Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Must-Know Lessons in Raising Money, Hiring & Firing and Marketing, with Three Ships Co-Founder Connie Lo

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Must-Know Lessons in Raising Money, Hiring & Firing and Marketing, with Three Ships Co-Founder Connie Lo · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Connie Lowe for Female Startup Club. Hello and welcome back to the show. It's Dune here, your host and hype girl. In today's episode, we're learning from Connie Lowe, the co-founder of Three Ships Beauty. Thank you.
• 0:25
  Now, we had Connie on the show back in August of 2021, and today she is back with an update and we're trying out a new format where we dig into some of Connie's biggest lessons when it comes to funding, hiring and firing, and marketing.
• 0:43
  This episode is absolute fire and I think we actually need to do another one to dig into Connie's lessons on retail and product development. So if you love it as much as I do and you agree you want Connie to come back on the show, let us know by sharing her episode on Instagram stories or by dropping into our Facebook group, which you can find linked in the show notes below.
• 1:06
  And while we've got you here, a quick reminder to check out our new program, e-commerce fundamentals. If you're an early stage founder or you're getting ready to launch your brand and you're starting this year really committed to taking action towards your sales and marketing goals, I designed this specifically for you. It's the program that I wish I had when I was building my jewelry brand and feeling totally overwhelmed and not really sure where to focus in my day to day.
• 1:36
  It takes you through everything from developing your messaging to your content engine, finding your first 1,000 true fans organically, my proprietary framework that I use to launch and create Buzz Online, and finally, getting started with your own Facebook and TikTok ads. And of course, I have a special launch offer that's live right now, and you can check it out by going to femalestartupclub.com forward slash course.
• 2:04
  Let's get into today's episode. This is Connie for Female Startup Club. Connie, welcome back to the Female Startup Club podcast. How are you? Thanks so much for having me, Dune. It's so weird to be back. So exciting. I know. It is so exciting. How is your week going? How's Canada treating you this week?
• 2:24
  Oh, it's been good. So, I mean, January has been off to a crazy start. We just hired someone new and currently are in the middle of interviewing for an account manager this week. So today has just been back to back calls. But I'm super excited to have someone join me on the sales team, which I'm sure we'll get into in today's episode. Just so.
• 2:44
  juggling a million things at once as a founder. But honestly, I can't complain. Like every time I'm going through overwhelm or stress, I always remind myself like, okay, I'm grateful to have these problems. Like I'm grateful to have 500 emails right now. I'm grateful to have a team to think about people problems for. So overall, grateful to be here, grateful to be alive.
• 3:05
  I love that. That's such a great way to think about it when you're going through like a shitty, a shitty moment or something stressful is happening or you're just like, I am losing my mind here. It's still a moment to be grateful for the fact that you're even able to have those moments.
• 3:21
  Yeah. Honestly, I think practicing gratitude, I know it's said all the time, but having been someone who practices gratitude for years and years, it honestly changes the way you live your life. Even if I'm stuck in traffic, or someone cuts me off in traffic, that's a better example, I guess. And I'll be like, oh, and then I'll think like, okay, what are three things I'm
• 3:42
  I'm grateful I have a car that I can drive with to go places instead of needing to walk. I'm grateful that I have a meeting to meet this buyer that I need to drive to. I'm grateful I didn't get in an accident. It's so much easier after that to be like, you know what? It's not that bad. I mean, granted, there are times where things are just really shitty and you cannot toxic positivity your way out of it. But for the most part, most things you can see through a more positive lens. Yeah, I love that. And I think as well, like...
• 4:10
  Sometimes I feel you can think, or previously in the past, I've thought, oh, you know, gratitude, it can be a little bit fluffy and, you know, whatever, like I'm not feeling grateful, blah, blah, blah, blah. But actually I've been listening to a few kind of podcasts around the brain and how it works from the perspective of, you know, neurosurgeons and neuroscientists and things like that. And when you are practicing gratitude, even, you know,
• 4:34
  if you did think it was fluffy, it is rewiring the kind of like neuropathways in your brain. And it is actually making a positive impact on your brain and how everything is working. And I just think that is so powerful to know that so that you can kind of, if your brain, I think someone was saying like, if it's kind of a toxic brain where you're constantly repeating negative thoughts and negative things, you can
• 4:56
  re-kind of shape and improve your brain health through gratitude and practicing positive thinking and positive thoughts and steering negative thoughts to positive ones. And I thought that was so interesting.
• 5:08
  I totally agree with that. And it doesn't even take that long. Like, for example, for our Christmas, part of our Christmas gift for our team, we included a five minute journal for everyone. Oh, my God. And last. Love, Alex. Right? Yes. Yes. Intelligent change. I mean, I have their productivity planner here. Oh, my God. I have like a five minute journal. Like, I'm obsessed with their stuff.
• 5:28
  Oh, but anyways, we gifted the five minute journal last month to our team and one of our team members in last week's roses and thorns where we talk as a team about like wins and like lowlights. She was like, yeah, my, my rose is that the five minute journal has actually changed the way I'm more positive throughout the day. She was like, it only took me three weeks. And I was like, whoa. Oh my God. I can't wait to text them after this and be like, okay.
• 5:53
  He has such a nice moment on the show. Oh my God, tell them, sponsor three ships, please. I've got the number of five-minute journals that I've gifted. I probably funded like a good portion of their business myself. I mean, I'm hearing partnership opportunity here. I am hearing collab. Oh my God, manifest it. Manifest it. I love that for you.
• 6:18
  Where do we want to start? Okay. I think like the way that we do these episodes is, or the way that we should do this episode is kind of like take a little bit of a rewind. The last time we spoke was circa August, 2021. So two and a half years ago, which is just so mind blowing to me.
• 6:36
  So I kind of want to like recap where we left off and then kind of talk about your story since then. You know, what's happened? Where has the brand grown to? What have been those pivotal moments that has led you to here? And like, where are we now?
• 6:51
  Yeah, I can't believe it's been that long either. It feels like just yesterday, but then also so much longer ago. So I think around August 2021, that was around a year after we had rebranded the company to three ships. And like four years after original side hustle called New Body that was started in my kitchen with the four grand.
• 7:09
  And in 2020 is when we went on Dragon's Den for the first time, which is like Hannah's Shark Tank. And we had just raised our pre-seed round, which was like, I think we raised 1.4 million. And that was our first big round of capital. So we're like, holy crap, we have so much money. We're going to do all the things. And also some of our investors at our cap table were like, okay, this is your moment. You got to like aggressive growth, growth at all costs.
• 7:31
  Yada, yada, I know that sentiment has changed a lot in the past two years. So we made all the mistakes, which was really great. We hired someone way too senior for us at the time, which ended up being a really terrible firing that we had to do. So one big mistake that we could definitely dive into. Oh my gosh, yes, let's definitely get into that.
• 7:50
  So we tried to deploy the capital like way too fast. We also at that time launched into some of our first retailers. So I think around August 2021, we might have only been carried in like Whole Foods in California and maybe some independent retailers. Now we're carried in over 900 retail doors, including all the Whole Foods in North America. We're also in like Credo Beauty, the detox market, like lots of natural prestige, mass stage retailers, like Holt Renfrew, Indigo, yeah, a bunch more.
• 8:19
  So our retail distribution has really evolved and grown since then. And our strategy has really been that accessible entry level brand within more mass age and prestige. So we can get more into distribution strategy and how we've made mistakes there too, because we made a really big one around that. We've also expanded our team. So I think.
• 8:36
  In 2021, we maybe had like four people on our team, I want to say. Now we're a team of 13, almost 14 full time with some freelancers, like around 20 freelancers that we work with. So that has a lot of learnings too, to learn how to scale a company.
• 8:53
  Fully remote. And also like most of our team is women. So I'm really proud of that. We just have we have 12 of us are women and then we have one male staff on the team. So it's been really great to just like empower other women in the company. And I'm just really happy with how everything's grown. Learned a lot about growing remote first, how to keep the team engaged.
• 9:14
  Yeah, there's lots I can touch on. Launched a lot of new products. Oh my gosh. I feel like, where should we start? I want to start because you've just dropped so many little seeds that I'm like, I want to get into that. And one of the kind of things I wanted to try in this episode was to kind of try out a new format. I kind of touched on it before we got started, but this idea of going through like your biggest lesson in hiring and your biggest lesson in retail. And I feel like you'll have so many stories that kind of weave into that. So maybe we can just kind of start by going through these biggest lesson topics.
• 9:44
  and dig into like those, I'd love to start with the funding piece, because I guess you just mentioned, you know, you raised and you were kind of going for aggressive growth and you were obviously experiencing what to do when it comes to that sort of playbook, I guess. So what's your biggest lesson when you think about the fundraising process and raising capital and bringing on investors?
• 10:08
  Oh, so many lessons around fundraising. Okay. So before we raised our pre-seed round in like 2020, we also raised like a friends and family equivalent round. It wasn't actually friends and family in it. It was more angel investors that were like third party, but it was like a small round of this 135K. So in that round, we made all the mistakes. We didn't have a firm like close date. We didn't even have like a minimum check size. We didn't know what that was.
• 10:32
  We also asked for really crazy amounts and things from our investors. We didn't know who to go to. We weren't super organized. We thought we had to go to VCs right away instead of Angels, which wasted a lot of time. So for any of you startups listening to your podcast or people very early in their journey,
• 10:49
  Don't be sucked into the enchantment and all the glitter of some of these headlines that you see. Like, oh, this company raised $15 million from this crazy VC. If you're early in your career as a startup founder, I actually think it's better to go for angel investors. Ideally, someone who is a former founder, because then they can actually help you through a lot of the early journeys that you're going through. Like, for example, I know you interviewed Tara Bosch from SmartSweets. She's one of our investors.
• 11:17
  Having people like that who have gone through it are much more value-add for you as a small company as opposed to some of these venture capital firms. And also, I think from the perspective of connecting dots, someone who can be like, yes, I can give you advice and the pitfalls to avoid and things like that. But I can also introduce you to this distributor or this person who did my legal side of things, whatever it might be. You can get really great referrals and recommendations from someone who's actively invested in your company.
• 11:48
  A hundred percent. And, you know, on that topic, we actually send out a quarterly investor update to all of our investors. And the first section of the email is where we can use help. And the people that usually reply to our emails are the founders that have done it before versus someone like now our bigger angel investors, like, you know, CEOs of companies and stuff. They don't really have that much tangible skill to contribute. So they read through like the investor update. They're like, OK, this company is doing well, but the ones actually take the time to offer help.
• 12:18
  A, have been through it, and B, like their founder empathetic because they know what it's like. So they're more willing to be like, you know what? Like, I remember what it was like when I was 27 and starting a company. Like, I want to help them. So I think we've learned a lot, like setting a minimum check size, setting a firm end date, also not raising too much for the size of company you are for two reasons. One is you don't want to overly dilute yourself. And second, if you think about it, if you're raising a larger amount, you're
• 12:44
  Then when you're trying to drum up FOMO from these investors that you're getting on pitch calls with, they'll usually ask you like, what percent subscribed are you? AKA like, of this total amount, how much have you raised so far? And if you're a tiny company, you're trying to raise like $10 million and you've only actually raised like $50,000 from someone, the percent subscribed is going to look so tiny compared to someone who is more realistic and says, okay, I think right now I'd probably only need $500,000 for the next maybe 18 months of runway, given that my expenses are pretty
• 13:13
  tiny as an early company. So I'm only going to raise $500,000, and it makes a lot of conversations a lot easier to drum up FOMO because you have to close that round faster. So those are like little tips and tricks that people don't really talk about when they're starting to raise. So I would probably say those would be the biggest ones when it comes to fundraising.
• 13:31
  I also think it's really important to always ask anyone you chat with, whether it's a yes or a no from them to invest for three more introductions at least. So you don't need to say like, give me three intros. We could be like, hey, is there anyone else you think we can talk to? Usually people give three to five. And we had this database in our Google Sheets that would just be like, contact who referred us, who between my co-founder and I was managing that relationship, percent probability of closing.
• 13:56
  what the likely check size would be. And then we would multiply those two columns to say like, okay, this is how much we think we're going to raise. So those are some of many lessons. I'm sure you have so many more in the bank. If you were thinking about, you know, if you were going to start a new business tomorrow and you were going to raise from kind of the early days,
• 14:16
  Is there sort of a formula or something that you could give as advice for another sort of early stage founder listening who might want to start exploring that kind of like angel round? You know, you just said 500,000, but like how would you get to 500,000 as a number? Would it be like this is how much product I kind of estimate that I need to buy like inventory wise or what would you be kind of like basing those early numbers off?
• 14:41
  Yeah, that's a very good question. It's probably a hard question. But if there's some kind of like, what would you do if you were, yeah, early stage that you could share as advice for someone else listening in?
• 14:52
  Yeah, so the first thing I would do is think about what you can fund realistically yourself versus what you actually need to fundraise externally. And what you can fund yourself isn't just the cash that you have. It can also be loans. So debt funding is really big, and a lot of people don't talk about that because it's not as sexy as getting an actual investor, even though it's an amazing option. And then also grants.
• 15:15
  Grants is another thing. We really lean into grants, especially when we're starting off. There's a lot of money out there that the government offers that you just need to take the time to research to be able to find. So those are two things. Also, we did a lot of pitch competitions, doing like Dragon's Center, for example. There's many ways that you can find capital without storing the fundraising process. That's the first thing I'll say.
• 15:36
  Then look at that capital you already have and see what you can do with that. So what I mean by that is, let's just say you are a newer brand and you want to launch four new products next year because the industry standard within your industry is maybe one a quarter. And you budget out, you're like, okay, for every new product I launch, I need probably...
• 15:56
  $15,000 in the initial R&D, the minimum order quantity from my manufacturer. I need to factor in like shipping, like whatever your expenses are. Then you say, okay, then to market that. So I kind of think through like the buckets of a P&L, like marketing. So there's like marketing to D2C, there's marketing to your retailers. If you have any headcount at that stage, like many startups don't, but if you do have like fixed costs that you need to think about. And then once you think through all those expenses, then what I would do is I would
• 16:25
  There's so much money I have. This is how much cash flow I think I'm going to generate from just like business as usual, because that's incremental. And then you compare your future state expenses to what you already have. And then on top of that, what I would do is I would ask myself, okay, so let's just say I need to raise $200 to cover these additional products on the marketing that I think I'll need for the next 12 to 18 months is usually what people try to fundraise.
• 16:48
  Then I would also think in an ideal world, if I had more money, what are some like bigger risks that I would take that I wouldn't have taken if I didn't have the money? So for example, maybe you have never, ever tested an influencer partnership and you're like, okay, from researching online, it's like $5,000 or maybe $10,000 for an influencer paid post. And I've never tried it before. So I don't know what the ROI would be. Like I would add that to the tally of what I want to fundraise. Maybe I want to test the part.
• 17:16
  podcast ad. Maybe I want to test like influencer seating. I'm just making these up. Then I would have some of those or maybe a higher that you're like, okay, if I had 40 grand to bring on this marketing coordinator, I actually think it would drive this much more time for me. And with that time, I could secure this many more accounts. So like that, those are some of the questions you should be asking yourself. And then that's, that's how I would get to the total, but I would fundraise.
• 17:40
  Yeah, I love that. That's so interesting. And I think I really love your point around, you know, don't just lean straight into raising capital from investors. And it's something I say all the time. I'm like, you need to first identify, do you even need to raise? What are the other options you have? I mean, I did a presentation recently and it was like seven other options that you could even just start exploring before raising. Do you angel invest into other brands? Have you started investing yourself?
• 18:06
  I'm not at that stage yet, but that is one of my goals for this year, actually. So I'm a really, really big proponent of like the quote, a rising tide raises all ships. So helping others wherever possible. So right now I invest my time in mentorship, but definitely on the list. Well, I mean, I see a lot of amazing decks from amazing female founders, so I'm happy to share them your way.
• 18:31
  make it this year you get started. Yes, please do. I would love that. And honestly, like even if I can help in other ways too, like for example, I think if people even search Three Ships fundraising deck, I shared it with one of like the financial publications out there. Cause I'm like, Hey, if this helps anyone, like please feel free to take it. Yeah. Oh my gosh. We should link that in the show notes of this episode. I think that would be so useful for people to see and
• 19:01
  Okay, I want to go into something that you were talking about when you were going through the aggressive growth phase of, you know, with, I still want to stay on this track of kind of like the investor piece. And, you know, you raised this 1.4 round, and you were saying it was aggressive growth and growth at all costs. What did you kind of learn from taking that pathway of growth at all costs? Does that mean you kind of like reduced your profit margins? Does that mean you did grow too fast? What happened there? Yeah.
• 19:28
  Oh, yeah. We made all the mistakes. So we stopped focusing on profitability, which was a big learning. I think that at the time, I wouldn't necessarily call it a mistake in the eyes of investors because they were like, hey, it doesn't matter what the bottom line is. We just care about top line, which the narrative has completely changed. What year are we talking for this?
• 19:47
  That was 2021, start of 2021, because we closed around in four weeks, I want to say, at the end of 2020. And then we started deploying in 2021. We made our first big hire, I think, in the start of 2021, I want to say spring. And that was a $200,000 mistake, all in all, which was a big learning as well.
• 20:08
  So I think we just spent too fast thinking that we had to deploy the capital faster because everyone was like, well, you need to show the ROI off of this 1.4 million that you raised and you can't just use it to invest in like inventory has to actually be used for growth marketing. So we spent a lot in like influencer marketing, tested podcast ads and not like on a small scale, like what I was saying earlier, it was like, well, if we're going to test influencer, like let's test.
• 20:34
  three macro influencers that were each charging like 15k and see like what happens there and one's in the food industry one's in like beauty one's in health and those were our tests but that wasn't like a smart way to spend the money another thing is when we hired the senior hire who was just too senior for us at the time we really trusted their perspective when it came to where we should spend so for example we had a product launch and this person said well i have like the best photography studio that i used to work
• 21:02
  with at my previous company. So it was $40,000 for a photo shoot, which up until that point, we were spending like a thousand or even that because we were doing things ourselves. Or she was like, well, if we're going to launch this product, then we need to do this influencer campaign. And that was another, I think, 40K US. So like 50,000 Canadian. And all in all, again, super expensive. And what I realized is
• 21:24
  It took us away from the fundamentals of the company that we had worked so hard to build and the consumers that we had created this trust with. And there was a moment, I want to say in the end of 2021, where Laura and I looked at each other and we're like, this is not working like the way that we're spending. I think we were like $800,000 in the red. And we're like, this is, this is not sustainable. Um, even though we were growing so aggressively, I think at that point we were growing like 500% year over year or something insane.
• 21:50
  So at the start of 2022, we, I think it was January, 2022. We looked at each other. We're like, okay, from now on, we're focusing on profitability. So I'm really proud to share that as of last year, I think 2023, we're a profitable brand now. We have made huge headway in that journey. And now every investor that we talk to, every founder that we talk to, they're like, how did you become profitable? Because in today's day and age, it's so difficult to be a profitable brand. Yeah.
• 22:19
  But we were just so laser focused on profitability. And every weekly meeting with the team, we're talking about our path to EBITDA positive. And every monthly update to the team, we talked about that. And every quarterly investor update, we're talking about that. And every quarterly team off-site, we're talking about that. So everyone on the team knew like, hey,
• 22:36
  you have to think from profitability first mindset. So if someone was looking for a photography studio, they would research five, like really negotiate them down, but work with the one that was the best quality. If I was thinking about bringing samples for a retailer, I would think like, hey, am I gonna be by the warehouse anytime soon? If I am, then I'll just pick them up instead of shipping and spending the $15. Like little things like that really add up. So to answer your question, lots of learnings, but really projectile, we are profitable now. And if I were to do it again,
• 23:05
  I wouldn't have listened to all these external voices and noises from investors and other founders. And when I was reading online of people saying like it's growth at all costs because things always change. And I also feel like it's kind of like, yes, you raise this capital, but in essence, you're still like a small business. So it's like you still need to act as a small business owner and use the power.
• 23:27
  of being scrappy. And because yes, if you're this huge, you know, corporation and you do have just unlimited budget to spend on huge photo shoots and things like that, that's amazing. And that's how that company operates with 200 staff or whatever. But like, even though you've raised so much capital, you should be still operating from a place of like, I'm scrappy. I'm doing this in a way that's kind of keeping us lean, I guess. Exactly. I think you really, really hit the nail on the head with
• 23:56
  We were operating like a large company when we were still a small company. And another thing is one of our core values is hustle, which isn't just like hustle culture. It's more, you know, doing things outside of your job description to help the team, putting your ego aside, things like that. And I think a part of hustle is that scrappiness because it's so part of Three Ships DNA. Having started the company with like $4,000 in my kitchen, like it felt like we just lost that entire part of our identity. And we're so focused on trying to be like every other company to sell online.
• 24:26
  So yeah, I think it was a really good learning. And when we raised again in 2022, which was like a seed round, that capital we deployed way more logically and strategically. And now that we're profitable, our runway is essentially kind of infinite right now because we are burning every month. So I'm really happy with how we've managed that raise amount.
• 24:48
  Wow. Well, congratulations. I love all of that for you. I feel like we could blend this into the biggest lesson when we think about hiring and firing. You had mentioned, you know, you hire this really senior person and you've also grown the team a lot over the last couple of years, but you've also had to go through that kind of other process that is just part of entrepreneurship of letting people go and kind of like reducing the
• 25:11
  headcount when it's required. Yes. What have you kind of learned in those lessons and how did you kind of, I don't know, how did you approach that? Oh, I think hiring, firing, it's,
• 25:24
  is one of the hardest things that anyone can go through. And even when I talk to founders of companies that are like hundreds of millions of dollars in sales or a CEO that's 40 years in their career, they always say like, oh, it's the people that's the hardest. So, you know, for anyone out there listening who's having these problems, just know you're not alone and you're not doing anything wrong per se.
• 25:44
  I think that there's several mistakes that we can get into or challenges of hiring and firing as a startup founder. One is when your early employees don't scale with the company and what the needs are. That's one that we can get into. Another is hiring too senior too quickly. And...
• 26:03
  not listening to your gut around that. Yeah, let's get into both of those. They both sound great. Okay, so the first one with regards to team members not scaling. So I think something people don't talk about as founders is when you're starting out, unless you fundraise a lot or you have a lot of money or you're a celeb that has like a lot of cash in the bank,
• 26:22
  you don't have a lot of money in the start to hire really senior people. So unless you're able to hire someone super senior that really believes in your company and just wants equity, which is so rare, especially as a first-time founder, most of the time you're hiring someone more junior that still believes in the company and is willing to take a small salary. Yeah.
• 26:42
  And then the goal is that this team member is able to grow with you. So when you go from 1 million in sales to 10 million and above, they're leveling up their skills. They're leveling up their networks.
• 26:53
  But sometimes they don't. And that's not your problem. It's also not their problem. Maybe it's just not a fit. But what the mistake I made was, was not being candid enough with previous employees that were early employees and trying to be too coachy, if that makes sense, and trying to coach them through their personality that wasn't a fit for the company. Yeah.
• 27:17
  clarify that. The mistake I made was giving too much leeway with early employees who weren't actually growing with the company and trying to coach them into being able to grow the company when it was clear from the start that they weren't the right fit and they didn't want to grow in that way. And it was my fault in that aspect because I wasn't practicing radical candor.
• 27:38
  And since then, since making these mistakes, I'm like a huge fan of radical candor and just being really transparent with people, but still in a very compassionate way. So it was my fault because I was trying to coach people when it was just clear it wasn't the right fit and then ultimately had to fire them anyway, which was just not good for either of us. So if I were to do it again,
• 27:58
  and I were hiring an early employee, I would make it really clear from the start, like, hey, right now we're at a million in sales. When we're at five, this is where I'm hoping you will be in your career. Does that align with what you're wanting? Do you actually want to grow into this manager? Or do you actually want to stay as an individual contributor? And if so, does that work for us as a company? We didn't have those conversations because it was my first time doing it. So that was like one of the mistakes I've made. I don't know if you want to get into that. I mean, I would love to, please.
• 28:27
  So since then, what I've learned is when an employee is not showing growth in the speed or in the area that is needed for the company, we start having those conversations a lot earlier. And what I mean by that is don't wait. Don't wait until a performance review or until you need to give a performance improvement plan like a PIP.
• 28:48
  for someone to be like, oh my God, I had no idea I was doing badly. Instead, now what I do is I have one-on-ones weekly. I've always had one-on-ones weekly from my team. But if there's something like a feedback point that I need to share, I will save it for a call that I have live with them in a weekly one-on-one and share it right away instead of waiting. And also on the flip side, if there's positive feedback, I'll always share it right away. But don't share it via Slack or via email because it could be misconstrued. You just want to give it live.
• 29:13
  And I also think there's power in like just building that trust that you're able to share things ongoing, whether it is a good thing or a bad thing, so that there's more like transparency in a relationship that it's, again, you're not waiting six months to bring it up. And it's then festered like inside of you where you're then more bothered and things like that. It's just kind of like. Exactly. In the moment or not in the moment, but, you know, in those weekly calls and things like that, just.
• 29:37
  Yeah, more talking, more communicating about where things are going so it doesn't expand into something weird and big. And I think that in the past, I was just so focused on trying to make people feel comfortable and make them like me that it was, what's that term, like ruinous empathy? Oh, I haven't heard that. So I was just trying to be too kind. So there's a book. Here, let me grab it for you. Please do. Love a rec. Okay.
• 30:05
  Radical Candor. I wonder if you recommended this in the last episode. Okay, yeah. So you can see there's a lot of bookmarks here. But this is an amazing book. And what Kim Scott, the author, talks about is
• 30:17
  Usually people either are on like two ends of the spectrum. One is ruinous empathy when you're just trying to be so kind and make everyone love you. And like, you don't give hard feedback because you just want everyone to like be happy. And then there's a flip side where people are just like straight up assholes and are just like constantly giving like really critical feedback that's not constructive. And where she says you should ideally be is like this section called radical candor, which is you are practicing compassion when you are giving feedback.
• 30:44
  You are thinking about the other person's perspective, but you're also giving feedback that is constructive because then they can ultimately grow in their careers. And what I was doing in the past was I was just too worried about making them feel comfortable and safe that I wasn't giving them the feedback that they would need to grow. And then when they weren't the right fit or when things didn't work out, then I had to let them go, which was just not good again for either of us. So very big learning.
• 31:11
  Radical candor, being way more transparent with feedback. And we've made a lot of changes in the company to also allow for this. So we do quarterly anonymous pulse checks with the team where everyone on the team is required to give upwards feedback to Laura and me. And also they give feedback to us and the team about anything. And it's all anonymous, so they can share whatever they want.
• 31:31
  And our EA and people operations person, she actually scores us every quarterly anonymous pulse check to see what the team morale score was. So we always try to stay at least above an eight out of 10. Another thing we do, like my co-founder and I, every month we do something called a founder feedback session where it's a call we never skip. And we give each other two positive feedback points and one feedback.
• 31:53
  like point that we can work on from the past month if there was anything. And I just find, again, like you said, things don't fester, especially if something was misconstrued. So often it was just like a misunderstanding and it's so much better to clear it up at the moment than wait. Oh my gosh. Absolutely. I love all of that. You've got so many good little gems in here that I'm like, Oh yeah, cool. Nice. Very good. Oh, good snippets for Instagram. I'm sure. Yeah.
• 32:19
  I'm kind of conscious of the time and I've got like two main ones that I kind of wanted to cover before we kind of wrap up. And so I wanted to get your biggest lessons when it comes to marketing because, and that's such a broad category, but it's obviously so critical in building a business, especially from like the early stages where you're like stacking these things that kind of need to be working organically before you even get to the point of, you know, paid marketing and paid collaborations and that kind of level.
• 32:46
  So I'd love to know, especially because you've gone through that aggressive growth phase where you were kind of like,
• 32:53
  I guess, splashing cash in different directions and trying different things that have worked. When you think back about, you know, the, I guess you're at like eight years now or 10 years nearly from when you actually started. Yeah. We started in 2017. Yeah. 2017. So seven years. Seven years. So kind of like what you've learned from the perspective of marketing and like building a brand that has such a loyal brand obsessed customer base.
• 33:20
  Well, great question. So again, going back to lessons, I think something that we learned last year is we got to a point in the brand where we had thousands of customers and everyone's like, yeah, you guys are doing such a great job. And Laura and I were cognizant of the fact that we can't scale as founders in the sense that we didn't want to just keep focusing on the founder story to grow our company. Because at a certain point,
• 33:48
  Like you can only say like, oh, we started the brand with $4,000 so many times. And we didn't want to just lean too much into that origin story. And we want to seem like a quote unquote legit brand. So we completely stopped talking about our founding story. We completely stopped talking about scrappiness of like, this is the behind the scenes of running a company. And we focus solely on product benefits.
• 34:09
  So if you actually scroll through our Insta, you'll see this transition where last year we were like, these are the three reasons you should buy this cream. And these are the three ingredients in the serum. And this is why these biodegradable eye masks are so unique. And we're like, yeah, like we're really showing people why they should trust us. And then it got to a certain point when we looked at our feed and like our emails were like, we've completely lost our personality as a brand.
• 34:34
  And I'll be the first to admit this. So there was this moment last year where we said, okay, this is not working. We've lost the fun aspect of the brand. And we asked the team too. We're like, doesn't it just not feel as exciting and fun? And they're like, yeah. So again, going back to transparency, the team feels empowered enough to share that feedback with us. So last year, we're like, you know what? Let's change it. Let's go back to showing the founders in our marketing. We don't have to just talk about the origin days, but we can say like, okay, those were the things that were hard at the beginning.
• 35:03
  These are the things that are hard now. Like these are the problems we're facing now as a company with 13, 14 employees. These are the things that are hard managing this many retail doors. These are the difficulties of trying to launch products that are B Corp certified and yada, yada, yada. So I think we've found our swing again. So going back to your question of like marketing learnings and things that we've learned through the past few years, I would definitely say,
• 35:28
  Look at other brands when it comes to getting inspiration and thinking about what you want to do from a marketing perspective. So whether it's like, oh, I love the way that Say does their community events. Like that's really cool. But don't lose your original identity because as a startup, one of the best things you have going for you is your founding story and your own personality. Like an Estee Lauder can't make a new personality.
• 35:54
  Estee Lauder brand and be like, oh, like, why is this crappy company? Or like, buy us because of these founders. Like, they don't have that going for them, but you do. So that's one of the big learnings from a marketing standpoint.
• 36:07
  I also think that you should think about marketing that's free as well as marketing that's paid. And then think about where your time should go. So for example, one thing that I do that's really low lift for me and eventually the account manager that we're hiring for will take this on is whenever we have a three ships promo at a large retailer, I will always film a set of Instagram stories. Like this is super easy. And I'll just like hold up a product or a couple of products that are available at that retailer and say like, Hey, you're welcome.
• 36:36
  XYZ retailer is having 20% off in two weeks and you know, mother's day is around the corner. So here are three products I recommend from our line. That would be a great fit for you to check out and take advantage of these savings. Then I send that all to the retail team as well as our marketing team. I send them the captions. I send them the swipe up links and then like, Hey, this is all for you.
• 36:58
  take it or leave it. And like nine times out of 10, they'll post it because no one's doing this. And again, it's free. But at a certain point, once you scale, you have to think, is my time worth this now? So something I learned from Naval Ravikant, one of the founders of AngelList, he always says, think about what the dollar value of your time is. So back in the day, when I was just doing the company, my time was worth very little. But now that we've been around for seven years, I have,
• 37:26
  a very high dollar value of my hour. And so now I'm like, okay, for the incremental XYZ dollars I'm going to get from sending this IG story set, is it worth it? Or should I be using this time to maybe train someone else on this or try to secure new leads? So that's what I mean by thinking, what are the free marketing ops you can do?
• 37:44
  Is it worth your time or should you just be spending on it? And it's up to you. And I also think this goes back to that kind of like when you're thinking about even though you've raised money, like there are other still things that you can be doing that's scrappy versus like turning straight to being like, yeah, the $15,000 influencer campaign.
• 38:01
  Oh, yeah. And I think it's really just about getting creative. I think a lot of people just forget that side when they raise money, especially. So that's something. And I mean, going back to scrappiness, here's an example of a story that would be interesting for your podcast. So it was in December of 2021. So it's after we last spoke. One of the highways in Vancouver was fully wiped out from a flood. And most companies...
• 38:26
  We're like, okay, well, if my inventory is in Vancouver, I can't get it out. And so the companies with a lot of money were like, I'm going to airlift it out and put it on your plane and ship it over somewhere. But for most companies who couldn't afford that, they couldn't put it on a truck and get it across Canada because there were literally no highways that would go across. And so what Laura and I did, and honestly, this was like Laura's idea. So I just really want to give her credit here.
• 38:49
  She was like, okay, if we can't get it across Canada from a truck, we don't have money for an airplane, then what can we do? So she asked her dad and uncle who lived in Kelowna, which is in BC. And she was like, can you guys rent a 26 foot U-Haul, take our packaging, drive down to the US border, drive it across the US and then go up in Ontario, which is where we need the packaging. And they were like, sure, why not? Like we're willing to help you guys.
• 39:16
  So they literally rented the largest truck they could find. They went to our warehouse in Vancouver, showed them proof that they were able to pick up our packaging, took all the packaging, loaded up the truck, did like a four or five day road trip across the U.S. We were freaking out because they weren't even sure if customs would let them go through the border, but they did. Then they came up to Ontario, offloaded our inventory. And this was just before Black Friday.
• 39:39
  Oh my God. I think it was actually right in the middle of Black Friday because we had to email a bunch of our customers being like, Hey, our packaging is stuck. But like, if you place your order, we guarantee you'll get it like in two weeks. And luckily our customers were so low. They're like, it's all good. And then as soon as we got the packaging, we had to like take our bottles that were manufactured in Toronto and like put them all in the packaging individually. So it was a full team effort at my parents' house because that was back when we were still fulfilling in my parents' basement. Yeah.
• 40:05
  So again, like this is an example of creativity to the max. But if we didn't do that, we would have missed out on all Black Friday sales. Who knows when we would have gotten our packaging. There would have been a massive line of brands and companies trying to get inventory out. And yeah, I'm just so grateful that Laura and my team have this hustle first mentality because I have countless stories like this that I think have really helped us get to where we are today.
• 40:31
  Oh my gosh. I feel like we should do like a three part series on this episode. Cause I'm like, you have so many great stories. I want to hear so many more. And I feel like my list of biggest lessons, like we're only like, you know, three in out of like 10 that I had, we need to do like a follow-up. Yeah. Before we wrap up, I just want to ask you kind of overall, if you were kind of starting a brand tomorrow,
• 40:56
  regardless of what it was, whether it's in beauty or something else, what would you kind of do to get it going, you know, in the time that we're in now, you know, coming out of 2023 into 2024, what would you be focusing on to grow a brand? Oh, okay. I mean, I'm not very like savvy when it comes to social media, but I have heard that TikTok blows up brands and I know there's no secret to virality, but I think
• 41:22
  I would take a ton of behind the scenes content. One of my regrets is that we didn't take more behind the scenes content of starting the company because we were embarrassed. I didn't want to show people that I was measuring by the beaker in my kitchen and using stainless steel mixing bowls that would also double as salad bowls later. That was not a vibe, but if I could do it again, I would have totally shown that because
• 41:45
  that content does A, does so well on social and on TikTok. And B, it's so good for remembering the beginning stories. And C, it creates really loyal customers because they're like, dang, that hustle, I want to support you. And now that I have more money to be able to spend on gifts and things like that, I always want to support the person I can see hustling their butt off. So A, I would build as much content as you can, literally just set up a camera up,
• 42:10
  and have it running and then decide what clips you want to use and what you don't want to use. I would also get really clear on why you're starting this company. I mean, I know this is more of like a macro question, but when we first started, a lot of people said, oh, why don't I just do a dropship business? Like there's so many...
• 42:25
  beauty like products, you can just white label and drop ship from China or something. We're like, that's not building a brand. And it's not something that excites us. And I think you should get clear on what's something that you really like to do in your free time. And what's something that you find yourself doing when you're procrastinating? Because that's a really clear indication of something that you would pour hours and hours and go above and beyond what anyone else would do just because you love it. And for me, that's skincare. I was obsessed since I was like 10 years old.
• 42:53
  And then I would also share with as many friends and family and your network as much as possible, because you don't know the people that your friends know and also how they're able to help. And that was a mistake that I think Laura and I made early on is we were embarrassed to share. And when we started to tell more and more people about it, they're like, oh.
• 43:11
  My uncle is a trademark lawyer. He can review your trademark app for free. We're like, wait, what? Or someone might be like, you know what? I have experience in meta ads. I don't mind maybe doing an audit for you for free. There's so many things and resources out there
• 43:28
  nowadays, especially with your network that you can dip into. I would also say there's a ton of free resources online, like on YouTube or paid resources like Skillshare, chat GPT now. I wish that was a thing like when we first started. Oh my God, chat GPT.
• 43:43
  Yeah. Like there's so much out there. So I mean, hopefully that helps. There's so many like tips I would share, but I know we have limited time. They were so, so good tips. And I especially love the kind of recording yourself because the B-roll kind of content, it's just so good to have, especially when you're kind of like, you know, in the situation where you are now, you've built this amazing brand and you're able to do the flashback of like how it all started, how it's going kind of vibe.
• 44:10
  Yeah, that's so good. And it is. You've just got to build that habit again of just being like, yep, I've got the camera on. I'm filming everything and just I'm going to have it in the bank. Whether I use it or not, it doesn't matter, but I've got it. I've got the B-roll. Yes.
• 44:23
  Oh yes. Pass Connie. I wish, I wish she did that. Oh my gosh. This was so great, Connie. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I feel like you've just shared so many incredible learnings and lessons and stories with us. I can't wait to have you back on for a part three. Thank you so much.
• 44:41
  Yes. And thank you so much, June, for even giving people the platform to share their stories. I have to say, I learned a ton from listening to you and the people you interview and also your Instagram. I love your Instagram carousel. So please don't ever stop doing that. Oh, thanks. Love that for me and you. Thanks, Bonnie.
• 45:05
  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.
• 45:30
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• 45:52
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