Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Your Hype Girl Day 2 & Blueland’s Founder Sarah Paiji Yoo's advice: “Don’t fall in love with your ideas”

Transcript

Your Hype Girl Day 2 & Blueland’s Founder Sarah Paiji Yoo's advice: “Don’t fall in love with your ideas” · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  Oh, hey girl, it's Dune here, your host and hype girl. Oh my gosh, day two of launch week. I am still pinching myself. And you know something that's really funny that I was just thinking about is that I went from building an e-commerce business to shifting to a totally online business. And now I am back officially in the e-com game.
• 0:26
  And I'm a lover of stuff. So like, I'm really happy about it. I love physical products. I love beautiful things. And I feel like I'm just starting to reach this funny inception moment where my totally digital business is beginning to enter the real world, which is...
• 0:44
  So wild to me. So wild. If you don't know what the book is about, Your Hype Girl is a compilation of 51 crazy talented, dedicated, and resilient women who have built these super cool e-commerce businesses that are literally changing the world. One of those crazy talented, dedicated, and resilient founders is Sarah Peiji Yu.
• 1:09
  And I'm just picking up the book so we can get to her section. And I'm flipping to chapter 47. And it's called Cleaning Up the Market. Sarah Pagey Yu is the co-founder and CEO of Blueland, a forward-thinking company that's reimagined cleaning products and is on a mission to eliminate single-use plastics.
• 1:39
  The name might be familiar to you if you're a Shark Tank fan. You may have seen her pitch that scored an investment from Kevin O'Leary. Or if you follow Kim Kardashian's Twitter account, you might have seen her on there too. And I guess if you're a female Startup Club fan...
• 1:55
  for a long time, you've probably heard her episode way back in 2020. Sarah shared her journey and what it was like in the early days trying to create something that literally didn't exist in the world and how she made $200,000 worth of sales in her first month alone.
• 2:16
  Now, before Blueland, she'd spent many years as a serial entrepreneur, as had her co-founder, John Muscari. They were both very interested in having a positive impact on the world beyond simply building a new company for the sake of. As a new mom, Sarah had become a lot more conscious about what was in her son's food and water.
• 2:38
  In her research about bottled water versus tap water, she was shocked, as am I, that both options contained hundreds of pieces of microplastics. Ick. She committed to cutting back on her plastic consumption. However, she didn't find much choice in the stores to aid these intentions, which, of course, is music to the ears of any serial entrepreneur. Ick.
• 3:04
  The pair set out to look at different ways they could disrupt the market and offer a product that bucked the omnipresent trend of single-use plastic. Sarah and John played with so many ideas, trying to find the right product fit for their vision. And she gave me some interesting advice, which is not to fall in love with your idea.
• 3:25
  Sometimes in the early stages, entrepreneurs can become too fixated on a specific idea to be genuinely open to feedback. And a great skill set to have in entrepreneurship is the ability to allow your ideas to evolve, to pivot, and constantly be iterated on.
• 3:45
  Something she said to me was cleaning products was the last category that they arrived at. Initially, they threw ideas around, everything from bulk refills, things like shampoo and body wash and conditioner, and they would go out to friends and survey them on the ideas. They would try to be really honest with themselves, try not to fall in love with the ideas, try to be open to the honest feedback that people were giving them. Oof.
• 4:13
  This is such freaking good advice. Let me just repeat this to you so it can really sink in. Do not fall in love with your ideas. Do not fall in love with your ideas. You might already know what's about to come here, but let me take you on a quick trip down memory lane of how this relates to me and my advice or my takeaway from the takeaway rather.
• 4:38
  So last year, I was all about starting an e-commerce business. I'd been listening and learning from all these crazy smart women, soaking things up, taking note of the blueprint. And I was so excited when we landed on the Non-Alk Wine Project. It seemed to fit everything we wanted in a brand and to create. Lovers of wine, but also wanting seriously good alternatives to wine.
• 5:05
  We spent the year researching, learning, developing, being so excited, so excited. But with that, we also started to see the challenges that this industry faces and the challenges that people like us not being part of that industry really faces. The complexity of a project like this, you know, it was just crazy, the pitfalls that
• 5:30
  we had as two small fry, basically, up against major players who are much better suited to innovate in this space, slash have way bigger pockets to develop world-class brands at scale. And we just reached a point where we realized, hey, for all these certain reasons, this isn't for us right now.
• 5:53
  And don't get me wrong, I'm all for having like blind faith in your project when the timing is right. But for us, and I'm only speaking about my experience, the big deciding factor was that we could not get the pricing right. This was a money problem. We built this amazing brand and this incredible identity that we were just so proud of. The product was five star. It was great.
• 6:18
  But the numbers just didn't make sense for us. It was too expensive. And it got to the point where I wouldn't even buy my own product. So whatever we had fallen in love with, it just wasn't right for us. And so we had to quickly and very quickly fall back out of love with this idea, out of love with this super unique and incredible brand that we had created, basically cut our losses and move on.
• 6:46
  which is tough. I'm saying it now in like this, you know, 30 seconds spiel, but like, this was a tough decision and a tough moment for us. We lost around $20,000, but we also gained an invaluable amount of experience along the way. So it wasn't a total waste. But I think the best way to end this thought is,
• 7:08
  on do not fall in love with your ideas is don't keep in a state of inertia just because you're already so far down the rabbit hole. Be honest with yourself about what you're building and continually audit yourself and the business to make sure you are on track and on the track that you want to be on and on a track that makes sense financially and like most importantly, financially.
• 7:34
  I feel like we can get lost in these crazy stories where you hear someone has just gone all in and sold their house to fund the business and get swept up in that romance of business.
• 7:48
  But what's right for one founder doesn't mean it's right for all founders. And a story can come across as a really casual thing when in reality, it's probably a lot more intense than that. There's a lot more kind of calculated risk going on in the background. And the money piece of a business is seriously challenging and it needs to make sense. It really needs to make sense. So you're going to live your life stressed and sad and not loving the journey and you've got to love the journey.
• 8:15
  There is no shame in changing your goals, in iterating your path or deciding to go a different way or just scrapping something altogether. If it's not right for you, who cares? Life is short. You may as well optimize for daily joy and fulfillment.
• 8:32
  Well, that's my mini recap for today. If you enjoyed this mini episode, you are going to love your hype girl. This week only, we have a celebration launch promotion running until Friday. So jump onto femalesightupclub.com or search for yourhypegirl directly on Amazon to make sure you're part of our first readers. As of Friday evening, I'm going to be putting the price back up to the usual price. So take advantage of it now if you so desire.
• 9:01
  And if you are feeling generous, you're feeling the love, you want to be part of the hype, you want to be my hype girl, you can go online, order the Kindle version, order the paperback version, order whichever you prefer to read and leave the best review you've ever left in your life after you make that purchase. Okay, that's all for today. I hope you have the most magical Tuesday and speak soon. Bye.
• 9:48
  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.
• 10:13
  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.
• 10:35
  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.