Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Inventing cannabis infused tampons and reimagining women’s health with Daye Founder Valentina Milanova

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Inventing cannabis infused tampons and reimagining women’s health with Daye Founder Valentina Milanova · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Valentina Milanova for Female Startup Club. Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. I'm your host, Doon Roshin, and on today's episode, I'm joined by Valentina Milanova, founder of Day, the company that's reimagining women's health.
• 0:26
  Day is a female health company bridging the gaps in healthcare through medical research and innovation. They exist to raise the standards of gynae health by creating effective products and services that fit conveniently into women's lives. Right now, they have two groundbreaking products available, the naked tampon and the CBD coated tampon to help with period cramps. And yes, I've tried them. And yes, my period was much better than usual. And I'll be using them from now on.
• 0:54
  In this episode, we cover how Valentina pushed past the critics and naysayers to bring her vision into a reality, her thoughts on working with agencies versus building an in-house team, and how she got a 20,000-person waitlist before launch with steps on what you can do too to get started. This is Valentina for Female Startup Club.
• 1:14
  Valentina, hey, and welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Hey, thanks so much for having me. Great to be here. I'm so excited to jump in and learn all about your business and what you've been creating for the world. Can you start by introducing yourself and what your business is?
• 1:32
  Of course. So I'm Valentina. I'm the founder of Day. In 2017, I first had the concept for pain relieving tampon. And over the past three and a half years, I've been working to complete pingo validation, build a team and launch our first products to market. And Day is a company where FEMA HOT research and development company currently based out of the Biscuit Factory in Bermondsey, where we have all of our machinery and design engineering.
• 1:59
  And we introduced our first two products. So the naked hyperabsorbent tampon that's free from any nasty chemicals, packaged sustainably, sanitized to prevent the risk of toxic shock syndrome, and the pain-relieving tampon. So that's our tampon that has a cannabinoid coating, which is absorbed through the vaginal mucosa. And that's how we're able to produce a pain-relieving effect for our users, specifically
• 2:25
  So as a company, we exist to, you know, we have the saying internally, we want to bridge the gender gap in medical research and innovation. And a lot of people don't know that a gender gap in medical research and innovation even exists in the first place. You know, we have a lot of information around the gender pay gap or other forms of gender discrimination against.
• 2:44
  people who identify as women. But one of the biggest pain points that exists in front of us as people with vaginas and female reproductive organs is that there hasn't been enough research into products that work for us. One super easy example. So the NHS recently changed its prescription guidelines for ibuprofen because it turns out that the 250 milligrams recommended dose.
• 3:07
  works for the male physiology, but not for the female physiology. So for the female physiology, you need 800 milligrams for the effects to kick in, which we've known anecdotally for a long time, because we hear a lot of women say, you know, when I'm on my period, I pop ibuprofen as if it's tic-tac. I go to a whole pack. And that's because the way that the medication was designed and the way that it was tested was only focusing on the male physiology. So that's,
• 3:32
  something that we want to rectify as a business. We want to create an engine of product innovation within the company that allows us to build and launch products that are effective, safe, and designed for women. Wow, that is just so mind-blowing and crazy. I think I also read somewhere on your website or on your social media that it wasn't until 1993 that women could even
• 4:01
  Yeah, I mean, 1993 was when the FDA made it illegal for researchers to not include women in studies for medications that were going to be administered to both sexes. So that's when people started including women in their clinical trials. But a lot of the medications that we have readily available right now were developed and launched before 1993. So most of the sleeping aids that we have, most of the painkillers, most antibiotics
• 4:29
  They were developed and launched before 1993. So they were never tested on the female physiology, which is why, again, anecdotally, we know of, you know, women reacting really severely to certain sleeping medications and, you know, having really intense sleepwalking experiences because of them.
• 4:46
  Um, yeah, so part of the work, I guess we do a day is also advocacy with regulatory bodies where we try and highlight the inadequacies that exist in the way that female healthcare is provided and obtained at present, um, so that we can shine a light on this issue and hopefully garner support for it being fixed. Gosh, that's incredible. Wow. Holy moly. That is all just bananas. Um, yeah.
• 5:12
  It's shocking. It's depressing, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, I'm so glad you're tackling it. Thank goodness for you. Oh, my golly. You're too kind. And I have to say, just quickly before I keep going on, I just tried your, well, I tried both the naked tampons and the CBD tampons, and I have to say I had a pretty good period. Yay, I'm so glad to hear that. I was grateful.
• 5:40
  Oh, you're too kind. But some of the feedback that we get most commonly about days, I'm so looking forward to my next period. I'm so excited now to have my period because I have the tools that I need to manage it in a way that works for myself. And that's, you know, we very much want to design the product with this, you know, goal in mind that people will be
• 6:02
  looking forward to their periods and they would be looking forward to the experience of, you know, updating female healthcare. But we also designed the packaging so that it looks like, you know, it's a little gift from yourself to yourself that you receive every month. And, you know, why, why do we have to have such negative connotations around menstruation? Like it could be positioned in a really positive way, especially women have, you know, the tools to prevent pain or to prevent tampon leaks. So if you,
• 6:30
  I don't know what your experience has been with our packaging, but, you know, we aim to produce this moment of joy when you open your earbox and, you know, just like a little reward from yourself to yourself. I mean, I can definitely tell you I had a big moment of joy when I saw your packaging and it's definitely on my list of things for us to talk about, especially once we get into marketing. I think your branding is just so phenomenal and so much fun. I really, really enjoy everything that you're doing in that regard, for sure.
• 6:59
  But I want to go back and get started at the very beginning, pre-2017, pre-Day. What was happening in your life that got you interested in starting your own business and the light bulb moment for this vision?
• 7:14
  Yeah, interestingly, I never saw myself as an entrepreneur. I never ideated that I was going to become a founder or business owner. In fact, my father was an entrepreneur and he had moments of severe income uncertainty in his life, which obviously impacted the rest of the family. So I always thought entrepreneurship was probably one of the worst things that you could get into when I was growing up. But at the same time, I was somewhat unfortunate when I was growing up to face a lot of female health challenges. So
• 7:42
  When I was nine, I had my first period and I was too young for anyone to have had a conversation with me around what changes my body was going through and what menstruation even meant. So when I had my first period, I went into absolute panic because I thought I had some disease. And I don't know if you remember your first period, but it doesn't look like blood. It's kind of brownish in color, which is exactly the kind of thing that no one tells you. I mean,
• 8:12
  I don't suppose they would have said it will look different than blood and it has a different consistency as well. So I was like, oh my God, what a shameful disease. What has happened to me? I'm cursed by the gods. Um, and also my periods were extremely painful. So what I was experiencing then, you know, as a child was these like bouts of pain and bouts of weird vaginal discharge. I didn't feel comfortable bringing this up with anyone, not even with my own mother, because I, you know,
• 8:40
  felt so ashamed by what was happening to my vagina. So for about a year, I kept having my period to complete secret from anyone. And I didn't realize that it was happening every month because I didn't expect it to be happening every month. I just thought it was like random bouts of this horrible disease, which would, you know, like,
• 8:59
  prevent me from going to school because I was in so much pain. I just had to sit in the bath. That was the only thing that helped. Medication wouldn't help. So then a year in of having my period, my breasts started developing, which is another thing that no one talks about really.
• 9:15
  awkward experience. They're very painful. And also it's usually the left or the right that come in first. They don't develop simultaneously. They're not symmetrical. So I had started developing my breasts. And then one morning I wake up and I go down to our living room and I switch on the TV. And there's a morning show program about how to give yourself a self-breast examination. So I proceed to give myself a self-breast examination, the tiny breasts that I have.
• 9:41
  they felt like lumps. So what I was hearing being described on TV as a lump that you should check for was what I was feeling on my chest. So I convinced myself that on top of this mysterious disease with the vaginal discharge and the pain, I also had breast cancer. And that's what gave me the impetus to go and speak to my dad and try and seek help for my quote unquote breast cancer. So young to be going through all of this.
• 10:08
  horrible first period experience. And then when I was older, so when I was 15, I later found out that I had PCOS. I had a number of cysts on my ovaries. Another thing that people don't tell you about cysts. So, you know, some cysts are filled with liquid, but other cysts are filled with hair and teeth.
• 10:29
  Because your cells go crazy, so they make hair and teeth. And if you can imagine, they're hard. So it's, you know, pressing against your ovary, producing a lot of pain. And I spent the entire 10th grade, so I was between 15 and 16 when this was happening. I spent nine months of the school year in bed, just like completely incapable to move.
• 10:52
  going to like various doctors, you know, like a doctor that was checking whether I had a kidney infection or a yeast infection, whether I had, you know, like stomach problems and no one could tell me what was going on. So I later found out when I had to have emergency surgery because people thought, oh, maybe it's appendicitis. Let's just take out her appendicitis. It's way, this girl is in way too much pain. So then when they opened my lower abdomen for appendicitis, they realized, oh wow, she also has these like crazy cysts on her ovaries, which then had to
• 11:22
  This was another really disempowering, traumatizing experience of femalehood that I had when I was growing up. And I guess this was the, you know, part of my personal story that really formed the seed inside of my, you know, really core being that made me constantly think about, OK, how can I?
• 11:43
  educate myself about female health. How can I become the person who has read every single research paper so that I can have an educated conversation with my doctor? You know, if I sense that they're not providing me with the care that I need, how can I incentivize them to do that by just being very knowledgeable? That's around the time when I formed the habit of just reading lots of research papers
• 12:04
  I subscribed to PubMed and started getting newsletters to my inbox with various research papers that were coming up on topics that I found interesting. Yeah, that's my personal experience that inspired me to found the company. But I always found it really challenging to call myself founder and CEO. I always said, oh God, that's such a douchey thing to say. Like I'm just the person that had the original idea for the company.
• 12:31
  it's still hard for me to see myself as an entrepreneur. I still don't think I fully fit the mold. Wow. Goodness. That is such a journey to have gone on to, you know, plant that seed. And so in, you know, was it 2016 potentially when you decided to actually start the business and put together, you know, a product and a team and build out this vision? Was it 2016 around about then? Um,
• 12:59
  So in 2017, I was doing an evening MBA course. In order to graduate, we had to come up with a business idea that was going to be socially impactful. So I started researching the geographical area of northern Bulgaria. So I'm originally from Bulgaria and Bulgarian.
• 13:17
  And I thought that if I, I knew Northern Bulgaria was a very impoverished region. So I thought if I could come up with a business idea that would somehow revitalize that region, then by virtue of doing that, it would be socially impactful and I would, you know, have fulfilled my MBA task.
• 13:32
  So I started reading into the history of northern Bulgaria and what that area had traditionally been good at. And it turns out it's growing industrial hemp. So before the communist takeover in the 40s, northern Bulgaria was the largest European producer and exporter of industrial hemp. And it had an industrial hemp research center.
• 13:51
  that was based there. And it was a Bulgarian scientist that initially synthesized cannabinoids. So I uncovered this like really rich, but forgotten history of hemp research in the Bulgarian National Library. So again, I just turned to my habit of reading research papers about industrial hemp with the view of creating, you know, a business concept that I presented my MBA class and, you know, move on with my life. My educational background is in law and economics. So I always imagined myself,
• 14:18
  You know, working as a journalist or working in a think tank, policy was something that I always found really interesting. So I never thought I was going to be a founder or an entrepreneur. And reading about the properties of industrial hemp, there were two of them that really stuck with me. And the first one being that hemp is one of the most absorbent natural fibers.
• 14:38
  And that the extract from the hemp flower, CBD, has potentially pain relieving effects. So and those were, you know, just two of many properties that I read about hemp. But those two really stuck with me. And this idea was born in my mind around combining the two of them and forming one product, which would be a more absorbent pain relieving tampon.
• 15:01
  And initially my journey was that I started sharing this idea, you know, with people around me. When I gave my MBA presentation, it was like dead silence in the room. People had their like eyes wide open. They were like, why is she talking about tampons? This is so bizarre. No one wants to hear about tampons. Like taboo. This is a proper MBA class. Yeah. Why is she doing that? She should have just presented some kind of an IT business. This is ridiculous. Who is this weirdo? Yeah.
• 15:28
  And then I started, you know, sharing my concept with my friends, with, you know, people at work and people would say, like, first of all, stop talking about tampons. It's uncomfortable. Don't do that. Second of all, if this was a good idea, Procter & Gamble would have invented it already, right? Like, why do you think that you're so special that you would come up with something that, you know, the research, massive research teams at Procter & Gamble wouldn't have considered already? So that really discouraged me. Gosh. Yeah.
• 15:54
  So many critics. Holy moly. Yeah, that discouraged me hard. Was there something that kind of powered you through? Or did you start meeting people who were like, okay, I see it and I get it? No, I wish I could say that. The idea kept pestering me. So it was always in the back of my mind. It just wouldn't leave my headspace. So then I decided, okay, well,
• 16:18
  You can still work on a company or on a product without letting people know. So what I decided to do was to just quietly start developing this original product idea so that I could see whether I could make anything of it.
• 16:33
  Um, and at that time moved back to London. I took a job in like early stage venture capital, which allowed me to have a little subsidy every month that I could dedicate to product development. I also lived in base water at the time. So I could spend my weekends in planet organic on Westbourne Grove. And I could just, you know, observe people around the tampon aisle and I could see their behavior. I could ask them questions.
• 17:00
  So late 2017, early 2018, I was working on, you know, the product development, the clinical validation, the IP, securing the supply chain. I wasn't thinking about the brand yet because I was hoping that I was going to be able to partner with one of the large companies like Kimberly Clark or Procter & Gamble. I was, you know, I was emailing every temple manufacturer.
• 17:21
  that I could find on the internet. I was sending them handwritten notes saying, please work with me. I think this is a good idea. And the only reason why we ended up, you know, building our own machinery in-house, creating our own production was because no one, none of the damper manufacturers wanted to work with us. So that was, you know,
• 17:39
  Early 2018, by the summer of 2018, we had preliminary clinical trial results, which were really positive. I was funding all of this on credit cards. So by the end of it, I had £47,000 worth of credit card debt.
• 17:54
  And I started fundraising. And then the way that I started fundraising, because I worked in a really early stage venture capital firm, which people often think that that's how I had like lots of contacts in the investor world. But that's not really the case because, you know, I was a lowly associate with,
• 18:11
  And my job was to look for companies for this fund to invest in. So the way that I fundraised, really unconventional. You know, everyone says, don't message investors on LinkedIn, you know, try and find a warm introduction. But the way in which I fundraised, because I didn't have any warm introductions, was by going on LinkedIn and marketing.
• 18:30
  typing investor, venture capitalists, and seeing what kind of people came up and then just sending them LinkedIn messages. And initially I pitched angels, technology accelerators, really anyone that would listen. And this experience was very humbling because people did not understand the business. And the most common question that I got was people saying, is this some kind of a charity? Like you keep talking about sustainability, you keep talking about social purpose,
• 18:59
  Like, is there a business in what you're trying to sell us here? But this whole process did allow me to, you know, perfect my pitch and also perfect certain elements of the business model and the way that everything was presented.
• 19:10
  So, yeah. And then in autumn 2018, we got our first term sheet. I signed it. And that's how we had our first venture capital investment, which was really shortly after followed by another one from a U.S. investor. And this allowed me to start building out the team because until then I was a solo person company. So this capital is what allowed me to, you know, start building the brand, start building the team, come up with a name for the company, things like that.
• 19:40
  Wow, goodness, that's such a journey. I'm so interested to understand a little bit more in terms of, you know, in the beginning, you kept having all these people push back on you and be like, yeah, no, don't get it. Don't get the idea. So you never really validated it first. You were just like on that relentless pursuit of building something that you had intuitive sense would be a game changer for women.
• 20:02
  At what point did you start, you know, finding your tribe in terms of women who were like, I want that. I need it. I think when the idea was a bit more fleshed out, I mean, people were pretty split. Like on the one side, I would get people saying, like, what is this ridiculous thing?
• 20:22
  predominantly women, I would hear saying, yeah, that makes total sense. Pain relieving tampons. Like, why hasn't someone come up with that already? So the feedback that I was getting, especially when once I had started, you know, developing my narrative around the company, the feedback became more and more positive, more and more encouraging. But we have an amazing community team.
• 20:43
  within the company, which has now translated that, you know, initial sentiment into a really large group of people, predominantly in the UK, who, you know, understand our mission, understand our vision, like the product and want to support the places where we're going.
• 20:59
  Right. Got it. This is a nice segue into the marketing side of things, which I really want to speak to you about and dive into what you did around your launch strategy. I think I read that you created a wait list of about 20,000 people and within your first week you had over a thousand customers and you were really able to amplify your message in a big way. Are you able to talk through what you did to get those kinds of numbers and the costs involved and the time involved and
• 21:29
  Yeah, absolutely. So I started building out the waitlist really early on. So it was when I still had my full time job. It was before I fundraised. So, oh, actually, I remember. So a friend of mine was working in the Financial Times and they were working on an article around female entrepreneurship. And she asked me,
• 21:49
  do you want to join? Do you want to be interviewed? And I was like, yeah, of course I want to be interviewed. It's a financial time, so I know this will be a massive boost for this tiny thing that I'm working on. So the evening before the article came out, I realized, oh shit, I don't have a website. There's no way that...
• 22:06
  if people want to sign up to something, there's nothing that they can sign up to. So I stayed up all night working on this website, which, you know, had a little bit about the product and it told people how they could sign up to the waitlist. And through that, we got a tiny amount of waitlisters.
• 22:23
  The way in which we really scaled our waitlist was not to a referral mechanic. So that is now currently working for us in terms of acquiring new subscribers, but it did not work for us when we were building our waitlist. What really worked for us was paid marketing on Instagram and Facebook. So we had a...
• 22:41
  Cost of waitlist acquisition of about, so between 50p and one pound to acquire people's email addresses. And when I say acquire people's email addresses, I mean gather their interest and have them sign up to be notified when the product dropped.
• 22:56
  And also, you know, start getting the word about the products out there and the brand out there. We also started investing in SEO really early on. So the first product we ever launched was our blog, which now has become one of the richest libraries of female hot content, Vitals. That was a really great way for us to build engagement with our community before we had, you know, a physical product to offer.
• 23:23
  And then we had about 4% of our waitlist convert when we opened the subscription in February. And then slowly more and more people started coming in. It was a really weird time to launch a product. You know, it was right in the height of the COVID pandemic. We had all of these big plans around, you know, a press campaign and a PR dinner and
• 23:46
  you know, a launch event that was going to be curated. And we were going to have these beautiful exhibitions of our machines and how we produced the date tampon, but those never came to fruition. And 2020 was a really, really, really rough year for us as a business. We had, you know, a number of people contract COVID within the company. A number of people lose parents to COVID within the company. Oh, God.
• 24:13
  Yeah, pretty hard. We also were supposed to raise our next round. So the first round was raised in 2018. And 2020 was always going to be the year in which we raised follow on funding. We did not do that before the pandemic hit. And then after the pandemic, it became really, really hard. So
• 24:32
  From a financial perspective, we no longer had marketing budgets to experiment with. We had marketing budgets to be really efficient with, which is why, again, we focused on Instagram and Facebook. We had really good cost of user acquisition. We also started investing in a referral program. So we built a two-sided referral program similar to what Airbnb has, where you refer a friend, they get five pounds off, you get five pounds off your next box.
• 24:59
  Um, that worked really well. So about 25% of new users every month come from the referral program. We also built an ambassador program for people like gynecologists, GPs, stay at home mothers, students, influencers, anyone that was excited by the vision for a day and by the product could have a unique code, um, to which they could generate sales and then they will get four pounds per sale, um, directly, you know, translated into their bank account.
• 25:28
  Oh, wow. Yeah. And we also, we did a lot of small SEO optimizations. We hired an outside expert to come in and do an SEO audit of our website and give us tips on how we could increase our performance. And within 2020, we rose from 4,000 unique visits per month to over 100,000 unique visits per month.
• 25:53
  Wow. Oh my gosh. That's great. Thank you. It's interesting in hindsight when your plans obviously go to shit essentially and you're like, okay, you know, we wanted to show the machinery. We wanted to do these pop-ups and those things couldn't happen.
• 26:08
  But then I also wonder if it forces you to really double down on specifically what's working and scaling those things. And maybe it works out for the better. Do you think you'll still do those kind of ideas, you know, further later into this year or next year?
• 26:24
  Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, we're really excited for a world where people can meet in person again. Another thing that we did before COVID, we had this community reach out event called Health for Breakfast, where we would go into the offices of large corporates or, you know, startup scale up. So we went to like the offices of Facebook, Monzo, Silicon Valley Bank, and we would give a presentation on a hot topic in female health.
• 26:49
  And we would, at the end, give people the opportunity to ask one of our resident doctors any questions that they had around female health or gynecological health. People really loved those events and were excited to bring them back. And yeah, we used to have day town halls where we would invite our community to the office and we would have, you know, everyone on Instagram go to psych shop at our office, check out the machines, have dinner with us, meet the team. Oh my gosh. We're excited to bring these back. Yeah.
• 27:18
  That's so cool. I kind of feel like your Instagram story that you have posted today, it reminds me of what you're saying about when you go into the office and have those conversations around women's health on your story today. For anyone listening, it is a question around what is your weirdest period symptoms, I think it was. And everyone's able to write back and share their things and then
• 27:40
  day has further gone on and, you know, given a scientific explanation of why it is that you feel that way or what that symptom specifically is. And I just thought that was so clever. And I was like reading through being like, yep, yep, yep. Interesting. Interesting. Have had that. Doesn't have to be a big mystery. Yeah. It's definitely one of my favorite Instagram accounts, especially in terms of the design, in terms of the content, the language. It's all so great.
• 28:08
  Thank you. That's really kind of you. We work hard on it. I'm sure you do. I'm very sure you do. I was reading your Year in Reflection article about what went good and what didn't go so good for 2020. And I'd love to talk through your thoughts on working with agencies and what you've learned through that process.
• 28:27
  Yeah, so I was really excited to work with agencies because, you know, I watched Mad Men and, you know, I had these expectations around how they were going to, you know, give all of this like revolutionary advice and be really actively involved in the evolution of the brand and was quite quickly disappointed. So at the beginning of starting to think about Day's brand, we actually wanted to
• 28:51
  tried working with six different branding agencies. And, you know, we had like an onboarding for each one, just started the whole process again from scratch. And we ended up having really mediocre results, which led me to believe that you can't outsource the really hard work
• 29:08
  soul-searching work that is required if you are to build, you know, a genuinely differentiated, thought-provoking brand. So it was quite a controversial decision at that time because of the increased complexity that it would invite. But we decided to bring all of our brand building in-house.
• 29:27
  We hired an amazing illustrator and graphic designer from New York and started working together on the brand identity. And she was happy with the level of attention to detail that we had to every single element of the packaging. Every color that was part of our color scheme had to have a meeting that was associated with something that had to do with the company. So we weren't just going to choose random colors because they looked pretty together.
• 29:54
  So we have the central brand thesis that we developed, The Scientist Meets the Dreamer, where that kind of aims to summarize what we're trying to do with the brand
• 30:04
  That's so cool. On the money side of things, does it work out to be better than hiring? It works out to be very much cheaper. And I don't know why people don't talk about that because like the main reason why people hire agencies is because they say, oh, but I can't afford to have a team in-house. Well, guess what? An agency will tell you, oh, you know, we love your brand. We really want to work with you. It's so interesting. It's not just another, you know, bottled water and, you know, we'll give you a great rate and it's going to be, you know, say 80K, 80,000 pounds.
• 30:34
  which is a lot. That's like two people's salaries. Yeah. For, you know, three to six months worth of work. And then there's going to be all of these hidden fees that will pop up and all of these, you know, new reasons for why you should pay more. So it's, it's very expensive to work with an agency. And,
• 30:53
  the people that they hire tend to be really junior. You rarely work with like someone very senior. And even if you do work with someone very senior, he or she will not be the founder of the brand. Like they're not going to be an employee of your company. They're never going to be as emotionally invested in what you're building as you are. So unless you, you know, totally dislike creativity and have absolutely no interest in design, then, you know, definitely don't work with an agency.
• 31:21
  It's a really great insight. And it's something that I've often thought about before, you know, in the past, having worked with people who there is a disconnect. There's a disconnect when you're working with a team who aren't fully invested in your business. And it can feel that you're, you know, pushed to the back of the line or whatever it is.
• 31:40
  Very interesting. I'm sure there's also obviously amazing scenarios where people work with people and they click and all that kind of thing. But yeah, super interesting insight. When you think about your journey so far and looking back over the few years in what you've managed to create and bring to the world, what do you think is your superpower?
• 31:59
  Well, this is pretty much, it's very cliche to say, but I think resilience and courage, just like never backing down when faced with the challenge, because so much of what we've had to do over the past few years just seemed impossible when we started thinking about it. Like
• 32:15
  setting our own production and not only having our own production, but also having it to medical device standards and then getting it certified by international bodies like the FDA or the European Medicines Agency without having anyone on our team that has ever done that before or building machines that coat tampons, which are hyperabsorbent with our cannabinoid formulation without that immediately permeating inside the tampon. Again, that seems impossible and we didn't have anyone
• 32:45
  building the brand that we did in-house, again, without having experience. When we hired our graphic designer, Erin, she didn't have experience in building brands. She's an artist. She's a creative person, but she's not a brand strategist. So that was, again, another thing that we had to completely figure out from scratch. And I think the only reason why we did it is because we've always hired people who are really resilient within the company and who don't back down when faced with,
• 33:14
  a massive mountain to climb. How did you find Erin, by the way? On Instagram. Love that good old Instagram. We sent her a DM message saying, we love your aesthetic. Do you think you could help us work on a brand? She said, yes. What is this about? And I was on a flight to New York, I think like three days after. Oh my gosh. Cool. And the rest is history. I love that. Yeah. Yeah.
• 33:42
  What advice do you have for women who have a big idea and want to start their own business? I guess the one thing that's really important is make sure that you are so obsessed with your idea that you would gladly wake up at 4 a.m. after only two hours, 45 minutes of really poor quality sleep.
• 34:06
  in order to go and do the really hard work of materializing your idea. So don't start a business or don't start building a product unless you're like 100% convinced that it has to exist in the world. Because I think it's rare for people to be able to bring ideas into fruition unless they have this almost delusional amount of belief in their product and their business.
• 34:34
  Yes, that is so true. That's what's going to drive you forward in the tough times and when everything feels really, really bad and you're like, why am I doing this? Yeah. And when I've seen entrepreneurs that are unhappy or that want to get out, they're usually people that...
• 34:51
  thought, okay, well, this could be a profitable business or I could flip it in five years. This would be interesting to try. They're not people who are just almost crazily obsessed with their business. They're visionary. Yeah. Okay. We are up to the six quick questions part of the episode. Question number one is what's your why?
• 35:16
  Two things. So the first thing is that I want to create a world where every woman can have complete understanding and complete control over hormonal, menstrual, vaginal health. And the second why is that I want to create this beautiful culture a day where everyone can, you know, show up as their effortless self to work every day and
• 35:39
  When I think about the kind of culture that I want to build a day, there's like one vision that I have. And it's, you know, in 40 years when our employees have had their own children and their own children have grown up, I want us to still be such a relevant company that our current team's children will still want to work a day. Wow, I love that. That's so special. What a great vision. Question number two is, what do you think has been the number one marketing moment that's made your business pop?
• 36:09
  Number one, I think it's misleading when people say, oh, you know, it was like this one thing. It's a collection of many different things. We have this saying in Bulgaria, luck comes to those who are prepared. So sometimes, you know, people obsess over like the one perfect strategy or like the one perfect marketing moment. But in fact, it's a collection of like many small moments of working really hard and doing the right thing that pay off.
• 36:36
  Yeah, absolutely. Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What books are you reading? What do you listen to? Are there any newsletters you're subscribed to that are amazing for entrepreneurs? I wish I could say I was subscribed to newsletters, but apart from, you know, just like my PubMed notifications on PCOS, endometriosis, vaginal microbiome, et cetera, I don't read any other newsletters.
• 37:00
  I do read books all the time, though, but they're not business books. I like to just read biographies or, you know, documentary style books that show like human stories and how people overcome challenges or how they develop emotionally as human beings. And I also get a lot in terms of getting smarter. I get a lot from coaching and I get a lot from therapy. So I do coaching twice a month and I do therapy twice a week.
• 37:29
  And that really helps me become smarter in the way that I manage my time, in the way that I manage myself, in the way that I manage my emotions. That's so interesting. When you say through a coach, how did you find a coach and how did you know what to identify as like what you would be coached in? So there's a great service that's available right now. It's called More Happy.
• 37:52
  Um, and that's happy spelled with an I, and it's a really affordable workplace coaching that you can take on various different topics that matter to you. So whether it's family relationships, uh, professional coaching, and they have a number of different cultures that you can choose from, and you can try different cultures until you find one that works for you. So I really recommend that. It's also very affordable. Um, it's within the budget of, you know, small businesses, medium businesses, um,
• 38:20
  So more happy, very much recommend to anyone that's interested in coaching. Cool. I'm going to check that out and I will link it in the show notes for anyone else who wants to check that out. Question number four is how do you win the day? And that's around your AM and PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and motivated and successful and productive.
• 38:39
  I love that. So I only recently started having morning and evening rituals because especially 2020 was the year in which I just woke up, worked and then went to sleep and then did it again. But I've been speaking to my therapist about the importance of morning and evening rituals and I started implementing these. So in the morning.
• 38:57
  And when I wake up, the first thing I do is I'm still like I have my alarm and then I want to spend a few more minutes in bed to wake up. So I turn on a podcast recently. I've been really obsessed with This American Life, which has these like beautiful stories about, you know, just like various people in like various areas.
• 39:18
  And there's one that they did, I think, two weeks ago, which was on topic of delight, which had stories from different people in America that were seeking delight in different ways. So I listened to that for about 20 minutes. And then when I feel a little bit more awake, I start reading.
• 39:36
  like the book that I'm currently reading. So right now I'm reading Barack Obama's autobiography and I'm also reading a book by Eric Fromm, which I'm reading in Bulgarian, so I'm not sure what the exact name in English is, but I think it translates to The Art of Loving.
• 39:52
  And then after that, I do 20 minutes of Duolingo, the language learning app. So I do German and French because I don't have anyone to speak German and French with. And I'm worried I'm losing the language. And then, ashamed to say, I do about, you know, an hour, 45 minutes of email training.
• 40:13
  And then in the evening, when I'm in Bulgaria, I have my trainer that comes in, um, in real life when I'm in the UK, we zoom, um, and I do like combination between Pilates and yoga. And usually I watch a funny show, which is a habit that I've formed recently because when I was growing up, we didn't have a TV. And then later on, you know, I was always working so hard. I didn't have time to watch some of the, like, I haven't seen, you know, like Sex in the
• 40:43
  Modern Family, all of these shows. Friends, I've never seen Friends. So, oh my gosh. Watching these shows.
• 40:51
  What are you watching at the moment? Now I'm watching The Office, The U.S. Office. I'm on season one. God, that's so funny. It's so funny. So much sense now why for so long I've heard so many people talk about The Office. 100%. I only watched Modern Family recently and I feel like it changed my world. It's so funny. Brings me so much joy. So wholesome. Yes, very wholesome. Yeah.
• 41:15
  Question number five is if you only had a thousand dollars left in your business bank account, where would you spend it? And that's kind of to highlight, you know, what your key resources would be to double your money or make more money from what you have.
• 41:31
  If we only had 1,000, I'd probably spend it on a farewell dinner with the team. At this stage, they cannot support itself with just 1,000. So I would probably spend it on just like a private chef, lots of delicious cocktails, beautiful dinner with the team where we all say thank you and see you soon. Lovely.
• 42:01
  And question number six is how do you deal with failure? I wish I could say deal better with failure. So something that I'm trying to do now that my therapist told me about, because I have a really negative inner voice. And the way that I speak to myself, I would never speak to anyone else in a million years. So something that my therapist recommended is, you know, when I go into like an internal situation,
• 42:24
  you know, self bashing around like, you're such a failure, you didn't do this, you didn't do that, you didn't go to your entire to do list, you didn't spend enough time with this person or that person, you didn't make your family feel loved, like I very easily overwhelm myself with this feeling of I'm such a massive failure. So I try and, you know, analyze the way that I speak to myself and see whether I would speak like this to a person who wasn't me. And that helps me put things into perspective. Wow, I love that. That's a great insight. Thank you so much for sharing that.
• 42:54
  Wow. Oh my goodness. I've loved this chat and loved learning about day and how it got started. And I'm just in awe of what you're doing. So thank you so much for being on the show today and talking with me. Thank you for sharing, you know, the spotlight and caring about female health and wanting to learn more. And I'm really glad that we get to connect with your audience as well. Me too.
• 43:20
  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.
• 43:44
  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.
• 44:07
  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.
• 44:23
  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.
• 44:48
  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.
• 45:10
  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.