Oh my goodness, it is 2022, I cannot believe it and I don't know about you but january is a time for me when I'm feeling so invigorated for the year ahead. I'm full of energy, new goals, dreams, excitement, It's a time for me to learn new things and set my intentions for the rest of the year. And with that in mind, I love to dig into new podcasts like success story hosted by scott D Clary and brought to you by the hubspot podcast network. This is truly one of the most useful podcasts in the world featuring conversations about sales, marketing business and startups with super successful people in the industry. So if you're in the mood for some fresh Energy, I would highly recommend starting with episode 189 called How to build an iconic brand with Joe Foster, the founder and Ceo of Reebok. It is a pretty wild ride. You can listen to success story wherever you get your podcasts. This is Vivian Vial for female startup club.

Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the female startup club podcast, I'm your host machine and joining me on the show. Today is Vivian Vile, the ceo and founder of fine jewelry brand joie de vive after losing her first business through a relationship breakdown, Vivian got straight back in the game, working on her second and most cherished jewelry brand, joie de vive. After learning about the jewelry industry and the dark side of golden diamonds, she set her intentions to create a brand full of transparency, being completely ethical and sustainable. She invested $1 million dollars of her own money and started creating her new venture. But what she didn't expect was to launch and we met with zero sales, absolutely zero. She shares the real heartache of going through major ups and downs in business and how she came out the other side sparkling. We also talk about a company that's been critical in her success way flyer. They offer revenue based growth financing for e commerce brands of up to $500,000 to support inventory purchases and scaling through performance marketing without taking any equity.

It's a great solution for brands who are doing well and need cash injections on an ongoing basis. This is Vivian for female startup club instead of our regular ad spot today, I'm taking this opportunity to touch base about female startup club's new course, the ads, N. B. A. It's the best course on the internet for women to master the technical skills needed to scale profitable facebook and instagram ads in partnership with leading performance marketing agency, amplifier. Through the course, you will learn the exact strategies used by amplifier agency to create and scale your facebook and instagram ads from scratch. These guys have collectively spent over $100 million 15 years and are sharing the exact strategies they're using on their clients. Today, We currently have an introductory offer on the site for $149 and $30 from every sale is donated towards girls, secondary education through the Malala Fund.

You can find all the info in the show notes or via the female startup club website. Let's jump into this episode. Female startup club precincts. Yeah, yeah, of course. Thank you so much for having me. I mean you were amazing. Your show is amazing. So I'm really excited to be here. Thank you. Thank you so much. Alrighty. So you want to know a little bit of my background how I got started? Yeah. So while my background has been basically for the last uh, 13 years in the art industry, so I was the ceo of a company that I started lunch and grew with my ex partner and ex husband, which is called storms publishing. And basically, uh, my ex husband is one of the biggest, well he is the biggest coast glass sculpture in the world today, but it wasn't like that always. So when we first met, I was 22 years old, I came from Brazil.

I was a big actress in Brazil and I came to the States to actually to go to film school and we met, you know, started dating, I got pregnant and when I really got in touch with his art, I just fell in love with it and I was like, I'm gonna do this. Um, this guy is a genius. I need to uh take over his career and make him who he is supposed to be. So I kind of like transition from being that The artist, the actress, they had all those people behind me, you know building me to being the person that was behind him, building him and that's what I did for, you know, from when I was 22 to when I was about 30 years old. So you know, eight years in a few years after we got married, we had our son Jack became the biggest code class sculpture in the world. We had a little tragic another little, we had, we had some really hard things that happened in between where he lost his eyesight who had to redo the whole business and stuff, but we came up on top and uh a few years later um we we went through a divorce.

So when that was happening um I was the ceo of the company, the company was striving and we were you know, doing millions and millions of dollars which we never thought was possible because he's one artist, right? It's like scaling like that for one artist, artist makes art work. It's very hard. And then when we started that divorce process, I decided that I wanted to create a jewelry line that would feature his work because we had a video that had gotten about 100 and 20 million views on insider about his work and we were flooded with people from all over the world wanting to buy the work, but they couldn't afford it because his artwork starts at $15,000. So I wanted to make a jewelry line that would feature his work and it took about three years of development. So I took all of his large crystal sculptures and made them into little stones and created deep Storm signed jewelry, which was my previous jewelry line.

Uh It was a lot of work, put a lot of money into it, a lot of tears too. And uh we launched the day we launched the jewelry line, We sold $170,000 in seven hours. Oh my gosh, whoa! It was insane. And we did not have any digital marketing, like, like up to that point, everything that I did was um we had a big presence online and had a massive facebook page and instagram page. But everything that we did wasn't to sell anything online, everything was offline because we're talking about selling $15,000 $100,000, pieces of artwork. And then next thing you know, we launched this website which wasn't even like the best thing that you could see out there. And we exploded with no marketing at all. It was basically people that were On our social media waiting for something that they could afford from his work and they just saw that now we had items, they started $700 instead of $15,000 and we just, we just exploded.

So this storm CNN generated amazing for the first year. But there was one problem. Um we were going through a divorce. So you know like if, I don't know if you ever went through anything like that, but when you're going through a divorce, There is a very crucial two years after that divorce where everything can happen and some really bad things happen because there's, there's so much changes and we were friends and then we aren't friends anymore. And so at some point like he didn't want to make the stones for me anymore. I didn't want to make the glass for me anymore for me to make my jewelry life. So I had to make a decision and I was going through as a woman, as a woman, as an entrepreneur, as you know, a mom and dealing with all of that. I had to figure something out for myself, where I would find my happiness because I just, at some point I just wasn't happy.

I was just fighting everyone everything around me and not living fully, literally, I just wasn't, I was struggling in every aspect of my life. My jewelry line was selling but it was a fight, Everything was a fight. So one day I remember sitting in my dining table and then thinking to myself, I just can't do this. I have, I know I have the strength to be able to create something else. I know I'm able to I launched this line was a success. I launched Jack was a success. It's time that I invest on myself now. I invest on something that I create that I believe in that has my values and go with that. And that's when I decided that I was going to create a neutral reliant and everybody was like, you're crazy, how are you going to do that? You know, everything that you've done so far was with Jack and how are you going to launch a different line?

And everybody's making jewelry? Like, what do you want to make? How are you going to do it? And I'm like, well, I'm gonna do it. I'm just gonna figure it out. And that's how joie de Vive was born. Um I wanted to create a different jewelry line that had all the sustainable ideals that I had with Viv storms, find jewelry. But I wanted to dig in deeper. I wanted to learn more about the jewelry industry because again, I got into jewelry, kind of like, I just like, it just happened, right? I wanted to make jewelry with that product and it kind of happened, but I didn't really have the knowledge of um everything that I was doing, how I was doing what I was doing and how I could make that better. So that's when I dug deep into the sustainable practices of making jewelry and what I really wanted to make my jewelry to be so joie de vive was created to be a jewelry line for the modern woman. It's meant to be for all the women that really care what they are wearing, what they're putting in their body.

For the woman that cares that you know what if, I don't know exactly where this diamond is coming from, it could have been mined by a child and I'm not okay with a child working anywhere really to mind this diamond. If I don't know if this gold is dirty gold or not, which most of the gold out there is that the gold, it doesn't matter where it comes from. Like here in America, we have, we have minds that have devastated communities in Utah is an example and there's no such thing as you know, klingle gold, so over go this recycled and we wanted to create an experience that is uh where we want to deliver affordable jewelry that is sustainable. That is true. That's traceable. And that makes people proud to say, you know what, I know where the diamond came from because it was created in a lab and then we, it was also a little bit of a, a challenge for me because a lot of grown diamonds are so new and a lot of people have this misconception and lab grown diamonds ours or corneas or they're not real or this, that and I kind of create a mission where I'm going to bring this message out there that the only difference between a lot of growing diamonds and a natural diamond truly is only the origin, it's the exact same thing.

It's physically chemically and optically identical and a lot of people don't know that. So it's important to make people understand that and I feel like that Today in 2020 people are much more aware of what they eat, what they wear, where things are coming from and how you can make a difference by choosing the right things. So that's kind of like how what would have happened. Um it sounded amazing and it is amazing. But when we first launched, we were like, okay, it's gonna be like vince storms, we're going to lunch it, we're gonna sell $200,000 in the first day. Great. I put a million dollars into a lot of it, wow, okay. This time I was like, I'm not going to spare a diamond and and that was from my pocket, like From my bank account, I didn't take loans, anything. I put $1 million Joie de Vivre. I didn't spare a dime. We did everything, the website, beautiful. All of the agencies, everybody that works with us, like everything is, you know, planned to be perfect.

We had like a soft launch in October of last year, 2019 and there were no sales, no sales on the first day, no sales on the second day, no sales on the third day or on the second month, oh my God, so what are you doing at this point? Well here I am with you know about a million dollars of inventory sitting in my safe, an amazing team, an unbelievable world class e commerce team Uh that I'm paying and I have an overhead of about $150,000 a month, and and and the money is running out and I don't have anywhere else to get money from. Um and I'm like, and everybody is telling me no Vivian, it's a brand new jewel reliance, a new audience, we get, we need time and time and I'm like, okay, I don't have time. So I literally kept pumping money into usually because I truly, truly, truly believed in everything that I was doing and it's it's literally my baby, it was the company that liberated me, but I truly feel that there was a lot to do with mindset in this one because everybody would come to me and say there's no way you're going to be able to thrive without your ex husband, there's no way you guys built everything together you guys build and I'm like no, no, no, I was the person that was behind and behind him building him, so why can I not thrive?

And I, I feel like that I started believing that and somehow and put it out there and it became my reality. So in december, you know, like I used to sell $20,000 in a day december, that was always sold for christmas month $20,000. And we're like, you know, I look at my C. 00. And I'm like, we're gonna have to figure this out because there's no more credit cards, there's no more lines of credit, there's no more money to draw from. And in january we're like, ok, we're throwing the towel, there's no more money, we can't, there's nothing more we can do at this point. And and I did through in the tower in january, I kind of like turn off and let everybody go, I turn off everything related to joie de vive because I just couldn't afford it anymore. And I opened a new company um you know, I had an opportunity of going to the financial business, you know, vertical, which I had nothing to do but because of my experience as being a ceo or a CFO and everything that I've built, I went into the financial business vertical and in two months we were killing it, we're doing like amazing.

So March comes along, we're doing amazing. And I'm like, okay, great, so let's just Launch a 50% sale for Joie de Vive, sell everything off that we have and just go do this because it's doing amazing and it was like, okay here here, I am giving away my child, right, which is what I love doing? But I mean I can't afford the child. So I'm going to have to do it. So we launched in this was crazy. And when, when people talk about like glow of attraction and all these things and that's when you're like, oh my God, this thing is real because that's when I let go. I said it's over. I'm, I'm letting this go and I put a sale on the website for 50% off. And in the first month we were doing no ads were doing no marketing, nothing. We just sensitive emails or email list. We sold $50,000 within a week and a half with no marketing spend. And I was like, Whoa, hold on a minute, what what's happening?

We found the audience like we had not sold all that amount in over since we started then it may comes along. And then we started selling $20,000 a day. What do you think changed my mindset? I feel like not just that, but I feel, you know, we were in the middle of Coronavirus, everybody's home. Uh now we're putting this amazing jewelry lying out there at 50% off. All of my, all of my pieces of jewelry are made out of 18 Karat gold, premium quality diamonds. Now it's 50% off. And and I think there's a lot to do with the mindset. I was like, Okay, I'm ready to just get rid of it. But the quality of what we have the company that what that we have is so amazing that like why are you getting rid of it? So basically I started seeing the sales coming in and my my financial company is exploding.

I'm working like a crazy person is doing great and I'm like okay, hold on a minute, what am I gonna do now? And we, that month we sold out all of our inventory in two weeks in May, we have no inventory. So I look, I look at Adrian and say, hold on a minute, Adriana, we don't have employees anymore. We don't have agencies working with it with us. I am running facebook ads myself. I like a lot of it. I mean I know a lot of time a CMO. So I know a lot of marketing and I manage a lot of it. But I always had agencies doing the work for me rather than me running those ads and I know that's your expertise. But you know, also the little things like how to do it, it's a little bit more challenging than overseeing everything. And and for me it was like there's no way I'm giving away my child, like I don't care how much money I'm making with my financial company, I'm gonna have to figure this out and that's when I started bringing everybody back.

So I was like Audrey We sold over, I think $280,000 in May. And we don't didn't have inventory for half of the month. So basically, um I think on the 12 of the 14th we started doing pre orders. So now you have to buy this this jewelry and wait 6-8 weeks to receive it and people were buying it like nobody's business. And then we kept doing it and and then I brought everybody back. I brought my pr company, I brought my amazing digital marketing agency that just took over. I brought, you know, and then here I am again at $150,000 overhead. But at least now we can justify because we're selling and we're selling it before we actually have the item, which is amazing. It's a good problem to have, but it's a good problem to have. You really weathered the storm. Yeah. So, so now we're dealing with the, you know, the facts that were short on packaging and and we have to produce all the jewelry, we never thought that we would have to produce like so fast and we're dealing with growth issues.

But yeah, so joie de vive is back. It happened over the coronavirus. And when people say, how did you do it in the middle of coronavirus virus? I'm like, I don't know, I think I just needed to go through this really hard time To kind of find myself after everything that I went through as a woman in business, as an entrepreneur. Um as somebody that gave away, you know, 50% of a multi million dollar company, because that's what I did. I gave, I gave away um basically 50% of my company that I built with my ex husband for the right of having that jewelry lying with him. And then that was taken away from me. So I had to I had to go over like getting really down to be able to rebuild myself and liberate myself and find a way to succeed and say, you know what, I don't need a man, I don't need anybody, I need my amazing employees, I need my amazing agencies and I need my amazing partners that will work with me to build and grow this brand and that's where we are and I'm just so happy to be able to talk about it because I never thought it was going to happen.

It was like this storm is never going to end and it has and it's clear outside. So it's amazing. I mean, I can see it on your face, you're absolutely radiating. I can I can see your happiness and I'm so happy for you. I didn't realize all the ups and downs of that story and it's it's certainly one that you've, you've really come out on top and I'm sure there were days where you didn't think that that would happen. Sounds, you know like a really big thing. I want to talk to you about the company that you've used to help scale your business way flyer for anyone that's listening way flyer is a company that funds businesses. They give loans, right? Is it loans? Yeah, they give it it's more like advances uh in advance. Yeah. Yeah. And they don't take any equity, they just take a percentage back. Um And you've basically been using this company to help scale your your inventory, right?

Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about about what it's been like and how it's working? Yeah, they're amazing. These guys. They are, I mean I can't even say good things enough about them. Um when when I found myself in that situation where, okay, so now we have all these pre sales, My whole website is at a 50% off. So that means that my margins are very little. I mean it makes sense if you have a huge amount of sales, right? Because even though if you have a little margin, a small margin, you're still making money, but you have to have a huge amount amount of sales. And you know, I came from a time where we had a lot of that when the money started coming in. So now I'm dealing with having to pay all of the debt and now I have to buy all of this brand new inventory and and all of it. So I found a way flyer and what they do is that they will basically by they will advance you money in exchange for a percentage of your future sales.

Um So I found them and they were able to basically find give me the money for my inventory. And then that way I can buy a lot more inventory upfront. I can have the inventory and needing my business to be able to scale because otherwise I wouldn't be able to do that. And you know, the more we sell, the more capital were able to access. So it's being a key factor on us being able to scale at this point and and they're amazing. They're not a huge company. You know, like other companies like that out there. So there's a difference. I've had problems with companies doing exactly what they do before. That was very hard to deal with Shopify capital for example, because when I went through this transition where I didn't have the product anymore for joie de vive and uh not productive for big storms. And I had to change injuries would've even we had no sales. We had alone with Shopify Capital. And they came after us saying that we violated the agreement and like how did they violated the agreement?

And they said, well you change your product. I said I didn't change my product by choice. I changed my product because the problems was taken from me. I had to create a different product. So it's different when you work with a company like Shopify capital to be able to get this advanced and when you work with a company like way flyer because if you have a much more you have a personal relationship with them, so it's much easier to manage that. And and then going from there. So it's been it's been a pleasure working with them. They have been a key factor for us for sure. Yeah. It sounds amazing. What was the criteria that they look for? Like how do you know if you're eligible to receive something like that? Well they will look into your sales, they, you know, we are on Shopify so they will go into Shopify, they will see uh and their technology is amazing so they will see what you have, what revenue you have coming in. And then they will analyze how much you're spending in marketing and advertising and then they literally have a dashboard which all that information goes into and they create like an analysis on how fast you're growing and that's what they used to analyze how much capital they are going to make it available to you.

And for example, we gotta an advance from them last month and then we're growing so fast that they already gave us another advance and then we'll use that for inventory as well and the next month if we show that growth keeps going, you know, so it's it's something that's amazing for smaller businesses because a lot of times especially going into Q four, I know they were going to triple our sales in Q four And how am I gonna be able to end and I can't do pre sales in Q4 because you're buying for Christmas you need the products now, so how am I gonna be able to buy all of that inventory upfront if I don't have the capital? So having these guys partner with our business is amazing because it's it's that's it it's a partner and they're not taking the equity, they're taking a small fee which is manageable, you know just for giving us that advance and the only payments really that you're giving them is a percentage of your sales which is like basically you're paying when the money is coming in rather than okay you have this big loan payments every month.

Um So yeah I feel like it's a partnership that we have with them rather than you know, somebody giving us alone. Yeah and it definitely feels like not enough people know about this because it just sounds so great. I'm I'm wondering what kind of and it doesn't mean you need to be specific about your numbers but how much money can they loan you like you know glass ceiling kind of stuff I think um I think they do up to 500,000. Yeah wow. Really cool. Really amazing resource. I was so interested to learn about them and I think it's something that more women need to hear about because I've especially had conversations with people who, you know, the biggest struggle is fulfilling, like wholesale orders, for example, and the upfront capital that's needed to continually pump into businesses in fashion and you know, whatever it might be. So it's really interesting. And how are you guys going now? What's happening at the moment with the business? Well, well, we're reworking everything. We ended our 50% off sale because we just couldn't make enough jewelry at that price.

And also because our margins are so low and it's just not sustainable to be able to keep a business that we can't make enough jewelry in the price solo, and we're not making enough to be able to grow the business. So we ended that, but we're as much as we can, we're launching sales to be able to make it more affordable for our clients. And uh, and now we're working on being able to get everything back together. So we have, we're creating amazing relationships with some of the biggest publications that are taking notice on, on Genevieve right now, which is very, very exciting because when I decided to create a sustainable fine jewelry line, I wanted to make something different, something different than anything that's out there. And for example, when you go into direct to consumer lines similar to my line, You know, you're going to find 10 Karat gold, 14 Karat gold, but we only work with 18 carat gold. We wanted to make affordable luxury. Um and I think it's like that in Australia as well. Right, you guys don't have 14, right?

I don't think so. I mean, I'm not familiar with receiving or buying 14 Karat Brazil is like that too. Like I come from Brazil, I've never seen 14 Karat or 10 Karat gold in my life. And then, so when I started making jewelry, I was like, okay, I'm going to make that from my culture gold for me is 18, that's gold. Okay, because 24 is too soft to make gold. But so all of our jewelry is 18 Karat gold. The experience that you get from buying our jewelry is very different than everything else that you can get out there. So we wanted to kind of put our team back together now that things are working and really get that into all the big publications and get most people that or demographic to take notes on our product. So we're working on new collections. We're working on an amazing, amazing, amazing engagement ring collection that's only gonna be done with sustainable lab grown diamonds. And uh we are working on some new collections for our everyday line and we're launching, we have a few new projects that are coming up.

So our name and some photo shoots are going to be coming up in some big magazines ah and getting ready for Q4 because I mean christmas is coming and I think that's going to be very different than last year. I hope so for you, I'm sure it's going to be amazing. I want to ask you, um, I didn't actually know that about gold and that it was like, you know, dirty mind, um, gold, which sounds bad for me to not know that. But that's the truth. Where do you get recycled gold from? Well not a case our manufacturer get the option of by what type of goals you want to buy. Of course we pay more for recycled gold. Uh, then you know, like newly mined gold that we really don't know where it's coming from recycled gold can be made in many different ways. It can be made from whenever you don't want your goals anymore, you sell it and then they will melt it and they will re, you know, refine the gold and, and, and it goes back to the perfect goals that you had, you know, when you have that jewelry was first made, a lot of people a lot of times the refineries, they will get goals from, um, you know, electronics, they have gold parts in it and all kinds of things.

Basically what we're trying to do is we're trying to not go into mind and mine go and you know, newly we, we want to avoid newly mined gold because that's what destroys communities. And if you do a little bit of research into dirty gold, it's it's incredible. And when I was making jewelry with the storms, I had no idea about any of that. When I started learning about and I felt so stupid, I was like how can I be making jewelry and not know all of this. Like if you go into a lot of direct to consumer brands, they are very very very affordable. And they have ethical natural diamonds. First of all, the quality of the diamond is going to be usually at least sc our diamonds, the quality is at least the very least V. S. So it's like amazing quality, all premium quality is that the color is is so much better than anything else that you can get out there. All all of our diamonds are color. Um at least H. And Clary at least V. S.

And the gold is all recycled. So so basically when I was researching all of that stuff, I was like how was I making jewelry? And I had no idea about any of that. And that's when I started like the more I learned, the more I was like okay I need to figure out a way to make this affordable and sustainable and something women will be proud to wear basically. And that's that's the premises of joie de vive and there's something that a lot of people will say about, you know it's an ethical diamonds because it's a certified by the you know the Kimberley process and then they want to dig into the Kimberley process, the Kimberley process. Um basically they will give a certification, two batches of diamonds. But they have no way to track where the diamond was mined. They have no way to track whole minds that diamond, how it was, mind what the working condition of those those minds were at that time.

They have no idea if you were a child that was mining it. Yeah, so basically it's a very flawed process, lack of transparency. Exactly. And then people are gonna say we use ethical natural diamonds, huh? Can you trace it? Oh no, we can trace it. So it's not ethical. I can trace my diamonds. I can tell you who was the person that cut the diamonds, The person that made that diamond to which lobby was made and all of that and the working conditions and all of that. And that's why I did not want to go into natural diamonds. Not natural because we can't call, you know mines diamonds natural anymore. The FTC crushed it. Now we can use mines diamonds or lab grown diamonds. That's it. They are both natural basically once created in the lab. It's such a big education piece because I feel so many people would be in that same boat of just not truly understanding the background of these trends. I mean we've all watched, you know, blood diamond and we've all got a basic idea, but we don't really, it's not forefront of our minds at the moment I think. So it's very interesting.

I want to ask you what your advice is for women who have a big idea and want to start their own business. My advice is just do it and believe in yourself and don't let anybody tell you that you're crazy because people will tell you you're crazy. Trust me, I heard enough people will tell you crazy, people tell are going to tell you that you can't do it or it's going to fail and it probably will fail, but you're going to overcome it just like I did, you know, and I truly believe that if you have an endeavor, if you have an idea, if you have something you truly passionate about and you love it has to fail for you to really understand the value of it. You know, you can be passionate about something, but if it's too easy, it's easy at the end of the day, failure is a big part of success.

So if you want to do something like you know, learn about it, educate yourself, find a way to create a plan because like an idea without a plan is just a dream, you know, but if you have an idea you create a plan Then you have something that you can go after and you can really succeed with you and don't let anybody take you down, especially if you're a woman, society will always come to us and we always try to crush us because even though we are in 2020 and even though things are very, very much different today, there is still that misconception that woman is made to be behind the man, I know where you know being a woman is made to be home with the kids and it's very different today. I can't, I can't say you know that it's not it's very, very different today, but there's two that misconception there's two always going to be that society view on where a place for the woman is in society and don't let society tell you you're not capable.

Just just take it, take every bit of it and make your strength to be able to to make that that that dream a reality and and you will, it's simple, hard work pays off, thank you so much. I loved that. We are up to the six quick questions. Number one is what's your, why my why is uh to show myself not anybody else myself that I'm capable and then by doing that, just showing everybody else that it doesn't matter who you are, where you come from, which country you come from, What's your background, whatever it is that you want to do, you can't do and if you don't believe in yourself, nobody else will believe in you. So basically my why is that?

It's self empowerment for sure Question. Number two is what's been the number one marketing moment that's made your business pop? I think that was that week that I decided that I was going to bring you back to close it and I actually didn't have any marketing, there was no marketing. Um I well there was, there was me, I was the one, you know, trying to do what my whole company was paying $150,000 should be done before, you know, and and we were able to revive the company from the ground up. That was it. That's when I got I found I found an amazing tool online and that's for entrepreneurs. I don't have a lot of budget for digital marketing. There is this uh website called magic dot com, that was what made my business. I I launched all of my digital marketing by myself with that website, it's super affordable and We sold over $250,000 in may just on that, me running my own ads.

So I think that was it, that was me kind of like using my what I could what I had to be able to make it work. Yeah, I really like hard work determination, grit, getting stuck into all the things that you haven't been doing before, Trying to figure out how to structure Facebook campaign up, skilling. I'm like so much easier to tell somebody to do it. Like I know what needs to be done, but I just don't know how to do it 100%. And that that website is phenomenal like for somebody that doesn't have a big budget and you have to figure it out. It saved my life so cool. I'm going to link it in the show notes for sure. Um question # three is where do you hang out to get smarter? I hang out in books I read, I read a lot, I feel like books, these people have gone through everything that you just, you just can't get out there and I work too much and a lot of my relationships, relationships and partnerships are back in L.

A. Where I used to live. So I try like right now nobody hangs out anywhere anymore because of Covid. So I try just reading and reading and reading and getting every information I can into my brain and then adjusting everything that I read to what works in my life. I love that anything in particular that you're reading at the moment that you recommend. Uh there's a book called um up your business. Up your business, your business, which is uh so because I'm on this right now with your growing business and getting to um getting to really, you know, start again from the beginning and and and double doubling up on everything. This book is phenomenal on how you can bring the right people into your organization, how we can stretch your organization and grow it. Uh, and it's all about people. It's all about people who you're working with and how they can really add to your organization.

It's a phenomenal book. I can't even say enough good things about it. Amazing. I'm gonna link it in the show notes for anyone listening to this episode as well. Question number four is how do you win the day? And that's around your AM and PM rituals that keep you feeling happy, successful, motivated fulfilled. Um, I start my day. Uh, usually I like to, I live in Miami and I live in the water. So like, right, just just by opening my eyes every morning, it's like, oh my God, this beautiful view of the water since I was a child, it was my dream to live in the water. And I grew up in Rio in brazil, but I never lived at the beach. So my favorite thing to do in the morning is I wake up pretty early and uh, my boyfriend is the barista you can think of, we have like an amazing coffee machine. So he makes me an amazing, beautiful cappuccino. I sit outside the balcony and I read and whatever it is that I'm reading at the moment I read for about, you know, an hour and drink my coffee and and, and then after I do and I'm always under the sun.

So the sun kind of like recharges me and after I do that I'm writing to start my day. So I usually just do what everybody does, take a shower and get ready to go to the office work all day and then when I come home I do it every day. Sometimes might say that I'm a little alcoholic, I have to have a glass of wine. My mom says Vivian, why do you drink every day? I'm like mom, I will have my glass of wine every day. I come home and it's the same thing. I sit in the balcony uh you know with my son, with Adriano, we usually have dinner outside on the balcony. I have a glass of wine. I just watched the sunset and sometimes I have to work when I'm home, but I'm okay with it. I love working, you know, so by loving working, I don't have to work a day in my life. But yeah, I feel like it's just spending time with my family. I just love looking at the water, it recharges me. Uh and yeah, it's my coffee in the morning, my book and my wine at night.

The simple pleasures. They're really important. Um question number five is if you only had $1000 left in your business bank account, where would you spend it? I would spend, I would, I would break it because I feel like in e commerce you have two things, you have marketing and you have the inventory, you have to have an inventory. So I would spend on on facebook ads. Yeah. And then I, you know if I have to, it depends on the circumstances, I would do like half inventory asked a half facebook ads. But if I can do preorders like like this, I would spend on facebook ads because the moment that I get that sale, I already have the money to put into the inventory. So to me today, there's no marketing better than facebook ads. There's no, especially for my brand, no google, no display ads, facebook ads and facebook and instagram answer it. Yeah, for sure. And question # six, the last question is how do you deal with failure in terms of your mindset and approach?

Um I actually thriving figure like that is a really weird thing to say, but it's true. I feel like the best business times I've ever had were always after a big failure and I don't know if it's like the warrior spirit inside of me which is like, you know, I have to fight and I will find a way to thrive even though I'm going through a very, a very difficult time, but it's very easy for people when things are doing really well. It's very easy for people to relax and that's what I found with me and it's one of the bad things about me and I think most people, it's very easy for you to relax and let go and how everything is doing doing good right now. But when you hit the rock bottom you have to come back and for me, every time I come back I come back stronger and bigger and taller.

So I feel like I thrive, I thrive in failure. I always come back better. So you have so loved listening to your story and what you've overcome and you're just absolutely killing it now and I'm, I'm so happy to have had you on the show. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. It's lovely to be here and meet you and you know, and any time, hey, it's just me here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the female startup club podcast. If you want to hear more, head to my instagram at Dune rasheen to see my filmed interviews with incredible female founders like Erica from fluffy beauty Greta from drop bottle and Sammy leo from breeze baum. And if you like what we're doing here, visit our website and sign up to female startup club dot com to get all of the good stuff delivered straight to your inbox and lastly, subscribe to the female startup club podcast. Mm hmm.