doubt, and remembers to just keep going Exclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceoUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastTo Find Out More:https://heyhanni.com/Quotes:“I was always figuring out ways to make the things that I wanted happen.”“A lot of times you have to take a non-traditional path and do what you have to do to get where you want to be.”“I think one thing I'm good at is understanding what people want and what they need intuitively and making sure that I can give it to them.”“Put yourself in situations that scare you.”“I wanted to initially make a single blade razor with one head for body and one head for face. What we found was from a technical design standpoint, it's just too hard to do both on one. So we decided to launch with the body razor.”“And so the great thing about the razor is you don't press or push into your skin at all. You let the weight glide it across. So it's very gentle and it gives you such a close shave. At the end of the day, what we found is, you don't need three blades, four blades, or five blades and gooey strips, you need one sharp blade.”“When I came back to the U.S I had no network, I've been out of the game for 10 years.I didn't know anyone. I just started taking phone calls with everyone. Suddenly I was surrounded by all these incredible female VCs and founders.”“If you have a unique product, don’t limit yourself.”“When you start to look outside of those traditional sources of funding, you find a lot of really interesting, smart, cool people who might be willing to take a chance on you.”“They're just people at the end of the day, there are people who are genuinely interested in what you're building, because that could be something that works out really well for them.“If you're going to shave, shave for you and shave with a really high quality tool that doesn't leave your skin terrible, painful and irritated.”“When I have those moments of self doubt, I remember my husband always says to me, ‘just put one foot in front of the other and keep going’, because this is the moment where so many entrepreneurs just bow out. If you do that, you'll just be like everyone else who wanted to start a company and never got very far or never ended up launching or whatever the case may be. I always remember that.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What it was like growing up with three sisters and entrepreneurial parents in Pasadena, California and how living in an entrepreneurial household gave her the drive to start her own businessWhy she believes her nurturing personality has helped the growth of True Botanicals What her time working in marketing at Levi’s taught her about marketing and communicationHow following the death of her beloved mother led her to take the leap into entrepreneurshipWhat the grueling process of fundraising was like and how she continued to push through it and why she deems it important to be selectiveWhat she’s learned about herself in the hiring process, and why managing optimism is importantWhat she believes makes a great leader, what she’s learned about hiring the right people, and why it’s important not to sweat the small stuffTo Find Out More:https://truebotanicals.com/Exclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceoUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastQuotes:“I really enjoyed connecting and I feel the power of marketing is to connect with potential customers.”“There's no question to me that whole nutritive ingredients could make beautiful and extremely effective products.”“My goal was to create products that were so beautiful and effective, that even if you did not care at all about using clean products, you would want to use our products.”“Over the years, I've learned how to not think too much about the past or the future, and to really respond in the moment to the opportunities that are there and, what's the best path forward and each day sort of answering those questions.”“The goal in the end is that this entire industry changes to better serve the health of people on the planet.”“The key is to be incredibly selective about the people that ultimately invest in your company, because you will be interacting with them for a very long time”“Just because you connect with somebody doesn't mean you necessarily have an aligned vision around how to grow the business.”“I've learned that it's a lot easier to let go when you really trust somebody and you feel aligned with their vision around how to build the brand and grow the business.”“Some founders are the founders who are meant to scale a business, and hire a team of a hundred people to run it. I am not that person. I am definitely more drawn to the creative process of researching, learning, and growing.”“I would say productive, direct communication and not sweating the small things is incredibly valuable, and it's brave. It's brave to talk about things that are uncomfortable.”“Just knowing that the challenges will come and keeping my knees bent, you know, meeting them with my best thought processes and problem solving skills is really the best you can do and, and rolling with it”“The lesson I had to learn the hard way was knowing when it was the right time to make my transition from CEO to founder and bringing in the right person to help scale the business.”“Hire someone amazing and then give them the room to do their amazing work.”“Expecting some challenges and being ready to meet those with a lot of flexibility and determination is just part of it. So if, if you're up for both sides, you know, the freedom and the hard work and the challenges, then I can't think of a better career.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What is was like growing up in a holistic household, having a thirst for knowledge and dreamingHow having the thirst for knowledge led to her getting three different degrees and starting her career at MicrosoftWhat she learned in her time at Target in her many different roles and how that taught her how to scale her businessWhat led her to creating Rae and collaborating early on with TargetHow the name Rae came to be for the brand and why she was so against it at first but realized it was actually the perfect nameWhat she's learned from fundraising and where she sees Rae going in the future years to comeTo Find Out More:https://raewellness.co/Quotes:“Target is one of the most incredible companies from a leadership perspective. What that means is there is so much inherent focus on the human, as well as the business, and they're really, really balanced in their approach.”“Prioritization and discipline are my biggest challenges. You can do ten things okay, or you can do three things exceptionally well and get them over the finish line and execute really well.”“Once your life becomes more full, you're almost pushed into a place of prioritization and discipline and kind of reassessing that list.”“I just kept saying, I don't know where I'm going. And I don't know what I'm doing, but I believe for the first time, and maybe forever, I figured out my why, and that is personally and professionally needing to chase wellbeing. Not only for myself, but for a lot of women that I knew felt the same way.”“I had an idea and I was really heads down in pursuit of figuring it out and seeing how big it could be, but for me to impact lives and to make a viable business model with unit economics and all of those things, I knew I had to build the business model around scale so that I could get that amazing product at the price that I know so many, so many women deserve.’“I wanted to create a brand that helped women realize wellness doesn't have to be a full-time job. It doesn't have to be expensive and it should be for everyone.”“I do believe some of it is serendipity and luck and, if you want to call it manifesting or whatever it is for you, but I also worked my tail off to find that manufacturer. I would say it's intertwined.”“There are tremendous barriers to scale and it's really hard to scale and especially to get into retail right now. So the more you can, go fewer, deeper, bigger, and have a collaborative conversation.” “As an entrepreneur, it's our job to bring things to the world that don't exist.” “Part of raising capital is finding your pocket of people that support what you do and getting one person to bet on you. That starts the domino effect with momentum.”“It is so important to live your truth and be yourself.”“​​Take how long you think it's going to take, figure out how long you think it's going to take. And don't two exit five exit, because that's really how long it takes to get the confirmation or to figure out the system to do that or the process. For all those reasons,it's the belief that it will all work out, but the patience to get there is really, really hard. And I'm constantly learning that.So you're not alone if you're really struggling with your own patience level.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:His journey from growing up in Vancouver struggling in school to ending up in finance for college What he learned from his internship at Credit Suisse that helps him in what he does todayHow his time traveling the country while working in finance pushed him to create something he was passionate about, The Naked MarketWhy The Naked Market chose to create a collection of brands rather than create a single brandHow they think about launching different brands and all the elements that go into itThe advantage of having multiple brands under a conglomerate and how he leverages learnings from each brand for next oneThe challenges and lessons learned in starting The Naked Market and how he wishes he would’ve started soonerWhat's next for The Naked Market and some of the opportunities they see in the marketExclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceoUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastTo Find Out More:https://www.thenakedmarket.com/Quotes:“One of our aspirations is to build the next big food and beverage conglomerate and not build the next big brand.”“If we see a brand that will integrate very well into the ecosystem that we have built, then we definitely will be opportunistic acquires.”“We've been very fortunate where, you know, food and beverage historically had much lower e-com penetration than other retail channels. That's really changed in the last 12 to 18 months.”“Rob’s Backstage Popcorn is our first ever celebrity joint venture. This is a brand that was created with the Jonas Brothers. They'd been eating this popcorn backstage since 2011. They came to us ahead of their tour and asked us to turn it into a brand and consumer product that all of their fans and others could enjoy.”“We officially launched at the end of 2019, our initial approach, we were going to be much more omni-channel in nature. Because of the circumstances of 2020, it really forced our hand to be an e-com first company.”“We've got a couple other big celebrity partnerships heading, one before the end of the year, and one in Q1, we've got an exciting line of candy products that are coming to market next year, and a really cool plant-based snack that we're really excited about.” “A big reason why we've chosen this portfolio approach to manage multiple brands is just the wide spread opportunity we see across the shelves of grocery stores and a lot of the non-sexy categories that people overlook.” “We thought we had such clear communication, and that we were clearly communicating exactly what we wanted the company to do, and where we wanted the company to go. But it very clearly wasn't felt throughout the organization and we weren't doing a good job at communicating.”“Your day can start as the best day of your life at 8 in the morning, and at 11:00 AM you get an email with an unexpected twist and turn that that you just never saw, which put you at such a low, to only three hours later, have it get fixed and be back to normal. The emotional rollercoaster is unbelievable, it’s indescribable.”“Expect the unexpected. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. And when things don't go your way, rather than harp on them, find a way to fix them.”“It's really a rip the bandaid off moment. And my general view is if you've been thinking about it for a significant enough period of time, then you just gotta dive into it and make the leap of faith.”“If you’re thinking about it, pull the ripcord, life is short and in the grand scheme of things, nothing even really matters. Optimize for impact happiness and, and stop making excuses.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How he grew up as a first-generation Britt in West London with his immigrant parentsHow being unsure of what he wanted to do throughout college led him to investment banking and his internship at Goldman SachsWhat his time at Goldman Sachs taught him throughout his internship, and into the 10 years of his career spent thereSome of the takeaways he learned at Goldman Sachs and how he’s used them in creating InnermostWhat led him to taking the entrepreneurship jump from his career to starting InnermostWhere the idea for the name Innermost came from and how, as soon as he heard it, he jumped on it How he sold his product into boutique fitness studios to help grow his business His beliefs on entrepreneurship and how to push through it with confidence Exclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceoUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastTo Find Out More:https://www.liveinnermost.com/Quotes:“You want people who are self-starters, who just get things done.”“You gotta make this stuff happen. Like, you are really only limited by the limits of your imagination. Just make it happen. Sometimes force of personality. If you want something bad enough, go after it.”“There's a huge body of evidence out there to suggest how different kinds of food, different ingredients, can support your health and fitness in real ways.”“Health, nutrition, and fitness, was super important to me at the time when I left Goldman's, and at the time that was a real trend in the market”“I decided there's an opportunity here. Let me create a brand, call it Innermost, and let's go and take a really finance backed up approach to nutrition, but let's incorporate lots of natural ingredients and create some amazing hero products that really cater to people's modern wellness needs.”“Innermost is actually a word, meaning the inner most thing within something. For me it felt like it alluded to the fact that how products are nutritional supplements and more than just the basics, there's more in them. And then also alludes to the individual, getting more out of yourself.”“What we've done is really take some of the smartest nutritional science out there, and then combine them into products, which are super intuitive and aligned with people's individual goals. So it's less of a one size fits all approach. It's more of a, okay, I want to have some protein and actually let me choose the one that's right for me.”“I would be completely kind of tenacious and super focused on making sure they understood our positioning, our branding, why we were different in the market, why the products were amazing, and why the branding was great.”“No one is going to give you anything, you have to go and get it.”“Stay humble. There’s always more to learn and getting carried away with your success is probably the first step in a downward spiral. So keep evolving and aim for the stars. Obviously believe that you can achieve it and drive for it and don't stop going, but, but stay humble.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What it was like growing up with his parents, brother, and sister in California, to going through his parents long divorce at age of 10, to moving in with his brother at the early age of 14How living with his brother at 14 taught him a lot about life and helped him grow up faster with having to pay for his own food, clothes, and other expensesHow losing his mom to brain cancer ignited his passion for health and wellnessWhy he loved the idea of helping others and helping them create an experience and ritual with teaWhat led him to creating Art of Tea and paving the way in DTC but also B2B with a partnership with Wolfgang Puck How COVID affected Art of Tea, how they grew from it, and altered the way they do B2BWhy being a little afraid to start something while also being excited means you’re doing the right thingExclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceoUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastTo Find Out More:https://www.artoftea.com/Quotes:“Ayurveda is a form of preventative medicine based out of India, and there's a school in New Mexico that I really fell in love with the alchemy of herbs and teas and botanicals. I ended up going there for a few years and really became advanced in my studies and continued my path beyond that.”“Tea for me became this way of seeing people connect with it not just because it tastes good, but because there's a ritual behind it, there's ceremony behind it.”“Tea is a way for people to connect regardless of age and religion and gender, and it's powerful, just leaves and water, but extremely powerful.”“But really good tea can allow you to mess up a little bit. You can go a little bit over a little under on measurements and heat but it's still delivering an amazing tasting experience.” “What we source at Art of Tea is whole leaf tea. We do whole leaf teas and these beautiful corn based microplastic, free sachets, which are stunning and gorgeous. But what we're sourcing as the top 2% of all the teas that are produced in the world are direct from origin, blended and crafted here in our facility in Los Angeles, and shipped out to be of the freshest bioavailable tea in the market.” “My number one reason at the time was I had a child on the way. So I was like, okay, I feel like I can kind of reach my max, my threshold, if I go down this job offer path, or I can do the stupid, crazy thing, and start my own company.”“I really believe over 80% of your success can just be just showing up.”“So I think what happens is that there's a difference between truth and a belief. What permission do we allow other people that are holding us back in our world? What power and what permission do we have?"“As a leadership team, we come together, we ask is this a great cultural fit? Is this person a team player? Are they meeting our core values? And if the answer is yes, then all right, we can keep moving in the right direction. If that the answer is no, we need to be able to make faster decisions. And sometimes it's very challenging.”“Be really clear on who you want to surround yourself with and who you want on your team.”“One of the most important lessons is you have to repeat yourself over and over and over again until you start hearing what you're saying back to you, you start sharing the core values, you start sharing the why, you start sharing the what we're doing and how it's gonna impact our website, our customers, our staff, our team over and over again.”“Take time out to listen to your gut and trust it. Surround yourself with wise people around you. And last is, you talked about being freaked out if it scares you, but if it excites you just a little bit more than it scares you, then you're doing the right thing.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What it was like growing up in Seattle, being the daughter of the producers for the hit show, Bill Nye the Science GuyHow over the course of a decade she accumulated her entrepreneurial skills by creating an organic sorbet, to baking and delivering custom cupcakesHow never fully understanding what she wanted to do throughout college helped plant the seed of becoming an entrepreneurHow the loss of her sisters best friend made her and her family think differently about life and helped foster the idea for SkinnyDippedHow in the early days of SkinnyDipped, Breezy and her Co-Founders would go door-to-door with retailers selling their productHow getting into Target stores was a challenge at first but they were able to do it within 12 weeksHow one of the most difficult things SkinnyDipped has faced is hiring and what they’ve learned from itAll the awesome products SkinnyDipped offers and what lies ahead for them Exclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceoUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastTo Find Out More:https://skinnydipped.com/Quotes:“Food was a natural place to land because food is a big part of who we are as a family. For us, it brings people together and it's about community and gathering where you're a fan of not only good-for-you food, but also equally as delicious and tasty. So that was just kind of a natural match.” “This idea or acceptance of entrepreneurship and kind of the unknown that comes with that was just really fostered in our family.”“I realized in college that I wasn't going to be on a normal path. I'm not sure that I ever said to myself, oh, I'm going to start a business. I think that was kind of like an evolution of that thinking for me.”“That was kind of the first of a couple of business ventures, where I always say that I started to kind of fill my tool chest with tools.”“For me and my mom, while in different times of our life, we were in a similar place. We were both ready for a bit of an adventure. We were both ready to grow something. And so we came together and said well, you know, what can we do together as mom and daughter? And that's where the inklings of SkinnyDipped began.”“It was the marriage of those things that has been part of the magic. And so I think we set out and we started to create the product. It was always in my mind that we were setting out to grow a business. Then we just had to start to put these kinds of initial steps in place to make the dream more of a reality.”“We originally were Wild Things SkinnyDipped Almonds, and one of our early investors pushed us to pick one of the names. He fought hard for SkinnyDipped, and we all landed there.”“The name SkinnyDipped did some heavy lifting for us on the shelf because it talks a little bit about the product, for us, skinny has nothing to do with weight or calories. It really refers to a thin layer of chocolate on the nut, or on anything we do now.”“My biggest strength is probably problem solving during a crisis. So I just did what I do. And I called every single person that I knew in the industry to find a truckload of almonds that somebody would ship to us on a dedicated truck in three days.” “We've had to build brick by brick or door by door. I'm proud of that because I think at the end of the day, we've built something real, something genuine, something that will be on the shelf for decades to come.”“You have to have a thick skin as an entrepreneur. I would say it's a roller coaster ride. It's a series of high highs and low lows. I think one thing that has been instrumental to our, not just our success, but our sanity as humans has been having, sharing this with not only my mom, but my two best friends as co-founders because there's moments where somebody has to pick somebody else up and say, it's going to be okay, we're going to make it.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How most of his childhood was spent outdoors in his hometown near SeattleHow even as a kid he had an entrepreneurial spirit by upselling pizza slices to his schoolmatesHow his different jobs of working the door at nightclubs in San Francisco, to working in event planning and working music festivals gave him the experience needed to start EvermillHow cooking and grocery shopping all the time sparked the idea for Evermill, along with wanting a more environmentally friendly spice system with a modern lookThe process of designing the Evermill jars, getting a patent on the idea of self-aligning jars, and putting the product in motionHow his dream goal for Evermill was to be featured on Oprah’s Favorite Things list and they achieved itHis lessons learned bootstrapping and now finishing up fundraising What Evermill has coming next and their plans for the futureExclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceoUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastTo Find Out More:https://evermill.com/Use the code Stairway30 to get $30 off! Want the Inside Scoop?:Text Lee at 310-510-6044Quotes:“People spend a ton of money on their kitchens and they just cannot figure this out because it's like it comes from everywhere, and there’s a lot of waste in it, because they buy it for it to be used, then it sits and then they don't know how to use it, or they buy another one because they need it, they don't know if that's fresh or not. So they throw it out.”“I was very frustrated by the issue of spices and so I started to kind of try and solve that problem.”“Buying things once and refilling it with a product and packaging, has to account for a lot of ways.” “Evermill blend is what we think of as the most universal blend. It's salty, garlicky, it's got a little bit of heat, a little bit of lemon in it. It’s one of those you can throw it on a chicken, you can put it on some fish, you can put it in a salad dressing, roast vegetables with it. It just has kind of a catch all for everything.”“Then we came up with the teardrop idea of all the jars self-aligning because if we were going to charge this much for a spice rack and there's going to be this beautiful thing that was so well thought of, I would hate for it to be ruined by misaligned labels.”“We started this company 13 months ago in October of last year. And our PR was like ‘who's your number one goal?’ And it was Oprah. Oprah’s everyone's number one goal. And then a couple months ago I heard back, asking for us to send more product and we said of course, then shortly after we found out that we were selected.”“Our ideal customer was a host and just like constantly having people over for dinner, and being a very nurturing, generous host. And so that's who's kind of embodied in and who we want to create products for.”“In terms of getting a company off the ground, you just gotta do it.”“I mean, it’s a 24 hour job, you are constantly working, there's not a lot of breaks, there's not a lot of vacations. You can't really. We're a three person company now. So, you know, if someone goes off, there's not a team to watch what's going on.”“Right now we've got a great set of 12 and 18, and they're the building blocks of most spice blends. So you can build any blend you want from these. So getting to the point where people can choose what they want is their number one piece of customer feedback.”“Just do it and start and just keep working at it. Just don't give up. It's going to get there eventually.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What is was like growing up in Maryland as one of five siblingsWhat his experience was like interning at the White HouseHow moving to Boston with a new tech startup shifted his career path How being passionate about people and working in the startup world gave him the passion for being a “wantrepreneur”How losing his uncle to skin cancer raised his awareness of the disease and increased his mindfulness of wearing sunscreenHow starting his sunscreen nonprofit, Skin Protection Foundation gave him the idea for starting BaskWhere Bask is now just 7 months after launching and what they have planned for the futureExclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceoUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastTo Find Out More:https://basksuncare.com/Want the Inside Scoop?:Text Lee at 310-510-6044Quotes:“I just love people, and that's kind of always been a constant throughout my life.”“I never knew what I wanted to do growing up. I was really jealous of those kids that had this profound sense of what they were going to be when they grow up. What I did know was that I wanted to do something impactful, something important.”“Life doesn't slow down because you're trying to accomplish something with your startup. So you have to deal with all these things when you're the only one who's there to deal with your company. There's something unforgiving about it.”“I've got a spreadsheet that I'm adding to daily of new business ideas, and it's just something that I have always wanted to do, be an entrepreneur.”“When I tell people about the starting Bask was, I really kind of stumbled into it.”“In talking with those entrepreneurs, I just became fascinated with the idea of DTC, and challenger versus incumbent brands, previously assumed to be entrenched categories.”“One of the things that always stood out to me was skin cancer is the most diagnosed cancer in the United States, more so than every other cancer combined. Despite the fact that it is easily objectively, the most preventable”“I thought, why can't we build a better-for-you sunscreen that's wrapped in a beautiful brand that's purposeful and intentional, and really appeals to Millennials and Gen Z, and talk about sun care differently in a way that gets people excited about it and then use those proceeds to fund the non-profit”“We want to end skin cancer. If we build a company that makes it enjoyable and fun to wear sunscreen as opposed to being a chore, we can get sunscreen into so many more people's hands.”“The thing that we knew was that Bask could not have oxybenzone or octinoxate, there's only 14 active ingredients that you're legally allowed to use in the United States, and those two are used in 80% plus of sunscreen.”“We want you to be out in the sun, but to do it safely.”“One of the crazy things about starting your own company is that you are going to do things that you have never done before. Basically every single day, you have to like completely learn something new and then master it because the future of your organization depends on it.”“It's really frustrating to get the no’s, but you have to be willing to deal with the no’s.”“Trust in yourself and just do it. There's never a good time, and if you keep waiting for that perfect time, your window will close. So do it. I encourage anybody to make a bet on themselves”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What it was like growing up in Scranton, Ohio where the hit show The Office, was basedHow growing up being active in sports and performing in front of others carried over throughout his life How his passion for wanting to express himself and entertain others led him to move to New York CityHow losing his first wife to cancer shifted his perspective on life and redirected his dreams towards creating BrrrnHow the idea for Brrrn came about, starting as a brick and mortar location and shifting to a DTC brand and fitness platform due to COVIDHow Brrrn shifted platforms in 2020 and created an online community for workout classes with the Brrrn slide boardTo Find Out More:https://thebrrrn.com/Exclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceoUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastWant the Inside Scoop?:Text Lee at 310-510-6044Quotes:“Winning builds confidence and losing builds character. I'm happy that I learned how to lose at a I expected to win.”“I was doing so many different jobs that it became like I had three full-time jobs trying to pursue this one dream.”“Talking to this Harvard professor, talking about cold being an ally, not an enemy for her to feel and perform her best. And I went home that day I was like, ‘if all that stuff is true, then why aren't people working out in cooler temperatures indoors? Why hasn't there been any cool temperature fitness studio?” “The pun burn came to me because of the limited research that I've found that had to do with exposing yourself to cooler temperatures can allow you to burn more calories than you would in hot or ambient temperatures because of what your body has to go through in order to stay warm specifically between the the range of l 41 to 64 degrees fahrenheit.”“The idea came to me, I'm like, oh my gosh, it's a group exercise, workout program, very similar to what was happening at the time with Soul Cycle but with cold, and we can do winter themed workouts in this fridge.”“I was grieving the loss of who I was but it gave me a chance to put blinders on and to go 100% into this entrepreneurial track.”“Anything that's worth having is hard, and obviously not being a stranger to adversity, this just seems like another opportunity to grow.”“The one thing that we did in our studio was have a slide board. Not only were we innovating the workout environment, we're also changing the way that people moved.” “I think the best brands listen to their customers obsessively to improve the end to end experience.”“The growing pains of pivoting hit you in ways that you don't expect.”“Just let go and just trust the process. I know how cliche that sounds, but it really does allow things to become more fluid and like listening and taking your time and not feeling like you have to rush into every opportunity and be selective. And also the riches are in the niches.”“If something's keeping you up at night, answer that call. And before you share it with the world, and ask someone to help make it a reality with you, know that the best thing you can do to compliment what your pursuits are as an entrepreneur, is to be the biggest critic of the thing that you want to do.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:His entrepreneurial journey from growing up in the Pacific Palisades and what it was like growing up with parents working within the entertainment industry How his mentorship with Keith Ferazzi began and how he continues to learn from him today What June’s hiring process is like and why it’s important for Matt and his co-founder to stay involved in the processWhat the process of June being acquired was like as a business and as the Co-FounderThe challenges he experienced in the early stages of building June, the fight to get investors believing in their product with no model in front of them, and how he continued to fight for his business. To Find Out More:https://juneoven.com/Exclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceoUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastWant the Inside Scoop?:Text me at 310-510-6044Quotes:“A lot of it is not so much the luck, but surviving long enough to get your timing right.”“To this day, Nikhil and I, even though June is part of Weber now, we still interview every single person that enters the June world or the connected devices world at Weber, Nikhil and I have to meet every single person.”“On the tactical side, we do a lot of very technical screening. We sometimes have challenges, quizzes, things like that before people even make it beyond just a phone screen, but by the time you make it to Nikhil and I, we're usually just kind of the culture check, not diving into too deep of tactical or deep questions, but we'd like to make ourselves available and answer questions and be there to be supportive.“For us, as soon as we kind of delved into this kitchen space, we couldn't unsee it.”“A lot of this is just not dying and not running out of money before your moment can happen. And timing is everything.”“Lasting long enough and executing is really, really important.”“As you learn, as you evolve, as you learn your market, as you learn your value, your company grows with it.”“You have to have the right amount of blinders on to be able to execute, cause there's hundreds and thousands of reasons why you shouldn't pursue them. So you need to have enough blinders on, to look to the side and gut check yourself and make sure only like mostly insane, not like a hundred percent insane.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What it was like growing up in upstate New York with dreams of becoming a doctorHow growing up with a single parent that had an autoimmune disease led her to a passion of holistic wellnessHow always having a sense of fire within her led her to building GoldeHow always having a passion for holistic wellness sparked the idea for creating a superfood brandHer advice for young entrepreneurs and how staying focused on the business and their why is the most important thing to lean intoThe lessons she's learned in being a young entrepreneur and getting the opportunity to work with a big retailerWhat it was like being a running Golde during the pandemic and how it acted as a way for the business to grow and thriveTo Find Out More:Golde.co Exclusive Deals from Our Sponsors:Get 30% off your first 3 months with Malomo by going to: https://gomalomo.com/stairwaytoceoUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastWant the Inside Scoop?:Text me at 310-510-6044Quotes:“The pivotal moment for me was when my mom started seeing a holistic wellness doctor and I saw the improvements in her health. It made me want to go to medical school to practice medicine through the lens of holistic care.” “People are born naturally to either lean into or not into leadership positions, there's a lot of that that just comes intrinsically from your risk tolerance, and the desire to do things your way.”“There are people in the world that are meant to go out and start businesses, and there are also people in the world who are meant to be the critical foundational systems in those businesses.” “I was really centered on this idea of like, how can we take on this space of wellness? Which so many people feel like it is not for them, how can we make it easy and approachable, and most importantly fun, because you're taking care of yourself.”“The ability to see those things and jump at them, even if in the moment they're extremely painful. That's what helps you get from A to B.” “There's only two ways that your business fails: it's because you run out of money or because you give up. As long as you don't run out of money, the only thing you have to worry about is just not giving up, just keep going.”“90% of the investors in Golde are women of underrepresented minorities. And I think it speaks a lot to who our story resonates with.”“When you serve as the team lead for the company, and you're thinking about who's going where, how you're developing them, who needs to get swapped out where, you are acting in the interest of the company, not you.”“Number one, know when you're lucky, and number two, know your why. If you have those two down, you'll figure it out.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What he learned about himself from an early job at Fry’s Electronics, what then got him into banking, and how he ended up starting Lolli and PopsWhy Sid learned so much from launching Lolli and Pops after buying a failing candy store chain and bringing it from the brink of closure to a continued successWhat mistakes he made in the past in leadership, what he learned from that, and how he has used his experiences to build QuinceWhy it’s important as an entrepreneur to understand a specific problem you want to solve, find a way to solve it, and recognize how important it is to be persistent in business and even in your personal lifeWhat is next for Quince and why he says you gotta try Quince to see how they have solved many problems in the supply chainTo Find Out More:onequince.comQuotes:“We liked the name. It was crisp. It was clean. And it represented a modernity about what we were trying to do.”“I think we are in the still very early stages of eCommerce. I think eCommerce is 15 to 20 percent of all retail. It's my belief that we will get to 50 percent of all retail is online. And, you know, that's trillions of dollars that are going to go offline to online and someone's got to be there to catch it.”“The magic in Quince is that instead of keeping goods close to you as a customer, we keep it close to the source of production. And the value of that is that I can create a real time signal from the time something sells to the factory.”“We're a company full of engineers, and so building all the tech to optimize for cost and to deliver things at an incredible price was quite an undertaking.”“The magic here is we're not producing on-demand, but we're producing near just in time, which allows us to get scale and match supply and demand really tightly.”“We can literally make goods salable the minute it comes off the assembly line. So, you know, typically one to two weeks, we can have goods ready to sell. And so that's a huge competitive advantage.”“We think curation is a really important part of Quince. So when you type in "sheets," you're going to pick between five or six different fabrications that we think most people want. But then we're going to give you the one best sheet.”“Finding mentors, whether it's the person that you report to or not, within an organization that can teach you is super valuable and finding those advocates for you in the organization is super valuable.”“You've got to be the architect of your own career. No one is going to do that. People help you, but you've got to be intentional.”“It's really underrated how valuable persistence is to an entrepreneur.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:Why Stephen didn’t feel like he was cut out for corporate life and what that led him to do instead throughout collegeHow he met his wife and Co-Founder, Allison, and started working for her family in oil and gasWhat led to Allison discovering the health benefits of apple cider vinegar and the desire to make it taste betterWhat turned their first iterations of the product from a hobby to a business and why it was a huge game changer What hard lessons they have learned and what they have learned through the fundraising processWhat it has been like to grow their team from two to 50 people in just 18 months and what they have learned about leadership and team dynamics as well as the importance of building relationships with those on your teamWhere you can find Poppi and what’s next for them in terms of flavor profilesTo Find Out More:drinkPoppi.comQuotes:“{Allison} read that drinking apple cider vinegar could really help to detox and reset her body. So that's where this whole concept really came about.”“‘How do we figure this out? How can we take this product from our kitchen and put it into a manufacturing facility and meet all of the qualifications and have all of the policies in place? How do we get it done?” So we just got to work. We just jumped right in.”“Looking back, I would have raised capital sooner. But that kind of just that wasn't the way that I was thinking about it. So we just made do with what we had.”“Early on we had talked to some of these co-packers, and their capabilities weren't there. They weren't willing to work with the product that was unpasteurized. A lot of them didn't want to work with vinegar because they felt like it would contaminate their lines. So being where we are now, obviously we just weren't talking to all of the right people.” “It was like, "Get equipment, let's scale it. Let's continue to grow sales and then reinvest in the business and continue to kind of bootstrap it.’"“I wasn't building on building a brand or taking it to market or putting together a promotional calendar to incentivize trial and do all of these other things to try and get people to try the product and build the brand. So I mean, that was honestly the biggest thing that I think halted our growth.”“The good thing and the bad thing is that Poppi is just been blowing up. At this stage of our business, we're growing faster than Vitamin Water did and Bai did.”“When you become a family and you're all pulling in the same direction, you don't mind picking up the slack for the other person because you know, when the tables are turned and you need someone to pick up the slack, they're there for you.”“It's all about Poppi being a mission-driven company rather than a maintenance-driven company.”“Making money should be a result of doing something good.” “I try not to have an ego because I want people to be able to speak up. And if it's not the best idea, know that we still love and respect you and are just excited that you're bringing ideas to the table as opposed to, you know, feeling like you're shamed because it wasn't the idea that we went with.”“Throw yourself in so far that the only path is forward.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:Why he became passionate about alternative protein and animal rights while in college How his time at Acton School of Business helped him learn a lot of what he needed to know about entrepreneurship and how he started an internship with ProVeg Incubator in Berlin, GermanyWhat led to the idea of a seafood alternative, specifically raw tuna substitute, and what the iteration process was like at the beginning What fundraising has been like for Jacek and his team, and what they have learned throughout the processWhy Jacek believes that making alternative proteins is not just about making a product “like” something, but actually better than that something and why the possibilities are more exciting that wayWhat strategies he has found helpful when hiring and ways he has been intentional about building a solid team at KuleanaWhat he learned from hard times, how he has overcome them, and why his passion for the mission continues to drive him through any pain and struggleWhat advice he has for other Founders and what is next and exciting for KuleanaTo Find Out More:Kuleana.coQuotes:“Going for raw tuna, I was like, ok, we'll have to actually innovate on the process to create products, and I thought that was just really, really exciting for me.”“Investing, in a very large sense, is a game of momentum.”“We can be something similar to, but also better than a product.”“It's a little bit of this fun game in food like innovating and making things better than, and at the same time, people like somewhat of familiarity with food. And I think that's what a lot of companies and Founders are trying to reconcile in the alternative protein space is how do you make it familiar, but you want to make it better?”“When it comes to hiring, it should kind of take a while. And if it's not, then maybe draw that process out just because obviously those are the people who really build that company. You only do so much. You do a lot as a founder, but it's really that initial group of people who multiply that impact.”“When people believe in it, they just work harder. They stick through the pain. So try to unravel that and identify whether somebody really cares about that mission”“It felt like something that needs to be done, and then it becomes a lot less about you. That's really, really cool because your pain then matters less. And when your pain matters less, you become more pain tolerant.”“If you look at professional athletes they have coaches, multiple coaches, right? It's like, why aren't professional business people having coaches? We should all have them.”“The reality is you start to recognize that if you don't prioritize your sleep and those other things, your work quality just drops tremendously and you make more mistakes.”“Some of the best advice I ever heard was, "Just do what excites you.’"“Sometimes as an entrepreneur, we feel like we have to invent everything, but it's a lot of times the best things are just small improvements and small iterations, or merging of multiple ideas and not feeling bad about that. But I think copy and paste is really underrated.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What her childhood was like and how she has always been a leader and had many interests and passions from an early ageWhat changed her focus from International Relations and Economics and perhaps leading to work in the State Department to working in marketing at the NFL instead and what she learned during her time thereWhat profound takeaways Mayssa gained during her time at Uber, Daily Harvest, and SoulCycle and how they have helped her today as a Founder/CEOWhy the idea for Behave came to her, what started her on the path to dig deeper into the idea, and what the first steps wereWhy Mayssa was frustrated with the traditional R & D approach to product development and had the genius idea of finding a pastry chef to help herWhat fundraising was like for her and what advice she passionately offers to those who are looking to build a business and raise fundsWhat lessons she has learned as a leader that have helped her enjoy her role and breathe life into her team as they continue to growWhy Mayssa believes that even the hardest challenges can lead to good things that help the company in the long run and what advice she has for other FoundersTo Find Out More:EatBehave.comQuotes:“Trying to do things that were more entrepreneurial and really owning projects and owning initiatives from start to finish, built a solid foundation for what it was going to look like to have an idea out of nowhere and turn that into a business and launch that business.”“You're pitching the partnership, but you're also pitching the business.”“I think in a partnerships role or a business development role, you almost have to take on that external speakerphone for the company in a lot of ways.”“Through all my experiences and through having built my career in a business development and partnerships function, for the most part, I've always felt that actually most business gets done just through friendship.”“My philosophy is that you will get so much more done by people liking you than by paying them or feeling like you have something to offer them.”“I knew that if we were going to do healthier, better-for-you candy, it was still going to have to taste amazing. When people reach for candy, it is an indulgence. It’s a moment of fun and joy, and I just knew that compromising on taste wasn't going to be an option.”“You have to go into it believing that you're going to raise the money. Actually, a lot of fundraising for me was shifting my own mindset.”“It's so easy to get trapped in this whole, very confusing web of what am I supposed to be doing? And I think the sooner that you can surrender and just say whatever feels right to me is what's going to be right for the business... And now I feel so happy that I was able to kind of let go of a lot of those shoulds.”“You have to also acknowledge that every other business that looks like it was built in a perfect Excel spreadsheet straight out of Harvard Business School was probably also a burning dumpster fire on the inside. You just don't see that.”“Just having people that are in the boat with you... I wouldn't have been able to get this far without that network and that support system.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What life was like as an entrepreneurial kid and triplet in Portland, Oregon, and what aspirations he had even back thenHow a pivot in college became helpful later in his career, what he learned from his time at Nike, and how he came up with the idea for BottomlessWhy Michael quit his job and jumped in to building out the concept and getting Bottomless off the ground, and what that experience was like for him and his Co-FounderWhat is so unique about the Bottomless system and how it is a truly customized way to never run out of high-quality coffeeWhy it took three times of applying to YCombinator before they were accepted in, why that is a good lesson for others wanting to apply, and what valuable lessons he learned thereWhat fundraising was like and why the first round was a total bust, but a valuable lesson that he offers to others who are ready to raise funds and want to succeedHow he has grown as a leader, what he’s learned from mistakes, and what it’s like to be a husband and wife founding teamWhat’s next in the near and far future with Bottomless and what further advice Michael has for aspiring entrepreneurs, Founders, and/or operatorsTo Find Out More:Bottomless.comQuotes:“One day we just thought, OK, how do you actually find out how much people have all the time? Just had this epiphany that weight is a source of truth for how much people have. And if you could just record that in a regular interval, you could actually solve the reordering problem for people.”“We actually are looking at your patterns and sort of dynamically figuring out essentially when we should order, so the likelihood of you running out is fairly low.”“The way that the actual coffee product works has evolved with contact with customers over the years.”“Trying to impress them with a bunch of clever writing is not as impressive as sticking to something and just sort of making progress on it over the long run because then they know you really are serious about building a company around this.”“It was always just focusing on the problem in front of you and just trying to continually grow. And so that was a very valuable thing, and I saw people sort of transform their way of doing things from sort of a very sort of business plan, sort of what I might call pseudo entrepreneurial mindset to a very sort of hustle-oriented mindset.”“Make something, try to get people on it. If they don't want it, ask why and make something else. And then once you have people, try to grow it. If you can't grow, it solves a problem.”“If you're an early employee at a company that has gone nuts and IPOd, or you're a previous Founder that has found some success, like, yeah, sure, you can start something and just get funding right off the bat. But generally, the other people have really done a lot of work to prove what they're doing to get that sort of fundraising, even today in this fundraising environment.”“In particular with the type of company that we're doing, that's really sort of building something novel from scratch and having to do a lot of new things, it just requires a lot of focus. We have to be three times smarter and also work three times harder. And I think having your Co-Founder also be your spouse is a massive advantage.”“Our real goal is to figure out how to automatically replenish everything intelligently using sensors rather than people having to do it manually and try to store this information in their head.” “It's just the way that restocking is done broadly is broken and it's broken in commercial settings, it's broken households, and it's even broken into some industrial settings.”“I find it immensely gratifying to work very hard on something that I think is ultimately going to be very impactful for the world. It may sound crazy, but I legitimately think we're going to inspire a whole new type of technology.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How Ric grew up in a family of doctors but had no interest in medicine so instead went into finance and businessHow he started selling his products online while the internet was still newWhat led to the creation of the company after he and his co-founder both had struggles with their own companiesHow challenges and losing a huge account led to a pivot that became a success in a new channelWhat advice he has for a healthy founding team and why good communication among the Founders and partners is not only imperative, but absolutely essentialWhat brought them to open up market in China, how it has been a unique strategy, and why that fits in with their overall missionWhat it has been like to open up their own retail stores, what lessons Ric has learned as a result, and what they have coming up in the futureWhy he thinks being a lifelong learner is a part of being successful and making a difference in the world around youTo Find Out More:100percentpure.comQuotes:“Why are all these companies putting these ingredients into the product? Because it makes them cheaper and it makes them stable.”“We led a lot of the innovations in the natural side of the industry. A lot of the preservatives you see in clean products today are ones we were the first to use in beauty.”“It's really an art when you're making a natural product. You have to be very, very precise on things to get it to mix extremely well.” “There are so many challenges as an entrepreneur, it's very rewarding, too, but you definitely go through a lot and I don't think it's easy.”“When you're working with partners, it's hard not to blame each other. You have to really ensure that you blame processes, not people.”“Trust is the most important thing. Our fastest years of growth are the years where we trusted each other the most, the three founders. Those were our fastest years when we grew 30-40 percent.”“It's our mission to improve the lives of six billion people and animals. China has a billion people and even more magnitude of animals on top of it. So I felt like we really need to stay true to our mission. And if we're really trying to stay true to our mission, we need to be where the people are around the world…”“I use China as kind of the model of eCommerce of the future because they bypassed the whole desktop computer phase. They went straight to mobile because nobody has desktops at home in China that I know of, so they bypassed desktop, went to mobile, and their eCommerce is extremely advanced because of that.”“The store of the future, the retail associates, are content creators.”“You have to be okay with failure. It can't bother you. It's got to be like water off your back. Nothing. Move on.”“Another key element of success is having a very strong network. If I need something or need access to someone, I can get it because of my strong network.”“Some people felt like brick and mortar is dead. I don't feel that way. I feel like you need both to be successful.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What it was like to grow up in a great family that valued homegrown food and home cookingHow he found his way into a passion for sustainable food while at Yale and had opportunities to not only be a part of farming but also part of helping others enjoy good foodHow he got a lot of experience and education working as a buyer for Fresh Direct and had a few light bulb moments noticing some gaps in the industry, and then came back to the Northeast to work for Happy Valley MeatHow his roommate had been learning a lot about the food industry as well and became the perfect person to co-create a solution to the healthy snack options conundrumWhat the product development process was like and how it all came together in a unique way with a final product that provides the answer to the problem they set out to solveHow they went to market and how they dealt with COVID coming at about the time they were set to fully launch What challenges Leland and his team have overcome and continue to work through What advice he has for aspiring entrepreneurs and what’s next for Slow Up in both retail and in the DTC spaceTo Find Out More:SlowUp.coQuotes:“There was a real live and interesting tension between staying completely committed to like really strict set of rules and values and ethics and growing quickly.”“We thought about what is the deal with the distance between how satisfying and exciting meals are and what we're living on in between meals?” “We heard over and over again that options that were healthy weren't tasty, and that options that were tasty weren't particularly healthy, and that everything had too much sugar. A lot of dissatisfaction and the nature of the dissatisfaction was pretty clear. So that smelled like a business to us.”“We just turned Chef Caroline loose and said, "Make something healthy and delicious that feels like a recipe, not a formula, and feels like it came to you from a chef.’”“The nucleus is that breaking that healthy/tasty compromise, using fresh ingredients like you would at a restaurant or in your own kitchen and coming up with a product that felt like a recipe, not like an extruded lab product.”“This has been an education for me in not saying, here's a delicious thing, how do we take it to market? But instead, like, here's a market, how do we make something to address it?”“We really think of ourselves, despite riding on the refrigerated bar coattails, as creating a new category. It's an unfamiliar product that really only resembles a bar in its shape, really not in its experience.”“Getting creative around where we belong in the grocery store, who the right buyer is, and who the right distributors are is part of the project.”“We like to say good food goes bad.”“Get a handle on the business first and then get a handle on what you think you can deliver, then take that and make the slide deck.”“You just got to jump in the cold water. I think that's the big advice. Hard to feel prepared, and with a little bit of the benefit of hindsight, pretty impossible to be prepared unless you've done it before. So just send it.” “There's always another hill to climb. Another problem to solve. Problems shift or grow or shrink, but they don't disappear. So once you've jumped in, recognizing that you just got to get comfortable in that. There's always another hill to climb.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What brought her family to the States from South Asia and what life was like with an entrepreneurial fatherWhen she realized that she needed to leave the big company world and become an entrepreneur herselfWhat her time at M13 was like and what valuable lessons Sabeena learned there about building a business well and getting started How DEUX launched what became a powerful test market via Instagram and why they knew early on that this was going to workHow she has learned to stay healthy mentally and keep herself as focused as possible, even with ADHDWhy fundraising for her was actually a lot of fun and what advice she has for Founders who are fundraisingWhy DEUX is on track to hit one million in sales during their first year and what advice Sabeena has for others trying to get that mark, including some of the unique ways she got her delicious product into people’s handsWhat’s next for DEUX and why you should just start when you have a great concept that you are wanting to move forward withTo Find Out More:eatDEUX.comQuotes:“It was just in my nature to be entrepreneurial. It was almost like I tried to fit into a box and tried to fit around the red tape, and it just wasn't working because it felt so forced.”“We didn't really have branding yet. We launched an Instagram, and we essentially said, "DM us to place an order, and Venmo us.’"“So there was, of course, the quantitative metrics that you look at of sales and follower counts and engagement on our social posts. But then there's also this quantitative, almost like feeling that you get, it's almost like this like magic sauce that you can kind of feel like, yeah, this is going to work.”“I don't think that doubt ever really goes away. You just figure out how to manage it and do your little mental health hacks to get over it. But it's kind of just like always living in there a little bit.”“Raising when you're a few months in versus raising just on a deck, a presentation, I think those are two very, very different things.”“It's disrupted what is so hard to disrupt, which is social media. And so that sort of relationship, I would say, has been kind of integral.”“That's the thing that I think is just such a core value to us is sure it can be healthy, but if it tastes like cardboard or kale, nobody wants to eat that if it's a dessert. So kind of marrying the two of, I call it, hedonistic health. But it's healthy and clean, but it's delicious. And I think that's kind of the fundamental I would say the core value of our product strategy.”“I think it takes practice and it takes reps to be able to have all of those high highs and have the low lows. And you have to go through them to kind of then even out and stay even-keeled.”“I need to do what a coach does to motivate my team to kind of have that energy and build that culture.”“Just start. We want everything to be perfect. We want to have the perfect brand and the best website. And we want everything to be pristine. And I think there is advice that I received that was if you're not embarrassed of your first product, then you're not doing it right.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What life was like growing up on a farm in Oregon and learning a lot about nutrition and agriculture and entrepreneurship and how that brought her to study at CornellWhy she started pursuing internships with the government, such as an Oregon Senator, and then in DC working on Capitol Hill before deciding that wasn’t the long term path for herWhat led her to the entrepreneurial fellowship called Venture for America and why that experience gave her so many learnings to take with her when she would later build her own brandsHow she traveled around the world for six months after the fellowship ended and what she learned from seeing farms in other parts of the worldHow her time with an angel group led to being the Co-Founder of a company called Plant Water back in 2016 where she was able to learn about how to build something from scratchWhy her learnings from building Plant Water led her to approach building GEM differently by creating an MVP product and intentionally building a community with which to understand, gain insight, and even look at as co-creators developing the product and the brand to meet needs more specifically and successfullyHow the community first model led to a quick and successful pre-seed funding round that came about very organically and quite differently than Sara had originally imaginedWhat great advice she has about fundraising and building your investor team through communication and relational partnershipsHow Sara and the team approached a recent rebrand, why they went about it, and what the process looked likeHow they have used a simple and small retail approach to continue to gain brand awareness, build a bigger audience, and gather more insight as to how they can continue to do things better and betterWhy their product is so different and why it mattersTo Find Out More:DailyGEM.coUse code word ​​STAIRWAY10 for $10 offQuotes:“I was always interested in our food system as a whole and how we can continue to improve it. And so I knew that was something that always was going to be a lifelong mission of mine.”“I learned most of all that it's about the people that you work with. When you get the right people in the room with big ideas and vision, you work really hard, and you learn that you really can, there's a lot that you can do when you set your mind to it.”“I learned that a really good leader is one that is always willing to roll up their sleeves and be a maker at any point at the company.”“The really good leaders are the ones that really understand how important it is to invest in the people and those relationships.” “Everything is a relationship and relationships are all about negotiation.”“I knew that I needed to get an MVP out in the market, and I needed to build a community first and make sure that I understood their problems that I needed to solve.”“Through that community, I was able to optimize the product enough to the point where we could then commercialize it and get it to market. And so this kind of community-based approach was the best way for me to leanly iterate on our initial product.”“This community organically really showed like, wow, people are wanting this.”“Once I realized that the pathway to successful fundraising was to build the relationships with the right investors that aligned with my mission, vision, and values, and when I started to find those and unlock those, that's when it started to become more successful for me.”“Just as much as they're buying a piece of your business, you are selling them a piece.”“I believe that the most successful companies are ones that take a step back and look at their community first and invest in customer experience first and foremost early on, not just the brand.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What it was like to grow up as the eldest of five in Ireland in a family of entrepreneurs who are third generation manufacturers of construction clothing and why she went into techWhy her dad encouraged her to go study business instead of dietetics and why she saw the wisdom in that laterWhat moved her over to California to work for Google and then AirbnbWhat her experiences at Airbnb taught her about how to create a healthy family culture within a company and not just grow fast, but grow well with a strong teamWhat brought about the need in Laura’s life for a company like Bobbie and what compelled her to develop a product and work on it for four years before launchingWhy she believes confidence and great referrals from past experiences are helpful in raising funds with investors, even if you don’t have metrics yet to shareHow fundraising has gone for Bobbie through traditional VC funding and also the nontraditional raising through Republic, which has including over 200 momsWhat the process of obtaining the FDA green light was like, what lessons came through it, and why it is the way it isWhat great advice she has on how to successfully lead a startup and what is next for BobbieTo Find Out More:HiBobbie.comQuotes:“Becoming an entrepreneur myself now, have I realized that the currency to join a startup is really energy. It's passion. It’s your connection to what’s being built.”“And it was during this I realized I love fast-growth companies. I love being in the middle of it. I loved being on call at random hours because that kind of adrenaline to be building something that wasn't just a massive revenue driver, but it was a culture changer is so impactful.”“I think that's part of an entrepreneurial journey, which is, you spot opportunities by seeing the ridiculousness of why certain things are the way they are.”“It continued to hit me that they are buying into my passion, my confidence, my ability to execute. What I had was, very fortunately, a decade of experience in the tech world and fast-growing companies to be able to point to to show that I did have a track record of getting shit done.”“We were very intentional about spending the two years prior to launching and building community. And often products and companies will say, ‘well you can't do that until you have a product on the market.’ And for us, it wasn't just about the product, it was about shaking the stigma, having the conversation.” “When we went to market, we had hundreds of moms who were dying to share that we had just launched. I believe that is kind of the secret sauce of what allowed the business to take off.”“It was an education of the industry that we are about to walk into. We are walking into an industry that is heavily regulated with massive companies watching your every move.”“The people that you find that are completely irreplaceable for you, you give them the world because they are worth the world. Your entire company goes around because of the people that you hire and how you recognize them, reward them, support them.” “There are hands down people that give me the sweats at night if I thought about losing them...because they truly are founders, owners, developers of this business more than myself. They are incredible.”“As a CEO, your job is to build the machine that runs, and every component of that machine is its people.”“How you support the exit of an individual in the business will say everything about your leadership.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How his childhood was full of the love of food and exposure to business and learning how to make money, even from an early ageWhat hard lessons he learned from mistakes in business while in college and how what he calls his first real business really grew and provided a lot of opportunity with nationwide clientsWhat it was like to have a successful experience in an acqui-hire with NOISE that was an amazing partnership for Andrew and what he did next with recruiting solutionsWhat led him into financial management and consulting, to part time CFO roles, and lead to a full time CFO positionHow the idea for Otamot came to him, what he did differently with this idea compared to other ideas he had over the years, and why he chose the name OtamotWhy they were able to hit the ground running after launching Otamot, how he got in front of more buyers, and his advice on marketing and pricing strategyHow he balances his full time, 9-5 job, with his 5-9 job growing Otamot and what advice he has for others who have a great idea and want to take it somewhere To Find Out More:otamotfoods.comQuotes:“To grow your business and really grow your experience, you're going to have to work with more and more people.”“If you want people to be the extension of you, then you've got to give it all for them every single day.”“I call it being comfortable being uncomfortable. Because if you're going to be squeamish and if you can't kind of thrive off of being in these different and challenging situations and really get excited about, hey, how do I jump over this thing? Then being an entrepreneur or doing something that hasn't been done before is not for you. And that's OK.”“A little light bulb went off and I said, I love making food, I am a parent that just wishes I didn't have to spend three hours to make this, but I feel really good about her eating it. But is there a life hack here?”“If we're going to flip the label around, what if we just flip the name around too? And it really plays well into it and really explains the origin of the sauce, which is we really want to turn things around.”“We prepped enough that well before launch I hired a PR company. Well before launch we did our branding and sell sheets, so we were able to hit the ground running and look like a million bucks before we made any money, before we had one sale.”“When you're building a business, you also want to look at what will your COGS be later on based on certain velocity assumptions. And you should be pricing yourself based on those future velocity assumptions, in my opinion.”“If you want to go national, you have to be ready for it. And that just doesn't mean, hey, have a few bucks in the bank. That means be ready from a production standpoint, be ready to service them, be ready to understand how freights work, how UniFi works…”“If I didn't have great teams on both sides of the table, I could not do this.”“You just have to be someone that's been used to juggling life and you have to enjoy being that clown.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What got Isabelle so interested in the plant based food space and how she has spent her time learning so much about it and seeing the opportunities present in itHow she came to realize the incredible benefits of Lupini beans and the huge opportunity there was to build a platform and a brand around this bean that many people did not know about yetWhat brought her to the US for one year during her undergrad, took her to grad school in Europe, and got her into the startup space once back in the USWhat valuable lessons she learned from the startups she worked with and how those lessons translate now into how she leads her company and how she values the people on her teamHow the opportunity to run with her idea for Lupii came about and what it took for her to find the perfect Co-FounderWhat the fundraising process has been like and what conventional and unconventional ways they are raising funds to grow the companyHow they changed their strategy once COVID put a pause on their retail relationships and why selling on Amazon has been helpful to them in the early stages of their businessWhat advice Isabelle has for getting through the hard times, being a good leader, a good Co-Founder, and also building something bigger than just a businessWhat is next for Lupii and where you can find them around the US and onlineTo Find Out More:https://getlupii.com/Quotes:“We are using the whole bean, which means that you're getting all the protein and all the fiber and all the minerals without any of the added junk. So that's pretty innovative in this space.”“It's great to want to take the playbook and tear it apart and throw it out the window. But it's also really important to even know how the playbook was written and you need experienced people for that.”“I think the trust piece is so essential, especially if you start something new and nobody knows you, and you have to build your reputation, it's important that you create trust and you can only create trust if you listen.”“It's important to listen and take in information and then make decisions from there, versus thinking you know it all because you don't.”“Surrounding yourself with a team, with a Co-Founder, that has complementary views is not easy because you tend to want to hire people that are like you. Get people on board that are different, that operate differently, that have different backgrounds, so that you can make informed decisions…”“Really, the job of the leader is to set everyone else up for success.”“You need to be open minded and self reflect and understand why am I behaving this way and why is this person behaving that way and how can we find a middle ground and do the best out of both? Because I think that's a great way to build a successful business with complementary skill sets and ways of doing things.”“What we love about Amazon is the fact that we get exposure to customers who would otherwise not find out about us. And we have had really honest, direct feedback, which is so important for us in the early stages of the business.”“Lupii is a platform for the Lupini bean. We're not a bar company. We're a Lupini bean company. We really see the bars as the first product range that we launched with.”“What I've learned is really there are hurdles that will feel tough at times, but then things will always work out if you just continue being committed to it and working at it.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What it was like for Achal to grow up in a family of doctors and health care professionals with roots both in India and in the US and how much he learned from being a part of such a family legacyHow his first jobs were scanning patient charts in order to convert them to digital and then working at Subway as a Sandwich ArtistWhat his work at Deloitte was like and why meeting his Co-Founder then created a strong partnership that led to the idea and creation of CabinetWhat convictions led to Achal and Russ deciding that they could bring about innovation in using sustainable options for packaging and why it is so important to themWhy batch level testing is so important and a vital part of how Cabinet ensures product quality and safetyHow fundraising has gone and what valuable lessons he has learned along the way, which has led to wonderful financial partnershipsWhat great advice Achal has for hiring and maintaining a cohesive company culture, even involving various team members in the hiring process who can help keep the cultural fit clear with new hiresWhat routines and mindsets he operates in daily in order to keep himself balanced and work through the highs and lows of being a Co-Founder/CEO and building a company with a great impactHow he has grown from a Founder into a CEO and why he sees those roles as different with a different set of needs at a different timeTo Find Out More:CabinetHealth.com Quotes:“My vantage point is, if you build a business, especially in the world of health care, that isn't prioritizing consumers' well-being, then that's directly oppositional to the purpose of being a business.”“I think our physical health and the environment around us are inextricably linked. And yet in the world of health care, there are no sustainable options today.”“It's exceptionally complex to innovate in this space. The supply chains are global. They're fragmented. Bringing more sustainable products to market requires regulatory expertise, requires buy-in from your entire supply chain.”“Being able to call someone who actually believes in you as a person, and not just the business, has been fundamentally important to our well-being and our success over the last few years.”“Reflect on why you are raising money before you go and raise capital.”“If you sell a product, it makes money, really think twice about why you're raising and if there are ways that are not just focused on a more heavily equity driven route that could actually enable you to be more successful in the long run.”“Your goal when you're fundraising is to gain momentum. And so really what you're looking for is not necessarily the check itself immediately, but the commitment that the investor will participate in the round.”“Don't get too caught up in setting a valuation or in some of the caveats the investors give you. Focus on getting the dollar commitment and you'll find that the rest of those contingencies typically fall away as a round comes together.”“Being a CEO... I fundamentally have three responsibilities. The first is setting a clear vision for our team and the strategy that goes with that. Secondly, making sure we actually have the right team in place, making sure that they're taken care of... And then third, making sure we don't run out of money or that we're making enough money to support that team.”“Building this company is my opportunity to continue the legacy of my family in the world of medicine to help people live healthier, happier lives, fundamentally building a more sustainable health care company.”“When you feel that you don't really care if you're going to hit barriers or failures otherwise and you're going to build that thing, I think that's when you found the correct why for yourself.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:Why David wanted to create this company with a product that needed to be iterated hundreds and hundreds of times to get it right to be a non-alcoholic alternative that could be added to cocktails What the process of doing what so many people in the industry thought was impossible was like and how they persevered with this unique ideaWhat it was like launching a brand right before a pandemic and how they navigated those unusual challengesWhat childhood in Oklahoma was like and what ways David was entrepreneurial very early on, learning valuable lessons about hard work even as a teenagerHow he got into the fitness and physical therapy world and what led him to the CPG world after thatWhat advice he has for Co-Founders and for setting yourself up to be able to let go more easily as you scale and grow the companyWhat unique route they took for raising money and what advice David has for other founders when looking for non-traditional fundraising ideasHow David and his Co-Founders run the team and cultivate a company culture that is built on trust and respect and keeping it personalWhat is next for Ritual and why they are confident that Ritual will become synonymous with nonalcoholic spiritsTo Find Out More:RitualZeroProof.comQuotes:“The idea never left. And what came to me was, if we could actually make these taste like known spirits, if we could approximate the flavor profile of whiskey, of gin, tequila, rum, that'd be amazing.”“The devil's in the details and the details matter. Let's get it right. So we kind of knew we were on to something really early on in the process and it became a matter of perfecting.”“It's kind of like the Impossible Burger or almond milk. There's never going to be a world where the coffee joints don't sell alternative milks to go with your latte. And in no world, the grocery store is not going to have alternative meats. Now that it's there, people are buying it.” “What we've learned is you can't change consumer behavior. They're going to do the thing that they want to do. Maybe it's not real meat, maybe it's not real milk. Maybe it's a Ritual Margarita instead of the real thing.”“If I could do things differently, it's prepare for more success because this category is on fire. This company is leading the charge in the United States for a category that's really needed. And nobody understood just how big this was going to get when we first started the company.”“You just can't do it yourself. You certainly can't scale. And if you started off with the mindset of this is mine, mine, mine, it's really hard to give those pieces away and grow. And you have to be able to give things away to be able to grow.”“There's nothing not personal about a startup. The whole 'It's just business' thing is complete bullshit. It's just personal. Keep it personal and become friends.”“The most important thing you can have among your Founders and among your employees is trust.”“It is so very gratifying to build something and see something out in the real world. But I think it's just worth it. I think it's a shame if you don't give some version of entrepreneurship a shot. It's a wonderful way to grow as a person.”“It's a learning process. Your life is about learning. That's as important as the money you'll get from this, and you'll realize later ultimately more important than the money you'll get from this is how much you've learned, people you've met, the experiences you've had…”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How Matt got involved with such a unique company and what the process of deciding to jump into this role looked likeWhat led to the decision to build the company through drops and why that has been such a great successWhat Matt and the team did to build enough hype to very quickly have enough interest to sell out every weekly drop within 30 minutes or less, sometimes even down to 10 secondsWhy experience, brand, and then sales is the order of their focus and how being intentional about their brand integrity has brought exponential growth in a very short period of timeWhat Matt’s extensive experience as a Founder and marketer in other companies in other industries was like prior to becoming the CEO of Last CrumbHow fundraising has been unique and why they approached it in a very Last Crumb way that will set them up for further growth and successWhat Matt’s leadership skills are like, what his superpowers are, and why he believes in a lean team that is focused and tight to move forward in efficient waysTo Find Out More:lastcrumb.comQuotes:“I shared the cookies with other people as I was exploring the opportunity and continued to talk to Derek. The response was exactly the same from everyone, which was, "Oh my God, this maybe is like the best cookie I've ever had.’"“I think we make a really cool product that makes people really happy because it's just ridiculous.”“There was a little conspiracy theory going on on Instagram for a while that here's no actual cookies for sale. And these people are just making this up. And it's a total marketing scheme which would have been entertaining and kind of fun. But that wasn't the case. We were increasing production by fifty percent week over week.”“We are growing ridiculously fast. And our goal is to get cookies into people's hands, but to do it in an ultra premium way.”“We look at ourselves as the intersection of luxury gifting, fashion, and then CPG.”“Because people are sharing our cookies, because they have this interesting unboxing and wow factor, I think that in a way it almost creates an experience dining thing that happens with you and the people you're with that you remember and you want again.”“We had a lot of hypotheses and we tested them. And some of them have worked really well and some of them haven't worked as well. And we're learning and we're continuing to iterate.”“If you don't think you have it {product market fit}, you don't have it. And I think that's a really interesting thing is that, if you make something really great and it resonates with people and they want it, you know. You don't have to beg them.”“I think that what I'm finding is that it's happening faster than I would have expected. But we're going about it in a way that is different than I've ever done it. And it's really interesting to see that.”“Find a really good CEO or people who've been CEO that you can call.”“My goal is that kitchen ops every day wakes up and says, "I wish you guys could have sold and shipped more cookies because we could have made more. "And every day the logistics ops says, "Man, I wish you guys could have baked more cookies because we could have shipped more." And I think that's a really interesting friction that we want to have.”“Take the first step. Don't worry about finishing the race. Otherwise, you're never even going to get a chance in the race.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How growing up with entrepreneurial parents taught her a lot about hard work and hustle and why she was always interested in creative type careersWhat types of jobs helped her learn how to run a successful business and why her time at eBay was impactful in her experience with marketing, which is helpful today as she has been marketing her own productWhy tea has always been an important part of Sashee’s life and how that became a pivotal part of becoming a Founder and creating Tea DropsWhat the impetus was for getting her to prove the concept and build her company on a solid foundation that led to more opportunitiesWhy she is thankful she had to bootstrap this business in the beginning and why it helped her make great, strategic decisions early on What struggles Sashee and her team had to overcome in the beginning of building Tea Drops and what struggles still occur nowWhat fears she had to overcome, including the fear of public speaking, which she has now conquered and actually been rewarded for great pitches by PepsiCo and Tory BurchHow she’s grown as a leader and what great advice she has for other Founders and operators who are wanting to build a successful business while maintaining a healthy life/work integrationTo Find Out More:MyTeaDrop.comQuotes:“I got exposed to email marketing, digital marketing, our social giving platform called eBay Giving Works at the time. And so I was exposed to a lot of different facets of marketing and that all was very useful when the time came for me to actually start marketing my own product.”“Growing up I was always exposed to tea culture and not just from a functional standpoint, that tea is a functional beverage that's good for you, but very much so that tea is this communal beverage that connects you to your culture, connects you to other people and connects you to your family.”“I loved every aspect of it. I loved the challenge of it. I loved not knowing what was happening next, but really working on something that I felt needed to exist in the world.”“Don't get me wrong, I was very scared. But I also knew that if I didn't try it now, I would have a sense of regret about it.”“Everything is nice in theory, but when you actually have to put it into application, practically do it, it's a whole different ball game.”“What bootstrapping does is it provides you with a certain discipline. You have to make hard choices and you have to do it with your own money.” “I grew the brand organically to probably 500K in revenue just from these boutique retailers before I took in capital, and that was really just a function of building a close relationship with the retailer early on.”“I think the challenge is more so just keeping an eye on what is your end goal and objective and not being so dissuaded or deflated by the feedback that people are naturally going to have, especially with something that's new.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How he spent his childhood growing up in China and Spain learning the supply chain and manufacturing industry through his family Why Aaron came to the US for college to study engineering and why he loved the problem solving aspect of what he was learningWhat companies he interned with during his time in college and what he learned about hard work and determination throughout the processHow his time at GE taught him so much about the processes that would help him scale his own business later Why he started Caraa, what the thesis behind the brand was and still is, and how they began to carry out their mission as a high-end, functional handbag DTC companyWhy he is thankful for a Co-Founder, and what building Caraa was like in the early days of the companyWhy they decided to not be venture backed, what that has looked like, what they have learned, and what advice he offers to others regarding fundraisingWhat Caraa has done to help people during the pandemic and why that has been important to Aaron and his Co-Founder, CarmenWhat is next for Caraa and how they will continue with their steady, sustainable growth and intentional customer affinity for years to comeTo Find Out More:Caraasport.comQuotes:“There's always extra things that might not directly tie into hard work and merit, but I would say 90% of the time when you work hard and you put your heart into things, it will pay off.”“You have to understand the human aspect of people. So having that perspective and having that emotional intelligence was something that I had to learn the hard and quick way.”“If I aspired to be a CEO or a business owner, having the know-how in terms of process management was very important to me.”“What we said is, what if we turn things around a little bit, still make the products in a very high end way, but really kind of make it very functional and keep the prices below four hundred dollars in terms of our average order value, because we're going to direct.”“Stay true to who you are in terms of authenticity.” “You'll be surprised if you do a little bit of soul searching, how much you can discover.”“To a certain extent it helps to have a Co-Founder. You know, I think single founder entities are very tough, not because you're not capable, it's because sometimes you need a shoulder to cry on.”“I'm a big believer in product market fit. If you can sit somewhere and think about, hey, the world needs these, but if you don't find the right audience to purchase it or to resonate with your product then you just have a little project or a little hobby. It's not a business yet.”“I was looking to grow, but I was looking to grow sustainably in a profitable way, if you may. So we ended up just saying, you know what? No to venture funding.”“When we were trying to raise, I felt that I was becoming more and more a professional fundraiser versus a professional business manager.”“We had that emergency meeting, me, Carmen, and also the board really quickly made a decision to convert part of our factory into essentially making masks using our scrap material. This was in the early days of the pandemic. And then we donated.”“If you don't have the right processes, everything will be very chaotic. So I think we do a pretty decent job in terms of creating controls and checks and balances and processes along the way.”“In moments of crisis, in front of the customer: transparency, transparency, transparency. Don't hide anything.”“Make sure that you have product market fit and then test quick, fail fast, and then reiterate.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How Rachel’s big family with two entrepreneurial parents provided the opportunity to grow up learning about business by watching her parents lead.How she built her confidence in college in order to build and lead a successful company.Why her time working at American Express and Gilt Group helped her learn valuable lessons from both a big company and a small business that gave her a scope to be set up to scale Daily Harvest successfully.How her observations about her work and eating habits led to her investigation of the food industry and to creating healthy, convenient options. The metrics Rachel set in the testing phase to see if she had a product market fit and how Daily Harvest took off so quickly.What it has been like to create and scale something that had not yet been done before, what lessons were learned the hard way, and why they are stronger now than ever before.Advice she has for building, growing, and communicating well with your team as you scale and why it is so important to have an open dialogue from the beginning.How her unique and steady approach to fundraising led to being able to partner with value-aligned investors who have been a good fit and have helped her in her goal for consistent capital efficiency.How she has grown as a leader and continues to grow as the business grows, and what is next for Daily Harvest.To Find Out More:DailyHarvest.comQuotes:“As a child, my parents were so passionate about what they were doing, and I could see it.”“The box that I actually needed to check was the confidence box, not the education box or not the work experience box.”“Seeing what happens when things aren't going so well and how some of that could have been avoided by more disciplined growth really led me to focus on things like capital efficiency when starting Daily Harvest from day one.”“When I think about how I've built Daily Harvest, and what our goals are, and how we treat our people, and how we invest in talent and growth and management skills, I think a lot of it is informed from that incredible environment that was created at Gilt in the talent incubator.”“I started looking at the food options out there and trying to figure out why they were the way that they were. And for me, it really comes down to how they are structured, number one, and how they view success in the public markets.” “If you think about what slow, steady growth and dividends mean for food, something that you ingest, there's a lot of squeezing margins. And when you think about squeezing margins out of food, it's also squeezing nutrition out of food.”“I set a metric for myself, which was very important for me, because what I wanted to avoid in this little MVP experiment of mine was I like to call it the Girl Scout cookie effect or the wrapping paper effect... I wanted to make absolutely sure that there was no ‘my friends are feeling bad for me’ effect.”“Economies thrive with specialization. And so do companies.” “You need to hire experts in certain areas, and it can create this really uncomfortable situation with those early people who you owe everything to, but it becomes murky when there's not a clear path for them. So my advice to people is to just have that awkward conversation up front and to have it frequently throughout the growth stage.”“Early on I felt like, "Oh, I'm a founder now. I need to have this morning routine and I need to have work/life balance, and I need to have all these things." Like that was stressing me out more than just being like "I'm at the center of a tornado, and it's great.’" “I think going from down and in to up and out was kind of the hardest transition because it's not just something you can do yourself. You also have to make sure that you have the right team to be able to support it and you have the right accountability that strings through the organization. And those things are hard to orchestrate.”“You want people who look different, who think different, who have different experiences that they bring to the table, but it's so important that the values are aligned.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How her love for food was a part of her family culture and why she originally thought she’d pursue medicine or lawHow New York City changed her perspective on what was possible and what her many internships taught her during her time at NYUWhy she pivoted into the tech industry and then took some time in the venture space, learning a lot about startups, venture capital, the ups and downs involved with building a brand, and that she loved being an operatorWhat brought her to her next step, the creation of Brightland, after olive oil became a pain point in her own householdWhy she decided to bootstrap first, what her experience with fundraising was, and what advice she has for other founders when it comes to raisingWhat team building has been like for Brightland and what lessons Aishwarya has learned in building her team and building her brandWhat advice she has for aspiring entrepreneurs and what is new and exciting for BrightlandTo Find Out More:Brightland.coQuotes:“I went to a venture firm, spent some time there, but realized that I actually love operating. I love being in the weeds of a company and being a part of that growth rather than sitting on the sidelines.”“Eventually I took my own just digging into why I had this fear or kind of working it through with my own inner critics. It was a lot of deep work that I had to do to then be like, you know what? I am going to try this and do this.”“People are discovering brands and entities on their phones and people's attention span is two seconds. So I think that it is important to have, if you can, something that's striking, that is memorable, and that then usually means that there's a design aspect to it.”“It's a numbers game. You have to talk to a lot of people. And it's tiring because it's taking up time that you're like, oh, well, I could be furthering the business or doing something to push the envelope or push the ball forward. But then when you meet the people that make sense for you, then it clicks into place.”“Always having a mindset of abundance over scarcity... If you're playing the scarcity game and feeling that, then the person on the other side can feel it, too.”“I think we also have the luxury because we are a small team and I'm building this with a lot of intentionality and not just trying to like blitz scale it in any way, so we have capacity to be a bit more thoughtful about who we're bringing on.”“If wellness and what you're kind of ingesting can be considered beauty, then our product certainly can be."“Your website is basically your storefront, so really understand the story that you want to tell. The more personal you can tell, the greater resonance and customer loyalty you'll build.”“When you feel like you're getting overwhelmed, just take one step forward at a time rather than looking at the big picture.”“Your team is everything, and you are nothing without them and being able to recognize that and celebrate them and be able to understand. Empathy is important for everything.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How childhood and jobs and internships during high school and college taught Rachel a lot of skills that she uses todayWhat led to the idea of Snowe and why she knew it was the thing she would be passionate about and would move forward with to build a brandWhy Rachel and her team spent two years researching, surveying, testing, and sourcing to lay a solid foundation before launching the brandHow product development began in their very own home with ideas of how to innovate a hand towel to be what they envisioned as better than other hand towels on the marketWhy they launched the brand with a big press event in New York City that created a brand experience to communicate the vision and the voice of the brand and why that gave a lot of credibility and success to Snowe right from the startWhat advice Rachel has when hiring and how her team makes sure that a new hire fits well within the company cultureWhat fundraising was like for Snowe, especially from Rachel’s perspective, being a female, and how they overcame roadblocksWhat advice she has on overcoming challenges and what some of the challenges they have faced were, including a leak in the warehouse on their first Black FridayHow she continues to grow and learn as a leader and what is next, new, and exciting coming up for SnoweTo Find Out More:SnoweHome.comQuotes:“Ultimately I realized I wasn't a thousand percent passionate about this particular idea. And that was something that was really valuable to learn. When we started Snowe...I really then knew the difference of, OK, this is it. This is the passion that you kind of need to go forward.”“What's interesting about the home space is it’s not until you're thrust into your first apartment in your twenties that you even really think about it. You grow up thinking about fashion, cultivating your style and how you dress yourself at an earlier age often, but for home you have no idea what your aesthetic is, no idea what's out there.”“A big initial brand vision that I believe we've stayed true to was that things get messy, life gets messy. It's OK. How do we create a brand and celebrate those moments around it?”“Speaking to customers is the most valuable information you get. And you have to kind of piece together the art and the science.”“We brought it to life and did a press launch event that ended up being really successful and helped us get some great press out of the gate that I think then just helped build credibility from the start.”“Our team and our people are our most important asset. I think anyone is remiss to think you can launch a company, build a brand, and do everything on your own.”“I think the biggest thing is also thinking through ‘What's your vision? What is your ultimate vision for the company? How do you see yourself getting there? What are the steps in between? How do you start to envision that? And then how do you learn to articulate that?’”“The same way founders have to be passionate about what they're doing, investors have to be excited and passionate.”“You can't over prepare for what you're about to embark on. And all the things that happen or all the things that go wrong, you know, they're going to happen. It's part of the journey.”“The qualities that are most important are perseverance and resilience.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How growing up in the south with a large family, and hard working parents taught her a lot about starting a business and working hardWhy Pree says that college taught her to think and how her studies and internships in law, politics, and storytelling led her non-traditionally down an entrepreneurial pathHow her time working with Emily’s List after college taught her not just about political campaigns, but also how to fundraise, how to launch campaigns, how to market, and even how to deal with failureHow politics is actually what brought her out to Silicon Valley and where she learned her strengths and her passions and how they could come together in entrepreneurshipWhy she went to business school and how she then got a job at a startup hardware company which taught her everything about building a hardware technology startup from the ground upWhat led to the idea to starting Preemadonna and why she thought it was important to build a fun and smart experience for Gen Z, specificallyWhat brought her to China where she gained a lot of market research and a good prototype to start withWhat Pree has learned about leadership and how she continues to pursue her passion to empower girls and women What fundraising has been like for Preemadonna and what lessons have already been learned through the processWhat is next for Preemadonna and what advice Pree has for other founders and entrepreneursTo Find Out More:PREEMADONNA.comQuotes:“College taught me how to think and how to construct arguments and in some ways to tell a story about those arguments, which actually leads us down the path to entrepreneurship in a nontraditional way.”“I wouldn't say there was one aha moment where I was like, "I'm going to build this device to decorate my nails, and I'm going to start Preemadonna." I would say I started to see all of these interesting moments come together for me.”“I like to say we're going to be an eight year overnight success story. I incorporated the company in 2013 in my apartment, in stealth, with no money, and I filed our first provisional patent in August of 2013.”“If you can take it and still have a smile on your face, like the next day, you don't get bitter. No one wants to invest in a bitter entrepreneur.”“I believe that Preemadonna is that company and is that entity that is going to really power creative expression through really fun, interactive hardware and software experiences that are really going to power this audience of Gen Z young women. And I have learned that, like, I am just a vehicle for that.”“I think I was far more impatient in the beginning. But now having worked on this for so many years, you get more patient.”“I pitched over a thousand people to date. Over a thousand investors, both angels, bigger funds, smaller funds. And we really kind of built a network of investors.”“Our mission is to really power creativity. And we think the creativity market is actually a one hundred and thirty five billion dollar market that spans multiple categories.”“The reason my company isn't named Nailbot is because we have a bigger vision. And our vision is how do we delight and really make our customers so joyful with really unique experiences? And the nail is really the gateway to the body. That's how I look at it.”“I would say just start small, get something going. Hack a prototype. There's nothing more powerful than a show and tell.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How Remi’s childhood was very unique and what life was like for her as a kid, including her obsession with freckles for as long as she can rememberWhat brought her from wanting to be an orthodontist to then becoming an architect/interior designer before becoming a Founder/CEO and what other jobs and internships were learning experiences in betweenWhat it was like to walk through both a failed Kickstarter and being publicly mocked by Jimmy Kimmel when she was trying to launch the first iteration of FreckWhat she learned about taking on investors and how she was able to recover and move forward after a terrible experience with her first investorsWhat happened when Remi focused hard for six months, gave it everything she had, brought on a business partner, and starting partnering with Instagram influencers in her marketing strategyHow fundraising the second time around went for Remi and her business partner, Des, and what advice she has for others who are starting the fundraising processWhat’s next for Freck Beauty and what advice Remi has for those with an idea who are wanting to build a company and see their idea come to lifeTo Find Out More:FreckBeauty.comQuotes:“You're able to find purpose in your work, regardless, and you're able to push the limits for yourself if you want to. And that's why I've definitely held in my career now.” “I always want our packaging to be like your vanity brag. More importantly than that, I want the end customer to feel represented... Your bathroom is your space. And I want our packaging to reflect that.”“I went back to the drawing board, completely reinvented the product, which is what it is now. But yeah, definitely it's hard.”“I was like, I'm giving myself six months and I'm going to hit it for six months. And I'm going to try everything I can… And in six months, if it's not changed, I'll walk from it, and it'll be a great learning experience. I'll be proud of myself either way. But then it took off.”“When you're finding your business partner, especially if you're an early start up, find someone who really fills your holes, so you can balance each other out.”“Start fundraising when you do not need to fundraise. Keep that leverage. You need the time to be able to analyze and feel yourself out and find the right fit for you as opposed to having a rush for cash flow reasons.”“Find people who are so much smarter than you and are so much more dialed into their vertical and let them speak to you as a CEO.” “I think that my strongest skill actually as a manager is just putting people at ease and reminding everybody of the vision and why we're here and what our end goal is. And not to get wrapped up in little day to day annoyances that everybody has, whether you're in a startup or, you know, an established company.”“Stick with yourself, know what you're doing, and if you are a new Founder, take the time to figure that out. Don't back yourself into a corner where you feel like you have to make decisions in a rush.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How her time working in politics taught her a lot, it also showed her that she was not made for politicsWhat led her to a free ride to Harvard Business School, which she eventually quit in order to join a group of friends in New York City who were working on a start upHow her time in tech led her to work on what we now know as Clear and how it was a pivotal moment Why that love of human exchange as a creator and entrepreneur and also the desire to help people with their health journey led her to start SmartyPants with her husband How they built their team at SmartyPants and why they did things differently than some potential investors thought they shouldHow they grew organically and quickly using Amazon to sell their one SKU, when they knew they were truly on to something big, and how they handled their rapid growthWhat lessons Courtney shares regarding going into retail and why they did it the way they did, which really worked out wellWhat advice she has for other Founders and anyone operating a company regarding healthy company culture, keeping family life healthy, and challenging the way things have been in the business world To Find Out More:Shop.SmartyPantsVitamins.comQuotes:“I started getting these emails, and I was transformed by that moment of the human exchange because I'd been in tech for my career, at that point for ten years, and I'd never made a thing that a person uses.”“If you could be a part of someone's health journey and also be a part of that human exchange that sounded really cool and really hard. And I like really hard.”“We realized that we had kind of stumbled into a better solution that addressed all the things that got in the way of people taking their vitamins consistently and therefore getting the benefit. And that was really the aha moment.”“The most important thing is do not try to get into a ton of doors, do a test in a small set of doors so that you can do online marketing for this. You can zip code target those people online, really let them know about your brand before they see you in the store. And you yourself can find out if it works.”“You're sad because it's so a part of you and you worked so hard and you guys are collaborating, creating, co-creating this life together and doing all that. But also you love it so much that you want it to have the future it deserves. And I'm not the best custodian of that future.”“The magic really is about the process. It's not about the endpoint.”“Magic is you're out on the skinny branches. You don't know what's going to happen, but you have an instinct and a vision and a feeling and a drive and a commitment to doing what you're doing come what may. And that come what may is the part that makes it fun.”“I'm going to fully be who I am, but I also don't have to solve every problem right now.”“I now know what my contribution is, which makes me less intrusive when I don't have a contribution to make, but also willing to stand in my conviction when I have a contribution to make.”“I do not want people working more than an eight hour day. Because I want them to have lives and be fulfilled people and have creative minds and go to museums and have time to see the world and be a fully contributing, breathing human being.”“That moment was seminal for me because it taught me a lot of humility about stop acting like it is just you, because, by the way, it's not.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How growing up in Maine and having strong influences in her life led her to appreciate nature and also know from a young age that she liked to lead othersWhat she learned during her two years teaching high school english with Teach For America and why she took a job in the business world after that with McMaster-Carr where she received invaluable experience in managementWhat got her interested in the food and beverage industry, why she went to business school, and what brought her to intern at General MillsWhat brought Eliza to turning down a job opportunity to finding her mission in creating herbal products that could make a difference in people's livesHow the first year of creating, branding, and selling her initial product taught her what she needed to change and helped her better understand what consumers would want, how to market it, and how to pitch to retailers and investorsWhat challenges she had to face and overcome in the beginning of launching Sunwink and what she and her team learned from themHow fundraising went for her and her Co-Founder, why she recommends having a Co-Founder, and what questions she recommends asking as a FounderWhy she believes rest is so important and how authenticity within her organization has led to a stronger and healthier company culture that can work well togetherWhat’s next for Sunwink and where you can find their products and continue to watch them grow for years to comeTo Find Out More:Sunwink.comQuotes:“The culture of your organization is really important, arguably a lot more than what you're making and selling. The people that make up that team and what it feels like to go to work every day are, I think, a big player in how successful you'll be.”“In a way, you're only as good as the people around you. And...the more you can get out of your own way and really put strong people around you and empower them, the better your team will be for it.”“If I can get the taste better and if I can get the packaging better to grab people's attention to want to try to taste it, there's something about this category that I'm getting feedback on that people are really interested in.”“The word Sunwink, to me, evokes joy and cheerfulness, and that's what I hope people take away from the product, too. So I think there's a feeling you get from the word.”“The things that I've learned in the process and continue to take with me are to really fight against undervaluing yourself.”“If an investor asks you something, and you're not ready to share that kind of information, you can say, "I'm not comfortable sharing that right now." And that's OK.”“The best thing you can do is just piece out the conversations. If someone's really interested, you're going to have multiple conversations. You don't have to share all the details in the first 10 minutes of the call. The details should really start to come out in call two and call three. There's a buildup.”“You have to rest. And it's the hardest thing. I'm constantly in an argument with myself about this, but like you have got to give yourself moments where you step away.”“I think the sooner you can be honest with yourself about what your end goal is with your company, like what are you trying to build? Have that dialog with yourself and keep checking in. Because the sooner you can do that, I think the smarter you will be about making decisions along the way.”“I always tell people, if you're thinking about doing it and you would look back in a couple of years and regret not doing it… You don't have another choice, because if you don't do it, you'll regret it.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How growing up in a family of doctors led to a real appreciation for nurses and doctors throughout her lifeWhat made her want to leave the small town in which she grew up and be in New York or LA, travel to Europe, and be a part of the world in some meaningful wayHow the desire to do things better has always been present throughout Louisa’s lifeWhy she started a yoga clothing company after college and why she went into finance after that, instead of continuing to build her first companyWhat her time in the finance world was like and what companies she got to see and work with and observe and learn from and why that shaped her even more to pursue a better way for consumersWhat happened with Claire’s that sparked the idea and created the curiosity for Louisa to innovate in a space that needed change and needed a better way and how her research, coupled with encouragement from her husband and a good friend got her started on the path to creating RowanWhere the idea for the name, Rowan, came from and why it fits so well with the brand’s mission and passion for this seminal moment of ear piercingWhat great advice she has on hiring and how she strives to create a healthy and positive team culture throughout the companyWhy she has found fundraising to be so beneficial, not just from the obvious raising of funds involved, but also for the clarity of goals and buy in from the team that it requires in order for it to be successfulHow Louisa led her team to take the challenge of COVID and turn it into a huge opportunity to expand into hundreds of Target stores and why that is a huge win for RowanWhat kind of routine helps her stay patient, focused, and able to handle the demands of being a mother and a CEOTo Find Out More:HeyRowan.comQuotes:“This is a seminal moment. This is a really important moment. It was an opportunity to have a moment with a friend or a parent or even with yourself. And don't we want to have great moments and remember them if we can? Because ultimately in life, that's what we look back on.”“I think that is for us one of the really exciting things about building this business is that we're creating this moment and then we want to be a brand that remains true to that customer for the rest of her or his life.”“I wanted to bring something that was accessible, but that was better and that was safer. And I also really liked the idea of creating a new work opportunity for nurses.”“I think as a CEO, my most important job is to make sure that we are taking care of. So what does that mean? First of all, that we have access to growth capital and great support from an ideas standpoint, et cetera, but that I'm building a really good team.“When you have employees and partners and teammates that feel ownership over what they're doing, there's a sense of joy and pride when things work, but a sense of accountability when they don't.”“it's important to listen to understand and not to respond in interviews. So I really do try to ask a lot of questions and then I really do try to listen.”“What is inefficient is after the multiple interviews done by different folks on the team to still have outstanding questions. It should be that you circle back and say, "Had an hour with this person, but here are the three things that I was left wondering about. Please make sure to ask them.’"“The fundraising experience requires you to get your house in order. And it is not possible to do it alone well. You need your team involved because they need to buy into the projections that you are building out and talking about.”“Your network is infinitely larger if you have great investors who also have large networks who are very interested in your success, not only because they know you and like you, but because they've actually invested in your business.”“It is really helpful if you can get someone to give you really good feedback. And to not let it weigh down, but to try to learn from it.” “You have to keep a piece of you because you're constantly giving so much of yourself.” “Whatever system you have in place is absolutely perfect to yield the outcome that it's yielding. So if you're not getting the right answer, then something about the process that you have in place needs to change.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How his parents’ marriage was an arranged marriage, what brought them from India to the US, and what life in the Bay area was like as a kidWhy he moved from an aspiring professional baseball player in college to an investment banker, working first as an intern at Union Bank of Switzerland and then working at the famous Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette investment bank after collegeHow after spending time in venture capital, then back to private equity, Neeraj wanted to become an business operator himselfHow a month consulting gig with TrueCar turned into seven and a half years and a huge opportunity to understand the inside of a business and how to thrive as a business operatorWhat came about for him to become the CMO at TrueCar, furthering his career path to learn yet another aspect of a company that would help him later as a CEOWhat advice Neeraj has for leaders when it comes to working with different personalities and styles of responses to management, and why he’s learned to delegate over the yearsHow he looks at recruiting and what he looks for when he is interviewing to hire key positions within the companyHow he took a step from his time at TrueCar to become the CEO of Byte and what special moment helped him realize the impact and importance of this company in the worldWhy he believes that a good leader delegates and lets others do their job, laying down ego, and thinking about the growth and health of the company with each decision he makesTo Find Out More:byteme.comQuotes:“You're not going to build a great business unless you recruit great people and let them be. My job is to recruit great people. And when they need my help, I give them my help.”“One thing that I've noticed is that CEOs and entrepreneurs and executives or whatever it is should constantly be showing their employees that they're in it, like they're deeply in it.” “Show the people that you're really caring about what they're doing.”“One of the most important jobs for a CEO after they reach a certain stage is recruiting, if not the most important.”“Your mind is always expanding and always thirsting for more knowledge, as long as you're willing to give it the opportunity.” “I want to grow this business, and I want to grow this brand to the most accessible and most affordable oral care brand in the world."“If you're afraid to open your mouth, you're never going to find your voice.”“We're changing people's lives. And so that has been the most powerful thing that I've gone through over the last year to understand how important what we're doing is for the world.”“It might take a little bit longer because you're building from the bottom up rather than the top down. But you'll go there the right way because if you start to grow very fast, your experience is always there to save you.”“I've seen this with early stage entrepreneurs. Stay healthy. Stay balanced. Because, you know, you can give 18, 19 hours a day for your work. And then if you ignore what's at home and you ignore that, it'll come back to bite you.”“That's one thing I've learned is recruit great people and let them do their jobs.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How her best friend’s sickness in college led to a search for a better and safer way to use good household products and foods without the chemicals and perfumes and harmful ingredients that are in so many conventional productsWhat Kelly and Allison did after graduating college that totally changed both of their lives and is now also changing the lives of Branch Basics consumersWhy Kelly and Allison’s Co-Founder, who is also Allison’s Aunt Marilee, has been an incredible resource and consultant and asset in product development for the companyHow the three of them launched a website with a company store and discovered helpful content to deciding that they needed to build a brandHow they had an opportunity to join an incubator program at the University of Virginia, which led to them meeting their future CEO, which led to a million dollar friends and family roundWhy a huge and hard lesson learned led to a stronger company and why doing the right thing was so important even though it was oftentimes difficultHow they have been able to stay genuine throughout the whole process of building this company and why it’s ok to learn as you goWhat advice Kelly has for aspiring entrepreneurs who have a great idea and want to start a businessTo Find Out More:BranchBasics.comQuotes:“This whole experience has now led Marilee to be such an amazing asset to product formulation for us because we won't compromise on certain things because we know how it affects the chemically sensitive.”“Our goal was how can we get Marilee's brain on the internet? It was not, how do we start a company to sell this product or that product? We had no business background.”“Cleaning is an easier habit or easier product to change. You're not addicted to your cleaning products. It's not as hard to change as food, and it's not as expensive as an infrared sauna. And it makes such a huge impact on your air quality and your health immediately.”“Our goal when we first launched our brand was to position it in a way that consumers would understand, so we made sure our spray bottles and our labels on that made sense to easily use it with the concentrate without having to get a measuring spoon out or figure out a ratio.”“We were not going to go back out with something unless we knew it worked and it was actually really safe. Because even if something is safe, if it doesn't work people are going to end up resorting back to the toxic cleaners.”“I think you figure it out as you go. I mean, I kind of like the fact that we didn't go to business school because we didn't think inside certain boxes or parameters, and we just kind of got creative and figured out as we went. And we stayed genuine to what felt right.”“We want to be truth tellers. We want to not have a product that we're just trying to spin in a way to sell to you. We want to empower you to become your own better product advocate.”“No one would willingly say, yeah, put these poisons in my products, yet we buy them every day because we trust that whatever is on the shelf is safe. And sadly, yes, we have to be educated.” “I think too often you can overanalyze and talk things to death and want things to look perfect or be perfect. Just start doing it and iterate along the way, and go in with the mindset of like, you're always going to be improving, you're always going to be testing and learning and making improvements. So don't let perfection hold you back from just getting started.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How having a love for building things was evident from an early age and continues to be a strong part of who Coulter is and the kind of entrepreneur he isWhy his time at Cornell studying mechanical engineering became a great foundation for learning how to understand something and how to characterize it and see how it works, which is helpful now with plant scienceHow his time building parts for high end cars, interning in photography, and working with a design agency taught him valuable lessons and also gave him even more experience as an entrepreneurHow Coulter and his wife founded Quinn Foods, built it for ten years, with his wife still leading that successfully in the snack industryWhat led to his discovery that there is a much needed upgrade for healthy lawn care options, why this would be impacting, and what he was going to do about itHow he used surveys and conversations with homeowners and potential buyers to learn what the needs were, how they could meet those needs, and what was effective in marketing, pricing, etcWhat fundraising was like and how unique his experience was with some great funds that have been a huge asset to SundayWhat Coulter has learned as a leader, what advice he shares with others starting a business, and what is next for SundayTo Find Out More:GetSunday.comQuotes:“For me, it's about making things, and that stream is continuous from when I was old enough to use my hands all the way till now. And so that's the kind of entrepreneur I am.”“When you have an entire team all feeling passion for something and all wanting to succeed at the same level, and there's that shared motivation, that's an unstoppable force.”“I think one of the fundamental things I learned is that your confidence drives confidence in people you're with, and it's a slippery slope. Once you start to lose that and display your lack of comfort and confidence, that spreads like fire.”“Our backyards are actually our third largest crop by land area. There's 40 million acres of yards. So it's tied with wheat. And that's ten times more than all the organic farms combined. So if you're thinking about the impact on agricultural scale, this is a huge piece of it.” “When you look at the kind of cultural practices on lawn care and property care, there's so far out of date. A managed law in the US gets something like five times more pesticides per acre than an industrial farm.”“No matter what, Sunday what's going to happen, and we were going to fight for it and find the people that believed in it and just keep going and make it work.”“I would say prepare for it to be difficult. Something I tell not every employee because I think might scare everybody off, but everybody comes in at a higher level, is that there's going to be times where the smartest move is to quit and we're not going to. We're going to keep going.”

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How growing up in an Italian family, getting to go to Italy in the summers, and loving fashion as a child and young adult led Marisa to believe that the fashion industry is where she belongedHow she ended up in marketing after moving to New York post college to pursue a career as a fashion writer and why she decided to stay in marketingWhy her time at Anomaly under an incredible boss and mentor helped her learn the industry of advertising and branding and gave her a strong foundation and a confident awareness of where she fit within that space, and funny enough it was in the beverage branding spaceWhy her time in strategy at 360i gave her a lot of opportunities to hone her people management skills, which have become critical to her success with what she is doing nowHow Marisa and her team came up with the name United Sodas of America and why they wanted to start this company in the first placeHow their press strategy created such momentum and success at their launch, even though they launched in May of 2020, literally in the midst of a pandemicWhy actually selling out of the product within the first three months led to bringing production in-house for a time, what they hope to see in the future as the company scales, and why they are currently blissfully self-fundedWhat challenges come with building a business in the midst of a pandemic and why compassionate leadership is critical as everyone is re learning how to balance life, work, and the world around themWhy their retail strategy is helping them get in front of the right people at the right time, and how it is successfully working out for them as a DTC brandWhat business advice Marisa has for aspiring entrepreneurs and operators of brands and also what to expect soon from United Sodas of AmericaTo Find Out More:unitedsodas.comQuotes:“If you can make it work with the people that you work with and if you can learn from the best person you know, then that makes it all worthwhile.” “It doesn't matter what we're working on, we'll find a way to make the work incredible if we’re with the right people on the right team.”“My mentality is when you're somebody's manager, you're building a team, like you're responsible for their work, but you're really responsible for making sure that they're in the right mindset to do their work. And that includes the right environment.”“When you hire someone, when you manage someone, know as much as you can about what they prefer to do and what they want and where they want to be going. As long as you can guide people to where they want to be going, even if that's outside of your company or above your own title, that's going to be good for you and for them.”“The inclination to want to do a beverage, a soda space beverage, whatever that was, mixed with the strikingness of the name really set us down the path of what we ended up creating visually, brand wise, everything.”“We're not a brand that's trying to satisfy every soda drinker. The Mountain Dew drinker, the hardcore Mountain Dew drinker, for example, might not be the person for us.”“I'm a big believer in that if you do something interesting and make something beautiful, press will care.”“Timing is really important. So making sure everything launches, at least in the same flight of days, can really create a huge difference and maintain momentum.”“I'm a big believer in developing a brand strategy at the same time as looking at the visuals.”“We are re-learning how to do life at the same time that we are building a company and, you know, managing that for my own personal self, whatever, being sensitive to the employees that I have and making sure that the excitement and the momentum of the brand isn't crushing their spirits and is rather raising their spirits is really, really a fine balance.” “You have to have a kind of like a willing naiveté, I think, to be an entrepreneur. If you know too much about the industry that you're about to disrupt, you won't disrupt it.”“Consumers always call the shots. So if you launch DTC, and consumers and press and celebrities and whoever else is buying your brand talks about it and says, "This is what we want. This is what we love," distributors will get it. And so will retailers. And so other buyers.”