Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / GEMS: Finding Your First 1000 True Fans with Saalt founder Cherie Hoeger

Transcript

GEMS: Finding Your First 1000 True Fans with Saalt founder Cherie Hoeger · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:09
  A moment ago when you were saying you're a B Corp business, did you have to think about the way that you were going to manufacture and produce these kinds of things with that in mind versus just going out and just potentially sourcing from who knows where or doing it a different way? Did it change the way you operated from the very beginning? Yeah, absolutely. Because as a B Corp, you want to make sure that you're providing products that are both good for business.
• 0:36
  Well, everyone's bodies for everyone and the environment and all of your stakeholders. So you actually have language written into your bylaws, into your operating agreement, saying that you measure the impact of your decisions on all stakeholders, not shareholders. So it's not about just profit. It's not about that bottom line. It's about people, planet and profit. All is a triple bottom line approach.
• 0:58
  And so we do, we wanted to measure how these products would affect the environment, how they would affect our customers and make sure that they were done in a clean way that was sustainably sourced and also used through ethical methods. And that's what B Corp is all about. Amazing. When you were going to do the mold, the silicon mold, did you prove out the concept and validate the idea before going ahead and pulling that trigger? Or is that something that came next?
• 1:25
  That came next. And that was the tough part. Now that I remember, we did do a little 3D print, but it's not something that, you know, you would actually test and put inside of you. Oh my God, I hope not. But I remember we started a focus group early on on Facebook with the goal to get a thousand members to join. And the idea was if we could get at least a thousand people who resonated with our new brand and mission and also our product,
• 1:51
  then we would have something that we could sell. So that's often called the proof of concept stage in business. So we started hosting these lunches in Boise and also in other states to recruit people to join our group. And we'd bribe them with free food and ask them to bring their laptops and invite their friends to join. And then once we reached those thousand members, we would ask them all sorts of questions. So we would say, how do you like our branding and packaging? And what do you think about this marketing idea? And which cup color do you like best?
• 2:19
  And we would A-B these questions to get real feedback from real consumers. And then we also wanted to see how they liked our new cup design. And we had them test out our prototypes once we had prototypes. And I remember how nerve wracking it was.
• 2:33
  Because you would have someone who would say, hey, I'm having trouble with the cup. And you get so worried, you knew there was that learning curve, but you didn't know if it was the learning curve or if it was the cup design. But then that same person would come back and they would rave about how comfortable it was and how easy to use it was. And it was this roller coaster of emotion to hear this real and raw feedback from our customers. But it was so important because it prepared us for the problems that we needed to address
• 2:58
  as a customer service team, and also really helped us gain confidence in our product that it really worked for people. So it was pretty amazing. And then once we did launch, and this gets to our launch phase, but they had tested those prototypes. We had a thousand people with a thousand sources of feedback for that product. And then when we launched, we gave them and gifted our packaging. And on social media,
• 3:22
  they were able to show us their unboxing experience and share it with the world. And it really helped us launch so that when we put our website out there, it wasn't just crickets. We had a team of a thousand people who were helping launch at the same time. Oh, my gosh. Wow. That's crazy. A thousand's a lot.
• 3:40
  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.
• 4:05
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• 4:27
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