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 question number one is what's your why? Why are you doing what you're doing? It's A Great one. So, for me, I spent a lot of my time on the creative work around or a bora. So whether it be designed, social packaging, branding, copyrighting, and my wife feels like in the same way that if you were, say writing a fantasy story and you get to world build, I feel like I'm getting to take this world that's in my mind and put it out into the world in a way that no one else would do, and it feels so special that all of these ideas I've had in my head, these little haiku shoes on the back of each of our cans, they're just this world I've gotten to create and that feels really special and I think that would be my why is that?

I get to take my own, like imagination, creativity and just like, I'm kind of like birthing something into the world that then I get to, you know when people say they love it, it feels really special. Yeah, it's kind of like an expression of things that it's it's an expression of you in a way. I love that, That's so cool. You the designer, are you actually the one designing these as well? So we work with illustrators, I am a designer, but on these ones we work with some really cool illustrators to I love that amazing question. Number two, I usually ask what is your number one marketing moment, but I'm going to ask you what your second biggest marketing moment is because I feel like number one is kind of obvious what's been the second marketing moment worth shouting about last year. We tried this for the first time and we're going to do it again this year. But we've been doing this golden ticket campaign where we hide golden tickets in five of our e commerce boxes And if you find one you get a year's supply of bora bora.

So we had five winners last year and it was really, really fun, really exciting, folks were excited to buy them. Um but also we got the best videos from our winners who were like I found it. Um so we're doing it again this year and that marketing moment has been special on a few fronts. The first one is just that obviously people are excited and we get a higher volume of sales, but more than that it feels so, so special to get people really excited. And then we have these five winners who a lot of them are loyal, true fans. Um, so that's been a big fun one that feels super on brand for us because it's playful and whimsical and sort of game the side. Oh my gosh, I love it on so many levels. You know what it reminds me of? I don't know if you've seen that episode of modern family where Phil runs out of his lifetime supply of razors that he won and it's like, he basically is like, oh my God, it's going to be a bad day because I've run out of these races and it's so funny.

Um, oh my gosh, I haven't seen it, but you should look it up, it's just too funny. That is so cool. I like, love that. Those videos must be, I don't know, so special. Love it. Special question number three is what's your go to Business resource in terms of book podcast or newsletter? Mm Okay, I'm going to come at it from again, a creative angle, I get this great, um, twice per year magazine called departamento and it's International and it's an interiors magazine and it has amazing graphic design and beautiful artists and it features folks who are writers and artists around the world and so it's not necessarily business Ian quotes, but for me it's big time inspiration for like brand building colors. What do we want our next can colors to be like, um I use that a lot. That is so cool. What did you say the name was?

I didn't get it apart aumento parlamento. I'm going to check that out. I've never heard of that before. Thank you. Love something I've never heard of before. 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? This is a great one. I want to start by saying, I regularly don't win my days. I regularly, you know, go a couple of too many days without showering et cetera because there's a lot going on, but here's what it looks like when I do in my day. I wake up early, usually around 6 30 or seven, although in the winter it gets a little hard. Um, I feel that I like to go on a walk with my dog and I really like to sit at a coffee shop in journal and people watch and I think for me it's just really nice to not start my day by thinking about work and opening my computer and kind of getting anticipate that anticipation that just comes from like I've been asleep and now I'm awake and suddenly I have all these things on my mind.

So journaling, walking my dog, starting early, having a slow morning is really big for me and then paul and I have this great time after work where if we're able to end early enough, we'll go on a walk and talk about what we're working on and talk about um talk about the day. And I think, I mean that's like a really sweet part of having a co founder that you also live with is that you can sort of debrief on everything around everything and you know, you know what the other person is talking about? That's so true, so true. My husband and I worked closely together and I just love it. I really love it. You really know what the other person is like, not just goals, but like how they feel about everything and what's important to them on like just such a deep level obviously because they're your partner, but like on a work front, which I think sometimes you, you kind of like miss um if you're partner works in a completely different industry or something. Yes, that's a great point question.

Number five, what is the worst money you've ever spent in the business? I would say early on, we got really excited about having or a bora merch and we wanted to have, you know, t shirts or hats and we were looking to source them from more sustainable places and we've never done it before and this wasn't necessarily the biggest loss we've taken on something, but it was a huge time commitment to go looking for the right hat to find the right color to decide on the design. We wanted for it to prep like our Shopify site to add it on there and figure out how we were going to drop ship them out and we ended up getting this shipment. This was only a few months ago of what we thought were going to be this cool khaki hats and they were going to have our eyeball logo right on the front and they showed up and they were dark army green with a lavender patch on them and it could not have been the worst color combination.

I didn't even know that it was possible to get this bad. And what about samples, samples? Okay. Yeah, great question. Remember when I said we hadn't really ventured down this avenue before we just got a photo sample and it looked khaki and we were like amazing looking like that. So I, yeah, that's the one. And now we have, you know, over 1000 hats that were like, I, no one wants to wear this. We can't in good conscience sell these. So that is actually one of our more recent um, spending failures. Oh my gosh, how much did that cost? How much does much cost when you're buying a few 1000 units? Mm, It's about $3 a hat. So it's not, it's not the end of the world, but and we'll definitely find a use for them. We definitely will not throw them away. But it always get the sample kids. That is the lesson, get the sample. Oh my gosh, 100%.

This question kind of blends on from the last one. So maybe you won't have a specific answer for this. I might have to make these questions up in the future. But what's been a major fail or mistake that you can share? And how did you deal with it? Building our website early on. We really wanted it to be beautiful and there are a couple ways you can build a website and I'm probably gonna get some of these technical terms wrong because I'm not an engineer. But there is a version of it that's called the headless site, which essentially means you're not using a template and instead you customize the whole thing And so um for the sake of artistry, I decided let's go that direction. Let's build out the most beautiful custom sight you've ever seen and it's going to have animation and things are going to move and and it's going to feel different because it is different. There's no template and that can be done but it ends up, we didn't know at the time being very difficult to then have any kind of tracking on your site. So like inserting pixels so that, you know, when people have arrived and how long they stay or when they dropped off in the, in the funnel.

Um we realized after a huge time commitment and customizing with designers and engineers. This beautiful sight that we were going to have to change it over to a template and that was, I want to save hundreds of hours of time and just like a loss of something that felt like, you know, truly transported. So that was, that was a failure. And that happened, I want to say about two years ago now and I would say some days I'm still sad about it. Oh no. Gosh, what's the learning there though? I feel like that sounds amazing. Like is it to keep it simple? Like not complicate things. I don't know what is it? Hmm. I think the biggest learning was actually learning how to be gracious with myself and be like, I didn't know better than um, we've never done this before, paul and I say that to each other a lot because we'll look back on things that we now know better then and would never have done it like that and have to remember at the time that was our best choice.

We made that choice with all the facts we had. Um, so I think that's the biggest learning. Yeah, that's a good one. Good on you. I hate that for you, but good on you. Thank you. And I will say I said I'm still sad about it. Sometimes our site is beautiful now is amazing. Very special. It is very special. Your, your overall brand and what you've created. I I just love it and I'm so happy that you came on the show and shared all these amazing things with us. I'm so grateful. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks dude, thank you for having me. 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. See you soon. Mhm, mm hmm.