Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / “Do you even floss?” Cocofloss Founders Catherine & Chrystle Cu on changing the human behaviours behind flossing

Transcript

“Do you even floss?” Cocofloss Founders Catherine & Chrystle Cu on changing the human behaviours behind flossing · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Crystal and Catherine for Female Startup Club. Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. I'm your host, Doon Roshin, and joining me on the show today are sister duo, Catherine and Crystal from CocoFloss.
• 0:24
  Everyone hates it when the dentist tells you to floss. It's like that thing that you know you need to do, you know it will prevent most of the issues with your teeth and gums, yet you just don't do it. And you certainly don't meet many people who say they love flossing, right? Well, Crystal and Catherine are setting out to change that and change the way that people think about flossing.
• 0:47
  They set out to make it a ritual to love instead of something that was a total pain in the butt. By tapping into human behavior and taking note from brands who create stunning packaging and products that women actually want to highlight on their bathroom shelfie, Coco Floss sets out to create a beautifully packaged piece that you're proud to display at the front and center of your bathroom cabinet to keep it front of mind.
• 1:08
  They also took other pain points like how it felt between your teeth, the color of the floss, the smell of the floss, and even what it's made from to flip the current experience upside down and make this a ritual that you actually enjoy doing every single day. This episode got me wanting to floss immediately, and I hope it does the same for you. This is Crystal and Catherine for Female Startup Club.
• 1:33
  Welcome to the show, ladies. I'm so happy to have you here. Thanks, June. Thanks for inviting us. I always kick off with an introduction to who you are and what your company is. So could you give us the rundown?
• 1:49
  Yeah, so I'm Crystal. I'm a dentist and Catherine is my sister. And we started Coco Floss a bit over five years ago, or we launched our product a bit over five years ago, mostly out of, you know, sheer frustration on my part as a dentist. And I can go into that more if you'd like, but yeah, that's basically where it started. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing.
• 2:16
  We'll definitely dig into that for sure. I want to hear all about it. And I just firstly also want to say that your product is so much fun. And for the first time in my life, I literally was like, oh, my gosh, I actually want to floss after looking at your products and reading about what you guys are doing and how you've really disrupted this industry, which I personally have felt that struggle that you guys have obviously honed in on. Awesome.
• 2:43
  So usually we get started by going back to life before Coco Floss, what you were doing. Obviously, you've just said you're a dentist, but what kind of prompted this business and what got you interested in launching it? You know, the light bulb moment.
• 2:58
  So I had been a dentist for a handful of years already, and I was in a unique situation because I was doing all of my own dental hygiene. Most of the dental practices here in the United States, we hire dental hygienists, and they do all of the hygiene visits with their patients.
• 3:17
  And that's usually the model works great. In my circumstance, I was doing all my own dental hygiene. And so I was spending a very significant portion of my time day to day at work, just educating patients on oral diseases, gum disease, tooth decay.
• 3:35
  Moreover, I was treating diseases after they've already occurred, which is really frustrating to me because basically people would come in and I want to say like 99% of them, you know, I'm telling them, oh, you have gum disease, you have teeth decay. And it was just it was just really sad. It felt like I felt like, you know, what am I really helping people? You know, I'm just treating problems after they've occurred. I really wish I could have make a more positive impact on these people's lives because I'm just trying to help them, you know.
• 4:04
  manage diseases. So then I realized, you know, the big missing piece was their own understanding of how the disease happened and also what they could do to prevent it. And that's where the big light bulb came in because I became obsessed with floss. I realized that none of my patients were flossing and, you know, flossing is really the only way to clean in between your teeth. And, you know, most of the cavities that I treat involve surfaces in between the teeth.
• 4:34
  And likewise, any gum diseases occur in between the teeth. And so cleaning in between the teeth is paramount and no one was doing it. And that's when I wrote with my sister, Catherine.
• 4:48
  It must be so frustrating because it's totally preventable. Exactly. Yeah. So much of it is preventable. And, you know, I tried so hard to explain to my patients why they need to floss, explain to them how they need to floss, when they need to floss. It's really not that difficult. But...
• 5:05
  No matter how many different ways I tried to tell the story and how interesting I tried to make it sound, I just had no success in convincing them to do it. And my sister is an example of that. She was my average patient. You know, she would get her teeth cleaned regularly by me. And I would have that same conversation with her like, your gums are bleeding. You have plaque here. Oh, this is not looking so good. We need to take better care of this.
• 5:31
  I know. And Crystal would tell me, this is Kat, and Crystal would tell me, you know, you need to floss. And I'm like, I'm not going to floss. Like, I don't know. I just like, I barely even, I struggle to brush my teeth. How are you going to get me to floss? I imagine you're also like, hey, I have a dentist as a sister. Like, I'm sweet. Exactly. Yeah. Crystal's done my teeth in the living room before. It's been great.
• 5:57
  yeah so anyways um yeah Catherine had that luxury being a cavalier about it but you know honestly even you know I only have one sibling and everybody else is not my sibling and nobody else is flossing either so I realized this was a big problem and I and I you know then I started to
• 6:15
  kind of like focused on like, okay, what is the problem with floss? Why aren't people flossing? And I realized I didn't even have a favorite floss myself. And so then you kind of just start to pick apart, well, like, why don't I have a favorite floss? Or what are the attributes of the most ideal floss? And I couldn't find a floss that meet those criteria.
• 6:33
  And so that's when I realized I became obsessed with floss. And actually, I tinkered around with it by myself for a little while. And I didn't get very, very far because I was practicing full time as a dentist and running a dental practices is also, you know, it's running a business. So it's all consuming. There's just not much free time to work on a product.
• 6:57
  And that's where Catherine came in. And that's like where things really started happening. I managed to convince my sister to join me. And so then this is where Catherine should probably share what she was doing before she started Coco Floss. Yes, please, please do.
• 7:13
  Well, yeah, I was actually, I had quit my job in finance. And I was actually working on an art startup at the time, but I had this grand vision of creating a marketplace where people could commission art from local artists. And so Crystal actually helped me with that startup while we were vetting that idea. It was so much fun. We were just meeting artists and learning about their stories
• 7:43
  I found it was really hard after spending six months trying to convince all of my friends and family, specifically the wealthier ones, because original art is pretty expensive to buy art. Like I would look for all my friends like who here in San Francisco has sold a tech company. You could probably afford art. I was trying to help match them with original art. But I found that it was just a market that was too hard. It was hard to get people.
• 8:12
  to pay for original art. And so, you know, but, you know, while that wasn't working out, I still really wanted to start my own company. And I guess do something more closely related to the arts overall. And so.
• 8:31
  lost with her when art wasn't working out. I remember it was a really sad day. I was in a conference room where we diagrammed out everything I had learned about the art market, where I thought there were opportunities and what I had learned. And
• 8:45
  you know, all my hypotheses about the art market and about where there might be interest were coming out invalidated. And then it was that same day when Crystal like drew a new bubble for me. It was like, here's the dent, like here's dentistry and here are all my problems as a dentist. And she was basically telling me, you know, Kat, you don't even need to do market research because I know that, you know, this is a problem. Everyone needs to floss. She was just, she had so much conviction that there was a big opportunity in dentistry.
• 9:14
  And so she convinced me to kind of join her on that bandwagon. And her convincing me actually wasn't a simple process either. I was really skeptical of someone who didn't floss and didn't really understand the problem of gum disease or really anything related to dentistry. I made her show me firsthand that there was a problem. And so what made you change your mind just by seeing loads of women experiencing these issues? Yes.
• 9:43
  Yeah, I guess it was a mix. Well, I guess for the first time, I started just asking my friends about their habits at home and about their personal oral health. And I kind of learned, like, I'd go to happy hours and I'd always ask people, like, hey, do you floss? Like, or like, have you had cavities? And I found out, like, all my friends, and I was in my, like, late 20s at the time, everyone was saying, like, that they had had cavities.
• 10:13
  or that, you know, their gums bleed, or that, you know, they knew that they should be flossing more frequently, though they're not. So I was like, wow, this is really interesting. Like, they're a bunch of, like, young, relatively healthy people, and everyone's saying that they're struggling with oral health. You know, that's not something that we often talk about. Like, when asked, everyone has a personal story related to their teeth health.
• 10:37
  And then another thing that we did that Crystal helped me structure to further convince me that this was a real problem was we hosted a 21 day floss challenge. So basically, we invited all of our friends on Facebook to floss daily for 21 days. And at the beginning of the survey, we asked people about their current flossing habits. Like how frequently are you flossing? If you weren't flossing very frequently, why aren't you flossing frequently?
• 11:08
  And then afterwards, we pulled them again. And we learned kind of about what happened after they started flossing for 21 days. And I guess at the beginning of the survey, I realized like, wow, okay, most people aren't flossing, so they are struggling with some form of gum disease. And most people aren't flossing because flossing is supposedly boring, and they haven't built a habit, and it makes their gums bleed, so it's uncomfortable.
• 11:34
  But we learned that after kind of 21 days of flossing daily. Well, I guess people, you know, well, people call it early. Yeah. And flossing. Yeah. I think my kind of big takeaway was flossing is really an acquired taste. So kind of like you don't appreciate what clean feels like until you've kind of been flossing regularly to appreciate that new feeling. And I think it's a bit akin to working out. Like unless you've been running regularly, you might not appreciate the benefits of flossing
• 12:03
  working out or running every day. So that was kind of a, yeah, that, that really, for me, proved this, approved out this opportunity. Like I wanted to see firsthand what Crystal saw every day in her dental practice and those survey results, I think were what finally convinced me.
• 12:22
  It's so funny because everything that you're saying is just so me. It is so things that I have experienced and that I try, you know, I know the importance of flossing. I really have gone through multiple times where I'm like, okay, I'm going to create a habit. I'm going to get into that. I'm actually in a really good habit at the moment, to be honest, but I dip in and out of these habits. Yeah. And I think it's so cool that you started with the challenge because truly I
• 12:49
  once the habit is there, it's just so much easier and it doesn't feel daunting. You don't wake up being like, oh, I feel guilty. I didn't floss last night. It's just built in. Starting that, you know, marketing it, I guess that way is a really interesting way to get people into it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then going back to the habit, like, well, why wasn't flossing a habit? And I think in part it was, in part it's cultural and another part of it is
• 13:19
  I think that people aren't informed on how gum disease works and why flossing is important. So I think we realized, well, you know, we need to help folks build the habit, but also to help educate folks on why and how flossing can help prevent oral disease. Because I think, I mean, personally, you know, I feel like often we fall off of habits like, you know, we can have a habit going for days.
• 13:46
  you know, every day I've been doing every day for two months now. And then something changes or you get lazy and then you stop doing it. But I think to get people to return to that habit, like the educational piece is so important. And another thing we realized, there's another thing I did every time I went out
• 14:02
  like bars or happy hours, I'd ask people, hey, do you know how gum disease works? Like, I learned that no one really knew. Everyone's like, this chick has great conversations. She wants to ask me about my gum disease. Yeah. And it was actually such a great conversation starter. Actually, if you ever want to just meet someone randomly at a bar and have it not be awkward, just ask them, do you floss? Because no one, everyone has a response to that question. And it always leads to an interesting conversation about
• 14:29
  gum disease or not like oral health and like what a pain it is. It's just like, it's just like a universal challenge for people. Wow. I love that.
• 14:39
  I'm going to start doing that. Yeah. Instead of asking, do you work out? Do you floss? Do you even floss? Do you even? Oh my gosh. Yeah. But I think what we learned is like, no one really understands what, like, what is gum recession? People hear about gum recession and then think, oh, my gums are getting lower. And it took, I had Crystal explain how gum recession works to me probably a dozen to two dozen times before it really sunk in with me to like really understand how that
• 15:08
  yeah, what makes your gums recede. But most people don't understand that. And so that kind of part of what we're trying to do at Coco Floss is to help people understand how all these variables interact so that, you know, if they ever get out, you know, lose that habit that they're incentivized and they have a reason to return to it again. I'm definitely going to ask you about that after this episode. Yeah. Yeah.
• 15:32
  Okay, so how does one go about starting a floss company? It's something I haven't spoken to anyone who's been in this niche before, so I have absolutely no idea. How does one manufacture floss? Where do you even get started? And how long does it take? Okay.
• 15:49
  Well, we just, I mean, it's so not glamorous or elegant how you start. It's just, I mean, I think the number one is just having the conviction behind whatever it is that you want to do. And that I was just so obsessed with this flossing problem.
• 16:07
  And so, I mean, we, I literally would just like go shopping for like different materials and just see like, well, first of all, we look at what was existing, right. And pick apart, like what was good or bad about it. And then it's like, okay, what is this made out of? And, and then I would just like shop like on Amazon or like at the fabric store and look for different like materials and see like what qualities of this material make it superior at its cleaning efficacy. Yeah.
• 16:34
  And that's, that's kind of like where we started, like literally Catherine and I combed the beach one morning, looking at like strands of seaweed, evaluating like, could this work? Like, no joke, we tried all kinds of materials in our mouths and in between our teeth. I remember flossing with my hair many times too. It doesn't work. Hair's friends.
• 16:57
  Oh my God, that's hilarious. So, I mean, we literally, I mean, this is, this costs like very, not very much money to do. It's just like literally just file an error. Yeah. Like the first step is, you know, if you want to make anything new, you need to first know what you want to make. And you can do that by, you know, you basically want to create a prototype.
• 17:20
  If it's a physical product, you could use Play-Doh, you could use craft materials, you could use 3D printing. But basically, if you have an idea of what you want created, then you go look for a manufacturing partner to help make that for you. And there are trade fairs you can go to, often industry specific. So like for instance, if you want to make a medical device, there are medical device manufacturing trade fairs that you can go visit. And there you can meet all the potential manufacturers and manufacturers.
• 17:49
  share with them your idea and see if they would be a good fit to help execute upon that for you. Yeah, but it's kind of like anything. It's building... First, you have an idea and then you need to share that idea and get someone else excited about it. Convince them that you're worth investing in because when you find a manufacturing partner, yes, you'll pay them for your product, but they're also taking a big risk with you because for any
• 18:13
  you know, new product, they need to invest in creating space for you and their manufacturing line.
• 18:20
  creating time for you in their schedule. And for any startup, it's always a bit of a risk. Like, I think these factories are often have, you know, people place one order, and then the business doesn't work out, and then they're not repeating orders. And so that turns out to be a loss for them. So basically, you need to, before you reach out to partners, you need to have an idea, you have to have true excitement about the problem you're trying to solve, and a prototype and idea ready to share with potential partners.
• 18:45
  So what we did, dovetailing what Catherine was saying, we...
• 18:50
  basically pitched an idea to our friends and family. We photoshopped what we thought our floss would look like and described its attributes. And we basically marketed our floss to our friends and family, and we had them pre-order it before we even made an initial run of our floss, just because of the investment. So we kind of like de-risked the initial investment.
• 19:18
  And that was an important test too, because sure, like maybe we can make the best floss, but if we can't convey the need to buy a special or different floss to other people, then what business do we have? And so we had the prototype, but we actually just kind of just floated the idea and got pre-orders for it. And that's when we're like, okay, we could do this. Yeah. Yeah.
• 19:42
  It wasn't even a lot. Yeah. You got that early like validation. There's people who are ready to buy. Yeah. Yeah. And when we're talking about pre-orders, I think Crystal and I were excited about maybe like 12 people to start and then it picked up from there, but that was enough to get it. And these were like 12 people paying, I think $6 a piece. So we were like so excited about that though. Yeah. Yeah.
• 20:04
  Oh my gosh, so cool. And that leads me onto something I wanted to ask you guys about, which is the price point of your product and how you sort of set about defining who your audience would be and whether you were going to kind of go that fashion luxury vibe, you know, through really cool retailers like Goop and Sephora and that kind of avenue, or to go down the supermarket route of the $3 price point. I want to understand like where you kind of
• 20:32
  how you figured out where you were going to position your brand. Well, I mean, I guess this is part of like understanding the whole existing problem. So and when you understand, OK, like where do people buy floss? Where do they get it? Most people actually there's no delight factor in purchasing floss previously.
• 20:51
  there never was. Most people would say, well, one, they didn't even know what floss they were using. They would say, it's just the floss that my dentist gave me. And mind you, those are very, very short lengths of floss. They're meant to last for a week, but the average person will let that little sample size last them almost a year. And so they, you know, and then so the shopping experience is not delightful in any way. And then you go to like the drugstore and everything looks so,
• 21:19
  similar, everything's so generic. And it's not delightful in any way. So whereas like, you know, as women specifically, like we find a light in, you know, just perusing through the aisles of Sephora and just discovering products that way.
• 21:35
  Also, you know, for example, Anthropologie, which is one of our current retailers, that was a big inspiration for me also, because here we are at a store like selling somewhat mundane things. I mean, we're talking about bars of soap, but like all of a sudden it's so delightful to shop for a bar of soap because they, you know, you can smell them, you can touch them, they're beautiful. And shopping for soap, Anthropologie is so different from shopping for soap at the drug store. Yeah.
• 22:02
  So that's kind of what we were thinking. I was thinking about also how dental floss as it was, it was something that was so hideous that people would put it in the back of their medicine cabinet. You know, nowadays, people actually are very proud of what they put in their medicine cabinet. They call it the shelfie. Certainly, yeah, it would be hiding behind something more beautiful or they put it inside the drawer. It's never on the counter.
• 22:31
  But then you'll buy the $35 candle and be willing to display it, even if you're not using the candle because it's too expensive to burn, but you're willing to pay for that candle and put it on your countertop because it's beautiful. And so I was thinking that it would be...
• 22:47
  wonderful to have a floss that people would proudly display on their countertop because I think being able to see it is also really important for habit building um how can you remember to floss every day if you don't even see it you need to go to your bathroom every day and just see the floss right there oh that's part of my routine I'm gonna I'm gonna use that every day oh my gosh so true yeah so and another part of pricing um also it does need to be practical so
• 23:11
  I'm still kind of surprised every day at how hard it is to make money as a business owner. Like, and for now, I really appreciate, not that I appreciate high prices, but, you know, I used to be someone who, you know, if I saw a lotion that was $15 instead of, you know, three, it's like, I might balk at that. It was like, like, they're just trying to rip us off or what is this? Am I paying just for the color? But yeah.
• 23:37
  You know, I think when you're starting a business, you also need to obviously do a bottoms up analysis where you just sum up your costs. And the reality is when you're starting small, when you're starting out and when you're buying things in lower volumes, you're going to have a higher cost basis. And if you want to, you know, make, you know, invest in higher quality ingredients or, for instance, like with our packaging, we've invested in using 100 percent recycled papers and all of our packaging, like all that costs a little bit more.
• 24:07
  And then another big cost, especially if you're doing e-commerce, is shipping. And that's super expensive. I think with all the Amazon Prime shipping, people assume it's free. But really, you have people's time to assemble the order. You have postage costs, which are now $3 in order. $3 is the starting rate. And all that really adds up. So as we were thinking about the price of our floss, we were also thinking about, well, what could support...
• 24:37
  everything we, not everything we want to do, but what could we even sell without losing money just starting out? And we wanted to be able to sell a single unit to people so people could try it out and at least break even there. And so I think when we started at $6, that was pretty fringe. And also the thing when you're starting a business from scratch, like all your costs are artificially low because you're probably not paying yourself. You probably have like legions of family members who are helping you, but
• 25:06
  At the time, we thought $6 was just enough that would enable us to sell a single unit while covering the postage and the product costs and all of that. So I mean, I know people always talk about what are retail markups over the cost of goods sold. And you need to make sure that you have enough profit to pay yourself and your teammates to...
• 25:32
  properly and to have money left over to continue to invest in innovation and your brand and distribution. There's a lot. To be profitable. Yeah. Yeah, totally. What I really love about everything you have both just said is like you really tapped into the
• 25:50
  the true consumer, like human behavior behind flossing, like wanting it to be beautiful so that it's, you know, out because it's so true. It's always the thing that's at the back. You always forget about it. Um, I think everything you're saying is just so you literally just speak to my core of someone who is like, has the floss issue. Oh, I love that. That's amazing. Yeah.
• 26:13
  I still have an issue. Well, I get off the bandwagon like every now and then. And then I do have to remind myself, like, I, like, I do understand how gum recession works. And Crystal showed me pictures of how people look as they age if they don't take it for the gums. And it's not pretty. Like, like, receding gums will make you look older. Like if you just took a picture of your face and photoshopped your gums to make them look
• 26:37
  you know, five millimeters lower than they are, you'll probably look probably five, 10 years older too. The habit needs to start in school. It should be done every day. Like from preschool, it should be like brought in that like you have a flossing time like at school and then the habit is there like 12 years later and it's locked in for the rest of your life versus trying to start at 30. Right. Yeah. Kind of like brushing your teeth, right? Like I wouldn't
• 27:07
  think not to brush my teeth like ever. Yeah, exactly. I want to get into the marketing and how you guys first started finding your early customers aside from your friends and family. What were you doing to acquire people in the early days and, and growing the brand and spreading like word of mouth and that kind of thing?
• 27:30
  Yeah, well, I think to start, we made sure that all of my dental colleagues got to try our product. Because for our product, once you try it,
• 27:41
  it's hard to switch back to a regular floss. So fortunately, having gone to dental school here and having a great network of dental friends, I was able to have as many as like all of them really try my, try our floss and they loved it. And so that kind of started the initial momentum because as a dentist or dental professional, I'm,
• 28:06
  dental hygienist all day every day just like I was you're talking about interdental cleaning and flossing and so um and it was the same it was the same problem everyone has it's like well yeah you want me to floss stock but what should I buy then fine I'll floss what should I buy and there was no recommendation there was no favorite um and so now coco floss is the dental dentist's favorite um and that was huge for us
• 28:31
  Yes, gosh, that is just such a win to get it into the hands of all the people who can recommend it to your ideal customer. Yeah, and I think it's important when you're starting off to focus your marketing efforts on, you want to find the people who are going to help you continue to sell your product. So figure out like who loves your product most, like if you just seeded your product to you.
• 28:59
  like 10 different categories of types of people like, Oh, I'm giving it to, well, maybe I should use the dental boss example, but like, for instance, the dental boss, like we tried giving it to just friends, like, and they tend to just skew towards like female, but you know, they'd use it and like, yeah, they had a great experience. But they weren't necessarily raving about it, but we found that, you know, the dentist, okay, you give it to them and now they were using it. And now they were like,
• 29:30
  they wanted to join our company. We hadn't even started. They're like, oh my gosh, we want to help you. I want to give this to every patient. Can I pre-order? So you want to figure out who is going to really evangelize. Yeah, who are your evangelists? That's the word, right? It just makes things so much easier, especially if you don't have a marketing budget. So I think we identified pretty early on that our dentists would be our biggest advocates and biggest cheerleaders.
• 30:00
  In addition to Crystal's dental school network, we actually did, you know, Crystal and I, it's really not that hard, but we kind of taught ourselves how to do sales. We took all sorts of like online sales training courses on how to cold call, how to track...
• 30:16
  You know, warm leads, cold leads, do follow-ups. We set call targets each day. I forget what it was, but we had, like, we were trying to close, like, five new dental practices a day through cold calling. And when we say close, by the way, close meant, at the time, willingness for the dental practice to receive your samples. Because...
• 30:34
  In the dental practice, because being a dentist, I know we get all kinds of mail every day with samples in it. And I saw it as junk. Like it would often go straight into the trash. And it's such a waste. I hate that. Right. So for us, I got like a like a positive lead. It was like somebody who picked up the phone and said, sure, I'll try your floss. OK, go ahead and send it to me. Because then that way we knew that our precious loss wasn't going to go straight into the trash can.
• 31:04
  Mm, totally. Had you had to order like a crazy, you know, minimum order or was it acceptable when you were first starting out? It was acceptable. Yeah, at the time, I think we put an initial order of like $10,000 worth of floss. At the time, it sounded like crazy.
• 31:23
  so much. But, you know, now that we're a little more versed in manufacturing, I think that that was pretty, you know, yeah, pretty good. Sounds like a lot to me. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. And so where is the company today? And what kind of marketing efforts do you do to acquire people now? Is it the same? Or have you kind of stumbled across some some new ways to bring people into
• 31:52
  Yeah, it's a bit of both. Actually, next year, so for 2020, you know, unfortunately, a lot of our dental partners, I think it's just been a rough year for everyone with COVID, especially for dental practices, for dentists and hygienists, as folks have had to kind of close their dental practices. And everyone's kind of had this fear of seeing the dentist for fear of getting COVID and all that.
• 32:18
  But dentists really remain, I think, our most loyal segment of our customer base. And in terms of how we're getting new dental practices to use Coca-Floss, it's still actually very similar. But Crystal and I aren't doing all the cold calls anymore. And I'm really happy about that. But next year, hopefully, if the world can return to normal, we're excited about actually beginning to test out
• 32:45
  a bit of like a dental outreach program, very similar to what Crystal and I did when we were first starting the company. But basically, we'll send samples to dental practices and follow up with them over emails and phone calls to see if they'd be interested in incorporating cocafas in their dental practice. So that's like pretty traditional sales. But, you know, in addition to that, you know, of course, we...
• 33:09
  we now have been investing and continuing to just diversify our channel mix in the digital marketing realm.
• 33:17
  When we first started the company, actually, we worked with dentists. And then we also got a lot of our early customers just through Facebook and Instagram, just organically. We were posting every day and trying to tag people to amplify the social reach of each of our posts. But as an online e-commerce business, a lot of our early customers came in just through our social feeds.
• 33:42
  Now that we've matured a bit, you know, we are spending into Facebook for prospecting and Google also for prospecting. I'm continuing to learn about new channels all the time. For instance, like everyone's talking about TikTok now. So that's something I've been telling Crystal, maybe we should consider TikTok. Oh, my God, you should. TikTok is the best. Yeah. But once you kind of like get traction...
• 34:05
  And once you have a marketing budget, it took us years to finally realize like, wow, we actually have a marketing budget. Like there actually is a budget for things and like a real budget. Like Crystal and I are finally getting paid and there was a marketing budget. Like I'm still kind of like amazed at that because it was actually still like a relatively recent thing that happened. I was like, I can't believe that now there's a company with a real budget. We can hire people and we're looking for, you know, we're continuing to build out our marketing.
• 34:33
  yeah, different phase now. But yeah, there are all sorts of ways to get in front of people. That's so exciting. Cool. I love that for you guys, having your own marketing budget and being able to kind of, you know, take a breath and be like, let's bring in more people to build our vision and spread the good word about flossing. Thank you.
• 34:59
  What advice do you have for women who have a big idea and want to launch their own company? Well, definitely first, I think having conviction in yourself is really important.
• 35:14
  And then having conviction in what it is that you want to do. So those are two number one things. And I think going back to the first thing, just knowing that you can do anything is really important. Because I think that a lot of people just doubt themselves or they look at what other people do. And like, I don't know how they do that. I could never do that. But the truth is, like any one of us can do whatever we want. And we can be anything we want to be. You just have to put your mind to it. And it is a lot of hard work. But deciding that you're going to do it is the number one.
• 35:43
  That's what I think. I love that. Yeah. I love that. And what about you, Catherine? What's your advice? Yeah, I'd say to really just to put on a hat of being committed to learning and just learning something new every day and getting one step closer every day. Not even every day. You might...
• 36:05
  get like five steps. We're far behind. And then the next day, get like 10 steps closer. But realize that, you know, I mean, to get to any goal, it's really, I think if you're committed to being just really honest with yourself about what you're learning on that journey, and if you keep kind of redirecting as needed, you'll kind of get to that goal. But yeah, I kind of look at
• 36:30
  I don't know. Before when we were kind of starting Cocoa Foss, even when I was just looking at a startup company, I thought of it a bit like we're panning for gold. Like we have this idea, we're trying to figure out who is most excited about the idea we have to share. And we're just like tapping
• 36:49
  maybe not and oh there wasn't and we'll go travel and find another river and like try to look for the signal but just a lot of trial and error and even to this day now that we're like a different phase where we're scaling the company but anytime we do anything you know we have an idea and we're just going to test it in in small ways and keep learning from these tests to get us closer to that ultimate goal
• 37:13
  But yeah, I think as Chris said, don't be intimidated by the magnitude of the goal, but realize that, yeah, everything is a journey comprised of a lot of small and incremental steps. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 37:28
  I really like that analogy. That's so nice. And you guys definitely struck gold. So that's really cool. We're up to the six quick questions part of the episode. And usually what I do is I'll run through it with someone first and then we'll run through the second time separately. So I will start with Crystal. Question number one is what's your why? What's my why? Well, I think it's awful that...
• 37:58
  like gum disease and teeth decay has become so commonplace that people think it's normal. And I'm talking about seeing it in everyone's mouths from executives to people that I treat in like community clinics to little children that I see in the Philippines. This problem affects everyone of all socioeconomic statuses. And I'd really, really like love to see
• 38:23
  what we could do to kind of make a dent in that because it's so painful seeing how afflicted we human beings are by these issues. Totally. Love that. Love that for me. There are people, people like you out there spreading the message. Question number two is what's been the number one marketing moment that's made your business pop?
• 38:50
  I think it was when Gwyneth Paltrow's blog, Goop, mentioned us. I remember it was December. I think it was December 2015. So we were fairly young. And to have Goop feature us was just, you know, that was like so exciting for us. And I feel like that really put us, you know, gave us the attention of some other publications. And that kind of just snowballed into us being a cool brand.
• 39:20
  Yes, I imagine that would have been crazy. So exciting. Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What are you reading? What are you listening to? What do you do to get smarter? Um, I'm either on audible or reading anytime I have a free moment, you know, the audio book app and what am I reading? Um,
• 39:43
  I read a lot of like health related stuff. I'm kind of, I'm really into it. I'm overly into it. But I read a lot of key things, overall health things. Yeah, I'm always recommending books to people. I think my patients are probably tired of it. But every time they see me, I have another book that I'm book entitled that I'm writing on a post-it for them and telling them to read. I also have a little library in my office with like, actually, I made like little library slip cards in there too, so that I could lend books out to people.
• 40:13
  And honestly, I don't get a lot of them back because I don't think my patients have time to read them. So they hold on to them indefinitely. But I just want patients to understand the problem. So I think that's really important. And so I don't mind giving books away as long as they're willing to read them.
• 40:31
  What's the number one recommendation you have? What book on teeth should I be reading? You should read The Dental Diet by Dr. Stephen Lin. He's an Australian dentist. And when I saw that book come out in 2018, I think I was like, Oh, my God, like, I could have written this book. I mean, in terms of not I mean, not to discredit him, like he is brilliant for writing it. But like, it just basically spoke to exactly how I felt about the problem. And had I not been doing
• 41:01
  I could have helped Dr. Stephen Lim with his book because it resonates with me so much. Amazing. I'm going to check it out. Question number four is how do you win the day? And that's around your AM and PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and motivated and successful. Hmm.
• 41:21
  How do I win the day? Well, I feel like, I don't know. I guess I feel very lucky about it. I'm generally very happy every day. Just practicing gratitude daily is a really important thing. I'm just grateful for, you know, every, everything that I'm blessed with. Maybe that's comes from seeing, you know, being in very, very disparate places, you know, like visiting like very, very poor countries and, you know,
• 41:47
  seeing what living is like there. And I just feel like I'm almost spoiled, really. Like I live in California, the sun shines most of the time. I work with my sister, who's my best friend. So yeah, I have a baby girl now. She's five months old. So I don't even know what it is, but I just feel really happy and blessed.
• 42:09
  I love that. That's amazing. Question number five is if you only had a thousand dollars left in your business bank account, where would you spend it? That's a tough one because Catherine knows this about me. Like I like to give like if if Catherine didn't help me, Coco Floss would have been a nonprofit and that would have died a long time ago.
• 42:35
  I think about the thousand dollars actually would go very, very far at this community clinic that I work in in the Philippines. Where we're trying to help this one school become tooth decay free, which would be a huge. I mean, it actually I think it already is, but it's I think the first and only tooth decay free school in the Philippines, which is huge.
• 42:57
  So that thousand dollars, you know, we could feed children for months or we could buy them floss.
• 43:08
  I mean, that's a great answer. That's amazing. That means the business would be done so because they're through the money. But that's what I think of. Last question. Question number six is how do you deal with failure? And it can be personal experience or just your general mindset and approach. Yeah, failure is hard, but I think just being willing to look at it
• 43:37
  that it was a failure, I think is the best way to grow from it. It's almost easier to look away and not acknowledge that it was a failure and then move on. But I think just like, you know, owning up to the failure and just kind of like taking that in and seeing what you learned from it helps you grow and then move beyond it. Absolutely. Yeah.
• 44:03
  Catherine, your turn. Are you ready? Oh, yeah. And don't feel like you have to. I, you know, I don't. I think it's so funny. I'm actually super shy. I was thinking about this, watching Crystal go through this. But I mean, yeah, I'm happy to go through it. But, you know, since Crystal went through it already. Oh, no, you're going through it for sure. You've got to go through it. Oh, okay, fine. It's harder to be second. Those are all big questions. Yeah. Yeah.
• 44:30
  They are. They're really big questions. I love this part of the episode because, you know, once I've done like 200 episodes, I'm going to be able to look back and see the trends that come out from all the women that I get to speak to. And I just think it's so fascinating what people come up with and what their answers are. So, you know, it's for the greater good that you do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Question number one. What's your why? Why?
• 44:59
  I'm really excited about, I guess, building the brand and about being able to hopefully just impact people in a positive way. And sometimes I know that's like really abstract and something I'm always thinking about. But I think one of the reasons why I've always wanted to start my own company was I've always just been inspired by great brands. Like I was like loved how inspirational.
• 45:29
  these shows, but they really shaped who I am and my values. And I think in some ways, kind of, yeah, they were very positive influence in my life. And I love how inspirational Nike is and try and encourage people to get healthier and stronger. And so I'm really interested in just continuing to explore how can a brand help people become better versions of themselves.
• 45:50
  Yeah. It's so funny that you say both of those businesses, because I can totally see both of those businesses in what you're doing. You know, you, you're making people healthier and you have like imagination and like dreaming into, into your product inherently. So that's so awesome to hear that. I totally see it. Um, question number two in your eyes, what is the number one marketing moment that made your business pop? Oh, um,
• 46:21
  Yeah, I think I have to agree with Crystal on that Gwyneth Paltrow on the Goop thing. There was something. Yeah, I guess that was our first retail partner, actually. And I think because, yeah, she had built such an amazing brand and that just helped really pull in other people who already really loved Goop and that philosophy and that audience was just so aligned with ours.
• 46:50
  And I know a lot of entrepreneurs may say, I'm wondering about how do you even get something like Goop to reach out to you? And actually the story behind that is actually that I think I had done some internet research on like Gwyneth Paltrow's assistance. Chris and I were just trying to like cold male celebrities. And I found a contact online and I didn't even know if his email would go through, but I had reached out to him just randomly asking if he would be willing to share something with Gwyneth. And I sent him,
• 47:19
  this individual samples and I think it was six or eight months later then I heard Gwyneth actually had a chance to try it because she personally tried everything on her website and then another six months later we were invited to place Coco Fossum Goop. Oh wow that's amazing really great strategy to get the assistants involved I love that very nifty tip. Yeah yeah
• 47:47
  So cool. Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? Yeah, I think really. Yeah, I guess. I don't know. Sorry, I got distracted. That's OK. Don't worry. Catherine's I want to say Catherine's friend network is very talented. She went to Stanford and her friends are all entrepreneurs. And so just hanging out with her college girlfriends, she learned so much from them.
• 48:18
  I learned from them too. I love that. That's really cool. Yeah. It's unique. Definitely unique. Definitely unique. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I mean, kind of like Chris, I think it's really, I'm embarrassed to say how much time I spent on Instagram, but you know, there were so many distractions, but I guess I'm someone who,
• 48:41
  I don't know, like I haven't been, I don't really know why I started trying to learn French again, but like I really love French in high school. And so these days I'm listening to like Duolingo in the car or I'll put on podcasts, you know, related to entrepreneurship or to tech. But yeah, just always trying to expose myself to new ideas. I also even downloaded Masterclass. Those are like really fun, short snippets where you can learn about it or one variety of topics from space to like at home gardening. So yeah.
• 49:09
  Yeah. Yes, totally. Such a great resource. Total side note, I have been absolutely addicted to Emily in Paris. And obviously, it's just the best show ever. I know. I'm excited to watch it because I think I'm going to get jealous. I mean, I'm so jealous.
• 49:28
  You will for sure. It'll make you want to like give up your life and move there. Question number four is how do you win the day? What's your AM and PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and motivated and productive? Yeah, I guess I...
• 49:48
  No, I really look forward to breakfast in the morning. I'll usually just start like, speaking of like literal rituals, I usually just try to start with a healthy breakfast, like always have berries and coffee and I'll take my time. I'll put on the news. I know I've been listening to France 24 recently, but I appreciate the French news because they have a bit more international coverage and a lot more arts and culture coverage. Yeah.
• 50:15
  Yeah. And then, you know, if I can, if I can get, you know, tasks done throughout the day and make time for, you know, a couple walks with my dog and Aussie doodle and find time in to work out and make a good dinner, then, you know, that's a great day, I guess. Then you've won the day. Yeah, yeah. Totally. Little simple things like having a moment outdoors. Yeah.
• 50:40
  For sure. Question number five is if you only had a thousand dollars left in your business bank account, where would you spend it? Yeah, I agree with Crystal. This is a really hard one. And I'm going to probably take a really practical approach here, but I think I might get I guess it depends on the state of the world. But assuming.
• 51:02
  Yeah, I think I'd probably just invite people to pitch ideas to me, actually. I think I'd, yeah. And then I'd kind of take that approach. But yeah. That's really cool. I haven't heard that before. Like, what am I most excited about? Like, who do I think is going to really take this and make an impact that I'm really jazzed about? Yeah. Love that. Very cool. And question number six, last question is, how do you deal with failure?
• 51:32
  Yeah. I think, you know, I think maybe even don't think of failure as failure and don't tie up. I think when people think of failure, they're thinking of an outcome being closely tied to their personal identity. But I think if you can disentangle your work from your identity, anything you do isn't a failure. It's just kind of part of the process of learning and of, you know, anytime you're doing anything new,
• 51:56
  We're really pushing the boundary of anything. You're going to fail. And that's just part of the process. So, yeah, just realize that it's part of the process and it's part of if you can learn from each failure, you've made progress and, you know, another step ahead.
• 52:15
  Totally. Oh, guys, that was so awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story with me and what's been happening in the world of Coco Floss. I am such a fan. It is just so cool. Oh, thank you so much, dude. We're going to be hopefully in the UK soon. Hopefully. Oh, my gosh, please come to the UK. Yeah. I'm working on it. Nice. I love that for me.
• 52:49
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 53:13
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 53:36
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.
• 53:52
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 54:17
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 54:39
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.