before we dive into the show. Today we have some super exciting news as of this month. Female startup club is officially part of the hubspot podcast network, Something we love about the hubspot podcast network is all of the inspiring shows dedicated to helping professionals learn and grow, especially women in business. So if you love female startup club and want to check out other shows like us, we definitely recommend checking out being boss, the gold digger podcast and the shakeup. Check out all these shows and more at hubspot dot com slash podcast network. This is Kendra Cole Butler for female startup club. Hey everyone it's doing here, your host and hype girl today, I'm joined by Kendra Cole Butler. The founder of Alpine Beauty. Alpine Beauty is the first and only skincare line to sustainably harvest wild crafted ingredients straight from the mountains of Jackson Hole. Wyoming the plants they harvest are some of the hardest working and most resilient botanicals that are conditioned to survive in an unforgiving climate which is high altitude, low humidity, little oxygen, intense sun, harsh wind and heavy snowfall when applied to skin.

These plants perform just like they do in the wild, preserving, protecting and strengthening your skin for increased resiliency which results in skin that looks feels and behaves more youthfully. We're chatting about creating a unique offering and how you can approach the retail piece before you even place an order with your manufacturer and how to get your brain stocked in the likes of Sephora. If you love this episode and you're wondering how to support us. It's by sharing this with a woman in your network who would benefit from hearing this inspiring founder story or by posting on social media. And by the way, I would also love to meet you. You can find me on instagram at Dune rasheen D double O N E R O I S I N and slide into my D. M's anytime. I'd love to know what you're up to and what you're working on right now. Let's jump into this episode. This is Kendra for female startup club customers want more from brands, delivering more means owning the customer experience, taking control over data acquisition analysis, creative and delivery.

Clavijo calls this owned marketing and believe it's the best path to growth for more, visit Clavijo dot com slash F. S. C. That's claudio dot com slash F. S. C. One last thing before we jump into this episode, I want to quickly shout about our course, the ads. M. B. A. Although I'm totally biased, I'm told by so many of the hundreds of women who have taken it so far that it's amazing and they've been able to increase their revenue in their business using the methods taught the ads. M. B. A. Is A D. I. Y course to help you master the technical skills needed to run profitable facebook and instagram ads by yourself. We've partnered with, leading performance, marketing, agency amplifier to create the best online program out there and these guys know a serious thing or two about performance marketing. They've spent more than $100 million in ads during their time. You'll learn everything from winning ad creatives to identifying your target kPI s implementing retargeting funnels and deploying scaling strategies to increase your revenue to upwards of six and seven figures per year.

It includes six modules with more than 30 video lessons and you can learn at your own pace. But what we're most proud of is that $30 from every sale is donated towards girls secondary education through the Malala Fund, a charity that champions every girl's right to 12 years of free, safe quality education and is working for a world where every girl can learn and lead to learn more. Head to female startup club.com. Female stock up Capri since Kendra Hi, hello and welcome to the female startup club podcast. I am so happy to be here. Thank you for having me today. Thank you so much for being here. Can you start by introducing yourself and tell us about what your business is? Yes, my name is Kendrick Old Butler, I am the founder of Alpine Beauty. We are a sustainable plant based skincare line that uses wild plants. We call them our wild crafted actives um that we harvest in my home of Jackson Hole Wyoming, which is where I'm talking to you from today.

Sounds like a little piece of heaven over there. If I must say, where does your entrepreneurial story start? It starts in 2000 and 15. I was a beauty executive in Manhattan and I had worked for a lot of the big beauty brands, Clarence, Givenchy dr Dennis Gross and I loved all the experience that I gained working in Manhattan and I loved my job But I felt a little burnt out and this is again around 2015 and I just felt the need to do something different with my life and my career and that is where I began this journey. So you quit your job and moved to Wyoming to do what I quit my job, I quit, my job was very scary. My partner and I made the decision together my husband at the time, he was in the same place. We just felt like kind of groundhog day, like we got up every morning, we went to our corporate job, we sat in front of our computer all day long, we worked really hard, we came home and we just hit repeat the next day and we just for seeking something more out of life.

We wanted a little bit more adventure and we wanted to take a chance and we made a pact that we were going to do it and we chose a day and we both went into work, we left our corporate jobs on that day and one week later we put everything that we owned in a u haul um which was not much like a couch in the kitchen table or something and we drove west and we landed in the beautiful mountains of Jackson Hole Wyoming and how do you then go from, you know, taking some time off to being like, hey, I'm going to actually start my own business and I have an idea, it was kind of a need um that I felt internally, I was very excited to leave my corporate job. I had a four month old baby at the time and I couldn't wait to just not have to check emails and do conference calls. Like I just wanted that life where it was just spontaneous and I was just you know and enjoying every moment and I did that for about seven days and I thought I need a job like and not that raising kids is not a job, it is the hardest job and I have so much respect for any buddy out there who's raising Children because it is a full time job and it is a lot of hard work, but for me personally, I wanted to do something in addition to that, so I decided to dip my toe in the water and I opened a few beauty stores in my local hometown because I thought this is a way for me to stay in the beauty industry, but I can still manage my own schedule, so I'm there for my Children, you know, my child when he needs me And that was my first kind of segue into this whole wild adventure that I'm on right now, but I started with just opening some stores to service my local community.

I love that you dipped your toe in the Wyoming water, you stayed in the beauty industry, What was it about that experience or that time that got you thinking like, hey, I'm going to get into wild crafting the natural landscape. Okay, that was like the first, this is like, that was the furthest thing from my mind. I think that necessity is the mother of invention. And I, when I opened the stores and when I was in Wyoming, I started to notice a trend that everybody's skin in this community was suffering from the extreme climate. So women would come into my beauty stores. I did not have my own skin care line. At that time I was selling other skincare lines, like the best in the business and they would say to me, Kendra my skin is so dry or I can't get rid of these sunspots. Like this hyperpigmentation is really bothering me.

And at the same time, I realized that my own skin had changed when I moved from New York City to the mountains. You know, you're at 6200 ft elevation right now, you're really close to the sun. There's little to no humidity. So I started to see these changes, not only in my own skin, but I was seen the clients and the women in my community very unhappy with the way that their skin locked. And it actually was an accident how I stumbled across these wild plants. I was getting a lot of returns in the store for the skin care lines that I was selling. I would sell a moisturizer and they would come back and say this didn't work. What else do you have? And I was sitting in my backyard one day thinking that the stores are going to go out of business because I was having such a high rate of returns and they started to look at the plants because I'm like pondering this problem and like I always find nature to be very problem solution.

Like I always find my answers when I'm in nature, whether it's taking a walk, sit in my backyard. So I'm sitting in my backyard looking at these plants and Jackson hole looks like a painting. I mean it is, there are just so many species of flora and gorgeous like grasses and flowers and it's just bright and colorful. And I thought what is growing here And how of these plants found a way to adapt and flourish in this environment that is so abrasive to my skin and my clients skin and that started the whole wild plants. It was just a mistake. I was just sitting in, you know, my backyard slash forest looking around thinking we're dry, we're suffering. These plants are hydrated, They found a way, how can I put these two things together here. And as a beauty expert to paint the picture, were you kind of like, oh, I'm just going to pick this flower, this wildflower and do what with it?

Like what actually what actually happens? Like how do you pick a flower and then see if it does something to your skin? What a great question, I'm not there, I don't get it. There's a lot of points in between there. There's a lot of things happening. Yeah, between those two things. So I was looking at the flowers. My first thing was what's growing here. I just have to understand that first. So it all started with research. So my skin looks horrible. My clients skin looks horrible. The plants are beautiful, the plants look great. What's growing here? Do I recognize anything that I'm looking at? So I started to research, quickly found that what was growing in my backyard. As I'm sitting trying to solve this problem is ingredients like Arnica borage, sage, calendula lightbulb. These are skincare ingredients. I had recognized them as skincare ingredients from my time working in the beauty industry because I had used products with all of these ingredients. The difference being that I was sitting in a forest of them growing wild in their own natural environment.

And I thought now this is interesting because when something grows wild, it has to condition itself to the elements in order to survive. And could there be something more potent and powerful about these wild plants? Then something that's farmed or comes in a powder form from a lap. So I started to become obsessed with wild the fact that they were in skincare ingredients as and has anyone ever put wild plants into a product. Um so then it just like I started off just like Googling a few things like a little bit of research and then I found this concept called wild crafting. Wild crafting is when you harvest a plant from its natural growth environment, sustainably and respectfully. We don't kill the plants. It's kind of like you prune them. But the difference is you allow the plant to grow uninterrupted. Like we want the plan to have to learn how to hold its rain for two months.

We don't feed these plants, we don't shade them from the sun, we want them to bake, we want them to go through that natural process of figuring it out. We don't put wire fences around them so the animals don't eat that. We want them constantly getting nibbled on by the local wildlife. Like we want them to have all these challenges because we believe that yields a very resilient and potent plant. And then the question was, what's that going to do when you put it topically on your skin. Are we going to see results pushed a little bit further and now we're gonna be able to innovate here. So that's how it all came about is first finding the plans, then trying to figure out what their properties were. And then I had to figure out how to put them into skincare, which was the biggest challenge that I faced at the time. And how do you put them into skincare in simple terms. So in simple terms, you need a really good manufacturing partner. Um, I knew the only thing I was cooking on my stove at the present moment at that moment was mac and cheese and maybe like a super or two.

So I had no idea how to make a skin care cream. Like I just, you need a lab. You need a pristine environment. You need everything has to be done extremely professionally because you're dealing with skin and that people are putting this stuff on their face. So I wasn't about to like, I wish I had the talent to figure out how to do it on my own. I did not. So I started calling around to some contract manufacturers who I know we're in the cosmetic space and I said, hey, look like I have this idea. I want to write a skincare formula and I want to bring you my own plants to put inside of it. So about 19 of them hung up on me. They told me that not possible. Um, I heard no a lot. And you know, I was working in the stores. So I was doing it like while the stores were dead. I was making all these calls. So I just kept going because I had time I heard 19 nose and on about my 20th call I just got a lucky break.

One of the manufacturers, like the owner was walking by the phone and I called at the moment. He picked up the phone and he never picks up the phone. But I said, look, I have this like really interesting idea. I want to mix some of these wild plants into a formula. And he said, this isn't the way we do it. But I'm interested bring me your plants. I want to see, I want to see what they can do and God. And that's, that's how it happens. And so did you go out and pick some plants and take them into his office and be like, hey, I picked this from my backyard. You know what this actually reminds me of? It sounds a lot like how you make gin. You go and you pick the botanical, like in the like truest most simple form. Not obviously like whatever big gin brand is doing, but like the small boutique gin brands is what they do, right? They harvest their juniper berries and things from the ground and make a potion out of it. Happy potion. It's not dissimilar. I mean that's exactly what I did. I remember the first time I did it.

Um I found a few local experts. There are some farmers, botanist, some people here that I worked with because it was a new concept to me, the concept wild crafting has been around forever. But to me it was new and I needed somebody to teach me how to do it. So I found some local resources that taught me how to do it. And I remember I took a pillow case. I had a pillowcase from my kids bed. It was just a white pillowcase and it went into my property and I started to harvest, you know, some of these plants and I filled up a pillowcase and that's how we made our first proud I'm wondering about because it's a sustainable product where you are harvesting by hand. Yet on the flip side of the coin, the beauty industry requires a certain amount of minimums and all that kind of stuff. How were you able to get enough of the botanicals to actually create a batch that they would allow or did they kind of lower their minimums to allow you to do a smaller batch at that time. That's a good question. So the answer to that is as follows, the wild crafted plants that we use.

That's kind of our proprietary secret sauce. You don't need a lot of them. They are very concentrated. They are very potent. So the first point I'd like to make is a little bit goes a long way. The second point I would like to make is that these products are made up of everything else that's in the skin care industry. So in a bottle of our cream are melt moisturizer for example, we have Skway lanes vitamin C. Sarah minds the base of the formula. The majority of the formula is made up of great, beautiful natural ingredients that are very, very effective after we make all of those together. The plants are like our secret sauce. It's like our barbecue sauce. So it's like you know, I don't vegetarians out there, let's not talk about meat. But you know it's just like it's kind of like our seasoning, it's our special seasoning that we are put on at the end of the formulation process to push the results of the products just a little bit further than they might go with everything else.

But we're using all of the same ingredients that everyone's using. I mean I can't grow like H. A. S. And B. H. A. S in my backyard at Jackson hole. Like they don't grow naturally. I love papaya and pomegranate as a very effective fruit enzymes for exfoliation. Try growing papaya in Jackson hole Wyoming. Like it's just not gonna happen. So I do source ingredients from my manufacturers and suppliers that I believe in. And I love and then the plants are kind of just our special stamp, you know at the end, it's like our final signature touch to everything so divine. I love it. I always like to ask about the capital piece of the puzzle. Obviously you already had your store but just focusing specifically on the beauty stuff. How much capital did you have to put in in the beginning to place that first order and get yourself set up to build the beauty brand. That's another great point. We decided we set aside a budget and I think we started with like $100,000, that was maybe a little bit over that, you know, whatever we were willing to spend in um and invest up front in the formulation process.

What I can tell you is I approach this in a unique way because I had come from the beauty industry and I knew it was very difficult. I don't want to say difficult because I don't want to give it a negative connotation, but it was a challenge to get distribution. Um the way that I started my brand is I actually pitched the concept and the products to some beauty retailers before I went into production because I was nervous that people might not understand or see my vision And if I spent $100,000 to get it started and then nobody wanted to support it or give me a platform for growth, I would be nowhere because the beauty stores were small. Like they couldn't, they couldn't sell, you know, a lot of products. So I actually found two national retailers. So I pitched my concept and my formulas before I produced and that to me was kind of a safety net, um, financially to know that going into this, I was going to have the support of some very big names in the, in the beauty retail space.

That is such an interesting approach. And how does it actually work? Did you have to like get them to sign an NDA or how did you approach them? Kind of thinking, oh, they're not going to take your idea and just do it themselves for example. Um, well, I, I just trusted them. The first retail ary that signed on with the line was credo beauty. Somebody had introduced me to Anne Jackson who is the co founder. She is an amazing visionary, she just understands, you know, where this industry is going and I think she was quite ahead of her time in that regard. And I flew out to san Francisco and I had a meeting with her and I had a little sample pot that my manufacturer had given to me and I had a piece of paper with like the concept, the brand logo, you know, the mission statement, what we believed in and I sat in front of her and I said, this is the future of clean natural skin care. Like I think this is how we're going to innovate is finding these wild plants and utilizing these wild crafted ingredients because they have tremendous powers, um insane potency and it's sustainable.

So that's you know how, how I did it and everyone's, everyone could approach things differently. But I knew that credo in particular was looking to bring good products to their community and I didn't think that you know there was any risk of them trying to do this and it's very hard to do. I mean there's a high barrier to entry, you know, to wild craft. Yeah, absolutely. That's so interesting. So you are able to get you know these by in essentially from a major major retailers and then place your first order kind of considering what you could start selling ddc and through your beauty store and what they would stock nationwide. Exactly. What were your customers saying during this whole process? Were you telling them about what you are up to? Oh yes, they were my, they were my testers like they were there, they were the people that gave me the confidence to go to a retailer. So I got the little sample pots. Um I wrote the formula for mount moisturizer. We brought our print plants to this lab.

They gave me the little sample pots and my next step was giving them out in the stores because I had to make sure that this worked. I was seeing the results of my own skin. But I was like, I have to test this concept far and wide. So I was giving them to all the customers in my stores for free. Um just dropping them in their shopping bags and I knew I was onto something, you know, a few days after that because women were just like stopping me in the grocery store and on my yoga mat and my child's playground, they were like grabbing me by the shoulders like Kendra what was in that pot, like my skin feels amazing. It looks so good. Like I'm getting comments from my friends like what was it? And I always just found it ironic that it was literally the plants that people in the local community were like stepping over with going on their hikes and like walking their dogs. But once I knew it worked in the mountains, I was like, okay if this works on people who have skin that has more needs like what's it gonna do at sea level.

So then I started sending the pots out to Miami and new york and Los Angeles and People who lived in a more forgiving climate and same results. Like people were just like this, this stuff is amazing. And that gave me the confidence to go to the retailers. So by the time we launched credo, which was in September of 2018 everybody in my store already knew the line was like coming and they were so excited for it. So I had a lot of support locally, which I'm very grateful for such a true community feeling, I'm sure. How did the launch go? Uh it went really well better than I had expected, You know, it was we launched Credo first and then a few weeks later we launched goop. Both have been fantastic partners of mine from the very, very beginning, but it started off where you know, first you get the pio and you're like, oh my gosh, they like wrote a piano, like we're selling products to them and then like you get the next one because they sold out and then you get the next one because they sold out of those and then you're like, okay, we're like, this is, this is starting to move.

I went into it with very low expectations to be honest, because I just didn't want to be disappointed. I knew what I had was special, but I just didn't know how it resonates and the concept of wild crafting, not nobody knows, but it is, you know, like people don't really education needs that it's a lot of education, you know, that we're trying to do. So not only am I trying to break into a saturated space, you know, I'm trying to educate our community on a concept that they don't know about yet that they might not quite understand until we teach them. So we have a lot of heavy lifting to do, you know, with, with every product that we, that we put out there. So that's so interesting. how is your marketing evolved, like how do you do that education piece and how do you get people on board with what you're doing and to understand and then to actually go through with the purchase. Uh it's a lot of a lot of a lot of communication, a lot of storytelling, you know in the sense that we we put a lot of imagery out there.

So we always are showing the plants where we're crafting, we're showing pictures of Jackson Hole, we're educating to the different species that we're using. We are very visual brand. So the marketing started with just me, I was doing everything and then our first full time hire was a creative director because I knew that I had to show our customer where we were doing this what we were using and how we were doing that. Like that's the biggest piece of education, like I could write it on a piece of paper but unless they can go to our website and see the wild crafting process and understand the benefits behind these natural wild plants. We weren't going to get anywhere. So we invested up front in a creative director who could really help guide the window, you know to Jackson Hole. Like we wanted it to be like this window where they come into the brand and they we transport them into this like forest in the middle of the mountains and their wild crafting with us and we're showing them how to do it.

So um it evolved pretty quickly after that but I knew that I needed more than just you know, a piece of paper, you know, trying to explain what this was when you look back over the last few years since hiring the creative director for example, what were the key moments of growth driven from um the key moments of growth I think for us in particular were really just expanding our retail partnerships and our distribution. You know, we started with Credo and Goop and then next after that I believe it was Q. V. C. Um and then Blue Mercury and you know retailers are fantastic because they were giving us a platform to help educate and tell our story and use our voices. Um I did not have the benefit of having a large like social media following. I didn't have a built in community when I started. So those retail partnerships have been very important and meaningful for us in um seeing the growth because the more people we have the opportunity to touch and educate about these wild plants and what they due to your skin, the more sales that you start to see come through and the higher the numbers and then the community just grows and people start talking and it's been very organic but I do attribute you know some of those retail partnerships to our success up into this point.

Amazing. I read that your now stocked also in Sephora and that's something I wanted to ask you about in terms of a lot of people who are listening to the show, who are perhaps building a beauty brand, that's you know, one of the major retailers on the list, the dream list kind of thing. How do you actually go about getting in Sephora? What's the process? So the process is um sending them your products um first and foremost, you know, getting your hands into the right merchants and then I think it's just um a waiting game, you know, you have to be really patient with this process. A retailer like Sephora, they have a lot of brands coming to them um all of the time and I would love to say it was this magical story where I sent them my products and the next day they called and said, we love you come, but it doesn't, you know, it didn't work out that way. Not for me, it was, it was a long time, you know, there's a lot of back and forth, there was questions, there was communication. Um as I was creating new things, I was like running ideas by them, like I think I'm gonna be this.

So we had a relationship for a little while before the brand actually launched in there and it just takes time, you know, it's, it's not, it doesn't happen right away and nothing good should happen quickly in my mind. So, so true. How long are we talking here? I probably, I knew right from the beginning that they would be a great retail partner for me. So maybe we started talking about a year and a half before the brand actually launched before things really started moving forward with them. But yeah, it was back and forth and just building that relationship and you know, telling them about what we're doing and whites why it's different. I think that's a really important piece of this. It's like, there's a lot of people who, you know, have a product idea and they're just like, you know, I'm going to do this, but I think you have to sit back first and just evaluate what the space looks like and figure out what you're doing that's is a little bit different or stands out from the crowd.

And for me, you know, it was these wild plants because I just fell in love with them and nobody else was using them. But I don't think I would be down that path if I didn't find these plants. You know, like I found something that I thought was pretty groundbreaking and that's what motivated me to keep going. Yeah. It sounds like you had that true conviction and you knew the power, You knew the story, you knew why it was so important and what made your product truly different and unique. What are the typical orders? Like what's the first order, like look like with someone like Sephora or a major retailer, are we talking like hundreds? Are we talking thousands? We're talking hundreds of thousands, like what does it look like to go into one of those stores? Um It just depends, you know, I think that with retailers in general, I think when they bring in new lines, they have a very strategic plan to roll it out in the right way, That makes sense, not only for them, but also for the brand and then they take a lot of things into consideration.

Um like how big is the brand, where's the brand awareness at? I think that all of my partnerships have been really great with doing this like slow organic growth versus just out of the gate, you know, writing these huge orders, knowing that I didn't really have the brand awareness for the built in community to move through them. So for me, in all cases it's like a starter, starting small and then they grow bigger and bigger over time, totally. Are there any learnings or kind of things that you can share if you think about retail distribution in general? What are the kind of frustrations or challenges that you face scaling a beauty brand into retail? Uh scaling a beauty brand into retail? Um Well This has been a really interesting year um for retail in general, I think that, you know, as a society community, we're just all very distracted. So what's been going on in the past 12 months has been a little bit outside of the norm in a sense, I think we've all had to pivot and find ways to adapt to survive.

It's been a wild ride pre pandemic. I think when you are starting to retail partnership, you have to go into it knowing that you're going to have to do a lot of hard work to support that retailer. And what I mean by that is it's a two way ST it's a dual relationship, it's not dissimilar from the personal relationships that we have in life to be successful in a relationship, both sides have to work hard at it. And, you know, sometimes, I think there is this perception that you go into retailers, like once the retailer says yes, you ship them your products and then they just do everything for you and your good, and that's not at all the way that it goes. Um you have to be constantly, they're getting their back, making sure they have the assets that they need, the gratis that they need for their staff, that there, all the representatives associated with that retailer understand the brand story. I've used the products, the education and there's a lot of money and time that goes into that, because if you just ship somebody your products and sit back and wait for the numbers to come in, you're gonna be waiting a really, really long time.

So in terms of a challenge, it's just kind of getting organized upfront, understanding the retailer, understanding what they need in terms of support before you start that relationship. So you're guaranteed success once you go into it and it might not be the right time for you. You know, like if there's, if there's a big retailer that needs support and that support requires resources, it's better to wait until you can do it right than to rush into something and not be successful at it. So I think for me it was just like a lot of upfront planning. Like every retailer I opened, I sat down with a budget, what do they need for me? How am I going to deliver it? Is it going to be enough, is it going to work? That's super interesting, great insight. Thank you so much. So if we think about after this crazy year that we've had, where is the business today and what does the future look like for you? What fun things can you shout about? Uh we're so excited.

So we just hired a president, which was a really, really big step for us. Uh congratulations, thank you. She is fantastic. Um, she is a team builder nurturer and she understands how to grow a brand. So that's going to be really, really great for us just to have another, you know, power player around the table with are already fantastic team, you know, to help us grow. Um we have found some new plants that we're gonna be introducing into skincare this year, we have to really exciting launches. One is in two weeks from now and the other is in september, but I can tell you that some of the active ingredients have never been used for in a skincare formula. So I'm really excited to be able to innovate in that regard and And introduce some of these wild plants that we find so amazing to our customers, but most importantly is the charitable angle that we have committed to since we launched.

So we are a member of 1% for the planet, which means that 1% of every product sale, Not profit, every sale goes back to our local national park. So when you join 1%, then you can pick a charity within their umbrella. And we chose the Grand Teton National Park Foundation because it is a very important ecosystem to the environment that I live in in Jackson Hole and it um was damaged many years ago by the settlers when they came in, they ripped up some of the, the natural plants to plant smooth broom for their cattle. So the national park has hundreds of acres, more than that actually thousands that have been destroyed by humans. And we have committed to our restoration effort in that local national park. And to date, we have helped restore nearly 900 acres of land based on our contribution to the park.

So for me, like when I think of the future, like as the brand grows, I want to make sure that we're growing um what we're doing and giving back to the environment because that ecosystem fuels the plants, the wild plants that I wild craft on my private land, like it's all connected. So I have to make sure that it stays intact and healthy. And I think that was our biggest accomplishment to date is to be able to know that we're really making a difference in our local community by restoring these national parks. So that's kind of like our thing as national parks. That is so cool. I love that. You also just said something that I was curious about, You said private land, are you just wild crafting from your property and not elsewhere. Oh my gosh, it has to be, you know, you can't just like go out. No, it's um yeah, we do it, we do it on private land and it's it's interesting as the brand grows, you know, we're getting more land and we're just kind of scene, but like I said again, it's not, it doesn't take a lot of these plants.

Um and it's we're not like clearing forests or anything. It's like, it's almost like pruning like if there's any gardeners that are listening, it's like take little tiny pieces and you just continue to move on. So the overall plant is left intact and healthy and it has the ability to regenerate and regrow, love it. What is your key piece of advice for women who have a big idea and want to start their own business. My key piece of advice is do not give up. If you believe in it and you know that it is something that makes you happy and makes you feel good, chances are, it's gonna make others feel good as well. They say solve your own problem. Like that's like what is the biggest problem that you have in life if you can find a solution to that? And that is what set me down this path. You know, my skin was falling apart, my customer skin was falling apart and it's like, I need to figure out what to do about this, especially in the beginning, it is, you will hear no a lot, I still hear no a lot.

I mean every day I get knocked down and you just have to get back up if you believe in it and there's passion and there's dr let that be your motivation and it will happen. It will, it really, really will. Um but that's my biggest piece of advice is just keep going and when I started, I just did a little bit at a time, you know, I was a mother of two young kids, you know, under two years old at the time, I didn't have a lot of free time, but I just chipped away like one day I would call contract manufacturers the next day I would figure out, you know what my jars we're going to look like and it's just like every day you just have that to do list and just knock off a little bit at a time and be proud of yourself and be kind to yourself and don't worry when you, when you hear no because it's actually you have to hear no a lot before you hear yes. So every now is getting you closer to the yes, Love It. We actually speak a lot on the show about, you know that one The compound effective just doing that one tiny thing.

Just aim for 1% every day and in one year's time, two years time, five years time you're going to look back and be like, yeah, it was just a series of a million tiny 1% steps. That is, it's so true. A big believer in it. I cannot imagine starting and saying, I have to do all of this in like four days. Like it would just, it's too much for anybody. So a little bit at a time I think is, is the way to go and you know, Rome wasn't built in a day. So they say, so just takes a little chipping away, chipping away chip chip at the end of every episode I ask a series of six quick questions, some of it we might have covered. But I ask it anyway. Question number one is what's your why? Why do you do what you do? I do this because I want to make a better environment for myself, for my Children. And because I also believe in the power of really, really good skincare and I want people to be happy when they look in the mirror and they use a product. I want them to feel that joy.

Mhm Amazing. Question number two is what do you think has been the number one marketing moment that made the business pop? The # one Marketing Moment was probably when we were featured on the Today show as a three month old brand. We were our website crashed the same afternoon. And I mean it was it was good. But that's when we were kind of off to the races I think is getting, you know, a really great platform like that. Mm hmm. Yeah, for sure. Holy molly Question # three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What books are you listening to podcasts? Things that you're subscribing to that others would benefit from knowing about? Well yours of course number. Congratulations on 100,000 downloads. What an accomplishment. Thank you To be honest to get smarter. I really just go into nature. I just need quiet. That is the most important thing for me because sometimes I feel overstimulated during the day and sometimes too much information just sets me off into many different paths.

But in addition to listening to your podcast, there are a few others that I support. I've been playing around on clubhouse a little bit. I'm trying to like I jump in and out, you know, So I do think there's definitely a lot of great platforms that have tons of education out there. But for me, I have my best ideas and thought processes, but I'm alone in nature. Mm feeding the grass totally. It's 100% true from or in the sand. Yes. either not in the snow. Well, that's what we have a lot of here. So usually my feet are in this now, but just that fresh air, it's, I find it to be so mentally stimulating to my brain. Absolutely. Question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM or PM rituals and habits that keep you feeling happy and motivated and successful? Um, am I need to do a workout every single morning? I have to work out in the morning. I can just tell my whole mojo is off throughout the day if I don't work out right now.

I'm doing this amazing at home workout. It's called Bond. It's like B A N D E and they have online classes and you can pick yoga or a hit class or Pilates and you can just like go to for live instruction. So I love that. Um I haven't been in the studio since the pandemic but I feel like that's giving me what I need um the end of the day, my PM ritual besides a glass of wine, which I love, my glass of wine is snuggles with my kids, I have a three and five year old boys and no matter how bad the day was or how stressful it was, whatever problems that came up when I get a chance to just put them in my lap and squeeze them at the end of the day, I feel completely rejuvenated and everything just all the bad goes away. I love a good squeeze. It's important. It is important Question # five, I usually ask the question if you only have $1,000 left in your business bank account. But I was talking to a listener to the other day named Larissa and she gave me a really great tip that maybe I should change the question to.

What would you do if you received a $10,000 grant. So that is the new question, what would you do if you received a $10,000 grant? Well $10,000 isn't enough to hire a new team member, but I think a really important part of building a business is getting the right people around you for sure. I mean the people build the brand, not the founder, the founder can only take it so far and then it's getting the right talent, so maybe I would pay, you know, A couple weeks salary with it, but I would try to get more people to help me educate and tell this story with a $10,000 grant. But yeah, that's um, it's a really good question and yeah, there's just so many things that you could do. Absolutely. And last question question # six is how do you deal with failure? What's your mindset when things don't go to plan? That happens all the time? I feel constantly that I'm struggling, you know, it is, it's really hard to do this and how I deal with failure is I go back and I remind myself of how far we've come since the beginning and I just try to talk myself like off the ledge by saying, look like this didn't work out the way that you wanted it to, it's not the answer that you wanted to hear, but let's just take a moment to revisit the winds that we've had and I just remind myself how far we've come from an idea to a concept to a product to actually being a player in this space right now.

So that's, that's how I deal with it is, I think of all the good things and I move on to the next get back up, you just have to get back up amazing Kendra, thank you so much for taking the time to be on female startup club today and share your journey and what you're creating out in Wyoming sounds heavenly. I'm so motivated by what you're doing and I think it's so great for everybody to have a place where they can, I draw inspiration from and it's it's a really, really important thing for us all just to support each other and share our stories because it's possible for everybody. Um so, congratulations on what you've built and establishing such a loyal community. I'm a big fan and I can't thank you enough for having me. Oh wow, we thank you so much. Going to make me blush. I love that. Hey, it's doom here. Thanks for listening to this episode of the female startup club podcast.

If you're a fan of the show, I'd recommend checking out female startup club dot com, where you can subscribe to our newsletter and learn more about our D I. Y. Course the ads, M. B. A. I also truly appreciate each and every review that comes our way. It might seem like such a small thing, but reviews help others find us. So please do jump on and subscribe rate and review the show. And finally, if you know someone who would benefit from hearing these inspiring stories, please do share it with them and empower the women in your network. See you soon mm