are you on the lookout for a new podcast? To listen to Being boss by Emily Thompson is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network. And something I love about this show is getting the chance to support my community of fellow creators and business owners. Being boss is an exploration of not only what it takes, but what it means to be a boss as a creative business owner, freelancer or side hustler. And I know it's going to resonate with so many of you who are listening in. So if you like female startup club, trust me, you're going to love being boss. Welcome back. Here are the six quick questions. Mm hmm. So question number one is what's your, why? Why are you doing what you're doing? The what we just talked about is being able to bring people joy and their happiest moments and really small and creative ways is absolutely why the long hours and the money and the time and the stress and the tears and the hard work are all worth it to be able to bring people that happiness in a way that they can't really get anywhere else is absolutely why we do it.

Amazing. Question number two is what has been the number one marketing moment so far? And you can't say Tiktok in general. I think that one of the things where I was like, oh wow, like people actually care about this is without a publicist, without helping anybody, a writer from business insider reached out and said, I've been following you on Tiktok. So, to talk adjacent, I guess, and I really want to write your story. And that was a moment for me that I was like, wow, you can't pay for this type of exposure. You can't just have people kind of sit up and lean in into notice what I was doing was huge personally and for the business. Yeah. And I guess this also goes to show like, you know, had you have not put yourself out there, that opportunity wouldn't come. I mean, maybe it would have, but the thing to remember is like when you're putting out a video on instagram or you're putting out a video on Tiktok, the buyers from, you know, stock is that you want to be stocked at their on these platforms to right there looking journalists, reporters there on these platforms, browsing, they're looking for things to be inspired by and things to write about.

So, you know, Yes, it will help your like, sales and all that kind of thing. But you should post because people are watching and it only takes one. You don't even need to have a following of one million followers. You you might have 5000 followers, but it only takes someone to discover your video. Absolutely. It could be any, I mean, you could have 100 views, but you don't know who those 100 people are. Absolutely. Question # three is what's your go to business resource in the form of book, podcast or newsletter. Oh, wow, this may be kind of a cheating answer. So I'm sorry if that's the case, but when you own a business Google is 100% your best friend. I can't tell you how many times a day I google the answer to something because I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't have a business background at at all, even close to it. But I think from a looking up to people are getting business advice. I really love to look up to other female entrepreneurs. There's baked by melissa.

I'm not sure if you know who she is, but she's really big in new york and she does these tiny cupcakes that they shipped everywhere. She's also a handmade business. So I really look up to her and her instagram and what she's doing, Jeni britton who owns Jeni's ice cream again very similar. She has some of the most inspirational, just little blurbs that she shares throughout the day that are really incredible. So I find that following like minded people and people that inspired me on social media, it pops up on my feet and it really makes my day and it's not something that I'm searching out for necessarily, but it has even a bigger impact because it comes to me organically mm that's so cool. I'm gonna look them both up and check out their content? 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? I love at the end of the day, at the workday, really having kind of a tally of things that, hey, this is what we needed to get done, which we do a to do list in the morning and here's what we hit and really kind of setting up for that next day and feeling like it was a success.

Hey, we hit this number of cotton candy that we needed to get spun. We made that goal. This was the content that I needed to film. These are the meetings that I had to have and really just in a lightweight, keeping track of all of that, but also being flexible within it more than anything. For me, it has to feel successful more than kind of checking things off if that makes sense. So like yesterday for example, we ended the workday with high school musical dance party, which happens around here pretty frequently and yeah, it's a fun place to work. I'm not gonna lie. And while that may have felt like a weird way to end the day or we posted about it on instagram, People probably like, do they even work? And we do, we work hard. We have fun a lot too, but I walked away from yesterday feeling like it was a success even though we didn't maybe necessarily produce cotton candy yesterday, we absolutely hit those check marks, how to dance party and it felt like we got everything done that we needed to. That is so fun. I hope everyone wants to come and work for you.

That sounds amazing. Question Number five is what's the worst money you've ever spent in the business? Oh my goodness. I feel like I could have a long list of this, especially with the online store. It we spent so much money on packaging and shipper boxes and all of that. I spent, I mean an astronomical amount of money. It was Like $40,000 on getting branded shipping boxes that I like all in through all the kind of trial and air and all of that to which they're beautiful. They're pink striped and emerald green on the inside. However, when they arrived at your front door, they're brown and beat up because they're shipped to you. So it's not like they arrived in this beautiful condition and they had so much ink on them that they don't stay sealed because the adhesive doesn't stick to the saturated cardboard or corrugated cardboard.

So that was a very expensive mistake. We did eventually find an adhesive that would work through a lot of trial and air, but we are wrapping up using those boxes and then having to go a different direction, definitely not getting those reprinted because it was so expensive and B it wasn't what we thought it was going to be too. Oh yeah, wow, that's crazy. That's a that's a big one. Yes, it could it could have been worse. But it was it was a big one. Yeah, that's a big one. This kind of blends into this question. So maybe you will have a different ends of it. Maybe not. Question number six is what's been a major fail that you can share and like how you dealt with it, definitely our glitter bomb packaging, the original one that we had. So actually I have the one right now in front of me. This is what we ended up with. There are these beautiful green pouches that we heat seal. They're great. The original packaging were these plastic jars and the thought behind that was that it really stayed fresh. We could control all of that.

Except for the fact that when summer came around, people were begging us for these glitter bombs. And we weren't able to test it in the summer because of when the shop ended up opening and the plastic would change size depending on where it was being shipped in the country. So it was being shipped somewhere warmer. The cotton candy was disintegrating inside of these plastic jars. And so for fourth of july I had just had surgery. It was Emma's like second full week here full time and we came in and all of our glitter bombs for the fourth of july had melted at the time. We didn't understand why or what was going on with them. We had to remake all of them, send them out. We had to refund a lot of money. We had to make it right and we did. But that was definitely a really big failure in the very beginning. And it took a lot of time to make that right and to develop the right packaging and to learn from all of that, but not something we were definitely expecting after all of the research and time that we put into choosing that specific packaging to begin with.

Ooh, that's a tough one. Holy Moly Yes, so definitely I feel for you that that's that's crazy. Crazy stuff we talked about that day often around here and how we never want to relive it. That's for sure. Yeah, I bet Emily thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show today and share your journey. I have loved chatting with you and what you're building and I'm so excited to see what comes next. Thank you so much for having me. This was lovely. 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, N. 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 other heirs 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.

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