Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / “He Locked Me Out Of All My Accounts!” How a VC Ruined Amy Lacey’s Cali'flour Foods & Her Comeback With Soursop Nutrition (Part 1)

Transcript

“He Locked Me Out Of All My Accounts!” How a VC Ruined Amy Lacey’s Cali'flour Foods & Her Comeback With Soursop Nutrition (Part 1) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  Let's take this show on the road. Imagine a world where gender equality is the norm and women have equal access to the same financial opportunities regardless of our personal circumstances. Hi, I'm Dune, founder of Female Startup Club and your personal hype girl. This is the pod for you. If you're starting a side hustle,
• 0:20
  scaling your biz or looking for inspo. We cover venture capital, personal finance, selling your biz and keeping your mental health in check from entrepreneurs like Refinery29's co-founder Piera Gelati and Ju Ru, who sold Hero Cosmetics for $650 million. Slide into my DMs if there's a question you want answered and let's get into today's episode. So,
• 1:02
  Amy, welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm so honored to be here. This is so exciting. We made it happen. We made it happen. A couple of tech issues. Love a tech issue. Story of my life. On my end. On my end. Oh, I don't know. I mean, you know, who knows?
• 1:22
  No blame here. There's no blame here. Oh gosh. I feel like we have a lot of ground to cover. There's so many things I want to ask you. I want to start with your first brand. I want to cover the acquisition. I want to cover the second brand. So let's kind of go back to where it all starts. I'm thinking pre pre 2016 ish. Where do you like to start your story? Okay. So I'm a mom of three, been married 26 years.
• 1:50
  And I like to start my story kind of with my mess. And my mess was, well, first of all, I grew up with a single mom. So my mess really started as a child. And truth be told, my mom accidentally got pregnant with me and she wanted to have an abortion. And my dad, the one good thing he did, I think, was talk her out of it. He married her, but that lasted about two years because he was a drug addict, alcoholic. So I'm
• 2:19
  raised by a single mom, pretty rough in the beginning. There were times where I was on the streets a little bit. I was in a foster home for a bit. And then I finally landed in a farm at my aunt and uncle's for, which really just changed my life. And I think it taught me what real love was, but it also taught me that I wanted a family. So when I got married and started having kids, I was like,
• 2:45
  very protective of my family, like very, like everything was centrally like located about my family. So I had started this tradition with my three kids called Friday Family Fun Night, which was pizza and games or movies.
• 3:01
  But one Saturday morning, I woke up and I couldn't move. I was inflamed. I was really sick. My body was attacking itself. And it probably had been attacking itself for a very long time. But it just broke me this one Saturday morning. So to fast forward, I was very sick, went to the doctors, was diagnosed with lupus and Sjogren's.
• 3:24
  was put on steroids, injections, and Plaquenil, which is the drug that everybody talked about during COVID, which has horrendous side effects. Oh, I didn't know that one. Yeah, Plaquenil was like the one that people were saying, you need to get Plaquenil in case you get COVID. But it has terrible side effects.
• 3:43
  And then I was on antidepressants. I was on, oh gosh, a water pill for inflammation. I was on five different medications and I got super depressed. I felt like I wasn't being a mom or a wife. I was like not able to function.
• 4:00
  So I got, I literally went into a deep depression. And then one day I just said, you know, I got to pull myself out of this. And I met with a man named Rob Wolf and some viewers may have heard him. He's a big paleo guy at one time. He created a cross the first CrossFit gym in my hometown. And I used to work out there and I thought I'm going to go meet with him because he really believes that food is medicine. And I want to figure out a way to.
• 4:26
  to get off these horrendous medications because the medications just had side effects that were worse than the actual condition that I was being treated with. So I met with him. He did an elimination diet. I went gluten-free, grain-free, and I figured out that grains and gluten were my issue.
• 4:45
  So I went looking to bring back the family fun night again and get some normalcy back in our family. And I discovered Udi's was the only gluten-free pizza crust in the market at the time. And it was horrible for me. It was horrible. It had a lot of fillers. It caused a lot of inflammation. So I went looking for a recipe online and I found a cauliflower pizza crust.
• 5:07
  Now, I was really resistant because cauliflower was not a vegetable I ever bought. And I mean, let's face it, it's like the last veggie standing at a party on a veggie tray. Like people don't really love eating it. So, and to me, it was like, it's white and it smells funny. And so I don't consider it a vegetable because it's not green, but this recipe called for it. And I was like, okay, I'll try it. And I perfected it. It was a hot mess in the beginning,
• 5:37
  is that it was so bland, it took on any flavors we put with it. So I was making cauliflower pizza crust, cauliflower tacos, and friends and family were loving it. And one of my friends said, you should take this to farmer's market, to our local farmer's market, just to teach your kids how to work a market, how to talk to people. And it would be a fun little hobby. And so I did that. And
• 6:03
  It went crazy. Like I started getting orders before I ever made it to farmer's market. A couple of local grocery stores picked me up, which means I needed different licensing, eventually needing to get a co-packer. But really what transformed, and this is the first, we were the first cauliflower pizza crust to hit the market. So when we hit the market, there was just the head of cauliflower. There was no rice, nothing like that had been invented. Okay.
• 6:28
  Wow. World first.
• 6:43
  And her youngest daughter had nonverbal autism. Like she was not able to talk. And the doctor had put her on a low carb diet. And it turns out our pizza crust was low carb. It wasn't planned to be that way. It just, it turns out it's low carb because it's grain free and gluten free. So she asked if I would send her some pizza crust, said, sure. We sent her pizza crust for seven months, like a lot of pizza crust. Oh God, that gets me in the heart.
• 7:08
  Yeah. Well, in order for Kenzie to eat, Jesse had to sit down and eat with her. So seven months go by and, you know, we're doing the farmer's market thing. We're doing some online sales, not a whole lot. Um, matter of fact, in 2016, I think our total sales for the year were like 108,000. And I was actually, because the margins were so bad, I was actually negative 60, 269,000 in the hole with the business.
• 7:35
  So anyways, I actually, Jesse asked me to come up and visit her. She said she had a surprise for me. So I said, sure. So I drove up there about an hour and a half. And when she opened the door, I about fell over because Jesse, because she had to sit and eat with Kenzie had lost 90 pounds, which I know is not healthy in a seven month period, but she had gone low carb, lost 90 pounds. And then Kenzie came up and gave me a big hug and said, thank you for the pizza.
• 8:06
  And she was talking and I was like, oh my gosh, you know, like tears. It was like that moment. And so we took pictures and it was so exciting. But fast forward a couple months, I'm negative $269,000. I can't spend any more of our money. Like we were remodeling our house and I used our garage money. So we had no, we were building a garage, no garage. Garages scrapped. Garages scrapped to cauliflower. So I couldn't go into our retirement. So literally...
• 8:35
  I am pretty strong faith based person. I'm literally in prayer. I'm looking at my husband who's sleeping, snoring. And that night I had a dream and I don't, I don't usually remember my dreams. And the dream was really vivid. It was share Jesse's story online. Oh God. So I woke up, I called my only employee I had who was back in the States. And I said, I think I'm supposed to share Jesse's story on Facebook. And she said, well, that's great. Except for you better ask Jesse, if you can talk about Jesse. Okay.
• 9:04
  And so I called Jesse and Jesse was super excited. And back then, Jared was making headways in Subway for his perversion. And Jesse's like, I'll be the Jesse of Califlower Foods, like the Jared of Subway without the perversion. I'm like, great. She was so excited.
• 9:21
  So we went ahead and we put it on Facebook and Facebook shut it down immediately because you cannot do weight loss before and after, at least back then in 2017, you couldn't do that. So I'm like, you know what, what's the more powerful story is Kenzie's. So let's talk about Kenzie and Jesse's
• 9:38
  We have a picture of her with Kenzie before Kenzie was talking and after. And there's a dramatic difference. You can tell that she's lost weight. And we talk about the recipes they ate and so forth. Well, that ad and that post went viral. And so in January of 2017, we sold more than we had in the entire 2016. And so I often I have the five P's in my business and I'll share that with you.
• 10:04
  And I believe that part of it has to do with what happened and why we went viral. But we ended up ending 2017 selling mass amounts of pizza crust. We started an email list. We started going into grocery. And by the end of 2018, we were the number one pizza crust on Amazon for 16 months straight. So we weren't just a cauliflower pizza crust. We were beating Boboli, Mama Mary's, like pizza crust.
• 10:30
  like not just frozen, not just cauliflower, but all pizza crust. So we were actually selling a pizza crust every five seconds online. We went nuts and became, by the end of 2018, we were an eight figure business. So I quickly had to get a team. I quickly had to learn how to be a CEO and I had owned other businesses, but nothing of this magnitude. And it was crazy. And then competitors started coming out like,
• 10:59
  you know, mass competitors and lots of other products. And so that's how CaliFlower started. I ended up selling a majority of it to some venture capitalists in mid 2019, mainly because
• 11:15
  I kind of lost myself. Truth be told, I started traveling all the time. I was never home. My husband, who's a physician, and this is kind of funny because he's Western medicine and I'm holistic. And so we kind of butt heads, but in a good way.
• 11:31
  So he had given up part of his practice and they were calling him Dr. Mom because I was never home. And remember, I go back to my childhood with this and I'm like, no, I have a family. I've been blessed. I need to figure out a way to get back home. But I was gone like.
• 11:48
  When Dr. Oz or the doctors or Home and Family, those shows or the cast of Hamilton call you and they want you to be there and have your pizzas or the ESPYs, Emmys, Teen Choice Awards, you go. You don't say no. And so I was gone all the time. So I decided to sell it to some venture capitalists. I also had just landed a major grocery store account, two of them, Whole Foods and Walmart.
• 12:13
  And I needed the experience of somebody that understood grocery to come in and help me. So I sold the majority of cauliflower in 2019.
• 12:23
  Wow. Oh my gosh. I have so many questions. I think, where am I going to start here? Because I had like some thoughts before. And my first thought was the power of storytelling is just, we can't ever forget the power of storytelling when you are building a business. Sometimes it's hard to share vulnerable things or...
• 12:43
  you know, things that might not be like the polished version of something. But then actually when you release your truth and your story and the things that matter to you or the people around you and your community, the power is just... And I think even if you observe your own behavior, you know, like...
• 13:00
  You know, if a brand is just over here being like, oh, yeah, look at my cool brand and like, look at these features. You're like, yeah, OK, cool, whatever. I'm not listening. But if you're over here and you're like, oh, my God, this is this person and this is, you know, the before and after transformation, like this is powerful and this is how it helped them.
• 13:19
  I think back to it's funny that you talk about, you know, your childhood. I also was raised by a single mom. I'm an only kid. We were raised like in the middle of the bush off the grid. My mom had no money, like absolutely, you know, dirt poor, even though she thinks she was like she's rich in life. She doesn't she would never say that she's poor because she thinks she's rich in life. And.
• 13:41
  Those kind of things I had never really spoken about. Like I was always really like embarrassed by my childhood and embarrassed that I looked different to the other like kids around me and I didn't come from this family unit and I had like such a –
• 13:54
  a layer about it. But then actually when I started the podcast, what I was doing was telling everyone else's stories. And then what my listeners started saying to me, they'd drop into my inbox being like, we'd love to get to know you more. You know, like we hear you every day. You know, we would love to know your story. And I was like, oh my God, I would never tell my story. Like that's, it's not like, you know, it's not the story.
• 14:17
  And then for some reason, maybe my husband encouraged me. I started like slowly adding in these tiny things. And that was like a real change in the show where things started to kind of take off more because I was being more vulnerable and sharing myself. And it's just, yeah, it's a really good reminder that those are the moments that you can really lean into. And they're powerful for everyone else. It's powerful for community.
• 14:40
  I never shared my story until I sold Cauliflower. I never felt like I would be taken serious. I never shared when I was on the streets. I put myself in a very vulnerable position at the age of 12 and I was sexually assaulted. Now I never did drugs or alcohol and I didn't sleep around at all. I had never slept with anyone actually. I mean, at the age of 12.
• 15:04
  But I put myself in a really bad situation and a 22 year old Marine took advantage of that. And I never shared that with anybody until I was in a mastermind with 10 other women and half of them had been sexually assaulted. And I felt the need to share. And I did. And then once I sold Cauliflower, I was like, you know what? I've made it. Like I've done something really big. I've started a product that became a billion dollar category. I'm not a billionaire,
• 15:34
  I wanted to share my story and my vulnerability because I wanted, I knew that if half the room had been sexually assaulted, then there's a lot of women that have had that. Also, I wanted people to know I didn't come, I came from a poor, poor place.
• 15:49
  I don't have some amazing education. I do have a college degree that I put myself through, but it's not at Harvard or anything fancy. It's at Chico State, which nobody's ever heard of. But I was able to do this business. And it's funny because I often say Google was where I got my MBA. And then Google invited us to be their pizza crust. And we actually went to San Francisco and we were in Google and we were doing the cauliflower pizza crust. And I'm like, wow, wow.
• 16:19
  Google is how I learned how to do everything. And here I am, I'm their pizza crust for an alternative pizza crust of choice. So it was pretty amazing. I will tell you though, I have made so many mistakes. Oh my God, please tell us some. Yeah, I've made some big mistakes. Some things that I share now with, with people's audiences, because I think there are things that everybody should be aware of and, and some people are, but some people aren't. So some of the
• 16:49
  For example, when I bought my domain name and I filed my trademark, but I had no money for a really good lawyer. So the lawyer I had did not advise me that I should file a word mark and then also a design mark. So my logo for Kelly Flower Foods had a cauliflower in the O and a competitor came out that had a lot more money than I did. And she...
• 17:14
  made her name very similar to mine. And her cauliflower was in her O. And I tried to find it and there was nothing I could do because I had never done my logo, my design mark. So I say, if you have a business that you think is going to do anything...
• 17:29
  A, hire a decent attorney, and B, make sure you file, not just your trademark, and own your domains. And ironically, I ended up buying a bunch of her domains because she didn't buy them on GoDaddy. And I went in and bought a bunch of them and I was driving. And this is very kind of shady, actually, but it worked. And since we were first, I felt like I had, and a lot of confusion was happening. I felt like I had the right to do this.
• 17:54
  If it fits you and you don't feel like you're betraying somebody, do it. But I bought her domains and then I drove her traffic when people would type in her name to our site. Because you can do that when you own the domain. So...
• 18:09
  I know that sounds shmarmy, but we were first and we had that logo first. And I was like fighting for everything I could. I mean, I love when someone shares a good little hack there. Yeah. I mean, I didn't have millions. She inherited millions. I had nothing. I was scrappy. I was, you know, we got an order. We made it fresh. We used fresh cauliflower. We didn't use powdered. We didn't use fillers. So I was the real deal. And so, yeah, I wanted as many people to find me as possible.
• 18:38
  Two other things that cost me money. If you have a website, you need to make sure it's handicap compliant. Now, I didn't deliberately not make, I didn't deliberately do that. I didn't even know that was a thing. And so when we became really popular, I got sued because I wasn't handicap compliant. Now you can go on and you can pay $27 to get your website handicap compliant. It ended up costing me, we settled out of court. It cost me a fine of $12,000.
• 19:08
  But I had to have the lawyer. It took time. It was upsetting. But of course, I wanted to make my website right. Yeah, of course. And then there's also these little trolls that I call trolls.
• 19:21
  that go in and they'll buy your font or they'll lease your font. And then they'll tell you you're violating your font. And if you're an established brand, like we were, you want to own your fonts. You don't want to change your branding. It costs a lot of money to rebrand. So that was an $18,000 fine because they went in and bought our fonts and
• 19:41
  And then they said we were violating by using their fonts. So make sure you buy your own fonts. I just, you know, before I launched Soursop, I bought my fonts. I think they cost me $65. But what happens is when you become really popular...
• 19:57
  And, you know, people like you start looking at Google trends and your business pops up and you're going like this, which is what happened with cauliflower foods. You're going to have these trolls that are looking for ways to make money and you can protect yourself, but they're not common knowledge things like, you know, who knows to do that? Some people do the handicap thing is becoming very popular.
• 20:17
  But not everybody knows that. So those are some little things that cost me some money. Oh, my gosh. There's some great tips there. I love those. Thank you so much. I feel like we're all going to get straight on to making sure that everything is, you know, in line with what you're saying. I really want to talk for a moment about the kind of acquisition moment and...
• 20:36
  Kind of how it came about, I just want to understand like your perspective of the VC world, you know, what the advice was from someone. Like I know that you said you needed more like strategic help in terms of you were launching into these huge national retailers. Kind of like was someone like, OK, well, yeah, you're at X revenue now, so you can sell for this. Like now's a good time to kind of like let kind of that go. Just the vibe of this time. So I had had a few offers.
• 21:04
  And I was kind of excited about that. But I mean, I also was like, wait, we have this phenomenal team. We're like one big family. We're crushing it. We're launching new products.
• 21:14
  We are winning awards. Our growth is massive month over month. Like, why would I sell? Like, I'm loving what I'm doing. But like I said, I wasn't around that much. And then truth be told, what really made me sell was a fire hit Northern California and burned down a town. It's called the Town of Paradise, which is called the Campfire.
• 21:35
  And that is where my mom, my stepdad and my aunt lived. And while I wasn't like super close with them, they all landed in my house, which was about a half hour away. And the thing with them is their houses didn't actually burn, but they couldn't live in them. So they didn't get the insurance and they didn't have the money to relocate without being able to sell their house. And nobody's going to buy it when you have no water and no electricity. So I was like, well, if I sell...
• 22:04
  a big chunk of it. And a lot of people are offering, they want it. And Nestle was grooming me. And that was where I thought I was going to get a huge exit was with Nestle. And that just wasn't in the cards. They brought me out. I talked to their team about customer service because I used to have more customer service people than I did sales reps because I believed the customer experience was the ultimate way to have a successful company and build community.
• 22:32
  So we have this whole Kelly Cares community. But anyways, the fire hit, they're in my house. You know, we've got these extra people, these extra pets, and my husband's like, what's going on? And my kids and everyone's routine is messed up. And I just thought, you know, if I sell, I have the money to relocate everybody. And so that's what I did. I sold a portion. I didn't sell the entire thing. I sold the portion. I took money off the table.
• 22:59
  I was an eight figure business. I should have had a nine figure exit, but I really believe because I was a woman back in 2019 in the food space with my growth and with our customer base, our email list, which they didn't appreciate the significant of emails people do now. They didn't. I think they do now.
• 23:20
  the value in all of that was a nine figure hands down, but I was dropped to an eight figure and I believe it was because of all of those reasons. And the other thing I did that I think is a huge mistake is I followed the money.
• 23:34
  Like I wanted to help everybody relocate. I wanted to be like the hero in my family. You know, I had experienced such rejection as a child all my life. And I didn't learn that my mom tried to abort me until much later in life. But when I learned that, that was like another slap in the face. But like being rejected for my real dad and I'm grateful to my stepdad. We have a great relationship. I have a great relationship with my mom now.
• 24:00
  But it's not the same as like I have with my kids. You know, I didn't have those same experiences. So I felt like I could be the hero by relocating them. And my husband went to California to be with me. So I said to him, where do you want to move? And he said, I want to live on the water in Florida. So we moved across the country to Florida and we bought our dream house on the water. And my parents bought their house, helped them with their house.
• 24:29
  And then I bought my aunt a condo and I take care of my aunt because she has no kids. So yeah, it was, it was an experience and it was a way to get out and a way to help them. And the thing is that with the venture capitalists, and this happens a lot, but I didn't realize it. So the advisors around me were kind of sharing this, but again, I was like following the money, which I don't advise doing. I was following the money. Yeah.
• 24:55
  And I took the deal at the last minute. I had an even better deal from somebody else. And I often wonder what would happen if I went the other route. But I took this particular deal. I honestly, my lawyer now tells me, the same lawyer that helped me,
• 25:12
  He's like, I think you had daddy issues during that time. Like you saw something in the founder of the venture capitalist that you related to as like a father figure. And I did. I saw him as a father figure. Like he was going to come in and teach me. And we were going to make this huge business and sell to like a Nestle. But that's not what happened.
• 25:32
  What happened was they put me on sabbatical. They changed my passwords. They fired my team and they changed the recipe. No. Yes. I didn't know this. I didn't know this part of the story. All of that happened. Oh my God. So I moved to Florida. So I got money in the bank. I have my dream house. I moved to Florida. I've lost my business. They fired my team, which most of them were my good friends. So they're hurting and they're not speaking to me because they're in pain.
• 26:02
  And they're upset because they see me as selling the company and moving away. And then they're, they're fired. And so they're, they're dealing with their own pain because they too, they helped me build it. You know, it wasn't me that built it. It was all of us. So it was like their baby as well. And I came back to work after sabbatical and during sabbatical COVID hit.
• 26:24
  So I couldn't even meet new people in Florida. So I became extremely depressed again. It was like a full circle moment. And I was sick again and inflamed again and didn't know what to do with myself. So my kids were thriving. My husband was thriving. They all would go to work and school and I would
• 26:43
  literally cry all day. Like looking at the beautiful water, seeing dolphins should be so happy. And I was devastated because I lost myself. I didn't even know who I was anymore. And that's when I discovered Soursop because my mom had been diagnosed with cancer and my right hand person that helped me build Cauliflower
• 27:02
  who also got some money at the exit, she still was speaking to me and she also was diagnosed with cancer. So my mom went Western medicine. My girlfriend went holistic and I discovered soursop through another friend whose daughter had cancer and she was healing from using soursop. So I was getting the fruit and I was getting it for both of them. And I took my mom. I mean, it's a blessing now. And I've gone through counseling and I've learned how to forgive.
• 27:32
  And I see now the rejection I felt from the venture capitalist was really just a redirection in my life for a whole new purpose, which was soursop nutrition. So I would have never discovered that if I had been working, because I wouldn't have had the time to take my mom to every radiation chemotherapy session. And then I wouldn't have ever met this woman with her daughter. And that's how I discovered soursop because she told me about it. I'd never heard of it.
• 27:57
  And then I started importing it in. It's so expensive. I'm like, there's got to be a way. The masses need this because I started taking it and my inflammation levels, because I got sick again. I was inflamed again. And I started having to take steroids and Plaquenil again. It was like this full circle moment. And then I started taking Soursop and I realized it was just, I was losing weight again. I was, my inflammations had dropped. Inflammation levels had dropped.
• 28:25
  I was feeling good again. And so I'm like, this is powerful. This doesn't even compete with a cauliflower, head of cauliflower. This super fruit is so powerful. And there's got to be a way for me to get it out there. And so that's when I started working on it.
• 28:41
  But here's a funny thing that happened. And then I'll stop talking because I'm talking a lot. No, no, I'm writing down notes. So I don't forget my questions for you because I'm like, oh my God, I've got so many things. Remember that inexpensive lawyer, not the lawyer that said I had daddy issues, my original lawyer. I did not know in the fine print that
• 29:02
  The venture capitalists owned anything I created. Afterwards. After, I still had some shares in Cauliflower, but anything I created, I figured for sure I could never do a frozen product and I could never do a pizza again.
• 29:17
  but they would own anything I created. So that's so predatory. This whole thing is so predatory. It's very common though. It's very common in the venture capital world. It is not uncommon what happened to me. Founders, in order to take your company from an eight figure to a nine figure to an exit that we had hoped for, you've got to like kind of get the founder out of the way. You've got to bring in experts. Unfortunately,
• 29:45
  The experts they brought in were phenomenal for grocery, but didn't understand e-commerce. And we built our base. Our foundation was built on e-commerce and that shattered. And when you start messing with your community, your loyal community that you've built,
• 30:02
  and they rely on that special customer experience, that special customer touch, and they lose that, they're going to go somewhere else. And there's so many competitors out there now. They found somebody else because we weren't treating them like we used to. We didn't have that same community. They shut down...
• 30:18
  the cauliflower cares community, which was pretty devastating. It was our nonprofit too. And they shut that down. And so squeezing those margins, squeeze in those profit margins. Yes. So while we're in mass amounts of grocery and we're growing that way, we're losing our community and that's what you need to go into the grocery store and recognize your brand. So, yeah. So I understand what they were doing.
• 30:46
  And I went through counseling for forgiveness. And, you know, I highly recommend a couple things. One, if you had any trauma in your life like I had, don't bury it. I believe that's why I got sick. Eventually your body...
• 31:02
  expresses or shows whatever you've done to it. So if you have trauma and you pushed it down and you haven't dealt with it, it's going to manifest itself in some kind of illness. It's just inevitable. And I've talked to enough doctors, even though I'm holistic, I've talked to enough Western medicine doctors that'll say, yes, it will manifest itself in an illness. So it's very important to deal with that trauma. It took me many, many years to deal with it. Secondly, forgiveness is key to growth.
• 31:32
  And forgiveness is a choice and healing is a process and you do it for yourself. Yes. Did I was embezzled also by an employee. I had to learn to forgive that person. I didn't go after that person. That's all another story. I didn't go after that person, but I forgave them. And later on, they came to me asking me to buy their business. I mean, like, you know, it's just, it's,
• 31:59
  Everybody will get what's going to happen to them. You know, good people, you do good things. Sometimes bad things happen, but inevitably good things happen to good people. Bad things happen to bad people when you treat them wrong. So, yeah, there's a lot of forgiveness that I had to do, but I did it for myself so I could grow.
• 32:16
  Because when you're angry, and I also learned this, my mom used to rage as a single mom. And I learned in counseling during this COVID time when I was doing counseling, that anger is simply fear and lack of control. And so I was really angry with the venture capitalists. I had a lot of anger there. And I lost control of my company. And I was fearful of what I was going to be, who I was going to be.
• 32:43
  So learning to forgive really helped me grow and move forward. And Soursop would never happen had I not done that. So in 2022, I sold the rest of my shares of Cauliflower.
• 32:56
  Everybody gave me a hard time. Family members, even my husband, because I sold it for pennies on the dollar just so I could launch this new product. And everybody's like, I can't believe you're selling your shares. Right. Okay. So you could kind of cut that and finish that contract so that you could move on. Yes. They're like, I can't believe you're doing that. Like you're like if they sell to a Nestle, but I knew deep down inside. Women's intuition. Yeah.
• 33:21
  I'm like women's intuition you knew I knew and I couldn't I wasn't part of the meetings I didn't see the books but in my heart and my mind I knew things were not being run the right way and lo and behold last year at the end of the year they walked away from the company and it shut down
• 33:42
  No way. A lot of people don't know that. And out of the auction of selling everything, I bought the email list and I bought all the social media sites.
• 33:53
  So we're slowly converting those to Soursop. And I've gone online to my community and I've told them kind of a story, you know, of what happened because for many months, the website just sat there. People were going, what's happening? And yeah, they just walked away. And so if I hadn't sold the last of my shares the year previous, I'm going to have a chance to have a chance to have a chance to have a chance
• 34:15
  I mean, you can't even imagine the amount of people that said to me, I can't believe you're selling these for pennies on the dollar. And I'm like, something inside me tells me Soursop is the way to go. It's going to help way more people than cauliflower. And cauliflower is great. And there's some great companies out there. But it is a fad like kale was. And it's slowly diminishing. People aren't buying cauliflower products like they were. But Soursop is here to stay. And we're doing a clinical trial.
• 34:45
  It has amazing health benefits. And I think the reason why we don't see it right now is because, look, Western medicine wants to keep you sick. And the food industry, here's another tip for your audience. A lot of people know this, but many don't.
• 35:00
  The FDA allows a 20% variance in the United States on labels. So you could have 20% more sugar in your product and not show it on your label. You can have 20% more hydronated oil or those flowers. Australia doesn't even allow in their country, nor does Europeans allow in their country.
• 35:19
  we can have 20% more of that and not show it on the label. Yes, the FDA gives you a 20% variance. And I know for a fact that people take advantage of that. So when you're reading labels and it's important to read labels, just note that it could have 20% more of those bad ingredients that you don't want in there.
• 35:38
  Oh my God. You know how you were saying like for you, you had like a Google MBA. I feel like I've had an Amy MBA. I've learned more in the last 35 minutes than I have in a long time. What the hell? This is, you've dropped so many like bombs over here that I'm like, oh my God, I've got a million questions that are written down that I want to go through. Well, I don't want to be negative though. I don't want to be negative. No, but this is stuff you would never find online. You wouldn't find this on Google. You just wouldn't unless someone tells you, you wouldn't know. Yeah.
• 36:08
  This is crazy. Well, I don't want to sound negative. I'm blessed beyond. And I am grateful to those venture capitalists. They gave me my life back. So I also think as well, like going through that journey with the VC kind of side of things, you know, and then wanting to sell the shares. It's like, yeah, well, like that was a chapter, end of an era. Like you don't want to look back. You want to look forward. You want to get into the new thing where you can like have the good vibes and the good energy again. Yep.
• 36:34
  So, okay, I want to just quickly rattle off some questions that I had for you because before we move like now into like the soursop nutrition, which I'm really excited about, I just want to understand like a few things. Number one was, well, this is just more out of curiosity. When this whole thing went down with this guy, did you talk to him after? Like, was there any contact? Like, how did, like, was he just like, oh yeah, sorry, see ya, this is just business? Or like, you just never spoke to him again? Yeah.
• 37:00
  The guy that embezzled from me? No, no, the VC guy sold you this vision and then was just like, see ya. No, there were many conversations that we had. Yeah. People are so weird. So weird. Yeah. We still had a lot of conversations. I fought for a long time to try to get them to understand what we built because I knew it was not working. And yeah, they definitely...
• 37:28
  weren't open to listening or learning from me. And at some point,
• 37:32
  You got to be a team player and you got to try to work with them because I still was the founder and the face of the brand. But it was a very difficult situation. It wasn't warm and fuzzy. No. Got it. And you know how you were saying like at that time they weren't interested in like the email list and they weren't like interested in these things that maybe today they would realize the value of that. What were they interested in? What were people coming to with this offer? Margins. Everything was margins.
• 38:01
  It wasn't quality. It was quantity. It was margins. What grocery store could we pay to get into? I mean, again, I wasn't in a lot of those really strategic meetings. Unfortunately, I was told go be the face of the brand and like make a video, that kind of thing. And so I was making food videos and I was trying my hardest to connect with an audience that I had no access to. Like I could, I didn't have the passwords anymore for social media. I
• 38:27
  I couldn't write my own email. They were putting out emails with my name on it though, which I really fought hard against because I didn't, the voice wasn't mine. And so I didn't align with them. By the way, I have a real quick, another business tip that I've learned with Sours Up and having your voice. Since it's the AI...
• 38:47
  like people are using AI and chat GBT. We hired this guy to write emails using my voice. So I would meet with him. But it turns out that one of our customers said, hey, you're not really writing these emails. And I said, no, actually we have this guy, but I am behind the scenes writing the email. And she's like, no, chat GBT is writing your emails. I put it in this app and it says it's not human. It's chat GBT. Well, I was mortified because we're paying this guy to take my voice and then copyright it, right? Right.
• 39:16
  Here's what I want to say and copyright it. Well, he was just having chat GBT write it. So I learned at a conference and AI that if you want AI to write your emails, that's okay. But have it be your voice and how that you can have your email go into a, an app and have it say human when you've used chat GBT, this is how you do it.
• 39:38
  You go on chat GBT, you tell them about your business, and then you ask them to ask you 25 questions. And then chat GBT gives you 25 questions. A lot of people are talking about doing this, but there is a key to it. So answer all those questions as authentically as you can, at least a minimum of 25. It's better if you can do more. The key is you've got to go back to that same page.
• 39:59
  So yes, AI knows about you now, but if you start a new page, it knows about you, but it doesn't know your voice enough to plug into the app to make it seem human. You've got to go back to the original page where you answered the questions to write your emails. So that will take it and it'll be your voice and voice.
• 40:16
  Basically, it's you. It's using your answers, but it's expediting it. And if you put it into the app, it'll stay human. You know what I actually also do with that? So I always get ChatGPT to ask me the questions to then formulate whatever it is that I'm doing. But I actually make sure that I do it on a voice note reply so that I can give a lot of context and a lot of information. Because if you're typing it, you might be like...
• 40:43
  oh, like it'll ask you a question, like, tell me what your business is. And you might be like, oh yeah, cool. One or two sentences. Fine. But if you kind of like get into a little bit of a conversation vibe and you just like record it, you kind of like put things in that you probably wouldn't have put in if you were hand typing it. So I think it's really good to voice memo it. All right. I'm going to test that. I am going to test that. Thank you for that tip.
• 41:06
  You mentioned that when the kind of business closed down, you at auction were able to rebuy some of these assets. Talk to me about this. I've never talked to anyone about this. I'm super interested to understand how these things happen.
• 41:19
  So what happened was as soon as I learned that they were going to shut down and walk away, I immediately found out who was in charge of liquidating. And literally the venture capitalists walked away. They left everything. We owned our own manufacturing plant.
• 41:37
  They left all the employees, all the product. They just walked away. Legally, I don't know how that happened. I don't know how they can get away with that. That's cut for art. But again, I didn't own it. I wasn't a part of it. And it's funny because I'm today and Soursop also are getting bills from people they owe money to. And I'm like, sorry, I sold my shares in November of 2022, a year before.
• 41:59
  And even before that, I had nothing like I have not been strategically a part of the company since January of 2020. So I can't pay you anything because I don't even know who you are. But yeah, so so what I did was I found out who was liquidating.
• 42:17
  And at first I was going to go around them. I went directly to the person that was in charge of marketing. And I said, can I have your passwords? Like you're no longer. And they were pissed because they got a call like the night before that they were, they didn't have a job anymore.
• 42:34
  So I was like, can I get your passwords? And they're like, sure. And they gave me the passwords. And I went in there and I changed their name to my name. And I was like, okay, but this doesn't feel right. I don't know if whoever's liquidating it sees the value in what all this is, but I wanted my original email list. We had over a half a million on our email list when we sold it to the company. And I can honestly say that maybe we're rewarming it
• 43:04
  We're at like 50,000 now. I mean, they really just dropped the ball on email. I can remember asking the marketing person
• 43:12
  what our open rates were. And he's like, I don't look at that. And I was just like, are you kidding? We used to do $6 million on email. You own that list. Like that's an asset. Like nobody can take that away from you. I can't believe you're not grooming it, but yeah. And then, and then I would get things like, oh, buyers don't look at social media. Well, that's not true. There's a whole new group of buyers. That's not true.
• 43:35
  Yeah. Even like Walmart got rid of all their old buyers and hired like nutritionists and stuff. And they look at social media. They look at influencers. Of course. They're looking at those viral videos. Yeah. So I, I went, I found out who was liquidating. I, it didn't feel right to take it over without doing it properly. Cause I didn't know if they would put a value on it. And they did. They put a value on it. And you don't want to get into like a legal battle. No. You're like, I've already been through the, the. Exactly. I wanted to own it free and clear.
• 44:04
  So I said, you know, what's happening to the email list? What's happening to Facebook? We had built a really strong Facebook community. It wasn't so strong anymore. What's happening to Instagram and TikTok and Pinterest?
• 44:16
  And he's like, well, right now we're more concerned about the equipment and liquidating all that and getting as many people paid as possible. I said, well, I want first right of refusal on all of that. And you tell me a price today and we'll lock it in. Like I'll do it today or you can take it to auction, but I'll do it today. And so we agreed on a price that day. I put it in writing with my attorney. They took it to their attorney's.
• 44:43
  Everybody agreed on it. It took about three or four months. And then I was able to legally obtain those. Even though I had access to the social media sites, I just backed off of them. I didn't go in. And then when they gave me the passwords, which I already had, I legally did all the changes then and there. And so now we have them. We have our own sites with Soursop because prior to that acquiring those, I had already launched Soursop.
• 45:12
  But now we have the cauliflower too. And so our original company with Soursop is Be Me Beyond Medicine. So that's what we've named the cauliflower sites. And we've told them, hey, here's what happened with cauliflower. I have a national bestselling cookbook that I wrote during the cauliflower days.
• 45:33
  Abrams Publishing published it. So if people want the original recipe of the cauliflower pizza crust and many of the other recipes, I'm happy to send them a book. I mean, you can buy it, but I have a bunch of them. So for all of that community, we said that to them, we sent out a bunch of books. So people could have the recipe still, but they just have to make it, which is a little bit, you know, it's a little bit of a pain, but yeah. But still that's a nice approach to take. I think community first.
• 45:59
  Yeah, on those sites, we wanted to also honor the cauliflower community and we wanted them to try soursop. So we're like, send us a message and we'll send you free samples of our product. And we hope to continue our relationship again.
• 46:13
  And you want to know something else? I really have to say this. My team that wouldn't speak to me, they are now either investors in Towersoft or they're working with me again. We have the old team back. Oh my God, that is amazing. Wow. It's a dream come true. We are back and we are movers and shakers again. And it's just like...
• 46:36
  I can't tell you how many days I sat on my living room floor when nobody was home crying, just devastated. And I had no idea what I was really being set up for. And I think going to counseling and forgiving, I think God was like, okay, here you go now. It's time. Here's your people again. You lost your way.
• 46:54
  And now you're back. And here you go. I think sometimes like the universe, like it'll just smash bang you into a wall and be like, yep, okay, you're going to hit rock bottom for a minute. And then for some reason it like course corrects and over indexes. And then it's like, and now I'm going to deliver. And like now it delivered. Yeah. And whether it's God or the universe, whatever it is, I also think it's the momentum and the power you put in to deliver.
• 47:18
  I really believe your business grows as you grow. So I needed some serious growth. I lacked emotional intelligence with the venture capitalist. I mean, my emotional intelligence went out the window. And, you know, I, I've seen a couple of posts and this is so true where it's like, if you don't have strong emotional intelligence and you can't learn how to react appropriately and you overreact,
• 47:41
  And get angry and yell or whatever. When you're in a real crisis, how are you going to handle things? And that's exactly what happened. I, I lacked emotional intelligence. So how was I ever going to run another company until I forgave, moved on, got rid of that anger and, you know, learned breath work and got healed from the inside out again.
• 48:02
  Wow. Oh my God. I love that. Okay. Let's talk about Soursop because I have a million questions. First of all, just a really quick one. Soursop nutrition. Was it strategic to call it the keywords for SEO? Okay. So for SEO, yes. For exit, terrible idea.
• 48:21
  So funny because we were at an event and my financial advisors that helped me put together the deck for exiting because you need a really strong deck and you need to know your numbers and everything. They saw us at the booth and they said, I can't believe Amy is doing this again. I can't believe she locked herself into an ingredient again. We really fought that with cauliflower and it hurt her valuation. Yeah.
• 48:43
  And my team's like, oh yeah, this is temporary. It's Be Me Beyond Medicine. Be Me is about getting back to your normal self again. The Beyond Medicine is just part of the trademark, part of the legal name. But Be Me is the real branding name. Let's get back to ourselves in the most natural way we possibly can. And so Be Me is doing business as Soursop, but it's temporary.
• 49:07
  Like BME is out there, but Soursop is out there. Soursop is to teach people what is Soursop. And when they start Googling it, we pop up. So it's definitely strategic. We definitely talk about BME. We were just in Times Square on a big billboard. It was so cool. And it was all BME. No way. That is so cool. Yeah, it was all about BME and it showed different people. And then it showed the Soursop products.
• 49:31
  So you will see that transition. We launch our new skincare line this fall. It's all be me. It has the ingredient soursop in it, but people will know by then what soursop is. So I'm not locking myself into an ingredient because that is not something you want to do. If you're planning to exit, you don't want to do that. It'll hurt you.
• 49:51
  I mean, this is where we learn from the mistakes and vulnerability to share, basically. Yeah. People say you never learn from your successes. You learn from your failures. So failure can be a really good thing. And as a parent, it's really important for you to let your kids fail. They like to not protect them, not be a helicopter parent, not be the parent that gives everybody a trophy. Like teach them not to have them have the experience you and I did as a child, maybe, but
• 50:20
  you know, a little bit more of the blessings there to make it a little easier, but also, you know, teaching them to learn how to deal, conquer failure at a younger age is going to set them up for success big time. Because if you can imagine when I went out to sell the cauliflower pizza crust to distributors, I got no constantly. Nobody's going to buy a cauliflower pizza crust because remember nothing was out there, but the head of cauliflower
• 50:46
  And I remember getting no over and over and over. And I was just like, okay, no is just next opportunity. They just need to taste it or they just need to see these letters I'm getting from my community of how diabetics can eat pizza again. And people are able to eat pizza that couldn't. They just need to see the vision that they can't see because they're nine to five jobbers and they're not entrepreneurs. They need to see my vision. So I need to present it in a different way. It's just a different opportunity.
• 51:14
  That's how I thought of my nose, but I got a lot of no's. A lot. It's a lot of no's in business. What do you think your superpower and zone of genius is? What is the thing that you're like, oh yeah, this time around, second time around, I'm back at it? You know what? Every single round, and I have a business before Cauliflower,
• 51:37
  Every round, I think what I'm really good at is finding the white space, meaning finding something that doesn't exist that is a need out there. And usually I'm serving the person I once was to find that, which is great. So if you are passionate about who you are and what you've gone through, serving the person you once were is your audience. If you can create products that help you have an easier life, then you're going to
• 52:05
  like it's gold. And so there was no cauliflower pizza crust. And so we, we did that there. We were the first sour stop gummies, the first sour stop shake to hit the market. There's tons of them now. And that's exactly what happened with cauliflower. Prior to that, I took medical lasers that didn't exist and brought them into New Zealand, bought three medical lasers that were created in the United States for oning mycosis.
• 52:32
  which is a toenail fungus. But New Zealanders, Kiwis are outdoorsy people. There was a lot of toenail fungus. I saw it when I was visiting my husband's family. And a friend of mine was an entrepreneur and he developed these lasers. And I'm really for natural, like food is medicine, anything natural. And while a laser isn't supernatural, the medicine you take for onicomycosis, and by the way, I've never had toenail fungus ever in my life. And I never will. But
• 53:01
  I knew a lot of people that did. And we had family members that did. And I knew that the medicine that is prescribed for that has terrible side effects. Like most people can't take it. And there was nothing on the market. So we brought these medical lasers in. Do you know, I cold called podiatrists from the United States. I'd get up at three o'clock in the morning because of the time change. And I would cold call podiatrists until I found somebody that took me in. And I partnered with a podiatrist in New Zealand who owned 10 clinics.
• 53:30
  And I brought over two lasers for the North Island and one for the South Island. And that was like, that was like, I already had sales experience, but that was like the ultimate sales. Like I'm cold calling from the United States. I'm going to come over. I am in awe. What a skill to have as in like seeing the white space and regardless of the product or the industry necessarily just going for it. I'm like, wow, I need to take a lesson out of your book. Yeah.
• 53:58
  Well, you see a need and you know, it can help people. You got to know for sure, 100% it can help people. And it's not as easy as I make it sound like I often talk about the five P's of my business. So one is passion. You got to be passionate. There are people out there in the business world that are super successful that are in my world that say passion shouldn't exist when you buy a business. And I don't believe that. I believe you need to be passionate about it. For some reason, like,
• 54:24
  If it's placing lasers in New Zealand, because you know family members of yours have this toenail fungus and they're embarrassed to have sandals on and New Zealand's such an outdoorsy place,
• 54:34
  Maybe you can help them because you've got this knowledge and this technology at your hands that somebody created that you know, and you know it works. So, I mean, that's kind of where it started. And I even had a business prior to that that filled a need. And it was with my kids when they were little and I was a stay-at-home mom. But you have to be resilient too. And so another P of my business is Perseverance.
• 54:59
  So there's a lot of highs and a lot of lows and not a lot in the middle. So when you're in a real low, what are you going to do to keep going? What's going to prevent you from shutting it down? Because you only fail when you quit, right? You might have little failures that are lessons, but you fail when you quit. So I've never been a quitter. I've always gone to the end.
• 55:20
  perseverance. What kept me going with cauliflower was letters I got from the community, the diabetics. I mean, there's kids with type two diabetes in the United States now because of our food industry and they were able to eat pizza again. And then
• 55:34
  A product, whether you're a coach or whether you have a product-based business, your product needs to be very authentic and very true to yourself. And I've said this multiple times on this podcast, but serving the person you once were is a way to start. So everybody has something that has helped them in some way. And so maybe even with coaching, just be super authentic. Don't do what I did at the end and follow money.
• 56:00
  Like be authentic. The money will come. And so the other thing I say is people surround yourself with like-minded people, but also people that have done it bigger and better. And don't be afraid to ask for help because I used to be terrified of asking anybody for help in the food industry. I go to these big food shows and I'd be afraid to even talk to anybody. Sometimes I go hide in the bathroom.
• 56:22
  because I was afraid I didn't know enough. And I, and the limelight was on me because we were the first cauliflower pizza. So I'm like, when people started using acronyms, oh my gosh, I was a hot mess. I'm like in the bathroom Googling, what does this mean? And they're like basic acronyms that I didn't know it. Matter of fact,
• 56:38
  One of the guys that ended up being on our board of directors and was a mentor to me, when I first met him, he started talking to me and I got really nervous. And I said, oh, I've got to go. And I ran to the bathroom. Later, he told me he thought I was stuck up. He goes, I thought you were super stuck up because you took off. And I said, Bob, I was terrified of you. And I went to the bathroom and I almost threw up. And I was trying to Google what you were saying to me. And I couldn't even remember it. But I was terrified that I didn't know enough to be
• 57:05
  in the room to deserve to be in the room. I mean, we were a hot product. How did I deserve this? So ask people for help. They want to help, but make sure you're in the rooms of people that are doing bigger and better things so you can learn from them. So that really helped me when I conquered my fears and started getting over myself and was willing to ask for help. Paying it forward. I believe that's really important. We had Cali Cares. We're working with kids with cancer at Soursop.
• 57:34
  I mean, I think it's really important to pay it forward. And when you get to a certain point where you can, like even when we were making no money with CaliFlyer, we're still contributing. And right now we're contributing products and various different things. Even when you don't have money, find a way to serve. And I will tell you when I was really depressed and going through counseling, they said the best way for you to cure, because I was like, I don't want to take an antidepressant. And they're like, okay, the best way for you to get over depression
• 58:02
  The best way for you to heal if you don't want to take an antidepressant is go serve, go volunteer, get out of your own way and start serving others. And you will get those natural feelings along with breath work, meditation, getting enough sleep, eating right, exercising. That last component has really helped me to serve others. Just gets me out of my own head and out of my own way.
• 58:24
  So paying it forward. Did I say everything? Passion, product, people, perseverance, and paying it forward. Those are my five Ps of my business. Oh, my God. I love that. The five Ps. I love that. With Soursop now, what are you doing the same and what are you doing differently to build this business? Actually, wait. Before you answer that...
• 58:43
  So do you like kind of like the really early beginning of a business where you're going from like zero to a million in revenue? Because, you know, there's such different blueprints, right? Like the zero to one phase is like the scrappy and like getting like down and dirty. And then the one to 10 million phase is such a different, you know, criteria. And I know you built the brand to more than that, but like those kind of the two phases. Yeah. Okay. So I really like the beginning phase.
• 59:09
  I like that's where I'm the scrappiest. That's where I can get the most creative. That's where I can make the most mistakes without it costing me too much. That's the real learning phase. I really like that beginning phase. I like the middle and the end phase as well. I can't wait for my next end phase because I've only had that one big ending the one time and I've made so many mistakes. So I can't wait to have the even a bigger ending where I don't make the mistakes.
• 59:37
  But that beginning part is so fun. Like just knowing you have something in your hands that's super powerful, but you haven't launched it yet. And just getting creative with your team and figuring out strategy. The thing that we're doing with this business that we did with Cauliflower really well before people were doing it, but now it's very saturated, is besides using email, we're using affiliates and influencers and...
• 1:00:02
  really doing a robust affiliate program. We did that with Cauliflower before a lot of people were doing that. Now it's very competitive and there's agencies out there now that do it for you, which we didn't have with Cauliflower. We were doing it internally. So it's kind of fun now. And we're, we're going back to some of our old influencers. The one thing I can say to you is everybody's negotiable. So I don't,
• 1:00:25
  really like I'm looking at some of the people we worked with, with Cauliflower and we paid them like five or 600 bucks and they're like 10 grand now. And I'm like, no, I just, I can't do it. Like I'm not there financially. It's not that they're not worth it, but it's just amazing to me how much they've grown too and what they get paid for virtually the same 30 seconds. So, you know, I believe in one of the biggest salespeople for us,
• 1:00:52
  that was not employed by me, was an affiliate, was a stay-at-home mom. She sold over a million dollars worth of pizza crust every year. What? Stay-at-home mom. And she had about 20,000 followers between Facebook and Instagram. And she would make recipes and she was in her sweats and she wasn't all dolled up and fancy and nobody knew who she was.
• 1:01:14
  And she would sell the heck out of that product. And she even started doing her own ads with our products. And we had a really good affiliate plan. We paid out really well. And so check out our affiliate program at soursopnutrition.com. We are paying more than any other supplement company out there right now. We researched everyone. If you find somebody that's paying more, let me know. We'll match it or beat it. But we have the biggest affiliate program. We have trainings. We...
• 1:01:42
  First of all, you got to try the product and make sure you actually will use it and love it because we don't want anyone promoting it that isn't actually going to use it. We'll never pay a celebrity just because they're a celebrity. Like they've got to love it and they've got to see the benefits of it. So I think that works really, really well. Building a community. I think everything's about community. And I think we learned that in Cauliflower before people were actually doing it. And you mentioned story. I studied story brand with Donald Miller.
• 1:02:11
  I took my whole team there. We learned StoryBrand in Nashville, Tennessee. You don't have to go to that extreme, but study story in the proper way. And you gave a great version of it. A lot of people are like vomiting about their product. Oh, it does this, this, and this. No, use your customers' testimonials to talk about your product. Use a third party and use like real life circumstances about your product, not just all of the featured benefits.
• 1:02:39
  Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Where, where do we want to leave this? What's your kind of, you've given us so much advice and so many learnings, but what do you kind of want to leave? You know, if someone's listening right now, that is a small business owner, they're just trying to find their feet, or maybe they want to start something. They don't know where they want to start yet. What's your kind of advice to those people, those women?
• 1:03:00
  Yeah. So I think, like I said already, follow your passion. But one of the tools that I use to make decisions, and I think it's a really powerful one. And I recently was, I'm doing a lot of talks on stages now, and I actually love it. I used to be terrified.
• 1:03:14
  Oh my God, me too. We're so similar. I love it. We need to become friends outside of this. Anyways, I was on stage and there was like 75 women and they were all nurse practitioners or nurses and they were starting their own businesses. And this was towards the end of their mastermind. I was speaking at somebody's mastermind. So they had already done all the things like buy your domains, get your website going, all of that.
• 1:03:38
  But many of them, they didn't know how to make decisions. And they weren't sure how much they wanted to put into the business. Were they ready to start, like leave their job and go full time? And so it's a real simple tool. But I was surprised one person raised their hand and 75 people in the room and only one person raised their hand that had ever heard of it. And I really believe in using a SWOT analysis.
• 1:04:03
  So have you ever used a SWOT analysis? Yes. I mean, I know exactly what it is, but I actually haven't used it in a while, but continue, please. Yeah. So strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. So I use that to make any kind of major decision and even in minor decisions. And it's a tool. It takes a moment. You've got to write it out. If anybody wants a SWOT analysis, like the one I use, DM me and my, cause I handle all my DMs.
• 1:04:29
  in my Instagram, which is HeyAmyLacy. And I'll send you my tool that I use. But I use it for everything. I think it's more important than a business plan, to be honest. I mean, it's really important to know your financials, but I use it to make major decisions, minor decisions and small decisions. And it's a tool that I learned midway through Cauliflower
• 1:04:49
  So I didn't use it in the beginning of cauliflower and I didn't use it in my two previous businesses, but it really helps me and it has helped me so much with soursop. So I think it's critical and it can help you in your personal life as well. I love this. I'm definitely going to follow you up for that. We will also link it in the show notes. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:05:13
  Hey, it's Dune 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.
• 1:05:38
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• 1:06:00
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