Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / The feeling when you have to throw away $25,000 worth of stock because it’s BAD. With Nomadica’s Founder

Transcript

The feeling when you have to throw away $25,000 worth of stock because it’s BAD. With Nomadica’s Founder · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Kristin Olszewski for Female Startup Club.
• 0:12
  Hey guys, Dune here, your host and hype girl. On the show today, we're chatting with Kristen from Nomadica Wine. We're discussing some of the tough stuff that happened to her early on in the journey, including the moment she had to throw away $25,000 worth of wine because it wasn't good enough. We also talk about what she'd do differently if she was to start this business again tomorrow. And that was a real eye opener for me. Very cool to hear it.
• 0:41
  Kristen is a sommelier by trade and the founder and CEO of Nomadica Wine. It's a company where she thoughtfully curates a selection of high-quality canned wine. She's passionate about working with high-quality small producers who focus on sustainable practices. And this is a really, really interesting episode for anyone in the beverage industry. So I hope you love it as much as I did recording it.
• 1:09
  If you want to learn from entrepreneurs like Kristen, please do join us in the Hype Club. It's a private network made for founders who happen to be women, building the next wave of e-commerce and CPG brands. Let's get into it. This is Kristen for Female Startup Club. Kristen, hello. Welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. I am so stoked to be here. Thank you so much for having me on.
• 1:37
  You are so welcome. I've caught you just after going to the gym. So I'm very glad you're still making the time for me today. For those who don't know who you are yet, or what your business is, can you give us a bit of an overview?
• 1:52
  Yes. So I am the CEO and founder of Nomadica Wine. I'm also a sommelier. I have been a Somme for over a decade now. I worked at Michelin restaurants all over the country. And I started Nomadica four years ago. We are the only premium wine in can. We source from small boutique winemakers. So just as I do as a wine director, sommelier in a restaurant, I essentially did that tenfold with my cans.
• 2:22
  sommelier curated canned wine with art to pair for the wine inside to act as the first tasting note.
• 2:29
  I love it. I love it so much. And everyone listening will know how excited I am to talk to you, given that I'm developing a non-alc wine company in partnership with Amastasom. And I'm just really excited to learn from you today and understand like what's working well, what's not working well, and, you know, industry insights that you can share. All my horror stories. I'll lay them on the table for you.
• 2:55
  Please do. I think I read you started circa 2017. Can we go back to the time when you sort of had your light bulb moment and decided that you were going to start this business?
• 3:10
  Yeah. So it was my co-founder's idea to start a canned wine company. In all transparency, you know, a mutual friend had set us up to me. I show up after service in my lady suit. You know, I was coming off the floor of Ostria Mozza, which is a one Michelin star restaurant in Los Angeles with a 90 page all Italian wine list.
• 3:31
  You know, I'd spent the last six hours selling crew Barolo to like film executives. And I sit down and Emma tells me she wants to start a canned wine company. And this is way before canned wine was even a thing. And my first reaction was, oh, no, thank you. I'm totally good on that. I have no desire to even be affiliated with a canned wine.
• 3:54
  And Emma is also Australian, very stubborn and didn't take no for an answer, which I love about her. Stocked my Instagram, found this winemaker. She knew I really loved Josh Clapper, who is producing phenomenal wines on the central coast of California. Canned a small batch of his Pinot Noir, brought it back to me to taste. And I definitely let it sit in my cabinet for a month or so until one night I didn't feel like opening up an entire bottle. I just wanted a glass of wine and I was like, you know what? I'll try it. Probably going to hate it.
• 4:24
  I'll make myself a Negroni after. And I find it's in these moments where you really because I used to be a person that really cared a lot about being right. And when I poured the wine into the glass, I had to admit how wrong I was.
• 4:40
  I truly didn't believe until that moment that you could have premium wine in a can. And I just realized that the level of wine that I like to drink, I couldn't find in a can. So we decided to go for it. And my undergraduate degree is in sustainable agriculture. I care so much about our carbon footprint and reducing that. And once I really started deep diving into the benefits of cans, I was sold.
• 5:03
  This is so interesting and I want to talk to a few different points. But first of all, my thought is Emma was really ahead of the times in 2017 because I feel like 2017, everyone would have had the same reaction as you as like, oh no, sir. Like I'm not interested. Circa now, this is like a thing and a trend for sure. So she was, she was onto it. That's cool. She's a visionary. Yeah.
• 5:29
  She really is. She's just one of those people that you tell her no. And she's like, I'm going to do it. I'm going to get it done. And she actually had just moved to Los Angeles. She had done some time at Harvard Business School in Boston. And before that, she was in Sydney. And she had a dinner date with a friend in LA. And the traffic in LA is so atrocious. Like people joke about it all the time, but it's actually just horrible. Yeah.
• 5:55
  And she called the Uber and was like, whoa, holy crap, it's an hour and a half Uber ride. So she poured some wine into a Pellegrino can for the ride and was like, huh. Well, this works. Exactly. And she's like, why doesn't this exist? So...
• 6:14
  Here we are. Oh my gosh. And here we are. The second thing I wanted to touch on there was the can versus bottle thing and what you learned when you were looking into that side of the sustainability piece of the puzzle and what you now know in hindsight.
• 6:30
  Yeah, I think, you know, the reason why I got into wine in the first place is because great wine is made in the vineyard. It's not made in the cellar. It's all about farming. And to be a good farmer, in my humble opinion, you need to do the right thing. You need to take care of the earth. You need to like farm organically or build.
• 6:46
  even better biodynamically if you can afford to do so, not spray pesticides, no copper usage, don't use any chemicals in the cellar, et cetera. But then I never really took it further and really wondered about the carbon footprint of glass bottles. Nevermind how bad colored glasses for the environment, how high energy it is to produce. You can't even recycle it when you're done with it. And glass is really heavy. Yeah.
• 7:12
  Like really heavy. Cans are 400 times lighter than glass. The carbon footprint from just the shipping emissions on cans alone is 80% less. Never mind the fact that it's made of recycled materials and you can recycle it. So amazing. Yeah, my mind was blown.
• 7:30
  Yeah. I mean, all of that makes so much sense. I'm wondering what the reception is to wines in a can, like in trade in like a retail store or something like a restaurant. Like when you came as a sommelier and said, Hey, this is what I'm doing. And is it something that you do in restaurants or like that you have on the menu? Yeah.
• 7:53
  So we really do well in, you know, chef driven, fast, casual hotels, stadiums, event venues. Got it. I know where we work, you know, grab and go. And I like to say fake dive bars, the type of place where...
• 8:12
  It looks a little like dingy and vibey, but then you're also going to get an $18 perfectly made Negroni. Hipster. Exactly. Like places like that, you know, no one's really like has a lot of care for the wine program usually, or they're just, you know, going through a lot of waste.
• 8:31
  Because they don't sell a lot of wine in places like that. So here comes Nomadica. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, your bubbles are always fresh. Your wine is always fresh. You don't need to throw anything out. You don't have any overpouring, etc. But man, those first two years were really hard. I think I went into it too with this arrogance of...
• 8:51
  Oh, you know, I'm a sommelier. I've worked so hard. I have such a great resume. I know how to talk about wine. I sell wine all night in a restaurant. This is going to come so naturally to me. People are just going to say, yes, I'm going to be making sales left and right. And the amount of rejection was staggering. Like it was...
• 9:14
  I mean, you've got to look back and laugh, right? I mean, it's so funny. And so many people were like, this is a bad idea. You shouldn't do this. You shouldn't put your name on this, Kristen. Many of my peers and people I'd known for a long time, they were like, canned wine will never be a thing.
• 9:33
  Lucky you had a visionary. I know. God. Stubborn one. I feel like I jumped ahead of myself a little bit here. So I want to go back to those early times to talk about like what you were doing in the lead up to launch and then launch and like how it went. So I, I love my mistakes that I've made. I have now at this point in my life really learned to embrace the lessons that have come from them.
• 10:02
  Oh my God, please share. Please tell us what they were. I mean, oh God, there's so many things. Like we didn't really research our name correctly and we wanted to be the Nomad Wine Company at first. And then we got a cease and desist and we were like, literally had to go to print the next day.
• 10:19
  So we changed our name to Nomadica and all night just what do we name the company? How do we change this? When we first started, we were making very small batches of wine and I was doing like Chenin Blanc from this vineyard made by this winemaker. But like, how do you scale that? You know what I mean? Now that we're in
• 10:39
  17 states and Canada and with like a big e-commerce business, you can't run a business like that with like registering things every hundred cases or so. That's just going to be exhausting. And also something I learned is certain varietals work really well in the can and certain varietals do not. One of the first wines that we canned was a Chenin Blanc from Clarksburg. Chenin Blanc can be quite reductive.
• 11:05
  And when you put a wine in the can, it increases the likelihood that the wine will become even more reductive because you're putting it into a reductive environment. And it was just bad. It was like it tasted so different out of the tank versus in the can. And had you already gone through the process of like actually doing a batch and canning it and then realizing after the fact, wow, what's the kind of like financial loss on something like that?
• 11:29
  That was a big one. That was like a 25 grand. And we had just raised a small friends and family at that point. You know, like Emma and I both had other jobs, full-time jobs. We were doing this on the side. She was working at Snapchat. I was somming every night at Ostria Moza. We hadn't raised a lot of money. We'd raised like $150,000 from...
• 11:50
  Like some of her associates at Snapchat, some people we knew, literally friends and family. And so we had to make that money go far. Yeah. And really stretch it. So what do you do in that moment when you realize it's bad? Like, what's the actual conversation of like, so what do we do now with this stuff that we have? That was a hard one because it's, you know...
• 12:15
  There's definitely this moment of we don't have any money. We're never going to get any money. You know, you feel this like sense of I don't know what to do. We need to make this work. But then also you have to take a hard look at it and be like, okay, this was a mistake. This was an expensive mistake. But I don't want somebody's first interaction with my brand to be a bad one. And you only get one chance with people. So we decided to destroy the wine and just take the loss on it.
• 12:46
  Yeah. Wow. But other than that, the other cans, you know, we did a really great job of having these really cool eye catching labels all by different artists. And the other ones were awesome. And yes, it was like 75 percent rejection. But then those 25 percenters, you know, like.
• 13:06
  One of my really close friends, Ryan Bailey, who is a sommelier at the Nomad Hotel in Los Angeles, tasted the wines. And he's like, these are great. Like, I'm so proud of you. Let's put them by the pool and in the minibar. And he is somebody I look up to so much. He's such an accomplished sommelier. He's such an accomplished wine director. And those like little nuggets of positivity and support really kept me going in those early years.
• 13:32
  like a great confidence boost to be like, yeah, I am on the right track. I just need to like persevere and like get through the hard times. Um, in those early, early times, what were you doing to spread the word marketing wise and was a big focus for you on like sampling and just, you know, gifting or like, what was your like early approach?
• 13:57
  Early approach was, and this is something I wish we had started our e-commerce business sooner. That's one of the biggest mistakes we made. I wish we had started that in conjunction with our wholesale business.
• 14:10
  But we did a lot of sampling. We were at a lot of music festivals, parties. If there was like a Netflix launch, if there was something, we were going to be there. We're going to make that happen. And I, of course, like never shut up about my brand. Like anytime I ever met anyone, whether it was, you know, I'm selling, literally selling them wine on the floor of Moza and like talking to them about a tiny varietals. And I'm just like,
• 14:38
  oh yeah, I'd like figure out a way to work it into conversation without being self-promoting. You know what I mean? It's just like, yeah, I heard about this wine in a can brand. Apparently it's really great. Well, it's funny because working in Los Angeles, people would always ask me if I was an actress too. And I'd be like, no, wine is my career. This is what I'm doing. Actually, I own a can wine company as well. And it was just like a lot of guerrilla tactics.
• 15:07
  And we definitely gifted a lot to influencers. We still do. Like how much per month? Honestly, probably in the first two years, at least probably a quarter of the wine we made, we gifted away to either influencers or events. Yeah. It's interesting to know the split because that's quite a lot, right? That's also a really big investment. But at the same time, it makes a lot of sense because you need to get the product out there in the food and better space. People just need to try it, right?
• 15:36
  Exactly. I totally get that. Where do I want to go with this? What do I want to talk about now? Oh, well, maybe let's talk about the e-commerce part of the business. When did you realize you needed to launch the e-com side and what was that like? It was hell on earth. So we decided to launch the e-commerce part of the business
• 16:00
  the beginning of 2020, I wish we had done it because it takes about a year to get set up licensing wise. The compliance on alcohol in the U.S. is exhaustive. And, you know, we had to change our licensing and then we had to apply for individual state licenses, which can take
• 16:20
  six to nine months to a year, nevermind that COVID really slowed it down. And so we had done some business, like we could direct ship in California. We had about seven states that were live all of last year, but we really launched our e-commerce in a big, meaningful way nationally, January, 2021. And if I could go back and do it over again, I would have invested in e-commerce from day one. And I'm,
• 16:48
  invested equally in that instead of just focusing on wholesale. And so when you launched then, does that mean you launched like without a customer database or you'd already sort of been building a list in the backend?
• 17:02
  We launched without a customer database. Like we had nothing at all. And. And how's it going? It's going so well. It has just been. I cannot like it's become so quickly. 40% of our business. Oh, wow. It's just the uptake has been phenomenal. We have. We have.
• 17:25
  30% of our customers are returning customers. We're growing month over month. We're going like 50% month over month, every month this year. And people love it. Like it's, I don't know. And in the early days, you know, I was going onto our Shopify and like Googling every single customer and trying to figure out what they did for work and stalking their LinkedIn's and looking at their Instagram and...
• 17:50
  Um, in addition to, of course, you know, sending out surveys and just trying to get to know who our e-commerce customer is. But I just, I love it. It gives me such a great opportunity to be in touch with our customers in a way that I don't get when somebody is, you know, shopping at a retail store. I don't get to talk to them. Totally. Absolutely. Do you think because you launched the e-commerce side of things in a big way this year, do you feel like you came into your stride
• 18:18
  like this year or do you feel like you really hit a key momentum, like turning point a few years ago and this was like another wave?
• 18:28
  Well, so we raised a series seed in 2019, closed it in the winter of 2019. And I quit my job. I went full time in 2020. Emma left the company to go pursue some other things. I stepped into the CEO role and started building a team around me. And last year was really like a preparatory year.
• 18:51
  You know, I like to say last year was our real first year in business because we really got it together. We focused on having the commerce plan. I hired a very talented creative director who just launched the rebrand of cans that we've been working on forever. We got...
• 19:07
  professionally commerce shippers. We learned how to tell our story in a meaningful way. I hired the most talented COO, Tara Hannaford. It felt, I felt like I was dating again. I think I was trying to get her to join Nomadica for nine months until she finally said yes to me.
• 19:25
  But she was the vice president of sales at Casa Amigo. She's had three exits in alcohol. She is just a killer. And I love the fact that I show up for work every day, somewhat intimidated by my COO. I think that's really a good place to be at. So I think this year was really our year that we knocked it out of the park and came into our own and started executing on all the things that I'd always wanted to do. Oh, my God. Like what? Tell me what. What were you executing on? Oh, my God.
• 19:51
  The fact that we were able to launch any commerce. And so part of our, our model is that we have, well, we started out with four core SKUs last year. We have two sparklings, a white and a rosé, a still rosé and a red. And,
• 20:08
  This year, we started doing quarterly limited edition drops, like 100 cases of something, drop it online. They sell out so fast. It is so cool. And the first Q1 limited edition drop that we did was a organic and biodynamic Chardonnay from the Central Coast.
• 20:26
  It sold out in like a week and people were obsessive about it. They're like, when's the Chardonnay coming back? When's the Chardonnay coming back? I got like a two like weird threatening messages from people that.
• 20:40
  Oh my God, that's so weird. One woman was like, this is the only wine I like. You need to bring it back. I just feel depressed. Like this year is so hard. Please bring back the wine. And so I was like, you know what? Let's add a fifth core SKU. Let's add a still white, a Chardonnay to our lineup. So those are available every day of the year in all of our wholesale markets and online.
• 21:02
  I hope she's become your best customer. Okay. This woman buys so much wine. It's funny because she like, her and I have this very personal relationship now because I like have responded to her questions myself. And, you know, we're like homies from across. It's like really turned it around. Yeah. Sounds like that's like the ultimate customer's experience where like someone's a bit knocky and then you actually managed to somehow turn it around and then become best buds. Oh, that is...
• 21:31
  my favorite thing to do in the entire world. But actually getting to do these limited editions, like I did a piquette this summer, we're doing a sparkling Barbera for our Q3 limited edition release. Like this is when we started Nomadica, I always wanted to do things like this because they're just fun. Yeah. It's fun to, to showcase small producers to people.
• 21:55
  A hundred percent. Yeah, absolutely. I love that about being a SOM. That's been my favorite part of my job always. It's like wine is so intimidating. Wine can be so, you know, inaccessible. So many people are gatekeepers about it. But, you know, there are those people that...
• 22:11
  Just want to show great wine at a great value. And you don't just have to drink the same thing you always drink. So that's been really great. We did a limited edition for Whole Foods this year, which was really fun. On the East Coast, we did an Albarino and a can for them. And I think some other small goals. Well, I just, as of today, actually, this came out today. I got on Wine Enthusiast 40 Under 40, which was like a personal...
• 22:40
  goal that I've always congratulations that's amazing congrats thank you and then in terms of wholesale I had always said you know I want to be in a stadium I want to be in a stadium we're in a stadium we're in SoFi Stadium we're this huge football stadium that's newly built in Los Angeles and we're just doing it it's just great to like see it all come to fruition and
• 23:06
  100%. That's amazing. I love the stadium events vibe. That's a really clever, clever approach. Where are you allocating budget now, marketing-wise? And what do you think it is that's driving this incredible growth that you're having?
• 23:24
  We hired a digital marketing agency, which I was really scared to do because also I think coming from this scarcity mindset of, you know, I raised this money. I don't want to spend it, which is really stupid. And if I could go back in time, you have to spend the money. You have to spend it aggressively. That's just, you're not going to be successful if you don't. That's why you raise the money. Don't hoard it.
• 23:49
  But really connecting with my digital marketing agency, taking the time to do individual tastings with them, having them understand my story, our creative director story, our COO story, putting the time into training, and then they have just gone out to crush it. And also, I think when we first started, I thought Facebook and Instagram advertising, that's going to be huge. That's going to be great. That's where it's all going to come from. Email marketing has been 30% of our business comes from email marketing.
• 24:18
  So yes, we have obscenely high click through and open rates over twice the industry standard, which is exciting. And just investing into things like that and really just keeping an open mind and being like, okay, well, what's working? How do I invest in that? I'm gung ho on TikTok now. Don't even get me started on how excited I am about TikTok. Yeah.
• 24:42
  And obviously podcasts too. I just feel like there's so many great ways to reach people and they don't all have to be paid marketing. For sure. Yeah, for sure. There's a few things I wanted to ask you about off the back of that. Going back to emails, what do you think it is about your emails that make it so successful? Like your email marketing strategy?
• 25:06
  I think it's the fact that our customers are wine drinkers. They were converting them from the bottle to the can. They don't drink other canned wines where the canned wine they drink.
• 25:18
  the quality of what's in the can is the strength of our brand. And the fact that I am a sommelier, the fact that I do have so much expertise and influence in my area, I know how to talk about wine in a way that people connect to. And I really thank God for my creative director and our copywriter because they really helped me translate that, my personal voice and how I talk about wine and our wine into email.
• 25:48
  Wow, that's so interesting and something that I guess like it makes sense. I know this as well in the back of my mind, but when you talk about that, it makes so much sense that it's, yeah, it's you coming across with your thoughts on wine and how you're tasting it and what it is that makes it special coming to people who love wine. Like, I mean, it's sommelier in a pocket. They get sommelier delivered to their inbox. That's so cool. Exactly.
• 26:12
  Exactly. And then I'm like, this is what you should eat with this. Or here's this really cool pairing or let's, you know, here's a recipe to pair with your Pink River Rosé and really making it personal and fun. And I love, again, tying it back to the art. We do Spotify playlists for each can as well. Tying it all in together like that. It's just synesthesia. I love that.
• 26:37
  So I have a few more questions. Oh, no, I want to go back to TikTok now. Now that we've moved on from email, I want to go to TikTok. Talk to me about TikTok. What's your approach? What's your excitement? What's going on there?
• 26:48
  I actually, everyone on my team has been making fun of me for a year because I've been like, TikTok, TikTok, we got to get on TikTok. I love TikTok. And, you know, I'm 33 and our leadership team, we're all in our 30s. It's funny. We're all women in our 30s. And everyone was kind of ribbing me and asking me if I was, you know, even old enough to drink if I was on TikTok. But I held fast on it. I was like, we need to invest in it. We need to create some content.
• 27:17
  It's so easy to get views on TikTok. One of our investors is this brilliant woman named Tressie Lieberman, and she's the head of digital marketing at Chipotle. And she is really the reason why I'm obsessed with TikTok. She was like, you need to be on TikTok. The amount of views, likes on even a comment.
• 27:38
  is insane. We have never even seen anything like this on Facebook or Instagram, but we can get a hundred thousand likes on one comment in a day, just the exposure. So we started early on, we are investing in it. We're just starting to do paid advertising on TikTok, but we've had
• 27:56
  you know, organic. We send wine to influencers that are of age, of course, and they make some really cool content. And it's so different than what's on Instagram as well. So I really, I really like that because I do think Instagram and Facebook are ads, you know, we're, we're a little more like chic and grown up and it's geared towards an older tends to be female. Um, we're
• 28:26
  I'm getting, you know, those 24 year olds, those 25 year olds, those 23 year olds who have money, aren't super like are just starting to get into wine, are super open-minded about canned wine because they don't have the preconceived notions that the rest of us do about it. And it's just been really positive and wonderful. I've been really surprised at it. I love TikTok. I just so rate TikTok. I'm really like worn out with Instagram. I feel like
• 28:54
  such weird feelings about it these days. Me too. So like over the polished, you know, and of course I'm guilty of it for sure. Yeah. I play into it, but I'm like, man, TikTok is just so much fun and you get so much joy out of it versus Instagram. It can bring so much negativity, I think not so much on the brand side, but like on personal Instagrams and things like that.
• 29:20
  No, totally. And I think that that's something that I love about it too. It's like your content doesn't have to be super polished. You don't have to have your hair and makeup done. You don't have to have the perfect background. You just have to be kind of interesting and real and people love it.
• 29:36
  Yeah. Total authentic. I think is the word of the year, the word always, but you know, authentic a hundred percent. I wanted to ask you if you were to start this business again tomorrow, what would you have done differently besides starting your e-commerce store earlier? I would have raised more money from the beginning. Um, I think
• 30:00
  We were being so precious about equity, which is such a mistake, especially as a first time founder. Don't be precious about your equity. What do you mean? Or like specifically for you, how did that, what's the impact? We should have raised $5 million as our series seed or pre-seed. Like that alcohol is expensive. CPG is expensive. Beverage is expensive. It is getting more and more expensive every single year.
• 30:30
  I think it's really easy to start a brand now and it's really hard and expensive to grow it and have it be successful.
• 30:39
  I would have spent more money earlier on. I would have hired more people and I would have hired a creative director day one if I could do it again. I think it's really interesting because we were working with this woman, Aiden Duffy, as a consultant on a rebrand on our logo. And then she was telling us that she was starting to look for full-time work. And my COO, Tara, was like, we should hire her. We should have her. And I was like, we don't need a creative director. We don't need that. That's a waste of money.
• 31:06
  one of the best hires ever and one of the most impactful people on our team. I cannot imagine a Nomadica without Aiden at this point. She has single-handedly changed so much. Beyond just the look of our cans, you know, we were recently featured in
• 31:24
  dye line. She, I wanted to make the cans as chic as the bottle. And Aiden did that with her rebrand and she manages our social. She comes up with brilliant, you know, marketing partnerships and ideas. And she just acts like she owns the business, which I just love about her so much. Like she's just brilliant. I would have, I, if I could do it again, Aiden would have been like the first hire. Yeah.
• 31:48
  Wow. What a glowing review. I hope she hears this. It's so nice to hear you say that. Wow. Go Aiden. That's great.
• 31:58
  Gosh. And so you would have raised more money. You would have given away more equity. And when it comes to the equity, are you allowed to share your like split of what you would have liked to give away if you were to raise 5 million? I mean, I think that, sorry, I'll be, I'm going to be slightly cagey about it, but I think that I appreciate that. I think, you know,
• 32:28
  And as in your exit number. Well, yeah, exactly. Like we're like, okay, well, we need to have, we need to have 60 to 80% of the business and we're only going to give away 20% of it. And it's like, you can't, you just can't do that as a first time founder without like real proof of concept.
• 32:46
  And what's better, you know, owning a majority of a small business that's not worth a lot of money or owning a small piece of something big and valuable. And I'm on that big and valuable team now.
• 33:01
  Does that mean it changes your also like the goalposts as in like originally you thinking, oh, you know, we can sell for like 10 to 20 versus, oh, you know, we can sell for 100 kind of thing. Like, does it change that now for you? I think we were super delusional when we first started and the goalpost has never changed.
• 33:22
  We just thought it would be a lot easier to get there. And then when you get in and you're actually operating it and, you know, I was talking to another founder who's in the BevAlk space and he raised a lot more money than I did, gave away a lot more of his company. But he told me what was really important for him is that he could go to bed every night and see his family. Yeah.
• 33:47
  And not wake up at 3 a.m. stressed out about running a business. And those words have echoed in my head for the last two years. And I really think that they're true because I think the hardest part of being an entrepreneur is the emotional and mental strength that it requires. Yeah.
• 34:08
  Especially, you know, I came up in restaurants. I've worked hard my entire life. I got a job at 15. I love working. Working hard is easy for me. But being confident in yourself, not letting your hard days drag you down, not getting stuck in the negative thought cycle that's like, I'll never do this. I can't make this work.
• 34:28
  I won't raise money. You know, those like fear things that we all get caught up in, just learning to ignore that, not looking at, you know, your competitors constantly, not comparing yourself because you have no clue what they're doing in revenue, no matter how successful they look. It was always shocking to me. That's been the most difficult part of it for me. I feel like it's something I talk about a lot with my founder friends. Like, how are you taking care of yourself mentally and keeping yourself strong?
• 34:59
  It's lucky that we live in the age that we do because I feel like that narrative has really shifted from, you know, 10 years ago, work till you die and don't sleep and don't care about anything else to now, which is like, get your eight hours of sleep. Like make sure you're checking in on yourself, especially in a world like where COVID has obviously changed the game.
• 35:20
  Um, everyone looks to those self-care small moments and encourages them daily, which I love that shift that's happened. Totally get you. What do you think folks in the industry like me need to know that we or they might not know yet? Including when it comes to non-alcoholic.
• 35:44
  Hmm. Well, first of all, I think you're a genius. I always say that if I could do it again, I would do a non-alc company. I think it's so smart. So like full thumbs up for me on that. You're much smarter than I am. The lack of regulation.
• 36:01
  It is so expensive to run an alcohol company. Thank God our compliance lawyer, like I've kissed the ground. She walks on. I'm like, what can I do for you? Your job is so hard and annoying. I could never do it. Even when she talks to me, sometimes I'm like, okay, I'm just not. How do you keep that all in your head? Like the difference? What language are you speaking? Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
• 36:27
  And then navigating the world of distributorship. And then we have to ship out of a fulfillment center that's licensed, a bonded warehouse for alcohol. And it's so much more expensive because, of course, we need signatures upon delivery. We need proof. So if I could do it again, something non-alcoholic. I think the world is your oyster at that point. And then you can sell into so many different spaces.
• 36:53
  Because people don't need a liquor license or a beer and wine license. You can be at sandwich shops and gift shops and just all over. You can really spread it around. Yeah. I think that's really smart. And then I think something I wish I had done earlier is really tapped into my network.
• 37:13
  I was really shy to ask people for help the first couple of years. And then as I become more successful myself, people ask me for a lot of help. And I love it. I love to like be useful. And, you know, selfishly, it makes me feel really good to help somebody else out.
• 37:29
  And I think if I had realized that earlier on, I would have been a lot more forthcoming with utilizing and tapping into the people in my network and asking like, hey, my old boss, you know, the master sommelier who runs the Whole Foods wine program. Can I have an introduction there? Things like that, that I was just so shy about.
• 37:50
  to ask about. A hundred percent. Got to leverage the connections. Exactly. A hundred percent. Exactly. Gosh. I don't know if it's going to be any different from, um, your answer just now, but what is your top piece of advice for entrepreneurs? Oh my God. Um, just do it. Just like leap off the cliff. Um,
• 38:16
  You you figure it out. You work it out. I think there's so many reasons not to do something. And I have a little bit of a perfectionistic streak in me.
• 38:27
  hold myself to an unrealistic standard all the time. And then I get like overly anxious about things and run through dark scenarios in my head. But every time there's been a problem, I've worked it out. I've solved it. And I think knowing that it's just, just leap. Like I, I leapt off a cliff. I had no idea what I was in for. And you know, four years later, I'm so glad I did.
• 38:49
  I love that. I feel like you can hear it in your voice as well. I can feel it. Thank you. At the end of every episode, we ask a series of six quick questions. So question number one is, what's your why? Why are you doing what you're doing?
• 39:07
  Because I truly believe that we need to think meaningfully about our carbon footprint. And I think I love the fact that Nomadica is doing something a little bit good in the world. We're offering people the chance to consume premium wine in alternative packaging that's literally better for the earth. Love it. Question number two is, what do you think has been the number one marketing moment that made the business pop? Ooh.
• 39:37
  selling out of all of our wine this summer. We were out of stock on wine for a month because we did not expect it to go that fast the first half of the year. And then people really wanted it, which it was awesome. It was, you know, it was the thing that I'd always been the most afraid of, but then it actually was advantageous for our business. Love that. Love that for you. Question number three is, where do you hang out to get smarter?
• 40:05
  What do you read or listen or subscribe to that we need to know about? Well, this podcast. I listen to How I Built This a lot because I just love hearing the stories of how everyone starts out in kind of the same miserable place and goes through so many hardships and then triumphs. That just always psychs me up. And then I have a really good community of founder friends.
• 40:31
  Like, it's so incredible because everyone has such different skill sets. And, you know, sometimes you want to go talk to eight people about how is affiliate marketing working for you? Like, what percentage of sales are you getting from it? Who are you using? And also, even when you're just having a really rough day and you want to quit and you're the founder and you're the CEO. So you can't tell your team that because you got to keep morale up. Having a friend or advisor you can call who's in the same boat as you is just invaluable.
• 41:01
  100% community all the way, network all the way. Question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM and PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated? Oh my God, this one's huge for me. I really changed my life earlier this year because I realized that I was not being the best version of myself. And so I wake up at six o'clock. I do not touch my phone for the first couple hours. Yeah.
• 41:29
  I do not. I used to check my email rabidly and it was just really messing with my productivity and just mental headspace. So, yep, it's so, oh my God. This was the best change I ever made. So I read, have my coffee, and then I go to the gym or swim for an hour and then come back and start work.
• 41:50
  And then I finish work. I need to be done with work at six o'clock at the absolute latest because I, for much of my business is working these like 12, 14 hour days that were just, I wasn't, you know, putting my best workout and I was feeling really burnt out and strung out and then have dinner, have chill time, put my phone away at night, do not look at it. And I try to be in bed by nine, nine 30.
• 42:14
  Yeah, that sounds like a great routine. Yeah, it's been really good. I need to get better at this phone thing. I wasn't a really great rhythm, but I'm no longer. I need to get back onto it. It's a slippery slope. It's a slippery slope. It's a slippery slope. It is a slippery slope. Gosh. Anyway, question number five. If you were given $1,000 of no strings attached grant money, where would you spend that in the business?
• 42:38
  I would do something really nice for all of my employees. There's eight of us now. I would like take us all out for like a really nice dinner or something like that. Do some hang time together. Just appreciate everyone. I feel like everyone says this, but I genuinely feel like I have the best team of people that I work with. I just love all of them. They're so talented. They're so smart and they work so hard. I'm really lucky.
• 43:04
  Oh, how nice. 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? God, it used to devastate me and I would fixate on it. And now, you know,
• 43:21
  Things just always go wrong. I now expect things to go wrong. And I've stopped freaking out about them because you can't solve a problem when you freak out about it. So when something bad happens, I genuinely just try to be like, okay, what's my next step? How am I going to get around this?
• 43:37
  I've our consulting winemaker who we've worked with for the last four years really taught me that, you know, we had an issue in production and we had had like a million issues in production, which I'm sure soon you will learn how fun this is. And he's like, Kristen, you need to just we're going to solve it. We always solve it. There's always a solution. If you panic, you're not going to see it.
• 44:01
  I love that. It's so true. It's so true. There's always a solution. Keep moving forward. Separate personal to professional. Try and add a bit of a buffer. Exactly. As best as you can. So I'm still learning that one.
• 44:20
  Kristen, this is so cool. Thank you so much for coming on the show. And I'm so excited to keep watching what you're doing. And I'm so excited to be connected to you now. I'm going to be knocking on your door. I can't wait for you to launch your NA brand. I'm here for any and all questions. And thank you so much for having me on. This is so exciting.
• 44:42
  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.
• 45:07
  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.
• 45:29
  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.
• 45:46
  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.
• 46:11
  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.
• 46:33
  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.