Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / 6 quick questions with Meryl Montgomery, Founder of Barbaril (Part 2)

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6 quick questions with Meryl Montgomery, Founder of Barbaril (Part 2) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  Welcome back. Here are the six quick questions. Question number two is what's been your favorite marketing moment so far? Okay, so we did one of the herbal rolling bars.
• 0:23
  for our friends at Gossamer Magazine. They were doing one of their issue launch parties, and so we were popping up there. And I got to roll some herbal, barberry herbal splits for Lena Waite.
• 0:40
  a badass like she waited in line, which was so cool. I got a chat with her later. She's one of Valerie and I's favorite celebrities. And it was just amazing. Like I was so starstruck, but at the same time, I was like, so are you investing in any BIPOC women owned cannabis fans? Because you're a fan of the cannabis.
• 1:05
  Please contact me. Yeah, you don't have to put yourself out there, but it was just kind of one of those like pinching moments. Like I couldn't believe that I just got to do that. That is so cool. And I love Gossama, such a cool magazine. We've had her on the show before to share her story too. Love it. Oh yeah, yeah. Question number three is what's your go-to business resource if you have to kind of think about a book or a podcast or a newsletter?
• 1:35
  Go-to business resource. Google, can Google be my answer? Of course. Google is a group, pretty much we go to for everything. In fact, even most of our operations are holding Google suites in one form or another. I guess that's where we start. I do have to give a shout out there to Airtable. It's a workflow management system
• 2:04
  We are, we do everything in Airtable when it comes to all of our content strategy, our management systems, our inventory tracking, like everything. Airtable has really become sort of a centralized hub for us. And it's just, they also have a lot of good resources and blog content and stuff out there for founders. But like I said, organization is.
• 2:27
  it makes everything so much easier and makes everything so much smoother. And so it has helped us be a lot more organized. Love that. I need to check out Airtable. I feel like I'm hearing about it all the time these days, but I don't actually use it. I need to check it out. Totally. Question number three is how do you win the day? What are your AM or PM rituals and habits that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated?
• 2:55
  So I have been meditating last morning. So pretty much I wake up and the first thing I do is put on a cozy sweatshirt and I open my window so I can get some fresh air. And I just put my Calm app in and even if you don't pay for the Calm subscription, like you do the free version, they do these times, sort of no word times meditation.
• 3:21
  that you can layer in different nature sounds and things. So I do like birds in a babbling brook, and I kind of vent out. So I started today with a 15 or 20 minute meditation. And then when I'm home, I try to be home. So I don't love to pick up rework projects again when I get home or things like that. Like I just usually will put my computer away and just kind of leave it away.
• 3:49
  unless like I absolutely need to. I am, I love cooking. Cooking is sort of my, I also, it's very zen to me. Like I could just grade garlic and chopped onions and grade ginger forever and just be completely happy and blissed out. So cooking is a really big part of my self-care routine. I also think, you know, just feeding, like nourishing yourself is,
• 4:16
  is an important piece of, of my sort of mental health and my balance. Um, and then finally swimming has been a really important piece as well. I typically go swimming. Usually I've been trying to go at least two to three times a week and I don't come in here at the pool and ask me like, you know, how many yards I do and like how many laps I do. And I, I don't count. And that is apparently very unusual for summers, but I just get in the pool and I just kind of go for it. And it's like one of the few times,
• 4:45
  unless I'm meditating, but my mind is just completely empty. And I don't, I just am in that moment. I'm thinking about my breath. I just hear the water and that's it. Yeah. I get into that meditative state flow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, hobbies for me has been a tricky one. I mean, my, my childhood really,
• 5:10
  sort of framed this position or this thought in my mind that if I wasn't working, then I didn't have any value. And so I've always been like working, working, working, working since I was a kid. And it has taken me a long time to kind of recognize that that was sort of my, this identity that doesn't need to really exist. And that I can actually, um,
• 5:38
  it was really, it was contributing a lot to burnout. And so being able to find ways of playing has been making me a better business operator. You know, I am a better version of myself because I am finding ways of taking care of myself.
• 5:55
  Yeah. Finding that joy in other activities, not related to work. Totally. Yeah. Question number five is what's been your worst money mistake and how much did it cost you? I mean, you know, I think vulnerability and honesty is the most important thing with other founders. And this year we've been going through a fundraising round.
• 6:24
  And we eventually had to just close that fundraising round without successfully, you know, getting the money that we were fundraising for. The biggest mistake that we made there is by sort of really having a lot of conversations with people that were never going to invest. And we were really, um, I was really.
• 6:50
  I would say, you know, chasing that carrot. And I wasn't, I was ignoring a lot of the red flags along the way because I was, I had it so in my mind that if I, once the money is in, then we'll be fine. Once the money is in, then it'll be, then we can move on. Once the money is in, we'll survive. And what we had just, you know, that wasn't ever gonna be the case for us here. And so we wasted a lot of time.
• 7:18
  chasing that carrot and, you know, it impacted the health of our business. It impacted my mental health. And what we learned is that we never got the carrot and we're fucking fine. The narrative that I had told myself was not true. And I think I really needed to come to terms with this, that it actually wasn't ever about that.
• 7:48
  Hating that money, I was ignoring all the lessons that I had always taught myself, and I just was ignoring a lot of the warning signs. What were the warning signs, or what were those red flags? To add another question into my six-foot questions. Yeah, I mean, I think the way the people, race and gender, were really tokenized. And, you know, I think as a black-black woman, and
• 8:16
  sometimes, you know, I get really sensitive to them and sometimes I'm just like, oh, it's just that white man being that white man, you know, I kind of am just like I can kind of characterize it and say, like, this is just what it is and I wasn't really listening to my own intuition when I was hearing those things, you know, I was like, in that kind of sense, but they have all of these other shiny good deeds that they're doing, you know, they just are
• 8:45
  uninformed and they're doing their best, but, you know, we're saying some things that just felt really tokenizing. So that was one, I think they were very unorganized. You know, there were some comments that were made that really, you could tell that they really thought of their own, their selves as certain kinds of like saviors.
• 9:09
  I think when you're going into a partnership, you're not looking for that. You want it to be a true partnership. And ultimately, those deals didn't get pushed through because we started to really push back in terms of some of our own due diligence that we needed. We wanted to, you know, we were bringing them on as equity founders and so, or as equity partners. And so we wanted to, you know, really go through a good due diligence process to make sure that they were a good fit for us.
• 9:39
  ultimately they weren't and it didn't work out. And I think at the end of the day, though, what it showed us was that the people that had rallied around us after that saw that was more than that specific partnership could have yielded. And it sort of separated, you know, separated the cream for us. And we were able to really kind of
• 10:07
  kind of lean into our community, and they were really there for us. And our allies were there for us when we really felt the blowback of that deal falling through.
• 10:18
  Hmm. Yeah. You're true supporters and you're true, true fans. I guess you could say, gosh, thanks for sharing. It's important to talk about this kind of stuff. Totally. I mean, it was a tough time for sure. I mean, I think for, for me personally, like I said, so much of my identity over the last four years had been building. I had a plan in my mind and this is how the plan was going to go. And they were going to plan for four years. And, um,
• 10:45
  When it didn't go to plan like that, you know, we, it sort of was like, oh, what it, it was my, I know I took it very personally. Like, and I think I, it took me about a month to kind of realize that it wasn't me and that it actually, this was how, this was always how it was supposed to go. Mm-hmm.
• 11:08
  Yeah, absolutely. Question number six, last question. What is just a crazy story, good or bad, that you can share from your journey in building Barbary? Crazy story. Gosh, I don't know. I mean, I think, you know, I think it's not so much a crazy story, but it is something that just feels really good. What does that mean?
• 11:34
  So my co-founder recently had to be back for her birthday. Her first birthday is next week. And so it has just been, I think, one of our biggest joys kind of bringing in the baby into a lot. You know, she's in a lot of our meetings every day. I get to see her a little face and all of our Zoom hangouts and stuff. And it's just been fun. You know, like I said, I love Valerie and I have such a long friendship.
• 12:04
  going back and being able to see Valerie grow from college Valerie to young professional Valerie to co-founder, entrepreneur Valerie to mother Valerie and sort of now being able to have this baby in the mix and sort of push back on that narrative of like, you can't have it all is refreshing. It feels like with the right support systems,
• 12:32
  you know, it might not be fully one thing, but being able to kind of fill your cup with a lot of different ways and being able to kind of watch her grow in that way has been just a joy for me as a friend and as a partner to her. And I myself, I grew up in a small business. My mom owned a day spa, so, you know, I grew up going to my mom's work every day and sort of seeing that experience. And,
• 13:02
  It's fun to kind of watch that cycle repeat itself again, you know, to have a baby, to be able to be a part of that baby's sort of beginning life or whatever that might be. It's just been surprising and fun, and I've kind of been able to be a very happy observer of it all.
• 13:25
  That is amazing. Love that. Love that for you. Love that for Valerie. Meryl, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show today and share your journey in building Barbary. I'm so excited to watch this next stage for you guys. And I'm cheering for you in October when you launch the new product. Thank you. Thank you so much.
• 13:50
  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.
• 14:14
  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.
• 14:37
  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.
• 14:52
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 15:17
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 15:40
  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. Thank you.