Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / 6 Quick Questions with Katie Wilson, founder of BelliWelli (part 2)

Transcript

6 Quick Questions with Katie Wilson, founder of BelliWelli (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. So question number one is, what's your why? Why are you doing what you're doing every day? I'm matching people with gut issues to products that help them, right? So it's still matchmaking at its core. It just, my why is solving my own pain problem or my own pain point.
• 0:29
  and hopefully doing it for lots of others too. Super cool. Question number two, what's been your favorite marketing moment so far? And if it's the billboard, let's go for second favorite. It's definitely the billboard. Second favorite marketing moment. This sounds cheesy, but I think the launch of the actual brand, I was so proud of where the brand netted out.
• 0:54
  And I did not design the brand, right? I love to give credit to the people who did, which is the designers, Sean and Cynthia. I was so proud of that brand when we launched it. I thought it was unlike anything I'd ever seen. And everyone told us not to launch this brand. They said they look like condom wrappers. And everyone loved the brand when we launched it. So for me, it was like, I knew it. It's amazing. I love it. I'm proud of that. 100%. Gosh, thank God you stuck with your gut. Lol. Lol.
• 1:22
  Question number three, what's your go-to business resource if you kind of lean into podcasts, books, or newsletters? It's 100% my founder group chat. So I have four founders in a text group chat. And I think we probably exchange upwards of 100 messages a day. And we're honest with each other, right? So it's a circle of trust where we can say, I'm having a bad sales day.
• 1:44
  What are you seeing on your end? There's no BS. There's no inflating the truth, right? Which happens in all industry, especially like on LinkedIn, right? It's a circle of trust and we all support each other. And founders, right? Advisors are great. Books are great. All of those are great resources. But when you're really building the business, other founders, I think, are your most valuable resource because they're literally going through it with you, making the same mistakes in real time or slightly ahead of you, slightly behind you.
• 2:14
  That's been life-changing for me in this context. Amen. Network is so important. The relationships you keep is so important. Question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM and PM rituals and habits that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated?
• 2:33
  I like to just work really hard. So that's a bad answer, but I'm up at six. I have to interface with customers many, many, many, many times in the day. For me, that's where I feel like I had a successful day. If I'm not talking to customers, I start to notice that I feel panicked and out of the loop and like I don't have a good pulse on the business. So I start the day interacting with customers and I end the day interacting with customers, having actual conversations with them.
• 2:59
  And I feel like I do a worse job of running the business if I skip those steps. That's an interesting answer. I love that. It's the first time I've heard that on the show. I'm sure I'm supposed to say meditate, right? Or take me time. But I don't, you know, balancing the mom thing with the business thing is challenging, right? I'm super honest about the fact that I think that's really hard to do. So I should mention like, you know,
• 3:27
  Leaving your computer for a minute and like running downstairs and seeing a child just smile is like really good, quick perspective and gives you some like, gosh, you know, that email or that problem I was worried about upstairs five minutes ago is not a big deal. Just, you know, my cute, you know, little toddler smile and tell me a funny joke. It's like an amazing reset. Absolutely. Question number five is what's been your biggest money mistake in the business and how much did it cost?
• 3:58
  Yeah, early on formulation. So it's like a good short story, but again, an example of where we leaned into community. So when we first launched the product, we launched it with Stevia, thinking that Stevia is low FODMAP, right? Stevia, our brand goals are low FODMAP, gluten-free, vegan, no sugar, alcohols, fiber, probiotics. So it fits those parameters. We launched the product with Stevia and our community hated it. I mean, they told us loud and clear, we hate Stevia. We don't want to buy anything with Stevia in it.
• 4:28
  So made a really difficult decision from the hospital to scrap it and reformulate without Stevia very early in the business. And so it took me like five days of getting that feedback and those comments in to make the decision. It just, like I said, I thought I don't mind Stevia. So it was truly a matter of leaning into what the community told me they cared about. So we tossed product and reformulated without Stevia. And the rest is history. People loved it.
• 4:58
  Oh my gosh. What was the turnaround time there? Like to reformulate? We reformulated at production, which a hundred out of a hundred don't recommend. And her formulator was really amazing, but it was, it was like chaotic phone calls me from a hospital bed calling her, like, how does it taste for sending products to me in an Uber to the hospital?
• 5:19
  It was in the height of COVID. So my husband having to sneak them into the hospital room so I could taste them. It was horrible. But we turned it around within like two days. I mean, it sounds really easy just to take Stevia out and replace it with something else. Most people who run a CBG business know that's not that easy when you're making something at scale like that in a co-packer. So horrible, hard, but worth it. And we've lost money doing it for sure.
• 5:47
  Are you able to share like a bigger amount of how much product you would have had to have gotten rid of? Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't like we were making smaller runs at that point. Now we make runs of 100,000 units. But this was literally the month it launched. We were making runs of like 20,000 to 30,000 units of product. Still a lot of product, but not...
• 6:09
  you know, not what it would be today, which would be catastrophic. Yeah. I mean, that's still a lot. At the time it felt huge. Yeah. It's still, it's still a lot. Feels huge to me. Incredibly risky decision. Right. Yeah. It was our launch month, right? We were launching that month. So we, it felt like the worst decision to be making, but looking back, I mean, it was clearly so right. Right. It was like literally as soon as Stevia was out of the bars, people went crazy for them. Wow. That's so interesting. Gosh.
• 6:39
  And last question, question number six is what is just a crazy story you can share, good, bad, or otherwise from your journey in business so far? I mean, we've talked about it a couple of times, but just what comes to answer or comes to mind. One thing comes to mind, and I sadly can't share much about it, but we filmed a TV show the week we got out of the hospital. And that was a crazy journey in itself. But
• 7:04
  can't talk about that TV show because it hasn't aired yet, but anyway, so that, that comes to mind, but I mean, just launching a business from the hospital with all the NICU doctors and nurses and, um, was just an insane situation. Um, very cool looking back. Right. I mean, like the first onesie, our baby ever wore was a belly welly onesie. I mean, this is like poor baby is like a belly welly baby, but, um, so that was the, that will go down as wild, uh, wild in the best and worst ways. Um,
• 7:34
  I mean, my memory of like about to be put under to get this emergency surgery was like telling them that we had to launch the business the next day. It was just totally chaotic. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then I literally woke up and I was like, I need to see my baby. Is she okay? She's okay. Okay, I need my laptop. They probably still think I'm totally like crazy, but it was what it was.
• 8:00
  Yeah, I'm sure they're all like your biggest cheerleaders. They're there since inception. Yeah, they're still some of our, literally our best customers, which is cool.
• 8:09
  Oh my gosh, Katie, you are crazy and so awesome. And I have loved this chat and everything you're doing. This is so cool. This was awesome. Thank you very much for coming on the show. I really appreciate you having me. It's been so much fun chatting with you and reliving all this for a minute. You don't do enough of this when you're running it, right? It's just taking that moment to reflect on, even though it's been a very short journey, it's the fun is in kind of
• 8:36
  I don't know, examining the journey once in a while and saying, gosh, oh, we've got this far. OK, one step at a time, one foot in front of the other. Let's do it again. So thank you. Oh, my gosh. You're so welcome.
• 8:51
  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.
• 9:15
  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.
• 9:38
  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.
• 9:55
  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.
• 10:19
  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.
• 10:42
  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.