Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / 6 Quick Questions with Helen Hall, Founder of Blender Bombs (part 2)
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome back. Here are the six quick questions. So question number one is, what's your why? Why are you doing this every single day? I think because... Not I think. I know because...
- 0:24I do not want girls to have to go through or boys to go through what I went through in terms of like the yo-yo dieting and spending, you know, the best four years of my life, like college, being insecure in my body, being insecure and thinking about food constantly, like being addicted to food and starving myself. Like it was, it was horrible. There's nothing, there's no better feeling than having control over your cravings and like
- 0:52not thinking about food. I don't even think about what I eat anymore. And I always enjoy it. So for me, that's my why is like teaching people to prevent the mistakes that I made. I love that. Question number two is what's been your favorite marketing moment so far?
- 1:12I wish I could say Shark Tank, but our episode didn't air. Oh my God. What? I know we went in and we just didn't bring enough drama. We didn't get ripped apart or anything. So like we didn't have drama. We didn't take a deal. So we didn't have drama, but I still got to meet Mark Cuban and I've kept up with him. He's been very, he's like offered free advice and stuff. It's been crazy. But I would say marketing wise, I'm not.
- 1:39just having an Instagram platform, which I feel so old school saying that because I know TikTok is the new thing, but having a community on Instagram, it makes me like want to cry because if we're deciding between two types of packages, like they pick which one they want or which one they like, or if we're deciding on a new flavor, like we'd run a poll, they pick it. They always give me honest feedback. It's like, it really does feel like family. It's kind of cheesy, but it does. Yeah.
- 2:05That is so cool. I love that. So, and we hear this on the show a lot, like bringing in your community through things like Instagram. And even if you have a really small community, like that's still your community. If you've only got a thousand followers, you've only got 500 people who are following you on Instagram. You can still poll that audience. You can still ask them what they think and what they prefer and build from there. I think it's great advice.
- 2:29Question number three, what is your go-to business resource besides the book you just mentioned, if you're thinking about a podcast, a newsletter, or a book? Ooh, all right. When it comes to culture, I'm obsessed with the book, Let My People Go Serping. When it comes to attitude, I love Bethany Frankel's book, Business is Personal.
- 2:59I would say I love TikTok. Like just going to TikTok and seeing what other brands are doing. I like TikTok because it's not tryhardy. It's very organic. I think that's the future is being more organic and vulnerable, which I'm working on. It's really vulnerable. I agree. And I love that. I love that you said that.
- 3:24Question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM, MPM rituals and habits that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated to keep showing up? So I follow that 80-20 rule with this too. I try to like have a productive morning 80% of the week. So like five days a week, which is the work week, I guess.
- 3:47But my morning routine always changes. I've never been one to follow rules very well. So I don't like a strict schedule, but I always try to do this games. It's called games and it's like gratitude, affirmation, manifest, envision, and silence. So I try to like, and again, the 80-20 rule can apply here. Like I try to go like write that down or go through 80% of that. And then at the end of the day,
- 4:17You can do that in your head or you can write it down. And at the end of the day, I hit on build, which is, you know, be like, what did I do for my business? You, what did you do for yourself? I, what did you do for your income? L, what did you do for your relationships that day? And then D, like, what did you do for your development that day? So I try to at least like hit, you know, four out of five of those.
- 4:44I love that. I haven't heard of either of those before. That's so cool. Did I make them up? Oh, did you make it up? Oh my God. I love that. Yes. I like acronyms. Oh my God. You absolutely should. That's genius. That's such a cool framework to operate under. I love that. Question number five, what is the worst money mistake you've had in the business and how much did it cost you?
- 5:11It's always going back to hiring the wrong people. It's been wasting a lot of human capital. One was like an ex that I dated and hired. And he was very helpful for the business in a lot of ways. But in a lot of ways, not. And like lawsuits came from that, which are super expensive because I didn't protect myself well enough. Other money mistakes.
- 5:38keeping people on the payroll when I knew I should have fired them, keeping them way too long. And then after letting them go finally, because I was a people pleaser and I waited too long, but realizing there were so many things that they mismanaged in the business, which cost me a lot of money. So biggest thing I learned last year and this year was to be so scarily picky in the hiring process that,
- 6:04get three references, like good references, put them through a little trial before they're onboarded. Listen to your gut. Always your gut always knows. And when you know you need to fire someone, just get over with it. Do it. And it gets easier the more you do it. Like now it's so easy for me to do it because before I really, what I care about, those are the people I care about pleasing, not like the rest of the world.
- 6:28Mm hmm. Wow. Holy moly. And last question, question number six. What is just a crazy story you can share in the business, good or bad or anything in between?
- 6:43So the craziest thing that ever happened, and if people have heard me on a podcast before, I've probably talked about it, so I'll give two. But if you haven't heard it, I think this is crazy. I wrote in my journal that I wanted to be in Whole Foods by 2022. And again, the business started in 2017, and we launched our legitimate packaging at the beginning of 2019. And I remember going to Instagram and being like,
- 7:07what now that we're allowed to wholesale because we have legitimate packaging, where would you guys like to see us? And everyone's, you know, Whole Foods, Whole Foods, whatever. I email Whole Foods like 100 times or maybe like 20 times and they just don't answer. So finally, I went to Instagram and I was like, look, I have emailed Whole Foods 20 times and they don't answer me. So if you have a direct contact there, let me know and I'll reach out to them.
- 7:33And then within like an hour, I had a message from corporate Whole Foods being like, fly down to Austin and pitch us. And so we flew down the following month, pitched, and then we had a second pitch like the next month and we flew down and pitched and we rolled out like nationally with them in 2020. Oh my God, that is so cool. The power of community. I love it. I know. I still don't know who it was that did that, but I hope that they told me one day.
- 8:03Or email me because I get lost in the DMs. And then another crazy thing would just be, honestly, my last year has been wild in terms of business. I was engaged and the guy I was engaged to worked for me. And again, going back to my gut, like the whole relationship, I knew it wasn't meant to be, you know,
- 8:27We would break up every, like, six months. And I just was never happy. But I was like, got to stay together for the business, right? And finally, we broke up. And it was a horrible breakup. Like, it was...
- 8:45He cheated, basically. Not basically. He did cheat. And from that, it was like a series of unfortunate events that happened in the next six months. Like, went through a lawsuit with him, going through so many issues. It was like a divorce, even though we weren't married.
- 9:02But then I tried to hire someone else to take over his place and I didn't get the right reference checks. That person ended up like doing a lot of sketchy things with the business because I was so like emotionally hurt at the time that I wasn't paying as much attention to what this new hire was doing as I should have been. And then we had like another new hire come in after her. Same thing happens. And but it gets better.
- 9:33after like three to four months of turmoil, what felt like turmoil.
- 9:38Then some really awesome people got involved in the business. And we got rid of any potentially toxic people in the business. In my personal life, I started dating this, like, incredible man. And this was, we started dating, like, last summer, and now we're married. You just know when you know. It's the craziest thing ever. Thank you. He's, like, the biggest blessing. But we have added two or three new people. Well, four. We've added four new employees to the team who are just so strong.
- 10:08that probably never would have, we never would have found them if I didn't go through that hard time, you know, last year. Because it was like, they came to me when they saw what I was going through. And they're like, I can help. I can't even help. I'm like, yeah, I do need your help. So that's been cool is just knowing like when you go through a period of hell, like it does always happen for a reason. And you learn so much from it. And then it's rainbows on the other side.
- 10:37I love that. And that is such a great note to end on. Rainbows on the other side, no matter what you're going through, anyone listening, every entrepreneur, every person, everyone goes through ups and downs. It's all part of the journey. And you've just got to kind of get onto that other side and know that things will change.
- 10:56Yeah. And even for entrepreneurs whose businesses don't end up making it, like, think of it like the most powerful internship that you've ever done in your entire life. You just learned. There's no price that you can put on what you learned from starting a business and the knowledge that you gained from it. So a lot of businesses don't succeed. So I think that it's important for entrepreneurs to not necessarily think about it as like a success or a failure, but honestly, it's like an internship.
- 11:24I love that. So true. This was so cool. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story so openly and so deeply. I've really loved chatting with you and I'm so excited to see what's next.
- 11:38Thank you. We have a discount code for your followers too if we want to do it. I'm just going to do FSC15. Great. Perfect. And that's BlenderBombs.com. BlenderBombs.com, FSC15. Go there now. Check it out.
- 12:00Hey, 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.
- 12:24And 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.
- 12:47As 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.
- 13:04Hey, 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.
- 13:28And 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.
- 13:51As 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.