Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / She sold her business for $105 Million in less than 3 years. This is Michelle Cordeiro Grant’s inspiring story (with tactical insights!)

Transcript

She sold her business for $105 Million in less than 3 years. This is Michelle Cordeiro Grant’s inspiring story (with tactical insights!) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Michelle Cordero-Grant for Female Startup Club.
• 0:13
  Hey everyone, it's Dune here, your host and hype girl. Today is a cracker of an episode. We have got Michelle Cordero Grant, the founder of Lively, talking us through how she founded and sold her company within three quick years for, just wait for this, $105 million.
• 0:37
  I know it's crazy, but the story is actually even crazier. So I don't want to give too much away. Well, maybe I will, but we talk about her launch. That was a combination of strategy and luck generating 130,000 emails in 48 hours.
• 0:55
  At its core, Lively is a brand that empowers women and provides a sense of community. They deliver lingerie, activewear, swimwear, loungewear, and self-care that take the best elements of high style and ultimate comfort from each category to achieve a brand new point of view of lingerie called lingerie.
• 1:17
  And it's more than just a product. Since they launched in 2016, they've built an ambassador network of 150,000 members, opened four retail stores, developed several sustainable product collections, maintained its commitment to price equality, hosted hundreds of IRL and virtual events they've launched over.
• 1:38
  podcast, they've provided a platform for its community to share their passions and projects, and they've also developed retail partnerships with companies like Nordstrom, Madewell, and Target.
• 1:52
  Growing from its concept stage to $15 million in funding to fuel the growth, all the way through to an acquisition of $105 million by Wacol in 2019, Lively is poised to get even bigger and make even bolder strides towards its mission of inclusivity, community, sustainability and accessibility.
• 2:18
  But before we get into it, make sure you check out our $1,000 small business grant that we have running in partnership with Flowium. You can enter by going to femalestartupclub.com forward slash 1000 hyphen cash hyphen giveaway and spreading the word to other entrepreneurs and small business owners that you have in your life. Okay, that's it for me. Let's get into it. This is Michelle for Female Startup Club.
• 2:49
  Michelle, welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. I am so excited to have you here today. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. What a great way to start my week. I love this. Oh, I love this too. I'm very excited. I always love to start by getting you to give us a bit of your own elevator pitch, who you are and what your business is.
• 3:12
  Oh, wow. Okay. So I am Michelle Cordero Grant, Indian, born and raised in rural Pennsylvania, a town called New Smithville. A girl who would get on the bus and go to New York City during the week because she was just looking for energy and more.
• 3:29
  and more. And my elevator pitch is I'm unapologetically optimistic. I'm a visionary. I think big. And I've learned the power of manifestation. I think that if you believe it, it will come. I live a life fulfilled of dreams. And I would say that my goal now in life is to inspire women to do what Lively stands for, which is to live life passionately, purposefully, and confidently.
• 3:59
  love all of that. You said so many things that resonate with me. First being I grew up in kind of like the middle of nowhere bush and was able to kind of use my inner self,
• 4:14
  something to dream big and change my like circumstances. And also the manifestation piece of that story where you're able to kind of visualize and think about what you want and go for it. I love that. That's so cool. I'd love to start this story by just circling back to where your entrepreneurial story actually got started and what was kind of leading you towards starting your own business.
• 4:42
  Sure. You know, I didn't grow up with the word entrepreneur. It wasn't really in my vocabulary. My parents had very steady jobs and they had the one job my entire life. Right. So I thought doctor, lawyer, investment banker, Indian immigrant family, that's what you did.
• 4:59
  Uh, turns out when I got my degree in finance, I was bored to tears doing things that were intangible. So I went and got a job in fashion, doing something more tangible for big corporations. After being in big corporations for, you know, over a decade, what I started to realize is that.
• 5:17
  There's all these amazing brands out there, but there wasn't a brand for me. And I love the power of brand. I love how a brand can make you feel and impact your human psyche, whether it's Ralph Lauren with Luxury and Prestige or Victoria's Secret with Angel Fantasy Push-Up. I realized in my mid-20s, there wasn't a brand that celebrated human uniqueness.
• 5:39
  and individuality. And I had lived my life for the first 25 years just trying to conform, trying to fit in in New Smithville, Pennsylvania, trying to look like Candace Swapnell. And all of a sudden it dawned on me that our superpower is our uniqueness. And so why isn't that being celebrated? Now this is, you know, pre-Me Too movement. This is back in 2012. Yeah.
• 6:03
  That's kind of when my entrepreneurial journey started. I had been at Victoria's Secret for about five years. I met my husband and I was like, this guy loves me for who I am and all my faults. That's super interesting. Like, why can't I do the same for myself? And I decided that I needed to change the way that I was going to live my life for two reasons.
• 6:25
  One, I love my job. And when I looked at my bosses that were female powerhouses, they were amazing at work. Not so great in their personal lives. Marriages were not doing well, didn't see their children. Women were choosing. You either had a great career or you ran your family.
• 6:42
  And then secondly, the rise of social media. Brands were not being built by utilizing what people had to say via community and so forth. And so my journey started when I decided I wanted a brand that celebrated human uniqueness and that would not be built in New York City, but would be built by women all around the
• 7:01
  Gosh, wow. So many things. So cool. And so just to be more specific, you're at Victoria Secrets and you decided to launch a brand around bras for women with different messaging, with different pictures, with different, all that kind of stuff. What was your actual vision for like the brand at that point? And what I mean by that is,
• 7:25
  Were you already manifesting where you are today or was it kind of like side hustle vibes? Let's start this thing and see how it goes. Yeah, I mean, I'm a pretty risk adverse human, so I wish I was risky enough to say that I quit Victoria's Secret and started lively. I quit Victoria's Secret and went and worked at a startup for three years to understand what startup life was.
• 7:46
  Then I realized, okay, so this is how it is from the beginning. And this is how it is through that early growth phase. And so I left and decided to start a brand and did so with one key ingredient, which is I had my supplier as my investor so that I could focus all in on customer and brand story.
• 8:09
  And so the vision that I manifested was I'm going to build a brand that is truly brand and community first. It's not about the retail. It's not about the sales and the markdowns and all of that. I'm going to build a brand that has purpose. And then if you think about the category of lingerie, it's one that women wear every single day.
• 8:30
  but hate it. Like, we love dress shopping. We love shoe shopping. Like, why don't we love bra shopping? Like, why isn't that connected to fun and like a girl's day after brunch? And so that was the vision. I'm going to take this category that is so just dark and dusty and not fun and make it awesome and celebratory and Instagrammable and not about being provocative. It's not about the category for others. It's about the category for yourself.
• 9:00
  I love that. That's so interesting when you actually think about that, that like the bra shopping experience isn't more fun and more celebrated. And it is this kind of like typically linked to my partner might like this, etc, etc, etc. Yeah. Yeah.
• 9:19
  Yeah, that's weird. You feel weird and icky. Yes, I agree. You do. You definitely do. I want to talk about two different things, both the kind of community thing and the investor as your kind of manufacturer. Let's start there and then let's work to the community piece because I really want to focus a lot of time in that, especially in your early stages of building the brand. Yeah.
• 9:44
  When it came to getting your manufacturer on board as an investor, what does that actually look like? Like, how did you get that to actually happen? Yeah, I mean, look, there's luck in strategy, right? And so I was fortunate enough that I worked at Victoria's Secret and was connected to someone that was connected to this person that was the CEO of the largest manufacturing company for Intimates for Walmart.
• 10:11
  And what I knew is that our category is very complicated. And if you're going to create something that's really awesome and different and also accessible, you have to have a good supply chain. So when I saw this opportunity to meet this gentleman, I went all in. And the great news is the luck was that he was looking to start a digitally native brand to hedge his company online.
• 10:36
  you know, and diversify as he saw Warby Parker, Casper and Harry's disrupting really dated categories. Right. So the world's aligned. Now, was I his first choice? No, because the first time I met him, I had the flu and I looked terrible. And I had my husband catapult me to a meeting because I didn't want to cancel. And I literally was just like shivering and trying not to just lose it. And he got up in 15 minutes and was like, great to meet you, I guess. Oh, my God.
• 11:04
  No. Yeah. And so I was not, you know, going to have this opportunity. And so what I did was I emailed him and I said, I'd love to have a second meeting. And I locked myself in our apartment and told my husband to take our one year old out for 48 hours and did like literally business plan for dummies.
• 11:23
  Never did a business plan in my life, Googling, using other people's templates and shells and put together a business plan that I understood from top to bottom, went back in, was super confident, showed up in terms of everything I knew about the industry, what I believed. And most importantly, my vision didn't ask me anything about the business plan because he knew I knew it. And he was like, yeah, this girl's got fire. She's got vision. We're going to do this.
• 11:51
  And so he basically commits some money. Are you able to share how much he kind of puts into the business at that point? Yeah. So it's pretty wild. He committed with a group of other people, a million five and a convertible note. Pre-seed. Didn't even have a name. Lively was brand X.
• 12:10
  But he saw that I had the fire and the vision for what this could be. I also had the experience in the category and had 10 years in corporate fashion, right? So we could speak the same language.
• 12:24
  Wow. That's amazing. And so impressive. And terrifying. And terrifying. That's a lot of money. Because I signed up for something. Totally. And that's a lot of responsibility, especially, you know, first time founder, first time like going through this kind of thing. I imagine that's a lot on your shoulders. Yeah. And alone, like sole founder. I remember walking out of Chase Bank and having received that money on my 35th birthday. It was like, oh, okay.
• 12:52
  I guess we're doing this. I guess this is a go. I guess I'm onto something. So it's like such a vague question, but like what happens next? Because obviously all this stuff kind of happens for you. I'm I've read about your story. You build this community. You have this crazy marketing launch thing that goes wild. But like, I just want your kind of what happens next before we get to that.
• 13:17
  So August 3rd, 2015 was my 35th birthday and when the money hit the account. And August 4th was my loneliest day because I went to an office. There was nothing there. It was...
• 13:31
  Three, you know, a glass wall and three white walls. And I sat at a desk with a notebook and was like, okay, let's, let's start a company, Michelle. You told everyone you were going to start a company. Let's start a company. And it was terrifying. So I was at that desk for about 30 seconds before I was about to cry. And I started just walking around New York City. It was like, get it together. You can do this one foot in front of the other. Step one. What's step one? Take away the fear.
• 13:58
  So I went back to the desk and I wrote a list of everything I was afraid of. I was like, I don't know anything about digital marketing, but I'm starting a digitally native brand. Warehousing? Who knows? Customer service? Who knows? And wrote all the things that I was most fearful of. And then started calling everybody I knew that was really good at those things. And literally just set up a ton of coffees, juice dates, walk and talks, anything that I could do to talk to people about the things that I was most concerned about.
• 14:28
  And then start working on the brand, which is what I do. So first two weeks, really building confidence by just talking to people. The second two weeks was I was building a mood board in my office that you'll, you can still see it's three dimensional, but it was the vision of what I saw the brand to be.
• 14:47
  So once I got over the fear hump and started building the brand, I sat down and said, okay, I can't do this alone, right? Like who am I going to bring into the fold? And the first thing was Sarah Sullivan, who's my creative director to this day. Shout out to Sarah. Sarah's the best. My vision was like, okay, I need a designer, right? I know what I conceptually see, but I'm not actually a fashion designer. I never went to school for it. I couldn't do a tech pack if you asked me to, to this day.
• 15:16
  But what I did decide was if we're going to create something truly different, actually don't want anyone from the lingerie world. After meeting people in the lingerie world, I was like, we're just going to end up creating what already exists. And so I used a strategy of two degrees of separation.
• 15:32
  to find Sarah and my next three hires, which was the idea that if I'm really going to have fun doing this, it needs to be people that I have a like-mindedness with. And so my thesis was like, friends and family, what's one layer next? Because I bet we have similarities in how we see the world and live.
• 15:52
  And that's how I met Sarah. She was friends with my best friend's neighbor in Brooklyn. Wow. It's random, but I love it. And we met at a coffee shop in Bryant Park and she was willing to work three days a week with me. And we decided let's build a brand more together. And if we have fun doing that, let's keep going. Six years later, here we are.
• 16:15
  Wow, that is so cool. I also read around that time is when you started, you know, it was like the time when Instagram was popping, things were happening. That's like where everyone was focusing their efforts. I read that you were finding women in random places in America and building out content to build a community. Do you want to talk about like that kind of part of the story and what was working then?
• 16:43
  Yeah, yeah. So this is Instagram pre-stories, right? Like that's where Instagram was at that time. Still not as saturated as where it is today. But again, the idea of Lively was let's build a brand with the world, right? Like let's not build a brand and then try and sell it to the world. Let the world help us build a brand. And so that was twofold. Let's build a community digitally and let's also bring women in physically. So in parallel, we were having focus groups of women
• 17:12
  10 to 12 people at a time who are helping us choose images and words and taglines. Those women's choices are,
• 17:20
  through several sessions, which collectively created data, said this is the best image and this is the best tagline. Now let's take that to Instagram and find women who feel the same way and want to share it. And so the image was a girl on a fire escape on the Bowery with a lively leisure bralette and a fur coat, like super random. But people loved it. And the tagline was inspired by wild hearts and boss brains, meaning like the passion and vulnerability of women, the thing that makes us cry.
• 17:49
  If you actually like channel that with business, it's fire, wild hearts, false brains.
• 17:54
  And so we went to Instagram and what we actually tactically did was we looked at brands that we felt were very similar in mind. So at the time it was like SoulCycle and Saqqara and Sweetgreen and scanned their followers and then found people that didn't have a lot of followers, like 500 to 100 followers, but great content and said, now these are the people. They know how to take content. They're passionate about how they show their personal brand. Let's reach out to them.
• 18:24
  in the middle of the country. And, and we built a community of a hundred women to help us launch. Do you mean like you were reaching out to them being like, Hey, come and join this, you know, private Facebook group or come and join this something online, or you're being like, Hey, here's this picture. Do you want to share it? And like, be part of like our community via that mechanic?
• 18:47
  Yeah. I mean, people ask me a lot about how that worked. And I'm like, we were very human about it. You know, we DM them and said, Hey, we're a bunch of women in New York launching this brand called Lively. This is what it looks like. This is what it stands for. We'd love you to be a part of it. And then we realized, and then we would try to get them over to email. And then, you know, like doing the transactional conversation and DM wasn't working. Once we got them to email, that was better. And then we would figure out, okay, she's going to be great at taking content.
• 19:17
  Or she's not comfortable taking content. We're going to send her content. So I think like where people mess up, if they try to create this machine out the gate where I'm like, no, no, no. Just be like a human. Just it's not the same for everybody. Don't overthink it. It's only 50 to a hundred people. It's relationship building. Yeah. Build a relationship and then build a machine. We didn't build a machine for a year and a half until we had over a thousand people in our community.
• 19:43
  Wow. Okay. So you had a thousand of these women that you had directly built relationships with online. And then this is you gearing up to go to launch, which is a great segue for us to slide into this part of the story, which I'm super excited about. Is that right? We had a hundred people at launch. Once we saw it launch, how explosive it was, we kept going with the program and ended up having a thousand. And now we have 150,000. Oh my God. 150,000 is such a wild number.
• 20:14
  Let's go back to the 100 women then around this point. I know you guys had a crazy launch that was totally unexpected from what I read. I want you to tell it in your own kind of words what happened and why you think it led to that craziness and what that time was like.
• 20:33
  Yeah. So, you know, we had the physical focus groups that help help women tell us this is the image. This is the tagline. This is the product. We had 100 women on Instagram saying, yes, love the image, love the tagline. Then we read about Harry's, the razor company who got 100000 emails in four weeks in 2011 when they launched their brand prelaunch.
• 20:55
  And the whole idea was, hey, if you get your friend to submit their email address to Harry's flash sale or flash page, we're going to give you a point towards your first razor. We're like, amazing. They got 100,000. We're going to get like 20,000, maybe over four weeks. So 5,000 emails a week. March 1st, it's a month before we're going to launch, quote unquote, launch lively and start selling physical products. And so my team and I sit down on a Friday, my team being...
• 21:24
  three of us in the office sit down on a Friday and say, all right, we're going to email this to everybody we know. And it was about 250 people that we found through scanning our Gmails. We know we knew more people to be honest, but apparently we don't. And I mean, we were like literally emailing like customer service at so-and-so company, like the guy that did my
• 21:48
  new. And what we realized is social media had changed since 2011 because that night we had 500 emails, which was amazing. The next morning we had a thousand, which was more than we expected because we want 5,000 a week. Then we had 10,000, 20,000, 40,000 by dinnertime, we had 50,000.
• 22:08
  That night we had 90,000 emails and I literally thought it was hacked because we did not create like any type of system that showed how much credit we were giving. Cause we didn't even tell people how much the bras were. We're just like, Hey, if you got, you know, 10 people, you got a credit of $10 and then $20 and then $50 and then a hundred dollars. So I was like, does 90,000 people have a hundred dollar credit to this company that hasn't made a dollar? I have no idea. Yeah.
• 22:37
  Does it though? What happened there? No, thank God. The math works out. Thank God. But long story short, everything blows up from a technology standpoint. The developers are trying to shut this thing down to figure out what is going on because...
• 22:53
  By the next morning, we had 300,000 sessions globally, like on a Google analytics map, the whole world was like firing blue and 280,000 unique sessions, which is 280,000 individual humans around the world came to our little splash page called where lively.com and 133,000 emails were in there. And the developers were like, Michelle, it's real.
• 23:19
  And so I was like, turn on customer service. I tell people this is the day Lively launched because this is the day that people cared. And so we launched email and phone and chat and all we were doing was fielding questions, girls from Australia, England, all over the United States saying, where's my Lively email? And where's my dashboard? We're like, we don't know, but why do you care?
• 23:43
  We don't have any answers for you. We have nothing. But like, why do you like us? And why do you care? And we collected all that information and built our first emails to eventually launch Lively on April 1st. And.
• 23:58
  We ship to every state in the country within 45 days without any paid media. Just press this email list and marketing around what these women and girls were telling us. Humans sharing with humans. Wait, what? This is so crazy. I still don't really understand. Like, what did the email say that you sent to these 250 people? Yeah.
• 24:24
  You know, to this day, I've personally tried to recreate things like this. And it was a viral moment. You know, again, luck and strategy, right? Luck and strategy. We hit the right Friday night, the right person or people started the snowball. But I fundamentally believe because we took the time to focus group and really, really narrow down to the perfect image, the right tagline.
• 24:52
  And like have confidence in that content that people were emotionally, women were emotionally grabbed. They were like, what is this? Must understand this. Who is this? I want to be a part of this. Wow. All of that sounds obviously so incredible, life-changing moment, crazy good stuff. But I also feel like that brings on all these challenges that you wouldn't have before.
• 25:21
  expected, known about, you know, thought was possible. What was the flip side of the coin? Like what was the not so great stuff that's happening now that you've launched and you have like hundreds of thousands of people who want your product and they want it now? Oh, yeah.
• 25:37
  I mean, first of all, high class problems, but so many. And so, you know, launch day, right? Like everyone thinks launch day is like glamorous. Like I literally, I got all dressed up and we're like, oh, it's launch day. Well, guess what? I get to the office and the warehouse is like, we can't ship all of this. Like, what do we, we don't even know where to start. Throw all my sneakers, grab them.
• 25:59
  The team, us three, went to New Jersey and literally just started packing boxes. Like I have a picture of myself drowning in boxes because we were so unorganized. And we also thought we were going to write a handwritten note to everyone, which we tried to do for like 50 hours. And then our hands were hurting. And we we had to literally ship for the first couple of weeks, our whole team.
• 26:21
  And, you know, but we learned and taught our amazing women at the fulfillment center, like our expectation and how we can improve the process, et cetera. The other problem was, again, high class problem. We kept selling out. And, you know, for me, I was like, well, no, no, no, no, no. We have to understand what the true demand is by style and like what this could be. So luckily, my first investor was our supplier. So I kept taking orders. We put the site on pre-order. So like you bought a bra.
• 26:51
  You would normally get it within a week. We would literally be physically emailing each customer and saying, hey...
• 26:59
  Uh, so we're kind of sold out, but do you, do you want to wait 30 days, maybe 60? And they were like, yes, actually. Yeah, it's no problem. Like you guys just launched. Congratulations. Again, being so human and just saying like, this is what's happening. We're so thankful for you. If you're patient, we'll get it to you, you know, et cetera. And we thought like we would have a 50% return drop off. It was like 90%. Yes. Yes.
• 27:26
  Wow. People were really, really excited about the brand. I mean, that's just amazing. And so I guess it's kind of safe to assume that following that, you know, that 12 months, it's kind of like you're probably just growing quite organically. Did you need to be doing anything else to keep that momentum going?
• 27:46
  Yeah, yeah, of course, right? So, you know, you start to fatigue your list at some point, right? And you got to keep growing and, you know, acquisition retention, right? The math tells you that you have to keep growing. And so by, you know, after six weeks, we started launching paid advertising. I had no idea how to do that. I was like changing budgets on my phone.
• 28:05
  for Facebook thinking it was like the stock market. And then we started to dip a little bit too, right? Come August and September. And you're mentally, I was like, wait, what? This is in a straight uphill. Like that's how all these SaaS companies show their model. It's always a straight uphill. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. This is retail, Michelle. Of course it's a roller coaster ride. Like
• 28:28
  Weather the ride. And that first year was really hard for me. I'm not going to lie. First of all, I found out I was pregnant with my son, Jack, two months after launching a company. So it was fundraising while pregnant. And also like literally telling myself every day that it's okay when sales were coming down. Right. And then, you know, we relaunched our website because it was too slow.
• 28:51
  didn't know that all of your organic information is lost and relaunched it right before cyber week. And like, what's quote unquote, the biggest time of the year. I did so many things wrong. But I think the biggest thing that I did wrong was I was really hard on myself. Like every mistake that I made, I thought the company was folding.
• 29:10
  And looking back now, I'm like, man, those are peanuts compared to the mistakes I make now. But I'm just much better at, you know, recovering. It's like an athlete. You just get much better at recovering.
• 29:23
  And it's kind of like, it's like you sometimes don't realize that you're in this scarcity mindset and everything feels like the end of the world when actually like you could have been objectively being like, okay, well, you know, this is shit, but like, it's going to be still okay. And we're still in abundance in terms of everything else that's going on in the big picture. Right. It's called the learning tax. You got to pay the tax, pay it early. Pay it early. Exactly. Exactly.
• 29:50
  I want to fast forward. I think it was 2019 when you start going through the process of being acquired and you sell your business for $105 million, which is crazy. Congratulations. Thank you. How big was the business at that point? And were you actively looking for a buyer? Yeah.
• 30:11
  So the short answer is no, we were not looking for a buyer and our business was growing, you know, triple digits year over year at that point. In 2018, we also launched our first brick and mortar store in Soho and we also launched our partnership with Nordstrom.
• 30:29
  So we had become this, you know, omni-channel company so fast. Like, you know, our Soho store had 500 people on a wait list to come in for opening night from our ambassador program. Everything was just on fire. So what happened was I closed my Series A round that summer and was gearing up for, you know, expansion. Yeah.
• 30:48
  And I remember my partner, Yossi, who is our supplier that, you know, believed in this idea so much pre-launch that he funded a million five with his network, right? Says, Michelle, you got to come to my office. There's someone you need to meet. And I'm like, what? I'm busy. I got to run a company. He's like, trust me. And it was a banker who represented a company that wanted to buy us. And she was like, look, there's this company that's interested in buying Lively. And they've been watching you for quite some time now. Yeah.
• 31:18
  And I was, we were like, we're not for sale. So, so who is it? And so much happened out there at that point, but yeah, it was not expected. Our baby was only three. And so what were you thinking to yourself? And I read that you were asking yourself certain questions and you kind of had some things going on in your mind. What were you thinking about?
• 31:43
  Yeah. I mean, it was actually a really tough inflection point for me because when Lively had this opportunity to be acquired, you're like, okay, hold on. Like, what can I give to this company that this company...
• 31:59
  maybe can and I can't, right? Is there anything that this acquisition would offer lively long-term? Because I had always said, like, we're here to build something that is a legacy, that's going to live well beyond us. And we were so disappointed and focused on building it right.
• 32:15
  they can bring a lot of that. Right. And so I think for me, the thing that I was scared of is that once you sell your company, most founders don't stick around. They're gone. Whether the acquiring company gets rid of you or they no longer like it. I knew that if I went on this, I'd have to figure something out. Like what's my next chapter. And so,
• 32:33
  That was really tough. And then I had my investors and my board, like, am I going to do right by them? Am I going to be able to get a deal done that really gives them the gratification and all the amazing support that they gave me back in a return? And then most importantly, what happens to my team? Like, is the culture going to be able to maintain? How are they going to feel about this? Do I even tell them? Like, what do you do? You know, so all of this. What do you do?
• 33:02
  And what did happen? Like, do you just have to go into meetings and say like, hey, this is what I want. I want to stay in the business. I want my team to stay in the business. These are the things that matter to me. Or is it more like them coming to you with an offer and you being like, I'm into this bit and I'm not into this bit?
• 33:17
  Yeah, I mean, I think the great news is there's no rules, right? So like everyone says, oh, but this is how it's always done. And this is how, well, Lively is not how it's always done. Like startups aren't how it's always done. So why do you need to follow anyone's rules with how we thought about it? So actually what we did first was we said, yes, we will meet with Wachol. We don't really want to talk about numbers. We just want to get to know them and see how they see the world.
• 33:41
  And if culturally it makes sense, then that's going to be good for the team. That's going to be good for me. That's going to be good for the brand. So let's move forward. The great news is our first meeting was magic. It was actually very symbolic in that it was in the same building, four years, almost to the week of when I met Yossi.
• 34:03
  on Madison Avenue, like the same building, him and I walked to the meeting where we're late, embarrassingly late. And we looked up, we're like, holy crap, this is where we met four years ago. Wow. This isn't a sign. Yeah. And then when you go into the process from a numbers perspective, I mean, you can control the conversation. And so I kind of laid out, you know, my vision for where I thought this should be and why, and where the market was.
• 34:27
  remember I wasn't in process, right? Like I wasn't trying to sell my company. So I didn't have a banker representing me and I chose not to actually, I wanted to represent myself. Wow. That's interesting and cool. I love that for you. Bold, very bold. Like how does it work? Like
• 34:48
  Obviously, you sold your business for a lot of money. Did you have an earn out period or did you just say like, hey, I just want to be in the business long term until I decide I don't want to be in the business?
• 35:02
  Yeah. I mean, it's, it can be a number of different ways, but you know, anyone that was an investor in lively still hasn't earned out for, you know, around for a couple of years. And like the dynamic that I have with Wacol is one of trust, you know, they know that I want to run lively and I love lively and I trust that they are going to support me and let me do it in a way that is still fun. And, you know, it's been over two years now. And I can say that
• 35:30
  Like very, very few founders in the world are probably as happy as I am still running a company that they sold. Yeah, I feel like it's not the story you hear like ever in the media. It's like this exception to the rule, which I guess is a lot of your story is like that. It's really interesting. It's an interesting journey, an interesting case study.
• 35:54
  Yeah. I mean, I often say if you don't like the world the way it is, then change it. And same thing with the process. If you don't like the process, then change it. It's OK. Everything's up for debate. Right. Absolutely. Who thought you'd get a mattress rolled up in a box? Yes. Yes. Like everything that's now normal. At some point, someone said, but why? Yeah.
• 36:17
  For sure. Where is the business today in terms of your team and what you're working on and, you know, exciting stuff that you want to shout about? Yeah. You know,
• 36:29
  We launched Lively in April 2016, right? So you think about that it's just been over five years and now we are this brand that has over 150,000 women and people in our community. We still stand for passion, purpose, and confidence. We still believe in price equality where any person can buy a Lively bra for the same price
• 36:53
  no matter what color, size, or style it is. We've really stuck to our values. And now we have a brand in Target called All You Lively. We have four stores across the country. But most importantly, our team, every Monday, still has the same tradition that we had back in August of 2015, which is we kick off for the Monday week with our lively moments, where we talk about that one thing or two things that happened in your life over the weekend that,
• 37:22
  Gave you goosebumps, made your hair stand up and is the reason why you live a life of fulfillment. That is a really beautiful tradition. I love that. How nice. Yeah. Yeah. Why else go to work, right? What was yours for this weekend?
• 37:39
  You know, for me, it was my son, Jack, Lydia, and my husband and I had dinner last night and we talked about the best moments of our summer. And my four-year-old son, Jack, learned how to swim. My daughter, Lydia, you know, got ready for second grade. And we as family had transitioned from like parents taking care of kids to like a full-on crew. Oh, a crew.
• 38:05
  You've got like a little dance troupe. We can hang. Going to see the family dance TikTok videos. Totally. We probably should. I love that. You absolutely should do that. I love that. What is your key piece of advice that you give to entrepreneurs who are earlier on in the journey?
• 38:26
  I would say I'm going to give you two. One, entrepreneurship is like a mental muscle. You're not supposed to have all the answers. You're not supposed to know what to do. But if you have the mental stamina, like an athlete has the physical, you will persevere. So take care of that muscle, sleep, eat, exercise, do the things so you can move forward.
• 38:46
  Number two is there's no I in team. I was a terrible delegator, but you cannot do it alone. And team does not always mean hiring. It's asking for help from friends, mental support from family, et cetera. So don't go it alone. Make it a crew. I love that. Make it a crew. Indeed.
• 39:05
  At the end of every episode, I ask a series of six quick questions, some of which we might have covered, some of which we haven't, but we ask them all the same. So question number one is, what's your why? Why are you doing what you're doing? Because I want the world to see everything glass half full. I love that. Me too. Question number two is, what do you think has been the number one marketing moment that made the business pop?
• 39:34
  Oh, definitely. That email viral campaign that put us on the map. That's a mind-blowing one. I think that's the most mind-blowing moment I've experienced hearing on the show. Crazy, crazy stuff. Question number three is, where do you hang out to get smarter? What are you reading or listening to or subscribing to? Other female founders. I'm a member of the Female Founder Collective and just being with
• 40:05
  I love Female Founder Collective. I've had Ali and Rebecca on the show and they're just so amazing. So many synergies. Question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM or PM rituals and habits that keep you feeling successful and happy and productive? So I run or sweat every morning. If I'm not running, I'm jumping on a trampoline or doing something. But endorphins are the way that I wake up and running on the beach is my heavens.
• 40:34
  Sometimes to really bad music, awesome music like Debbie Gibson. Electric Youth was on my playlist this morning. What do I do at the end of the night? I make sure I'm present for bedtime with my kids. Bedtime stories. Yeah, or just snuggles, like best part of your day. Let's talk about it. Absolutely. I got a dog and of course I can't compare dogs to children, but snuggling with my dog is literally the highlight of my mornings and evenings.
• 41:02
  Yes. Yeah. So you want to just like, you want to record it. It's so good. It is so good. There's nothing better. Question number five is if you were given a thousand dollars of no strings attached grant money, where would you spend it in the business? What's the most important spend of a dollar for you? I think I would give it to my hardest working team member because I find that humans are the most. You can't, you can't copy them. They're
• 41:33
  Love that. And last question, question number six is how do you deal with failure? What's your mindset and approach when things don't go to plan? It wasn't meant to be get up and move on. Love it. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it is. I fail all the time and it's good. Skin your knees, put a bandaid on, move on.
• 41:57
  Skin your knees. I love that. That's really cool. Michelle, thank you so much for taking the time to be on Female Startup Club today and share your journey with Lively. That is just, there's so many wild things in there that I'm really excited to listen to this back and take a lot of notes. Thank you so much. Amazing. Thank you for having me. Have a great day.
• 42:22
  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.
• 42:47
  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.
• 43:09
  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.
• 43:25
  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.
• 43:50
  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.
• 44:12
  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.