it's been a few months since I joined the hubspot podcast network and I'm so excited about the other shows in there that I'm learning from, especially the gold digger podcast hosted by Gina Kolata Jenna's show helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks, inspirational stories and so much more. I just finished listening to her recent episode about how she grew her Show to 60 million downloads and was blown away by some of the insider tips she shares and here's something else you should know On january third you're going to hear a certain someone in Jenna's show that certain someone being more, make sure you pop it in your diary because I am so beyond excited, I can't wait for you to hear it. Listen to the gold digger podcast wherever you get your podcasts. This is Aaron Carpenter for female startup club. Hey everyone and welcome back it's me Dern, your host and hot girl today on the show, we're learning from Aaron Carpenter, the dancer turned entrepreneur behind nude bar, She bootstrapped this business for a good 10 years before things really started to get interesting.

We talked about that 10 year grind to overnight success, The investment she got from Serena Williams and one thing to remember about affiliates, if you don't know, nude bar is a high performing body wear brand redefining the concept of nude, they carry the widest shade range on the market, leading the conversation around inclusivity and authentic representation in fashion today and was born from the first hand frustrations and colorism that Aaron experienced growing up as a black woman and dancer, she experienced years of hardships finding hosiery that matched her skin tone, often spending hours dying her tights and pancaking her shoes to meet the industry's requirement of nude undergarments. one More quick thing before we jump into the show, I don't know about you but I like emails. Sometimes. I'm just in the mood for a good scroll. We send a weekly newsletter out every monday and here's why I think you should sign up first of all, one.

If you're interested in these founder stories, we put the key insights from every episode in there. So you can easily go back from what's been on the week before to even if you're not an entrepreneur, it's interesting Like we have different job opportunities from female founded companies, we have books that you might like to read, we have industry news about female founded companies in the industry and three we drop in all the resources and links you need from the episodes so you can easily access them on the go. So if you're into emails like me, it's free, you can go to female startup club dot com to check it out and sign up. Okay, let's get into this episode. This is Aaron for female startup club, are you working around the clock to build the business you always imagined? Do you want to communicate with your fast growing list of customers in a personalized way, but in a way that gives you time to work on the rest of your business.

Do you ever wonder how the companies you admire the ones that redefine their categories do it? Companies like living proof and chubby's, They do it by building relationships with their customers from the very beginning while also evolving in real time as their customers need to change, these companies connect quickly with their customers, collect their information and start creating personalized experiences and offers that inspire rapid purchase, often within minutes of uploading their customer data. Clay vo empowers you to own the most important thing to any business with the relationship between you and your customers and the experiences you deliver from the first email to the last promotion to learn more about how Clay vo helps you own your growth visit clay vo dot com slash F S C. That's K L A V I Y O dot com slash F S. C. Female startup car presence. Mhm. Aaron, Hey, hello, welcome to the female startup club podcast.

Hello, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here to chat with you. Yes, me too. I'm excited to learn from you today. Thank you so much for joining us. I always get our guests to start by introducing themselves and explaining what the business is. Yes. So I'm Aaron Carpenter, I am the founder of nude bar and nude bar is a line of body wear intimates and hosiery? Really designed to represent the diverse world that we live in. Ultimately we make 12 beautiful hues or nude shades to really represent all types of women from fair medium and deeper or darker skin tones based on many bad experiences that I had shopping for new, that did not match me. Mhm. Yeah. Let's go back to those experiences that you were having. I read that you started this brand, you know quite some time ago. So for 2009, so let's go back to like the lead up to 2009, what was happening in your life that led you down the pathway of becoming an entrepreneur, starting your own business, decided to solve a problem.

Yes. So, you know, I had these re occurring, you know, things come up in this specific category. So first was when I was about 16, 17 years old, I got into a program in Washington D. C. Where I grew up at the Kennedy center where nude or flesh tone tights were required for a dance program that I was a part of in partnership with the Dance theater of Harlem, which is a ballet company in new york city. And so it was a pretty selective process in terms of you know, 10 girls and 10 boys and the D. C. Metropolitan area will get selected every year. And one of the requirements was to have nude or flesh toned tights and shoes and underwear as a part of your uniform, along with your black leotard. And so I went to my local dance stores to purchase these items and they always had nude that came in beige or to represent white skin, you know beige, I'm not a beige person.

So I just went to class with those items because that was all that I could find and I felt that, well, you know, this is what they asked me to purchase, so I show up and I was asked to sit out of class because I was not in uniform and so that's really embarrassing. Um and this is like a part of the dance discipline where if you are in trouble or you're not uniform or you know, you took a misstep, then you're asked to sit out of class. So I asked the teacher at the end of class, uh well you know, what could I have done to be in uniform? I explained to her, you know, my shopping process and she said, oh no, you didn't take enough of the steps, You needed to die your tights to match your skin, you needed to make up foundation onto your shoes, which we call pancaking in the industry, you need to do these things as a regular part of your regimen to be in uniform and to have the proper nude undergarments, tights and shoes and I was just like mind blown that this was what was required of me, but this became a part of my everyday life moving forward since I was a teenager, wow that is so intense and just, I mean, I don't know what, it's obviously it's crazy, totally crazy.

Is it at that time that you think about starting this business or is this when something just gets a seed is planted? Like, hey, there's something missing here. Like I need to keep looking or like surely there's a solution, surely someone is doing this. Yeah, so it was more so that there was a seed planted where I was like, I have to get to the bottom of this. Like this is crazy. And ultimately as I moved along in my career and got older, this is something that artists, you know, not just dancers, but actors and you know, various performers were complaining about regularly behind the scenes. It wasn't just unique to dance only and it wasn't unique to either, even just black dancers, like even white dancers and performers were saying like, wow the nude on the market, maybe it's too dark for me and I'm really, really fair skin or you know, generally people were complaining about this and so I just couldn't really understand why no one and at least in the performance where space was, you know, wasn't doing something about this or making better solutions and ultimately, you know, after years of, you know chatting with various artists about this and even chatting with everyday women, like my mom who, you know, was a computer programmer working in more of like a corporate America experience or environment, you know, where she needed to wear like a white button down blouse at work or you know, a suit with a skirt.

She wasn't finding nude that worked for her either. Right? So she wore a beige bra underneath a white shirt. It would show through her shirt she needed, like knew that actually came in her skin tone. It's actually the proper wardrobe option. And so as these recurring complaints were happening, I've started digging deeper is like, why is nude just beige? Like, what, what is that rooted in? Like why, why are we, why is that something that we're talking about as like one color? And ultimately the conclusion that I came to is that, you know, the standard of beauty and you know what it looks like in terms of like white skinny, you know, tall. All of these things are pretty rooted in systemic racism and even colorism and this idea that, you know, the hierarchy or the standard of beauty is this one prototype of a person is just, you know, it comes from those roots, right? And so therefore manufacturers and brands haven't really thought outside of the box in terms of, you know, everyone else and what the actual world looks like.

Um, and so that's where in 2000 and nine I said, you know what I want to launch this, I had, you know, graduated college, I had a B. F. A in ballet. So I spent a lot of time in the dance industry. Already had been connecting a lot with, You know, wardrobe stylist and um, costume designers pretty often and they were all like, I really wish there was a solution to this. So 2009 I decided to, you know, move forward with just like incorporating and figuring it out. So how do you like go about figuring that out? Like what does that look like in reality to bringing this brand to life? Yeah. So bringing the brands of life, um, you know, first started with just talking to the consumer, right? Or who I felt was a consumer. So, you know, people in my dance community as well as, you know, other everyday women outside of my mom who were also in corporate environments. And then, you know, I from there, I realized like, okay, I need to incorporate, I can, you know, right off some of these things that I'm, you know, supplies that I'm utilizing in order to get things going.

Um, and then from there, I, as I was talking to people, a lot of introductions were made. So a friend of mine had a business mentor that was starting an incubator and was looking for more female founders to join it. Um, so that kind of snowballed into, you know, that relationship leading me to pitching investors and so on and so forth. But ultimately just started with talking to my community, understanding what the product need was and spending a lot of time on like product development. Mhm I read you started with something like $3,000 of your savings. What did that actually go towards and how far did that get you into launch or into building the business? Yeah. Uh, so I started with $3,000 of my, my dancer savings, really specifically from American airlines commercial that I was, you know, getting residual checks from. And um, ultimately I started with that because that's what I had to start with. So, um, when I got into this incubator program, um, you know, this particular mentor was guiding me with, you know, how to pitch investors and I started with angel investors and majority of them were white men and didn't really understand what I was trying to build and really have this perspective that, well, if no one has, it seems like such a simple idea and if no one has done it before, then why, then it probably isn't needed.

It probably isn't something that is required on the market. And I try to tell that story, you know, a lot as to why it was needed, why it was important and why this beauty standard was this way and, and all of these things, but ultimately they just, they weren't getting it. And so I did meet with one female angel investor and she said, honestly, I think that you need to just started out of your apartment, um, with as minimal money as you can and just like build a little bit of traction and then go back into, you know, the market of pitching to investors in fundraising and see where that gets you. So I started with about $3,000 and I bought my first batch of inventory. I essentially went like door to door salesman style. Like I always had tights in my bag, I was still performing. Um, and I would have in my dance bag, you know, samples and tights and swatches and all these things that I'd be showing other dancers and trying to connect with like the wardrobe people for whatever project I might be working on. And I just kind of sold that way.

I picked up the phone and called people, I called every NFL dance team cheer team in the country. Um, to see if they would want to purchase the product. And I really just started really specific with like the entertainment industry with a little bit that I had. That is so cool. And I feel like it's something that people often forget is like hand to hand combat. Like just going like one person at a time, you can truly get your 1st 1000 customers by doing that. It doesn't need to be, I need to reach millions of people overnight. It's like, hey, just start by actually going one customer at a time going and finding that one person and speaking to them face to face and being like, would you be interested in this product? Do you need this product? And it's like, as simple as that. I love that. Where did you actually get the product from? How did you develop and manufacture the product in the beginning when it wasn't something that was out there? Yeah. So I first just started with sending, like finding various fabric samples of colors that I wanted like to build off the color palette.

Um, and even before that, like building up the color palette, I surveyed a bunch of, you know, women and came up with, you know, various makeup foundations essentially that I felt, you know, would build out the diverse palette that I wanted to create and then I either found fabrics that were similar to those shades or I dyed them myself. I had die experience from, you know, my earlier days as a dancer having to dye my type. So I, I even bought a lot of guys and would like, you know, create these colors myself. Um, but ultimately that's what I would send as like my tech pack essentially to these manufacturers and say, hey, these are the colors that I'm trying to make and this is the product that I'm trying to make and I took a lot of, you know, stressful energy of like, okay, can you tweak this and change that and product development is like really, really stressful, I feel for especially a first time founder, it's like you think you're communicating something and then you're not getting what you think you're getting what you thought you were going to get and you, I don't know. So anyway, I went through that whole process, but you know, ultimately it was a lot of lift on my end and I'm, you know, I don't have at all and apparel background and manufacturing background.

So I was just like, he's seeing the puzzle pieces together on my own, you know, to the best of my ability because I felt so you know, driven to solve this problem, I felt so moved that this, this needed to be solved. You know, even though it didn't exist, what's kind of the next phase of this business for you, Obviously the early days, maybe the first year, second year you're doing that hand to hand combat, you're reaching out, you're picking up the phone, when does it start to become like a little bit of a snowball where people are coming to you and the table kind of turns um, I would say that shift started happening when we got our first celebrity, you know, customer slash influencer. So I found it in 2009, I spent a couple of years figuring out the whole manufacturing process and that I didn't launch anything until late 2011 and around then my mom is like you know you should send stuff to Wendy Williams, the talk show host.

She's always wearing fishnet, she wears this brand called Woolford all the time. You know it's really great brand but maybe you should send her your stuff and I thought there's no way she's going to change from like this high end luxury brand to mine but fine I'll just send her a package and I wrote a you know a pretty personal letter like telling my story why I'm doing this. Um In a couple of weeks later she you know her wardrobe team called and she became accustomed she's still a customer to this day. Um and we're like in the credits of the T. V. Show and everything but what's awesome about that is that I sent this first box for free They call and they purchase you know like fully purchased for the season what she's wearing every year and she posts every day on social media what she's wearing, tagging all the brands from head to toe like even back then in 2012 and she posted on her website linking like every product she has on like you know specifically what she's wearing. So we started getting a lot of referral traffic you know from I mean I had like a landing page at the time I didn't even have like an e.

Commerce website, you know formally so therefore it was like come to the landing page and then I call my phone number basically and I'm going to answer it. So that was when we started first getting like people coming to us and then also other celebrities started reaching out saying, hey, I saw Wendy and your product Tyra Banks stylist reached out, I saw Wendy wearing your fish nets, we love them, can we get them for Tyra and Laverne cox? And so that kind of started happening because of that moment, because of her holy molly. That's so cool. And like the lesson here for everyone listening is like, you've just got to try, you've just got to put yourself out there if you think like, hey, you know what's the worst that can happen? Maybe it's a no, maybe it goes nowhere, but maybe it's a yes and maybe it's a big yes, in a big way that really gets things going. That's incredible, wow. Oh my gosh, I love that. So you get with Wendy or you get your product with Wendy. She opens lots of doors. What gear are we talking? Like where are we at in the journey at this point?

Yeah, so this was in 2012, I'm still bootstrapping by the way. So are you working like another job for you full time on this? Yes, I'm working another job. So the job that I'm doing actually at this time, I'm like slowing down with my performance, dance career. So I'm, you know, at that time I kind of had an agent and I would kind of, you know pick and choose auditions that I wanted to go to and like kind of per gig opportunities. So like a commercial that I would shoot for 48 hours and then be done basically. But other than that, I was also teaching bar fitness classes, I would teach early mornings and evenings and weekends. I would teach anywhere from like 15 to 20 classes a week and then I would run the business during business hours during the day, monday to friday or any other off time that I had. But I was like shipping and packing and you know, stuffing envelopes and running to ups USPS to answering literally the phone number that customers would be calling, like literally doing all the things and then trying to figure out how I could place the next order for inventory with, I don't know, a little bit of money that I had draping it together from the different accounts and the different jobs and all that kind of thing.

Got it, wow, okay. Doing here as we get deeper into the holiday season, you might be thinking about ways to keep your business connected through the madness with things like employee holiday travel by our behavior changes and Q4 wrap ups, staying connected has never been more important from marketing to sales and operations. A hubspot crm platform is ready to connect all of the touch points of your business whether you're just getting started or scaling to what's next hubspot is consistently working to make its platform more connected than ever. Improved forecasting tools, give you a bird's eye view of your entire pipeline to see what's around the corner, see how your quarter is going, inspect new deals and use customizable data driven reports to improve team performance as you grow with custom behavioral events. You can get into the details of what makes your customers tick track site behavior and understand your customers buying habits or within the platform, learn more about how a hubspot crm platform can help connect the dots of your business at hubspot dot com. So that's 2,012 and then There's obviously like we're working towards this point in the story that gets to like 2018 when something really big happens for you, but I'm kind of wanting to fill in the gaps from 2012 to 2018 before that happens.

When is it that you like quit your job? When is it that you're kind of like, hey, I can fully focus on this now, it's really a vibe. Honestly not until Like closer to 2019 is when I was able to like step back from those things or those extracurricular activities if you will. Um and so I guess, you know, a bit of fast forwarding, is that In 2018 I got pregnant with my first child and I was like, okay, I need to figure out what I'm going to do, because I could teach up into a certain point, like from the bootstrapping perspective, but at some point I'm gonna have to stop doing that because I'm gonna have to recover from giving birth, right? So, um, you know, I knew I needed to start pitching investors and I kind of had been off and on, you know, over the years, but still nothing was like snowballing, nothing was happening where, you know, still kind of similarly, either, people didn't understand the problem that I was solving, even though I was starting to have, you know, celebrities and influencers and some traction?

You know, there was still this question of like, well isn't enough traction? And I mean, you know, I find at least in the conversations I have with other black female founders, this is constantly a theme where it's like, okay, you don't have any traction or you need to prove the concept and then you have some traction. That's like, well then it's not enough traction. So I felt like I was constantly chasing this like benchmark of where I needed to be and not really hitting it when it came to pitching investors. Are you able to share? Like, what was your traction at that point? Like, what kind of revenue were you doing in the year? Or like, how many customers did you have? Yeah, so, you know, we were in pretty early days, So like, you know, earlier, six figures is around where we were around those days, around the time. That's a lot still, like, it's still, I mean, people were kind of still wanting us to be like, a million in revenue, and it's like, Do you understand that I started with $3,000? Like Yeah, and also, it's like not a high priced product, it's still you're selling, you're moving a lot of units, even if you're in six figures, like, you're still moving a lot of units, like what other kind of traction can you want?

Okay, got it. So you're in that situation and then you meet a certain someone and things start to change. Yeah. And uh so in 2018, during my pregnancy, and, you know, I'm like, still like, hustling and bustling, plus pitching, you know, whoever I can meet really random, we get this order for serena Williams on our DTC channel and eventually, you know, a conversation started because we sold out of her skew that she needed for one of her tennis matches. This was like in the middle of her tennis season. And the question was around like, well, when are you restocking? And I had to explain, like, well, you know, I'm bootstrapping and this is how I'm bootstrapping. And basically, if I could save up enough money to get this particular skew, that's kind of how it goes. And I have to do a lot of the the, you know, analyzing the data to decide? You know, pick and choose which skews are gonna be restocked and ultimately, that, you know, always had us in a position where we were sold out of things all the time, which is obviously a bit frustrating to the customer, but that is the reason why it was like, there wasn't like a ton of outside capital, if you will, that was coming in to support that.

So anyway, you know, that conversation led into, you know, well, with serena be interested in investing, I just, you know, asked and like, shot my shot. No way. Oh my God. Yeah. And so around that same time that conversation led into them, you know, suggesting I apply for a pitch competition that serena was doing in partnership with Whitney Wolfe herd from Bumble, the dating app. And so Bumble, the fund and serene Adventures were coming together to invest in black female founders. I thought this was like not going anywhere like that. I mean, this was like posted on social media and I'm sure thousands of people applied for this. So, you know, I just thought I was going to get lost in the shuffle and um I went through several rounds of like, you know, conversations and um as a part of the process, as did the other finalists, but I made it as, you know, one of the top three finalists um and eventually won the investment and they were my first investors in?

That is so cool. How much was the investment? How much did you win? Um, I can't share. Okay, right. Sorry, got it. Got it. Got it. You know what I think is funny and we've spoken about this on the show before is like, everyone thinks that it's just like overnight success, but actually it literally takes 10 years to reach overnight success. And I feel, I feel like that's probably how you're viewed. Like now you've got this amazing celebrity partner, you've got people who, You know, obviously celebrities that were, you you're doing all these amazing things, but you've been hustling at this since 2009, which is, I don't know, a long bloody time. Gosh, great perseverance. And I mean people, you know, a lot of times when I do talk to other founders about that, they're like, you're crazy to keep doing this for so long. But I feel so like my company is very mission driven and and what we do and I feel so compelled to like truly solve this problem, um, of nude being more inclusive that I don't know, I don't, I don't feel like it's like crazy.

Yeah, You don't feel like it's been that long period of time. Like I want to do it. Yeah, totally. So, okay, so this is 2019, you win the competition? And then what do you use that money for? Is it like investing in new stock and marketing or is it new product development? What's kind of the road map after that and how have things changed since then? Yeah, so I definitely invested in some inventory because we knew that between, you know, some pr opportunities that were coming up, that there was just gonna be, you know, an opportunity for the brand to get some exposure and like obviously we need to have inventory for that. So I did spend a little bit on inventory. I did start, you know, I had, You know, some part timers and 1099 years, but I started having them work more hours, you know, as the business is getting busier so that it wasn't all on me because you know, keep in mind that I'm still, my, my firstborn was born in 2018. So I'm still like a new mom essentially and kind of juggling that as well.

So, you know, getting additional help on the team front. Uh and then also, yes investing a little bit marketing. We started kind of early on testing like really small amounts on digital marketing. So, facebook and instagram and google, wow. Gosh, that's so cool. Fast forward to today. I love to talk about your marketing approach now, what's working for you? How do you acquire new people, new customers and kind of further spread that spread. That good work. Yes, so organic is actually really huge for us. Um, you know, and I mean most of the life cycle of the company has been organic and for us are our biggest channel is instagram because seeing is believing, right? Being able to see the color and how it may be matches a person and you might connect with that person the shade that they are and the body type that they are, because we're not just inclusive in skin tone, we're also inclusive in sizing. We go from Children's sizes up to four x five x, which fits up to £350.65.

So literally we like to showcase so many body types and different types of humans, non binary, you know, etcetera. And so we were able to allowed to, we're able to do that, you know, pretty easily on our organic instagram. But other than that, you know, obviously we play in all the paid digital channels. Affiliate marketing has actually been a really great place for us to play as well. And then influencers, of course, when you say affiliate marketing, do you mean like a referral program? Yeah, essentially. So, um, you know, when we're, we use affiliate marketing and twofold. So one is working with an influencer and you know, they, you know, maybe get a percentage of the revenue or revenue share. And then the other side of it is that some media outlets will also, I want you to be under an affiliate network as well so that they can post your brand or talk about your brand. So we kind of, it kind of works in two folds for us. That's clever, so kind of like if you know, I'm just pulling someone out of the hut here, Publisher like refinery 29 partners with you, they become kind of a, an editorial slash advertorial partner and then they drive the commission's through your site.

That's so clever. I always think of affiliates in terms of the influencer side of things, but I forget that publisher angle, which is so key to keep in mind for everyone listening, What do you think is important advice or your top piece of advice for entrepreneurs coming into 20, I mean, you know, the biggest thing for my brand and as we talked about earlier is just perseverance. Right? And obviously we're in such wild times in the world and the, and just life in general. Um, so you know, things are different, things are confusing, things are more challenging in various ways, but you know, just pushing through and persevering. Um, and just talking to other founders. I mean that's such a huge unlocked for me when I feel like I'm hitting a wall or I don't know what to do next. I, you know, paying other founders within my community and say, hey, have you tried this? Are you dealing with this? How have you solved this problem? Um, is always really helpful, so definitely perseverance perseverance and asking for help and support.

I mean, I'm so with you, we, as part of female startup club, we started a private network for women who are in e commerce entrepreneurship, do the CCp G, that kind of thing, and I just learned so much from asking other people like, hey, how are you doing this? Because I forgot to tell you this earlier, but I'm also through this journey of female startup club, I'm building a non elk wine company and it's in development at the moment, it's of course taking a lot longer than I thought, a lot more expensive than I thought, but I'm learning so much through this peer to peer network by being like, how are you doing, how are you trademarking the brand? What lawyer did you use? Like how much should I be paying? Like all these things that I just had no clue about. Its so true, you need to surround yourself with other people who are a few steps ahead of you too, get those bits of gold. Oh gosh, this was so fun. At the end of every episode, I asked a series of six quick questions, some of which we might have covered, some of which we might not have, but I asked them all the same question.

Number one is, what's your, why, why are you doing what you're doing? Yes, my wife has evolved over time, but the main y is really, you know, I think about the girl, the younger girl that I was, and the bad experiences that I had shopping for products that represented me and what that made me feel in terms of how beautiful I might be or, you know, my self esteem and things of that nature, and so I really hope to change that for women and girls, for them to see products that represent them, to feel that they're worthy to shop in this store or that store um and to just have, you know, other views of what beauty is and you know, I guess the way that that has evolved as, I'm a mom of a little girl now, a brown girl and I hope that by the time she's old enough to shop for products like this, she won't even have a thought, that's like, oh, am I beautiful because there's already products that represent her, she's, she's there and she should know that she's worthy of shopping there, being there, being in whatever room that she's in, Oh my gosh, amazing, literally changing the world, I love it.

Question number two is what's been the number one marketing moment that's made the business pop? I feel like there's been a few, so, I mean, Wendy Williams would be, you know, one piece of it, but I mean so much has happened since then, we've been on Good Morning America and that was huge for us, I've just was live on HSN and that was like a huge moment, you know, ultimately I would say any any visibility that's been like tv type of PR driven have been really huge for us for growing the brand. Yeah, amazing. I can only imagine, gosh, Good Morning America, that's that's a good one Question. Number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What books are you reading podcasts, newsletters that other founders should know about? Yes, I so you know, honestly I spend a lot of time on social media following other founders and then when I hit certain points in my journey and I'm like, oh I saw that this founder was dealing with X, Y Z, I literally did.

Um and and a lot of times I've then become friends with those people right to where we are now text messaging and you can have the back and forth of like, oh, are you trying this, are you doing this? Or we may have on a monthly zoom, you know, things of that sort. Um and then I'm also in just various like women female founder entrepreneur communities that, you know, I've joined to kind of stay in the know of things and and feel like I have some sort of community, I love usually in terms of like finding books or things that I'm reading, it's usually recommendations that I get from either other founders or advisors that I have um as well that they say, hey, you should, you know, check out this book. Yeah. Any recommendations that you, that you want to make note of a top recommendation. You know, I'm always really inspired by. Like I actually, you know, spend a lot of time listening to episodes from this podcast and in a way cool. Yeah. I love hearing just other founder stories. I love listening to how I built this on NPR um as well.

And even though, you know, those founders are way further along than I am, it's still just inspiring. And I feel like if I listened to those things on like a monday or Tuesday, then it just gives me a little extra push for my week because I hear, you know, uh, you know, a gamut of stories of things that they had to overcome essentially. And obviously as a founder, you're overcoming challenges every day every other day, whatever it is. Yeah. I mean I know those feelings, I know those feelings so much right now. It's just day after day, there's like highest and this lows every single day I feel it, question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM or PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated? So in the morning I do have like a morning routine and usually that's, you know, exercises some sort, it's pretty diverse. But uh, I mean it could be anything from like bar to yoga to high intensity interval training.

Um, and I usually do that anywhere from like 30 minutes to an hour or it could be writing the palatine, whatever, so do that first and then I'll, you know journal a little bit. I have a gratitude journal and I always find this helpful because it allows me to just kind of feel good about, you know where I am and where I'm going in my day and you know, as we were just saying, there's so many ups and downs in this entrepreneur journey and a lot of times were like, gosh, I'm crushing it today. And then other days were like, I'm really, I'm failing like that. I don't know what's going on. Um and so I find that the gratitude journal just kind of puts things in perspective of just like, you know what I'm grateful for these things, These things are amazing in my life and it just sets the tone for my day and then in the evening. Um I do also write in a gratitude journal kind of closing out the day with like good things that happened in the day or my wins for the day if you will and then I relax and have dinner with my family.

Love it. I'm trying to do a lot of morning and evening gratitude stuff. It's just about saying it out loud my husband and I say it to each other, but trying to keep focused on, on what we're grateful for and not the things that kind of bring us down. Yeah. Question number five is if you were given $1000 of no strings attached grant money, where would you spend it in the business? And it's kind of to highlight your most important spend a dollar right now. Yeah, I I would still spend it on our organic social um and just you know, I mean there's a lot of ways to spend that, but anywhere from like bringing on you, no more influencers that can produce more content for us for the organic social or creating our own content. Um but yeah, just on our organic social. Mhm And question number six, last question, how do you deal with failure? What's your mindset and approach when things don't go to plan? Well, failure is so tricky and I feel like a complex word in a way I guess I think about failure in the sense of it's just a part of the journey, like it's you know par for the course if you will and um I guess I try not to, you know, as I do my gratitude journal morning and night, I try to focus on those decisions, those things that happened, failure or whatever don't define me as a person.

Um so that's like one outlook and then I always think of every experience as you know, I'm being led to these experience, I'm a God believer. So like God has led me in this direction and you know, whether it be good or bad, it's for a reason, it's to show me something, it's to reveal something to me, it's to give me an experience, um that's going to make me better in the future, and so, even though it may not have turned out the way that I wanted to, it's for a reason, and I always try to, you know, take you in some type of positive perspective about it, because now I know either that's not the right path for the business or now I know that um you know, that's something I'm not good at, and I need to outsource it or, you know, whatever it is, right, there's there's always a positive way to look at it, and that's how I try to keep my mind set, Absolutely find the lesson, find the learning, grow from it and move on erin this was so cool, thank you so much for taking the time to come on female startup club and talk about everything that you're up to.

Is there anything you want to shout about in the future? Any, any fun things in the works? Well, first of all, thank you for having me, um I love talking about this stuff and it's just really great to, you know, chad and really an honor to be on the show, um but yeah, I mean, other other shout outs are that we have some other exciting opportunities coming up, we're gonna be launching and some big box retailers soon. We recently launched on HSN. So that's kind of an ongoing thing um as well. And it's just it's a really exciting time in the business and, you know, in some ways it feels like finally, you know, but but it's it feels like the right timing and I'm really excited about it. I'm excited for you to, I'm going to keep my eyes peeled for this big box retailer who, 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. Mhm.