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hat girl era · From 9 to Mom

• Catie: Welcome back to From Nine to Mom. Danielle: Where we discuss balancing the nine to five hustle with the beautiful chaos that we call motherhood. Catie: And today we have two very special guests. Both ladies, Christine and Kristen, are the co-founders of Local Social Club. They're two New England moms. We're gonna get into all of the things, but they own the I wanna say hat brand. But you can if you guys are watching us today, they both are styling their local social club hats. You guys have seen them on the podcast before we had a promotion for them going. I've been wearing their hat all summer and I feel like all year, quite honestly. But we want them to tell their story and how they got started. But first, Christine and Kristen, thank you guys for coming on the podcast. Locals Social Club: Thanks for having us. We're excited. Thank you. Yes, we can't wait to chat. Catie: I know it's been a long time coming. We first meet like met you guys because I saw your guys' stuff all over TikTok. And I was like, I'm obsessed with this hat. I need it. Locals Social Club: Yeah. Catie: How do I like work with you guys? How do I like I wanted to like find some sort of collaboration, especially when I saw you guys were a mom-owned brand. So shout out to your guys' TikTok. It always Locals Social Club: That is a work in progress, but thank you. Danielle: Yeah, I feel like Katie and I like are at this point are like fangirling a little bit because our both our kids too. Like my son has worn that hat every single day since the day we got it. And it's Locals Social Club: We love that. Danielle: like his like, I'm like, you're having a bad hair day, throw this hat on. We're going to the pool, Locals Social Club: Yes. Danielle: throw this hat on. And it doesn't matter because he's a filthy little seven and a half year old, but Locals Social Club: Yeah. Danielle: it's wall like so easy to clean it's so nice. But I'm like, wow, we're talking to the people who made our favorite item that we use every single day. Locals Social Club: My God, that's so sweet. Thank you. We love hearing that. We love when somebody buys a hat and actually it becomes part of their lifestyle. We we just love that. Catie: Yes. So before we get into all the fun questions we have for you guys, we need to know how old your guys' kids are and what is causing chaos in your house right now. Locals Social Club: God, what is entirely honest? Catie: I know. It's like what's the big drama in the house? Locals Social Club: So, my son is four and my daughter is I'm sorry, he's five. He just had a birthday last week. He just had his birthday last week. Catie: yay. Danielle: Happy birthday. Locals Social Club: Thank you. And my daughter's eight turning nine soon. I think for us, the biggest chaos, and I hate to say this because summer is my favorite time of year, but it's just a summer time, they're in a hundred different places, a hundred different directions. our sons actually just graduated their little daycare together, which is so sweet, but now we don't have that as a constant in our lives, so we're kind of shuffling them out all over the place. And my husband and I both work full time. So he's out of the house at 4 30 in the morning. I'm shuffling them off to camp, stopping meetings, going to get them. It's just the chaos of running around and trying to still enjoy summer, I think, for a for at least our family. Yeah, I mean that's yeah, for sure chaos over here too. But so I have two boys. I have a five-year-old son and a new three-year-old son. and I think just two boys is inherently chaos. Like I don't think there's ever not been chaos, but I think Danielle: Maybe we'll agree with that. Hmm. Locals Social Club: Now with my three year old, he's definitely like getting more of like the voice of his own. So before my five year old could kind of like run the show with him, like this is what we're doing. So a lot of like this is mine, no fighting over toys. There's a lot of wrestling happening. A lot of like don't sit on your brother's head. It's just like true chaos here at Danielle: Yeah. Catie: They that is the boy. I remember us talking Locals Social Club: twenty four seven. And I don't think. Catie: about this now because we both have boys this almost exact same age. And it is like I am just playing referee. I'm yelling Locals Social Club: Yes. Catie: constantly, like, get off this one. Like, no, you don't make the rules. He can play a way that he wants. Like, he doesn't Locals Social Club: Yep. Catie: have to follow your rules. Danielle: You're saying it's a two-boy thing, but I don't I don't know. My daughter's three, and my son is much older than her, and she beats the crap out of him. Like I have to stop her constantly, like Locals Social Club: It's a strong girl. Danielle: she is just holding her own, and I so I feel the same chaos, but then like I can't really. whatever coach them or tell them to stop in the same way because I'm like, Colton, you're ginormous. You're a seventy Locals Social Club: Yeah. Danielle: seven pound, seven and a half year old Daisy's three and all twenty seven pounds soaking wet. But she'd beats on him, I'm telling you. Locals Social Club: That's the thing is my littlest is like strong. He is like a solid kid and now he's starting I'm like, You're gonna hurt him. Like they really go at it and we gotta Danielle: You need to slow down. Catie: They it is because they're like the same size and the funniest thing, and I don't think I've said this on the podcast yet, but so my younger one is a big boy. They both are like, you know, in their own way, but my older one, Jack, like my he's like a twig. He doesn't he like Locals Social Club: Yeah. Catie: eats chicken nuggets. Like if you give him a Locals Social Club: Yeah. Catie: happy meal, that's the only time he finishes anything on his plate. But my younger one officially weighs more than him. Locals Social Club: that's yeah, Catie: He's not taller, he's just like built bigger like yes. Locals Social Club: no, that's Nigel. I need your son's workout plan. He was like shirtless running, literally like Catie: Rep. Locals Social Club: looks like he had just come back from the gym. I'm like, honestly. Like he is a solid kid. He's just muscle at three somehow. Catie: Yeah. It's so funny. It's so funny. So we need to dive in how you guys got started with local social club. You got to give us the whole background story. Locals Social Club: Yeah, so our husbands have been friends long before us, probab I mean, long before we even like dated our husbands. They were friends. so they played in a baseball league together. And we just kind of clicked through them, the four of us pre-kids would hang out like all the time. We just became like a little crew. And then slowly we sort of developed our own friendship. And now we joke that like we're best friends. And we're like, you guys are over here on the show. Catie: They're the tackle. Yeah. Danielle: Liv the glue. Locals Social Club: So we both really we have obviously a lot of the same interests. We forever, even like really pre kids, talked about like we should do something. We both like wanted to start a business, wanted to test the waters and see what it would be like to do something on our own. And we a we've had idea after idea. Like an idea name it. We've had it. Like we during the wedding planning process, we were gonna do like a bachelorette planning business, we were gonna do a cocktail napkin business, an oyster oyster truck. Like we were like we should Catie: Yeah. Danielle: All the things. Locals Social Club: open a smoothie shop. Like we went everywhere. And the thing is we truly believe we could do any of them. We're like, we got it. I think we still are like, should we open that smoothie shop? Like we're still like, we can do it. Catie: Right. Like we're gonna do it. Locals Social Club: We're so we're a little delusional there, but we Danielle: Not delusional, it's inspirational. I mean, you guys are just and it gets worse with cocktails. So I feel like if you guys are hanging out. Yeah. Locals Social Club: Exac there's always a cocktail call to that. But yeah, just one on so we had boys, our two boys, and started, I mean, our husbands wear snapbacks all of the time. Like you unless they are at like a meeting, even then, they're still trying to wear a snapback. and so obviously when we had our boys, we wanted to dress them a certain way and very similar to their dads. So naturally hats for something we were hunting for. And we really the first couple years of their life couldn't find one that we liked. And I feel like it sounds cliche like when you ask people like why. It's like, we couldn't find what we wanted. But that was it. Like Kristen had texted me and it was like one Christmas. Yeah. Saying like, you know, like what did you get, Regan? I can't find a hat for Tucker. Is there one you like? I'm like, no, they're all just like cartoonish or they don't fit right. They seem to just not the vibe. And Kristen was like, wow, what if this became our idea? Like saw an article, literally sent me like a market analysis on the hat market and was like, this industry is booming. Catie: All right. Locals Social Club: Like, should we make hats? And we just did. Like we was like, sure. And then it just rolled from that point forward. And we started dreaming about what these hats would look like and ideating ideas. And at the time, I had just I just either changed job. I had something going on. I just changed jobs and I was like, look, I really want to do this, but I want to go all in. So even though we had the idea probably around November ish, we didn't we agreed that we wouldn't start until we were both ready, which was something that was a shift for us because normally we're like, All right, when do we start tomorrow? But this felt a little bit more real because we started to put some true thought behind it. So then I think it was April time frame. after the holidays settled down after the new year and we're like, all right. And I think I had said to Christine, I am like, I think I need thirty more days and then I'm good. So in those thirty days we just spent a ton of time researching. Like we just researched everything and something that's interesting about us is which can become a really big challenge to us sometimes is we have no experience in this industry whatsoever. We don't have a fashion background, we don't have a design background, manufacturing, marketing. Sales, e commer nothing. So we are truly doing this blindly, but what we found is we are just so determined the product means everything to us and making sure that the hat is exactly what we want because we are just we can't have somebody spend their own money on a product that we wouldn't even wear ourselves. So it's just so important to us that the product is the best. So we spent months honestly researching a manufacturer, even what what a hat was. We're like, how do you make a hat? Well, how do you get the hat in front of someone to then design that hat? So it was just so much time and research up front. which honestly has really gotten us to a point where we feel educated in what we're doing. Yeah. Danielle: Yeah, that's so cool. I feel like as you say this, I literally wrote I take notes when I do anything because I'm a nerd. But I was Locals Social Club: Yeah. Danielle: like, I love that you guys said that. Like as friends, you were like, we really want to do this. We both have corporate jobs, right? But we all want we both want to go all in and that you respected each other enough to say like, okay, we're Locals Social Club: Mm-hmm. Danielle: gonna do this when we're both ready. Were there ever points where like one of you was more antsy than the other? Or was it just genuinely that respect from like the get go? Locals Social Club: I think it was risk back from the get-go. We were both excited. And we definitely had like I remember we we do like an annual girls trip. Danielle: Mm-hmm. Locals Social Club: and in the car ride, we for the fr normally we just like chat about whatever. We literally had like a financial discussion with each other, which like we never like Kristen told me about your finances, but we were like, What? Give me a number that you're comfortable investing. I'll give you a number. Like, let's talk this through. Over under what are we good with? And That sort of I think was where we were like, okay, we both feel like we respect that number. We were in agreement. We felt like we're on the same page. I had just had my second son. So Kristen was really mindful of like a lot going on. Like we have a toddler and a baby. She had a new job. So I think we luckily aligned, like we were both ready to go. But even now we still have that conversation. Like we have so much going on. I mean kids working full time, like this is a lot. And LSD is a full-time job in itself. Danielle: Yeah. Locals Social Club: So there's times where like one of us is slammed with kids or work and we have to check in with each other about like, are we good doing this? And at any point, if the other yeah, like are we done here? We're always like, Are Danielle: Does it sound familiar? Catie: Yeah. Locals Social Club: we so good? And like, what are you like? We can pick up on the others energy, like energy so well at this point. Like If one of us is just texting differently, that'll be it for you. Okay. So Danielle: It's it's crazy. I think it's really cool to have partners on the podcast for Katie and I, because we're business partners and we have from nine to mom. And we usually talk to independent brand owners, right? But it is such like a different experience when you have a partner and you Locals Social Club: Mm-hmm. Danielle: have a full-time corporate job and your own career, like your own thing that you're starting. I think Katie knows more about my finances than my husband at this point. Like Yes, and I think you probably Locals Social Club: Yeah. Catie: Yeah, truly. I think I could guess her passwords even to get Danielle: I you are like. You know my passwords. That's the worst part. And Locals Social Club: Yeah. Danielle: it gets to a point where you're like, but that is such an important conversation to have when you're going into business with somebody because it it sends a trajectory of how quickly you can actually move. And I think that's just really cool that you guys had that, especially with the friendship and now the business and it's still remaining fun. And look at what you've built so far. Locals Social Club: It's it's so fun. And that's something we've always been really sad on is like when one of us is like, this is no longer fun. Obviously it's stressful, but I'd Danielle: huh. Locals Social Club: say like every couple of months we have a check-in about like, are you still good doing this? Like, are you still like, Yes, this is getting more chaotic than ever, but like are we still at our core happy doing it? And if Kristen was like, No, like this is actually causing me more. harm in life than happiness, then we're done. Like I think yeah, we don't ever want to feel like we're pushing the other in a direction they don't want to go in. And we've thankfully been really on the same page and able to sort of like when one of us is panicking about LSC, the other one tends to be like, It's okay. So we balance out in that way. Catie: It is refreshing to be like in a partnership when you're launching something new too, because I feel like Danielle and I go through that where we lean on each other when one of us isn't feeling like super confident or frustrated in a in a process or that. But do you guys have like roles that you fall into? Like do one of you handle more of one side of the business and one handles the other? Locals Social Club: Yeah, I think that naturally we've fallen into kind of our quote unquote roles, but we are so e our opinions matter so much to each other that we really don't kind of sign off until the other one agrees on it. So Christine does all I mean, she does not want me touching social media and I don't blame her whatsoever. I don't even know how to use my own social media. So Christine does mostly all the social media, but I have fun with it too and I'll build like little Canva ideas and send her ideas or put pictures together and she'll just edit it for me. So I still have a voice in it, which is nice. and then she handles all the shipping. that she we have all the actually right behind us, all of the all of our hats in her little sunroom area. And then I do I handle all the manufacturing and I speak with our manufacturer typically all night long when we're going through an order process and doing most of the ordering. As well as I try to do the finances and budgeting. and email. So we i the big bucket items we have we separate. We separate, but the day to day operations, day to day decisions, day to day, you know, just tasks of what's happening next, we we do together. Catie: Yeah. So can you give us a little background of as you guys were building the hats, how did you like how did you start the process like reaching out to people to like make the hats for you, designing them? Give us a little insight on that part of it. Locals Social Club: Yeah, I mean Kristen started really, I don't know like what got into her one day, but I remember her being like, okay, so I'm Googling, like literally Googling how to make a hat. we talked to a lot of people on upwork in the beginning. we didn't end up actually like moving forward working with any of them, but it was helpful for us because we truly knew literally zero about what we were doing, like what's the first thing you do. And I don't know if how we started was like the correct order, but we talked to a bunch of people. We got a lot of like varying answers on what to do, but it was all helpful. and something we sort of kept hearing was like you need a tech pack. We didn't know what that was. We don't so even really use a tech pack, to be honest. We do things like just kind of our way. but so we started Googling how to do that, researching how to make a tech pack. We ended up finding, we did probably I think it was five different manufacturers to start with that we identified. We like looked at different hats they had made, companies, like you can sort of see, like any hat brand, you can really see who makes their hat. So we would try and see like what quality, just researching a ton of that. And then we ended up connecting with we still use her, our like amazing graphic designer. She helped us do like our whole brand guide, all of that, and really like took our vision for these hats to life and did mock-ups with us, like walked us through the whole process, gave us the files, and then we picked. we just did a little Instagram post on this the other day, but one of our first hats. We did five samples of it. Only four arrived. One is still out there in the world, don't know where it is. Danielle: In the universe. Catie: You never came. Locals Social Club: but that was something. From the research we learned, like a lot of it, like I would like sit on TikTok and try and like end up in the pocket of TikTok, which was like apparel, hat brand business owners, and like how they started. And something almost everyone said was like, no, I got one sample and it was a mess. So we chose to invest more money in doing more samples, which thankfully we did because looking back, like really only one of them was usable. Yeah. Like Danielle: Yeah. Locals Social Club: we got a lot of junk and this the hats that we thought, my god, this manufacturer's gonna be it. Like we had one and Jenny. We were like, Jenny is the best, this hat's gonna be amazing. It literally looked like a piece of paper in the shape of a hat. It was so Catie: My gosh. Locals Social Club: bad. So that was really like once we got those samples, we set like picked our manufacturer. It's that in our manufacturer sense. they're Danielle: That's crazy because I don't know how I got there. My son, like we watch like people makes I think like making art and then people turn things. I don't know if your kids do this. Like they have characters and they turn them into plushies and they talk about the experience. Locals Social Club: Yeah. Danielle: Somehow I got on that side of TikTok at one point. And it is crazy the investment that you made up front for people who are thinking about like starting anything like that, people go with the one and they end up wasting so much time and then Locals Social Club: Okay. Danielle: money on that one vendor doing all these ideations and ideations of like the same exact thing and they all come out bad. Like I Locals Social Club: Mm-hmm. Danielle: would have never thought, because we've never made a product, Katie, outside of like Locals Social Club: Yeah. Catie: You know. Danielle: swag, like do multiple in the beginning, see which one res I mean, we do that in marketing, but I would have never thought to do it Locals Social Club: Right. Yeah. Catie: Great. Danielle: in production. But that's so smart because then yeah, a little bit extra up at the front, but you get to pick the best and move forward instead of wasting time. Locals Social Club: Exactly. And we did take a little bit of each hat and make it into our final. We learned a lot through that process, how high the crown needs to be, how tight the back needs to be, the interior lining was super important to us, how tightly the rope stayed on the hat. Like all these small details we had no idea. We're like, We're gonna design a hat and then it's gonna look beautiful. And it's like this doesn't work that way. Danielle: But all the things you said are things that we've all gotten pissed off about on a hat. Like I've gotten mad Locals Social Club: Yeah. Danielle: about the crown. Like I'll get Jordan a hat and I'll be like, that looks dumb. The I hate when the rope rolls up every 15 seconds, like Locals Social Club: Yes, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Danielle: on a, you know what I mean? On a hat. The interior my my husband won't wear certain hats because he's afraid the sweat ring like on the material will be I'm like, so it is like stuff you Locals Social Club: Yeah, yeah. Terry Potter. Danielle: we think about in our day-to-day, but never think about in terms of Locals Social Club: Exactly. Danielle: that. Locals Social Club: And that was we could have, which I think when we started this, we kind of thought like, okay, we'll pick a style hat and we'll just make it. I don't even know how we ended up down this road, but like we our hats are like a custom style hat. How we got there, I don't know. But we did. So we definitely made our lives a little bit more harder than they needed to be by doing that because we were literally like texting back and forth, like, okay. I'm measuring this hat of Regans should be measuring tickers and we're like, Okay, now the sample is this, let's put it up at like two centimeters and like we really spent, I mean, it was probably from when we No, summer. I think we bought our first samples in July. So I think we were away. Yep. So I had to go like get them from our house. Danielle: Well, I've been following and if you're listening right now, guys, follow their their socials because they've been talking about you have been talking about like the start, the first hat to now. And that just happens to be the hat that Colton always wears. So I always love like seeing Locals Social Club: that's awesome. Danielle: like what you're doing. but it is cool to watch you do that. And as this has evolved, obviously, where is the business at right now? Like what is up and coming for you at this moment? Locals Social Club: Yeah, so again, we've learned so much. We honestly keep on I think something that Christine mentioned too, we always have those check-in moments, right? So and we don't just keep on going, we try to look backwards a lot too and say, We something that we know we need to get better at is actually using our data to make informed decisions, but we for better or worse go a lot off of our gut with this process right now. Which is funny because we're both in corporate worlds and here I am sitting on strategy meetings and talking to executives and you know, laying out based on data. And then when I turn my brain off to LSC, it becomes this totally different experience where I'm really just going off of our gut feelings and developing this. And I think a reason for that is because we really are trying to build it as a community. And I think a lot of that builds off of emotion. Danielle: Mm-hmm. Locals Social Club: so one thing that we're really trying to do is build that community and and really have more of that club feeling, if you will. But aside from that, looking back, you know, our products are not 34 to 40 dollars is our product. So we have to sell thousands and thousands of those products to actually make you know a business be a lucrative business. So something that, and I'm sure you hear the passion in our voice is our favorite part of this business is design the apps, hands down. Like we love that process. We again unconventional, but we have hundreds of pieces of fabric. We go sort through them, we have these ideas that just pop into our head, and typically we're pretty aligned on them, and that's And seeing the final product come and get delivered, we constantly follow our tracker. We have hats coming now. We're like, my god, they're running tomorrow. We get so excited about the actual product. So something that we have been able to kind of transition to in a different revenue stream for us is designing custom hats. So we go we're approached by actually one of our customers and she just loved the hat. Similar to you, Danielle, she was just so passionate about the hat itself and loved it on their son and So she asked us if she owns her own business. She's an entrepreneur. She was so successful. She asked us if we would make a hat for her. And at first we were like, gosh, we don't know how to do that. And we didn't know how to structure that from a financial perspective. And so we just felt like it was a really good opportunity and good exposure for us too. So we did our first collab with her and we loved it. And she loved it. And she ended up ordering two styles, both in two different sizes and then a separate style. And We just love that process. So we have been thinking about that and got another opportunity to do it with a local coffee shop as well, who actually is really well known in in the North Shore community. so we're trying that right now. We're we're really passionate about that. It gives us that little bit more momentum and a different revenue stream to bring in rather than just being e-commerce. So that's kind of the direction that we're going in right now. Danielle: Now will L S C be like on all the paths somewhere hidden or Locals Social Club: Yeah, so the tag on the back, sort of like we always say like with forty-seven Red Hat, like no matter if you're in like a Red Sox hat, it still says 47 on the tag. So at a minimum, it will always have the tag. depending on the design of the hat, we'll have local social club on the back. But Danielle: Okay. Locals Social Club: above all, like we want any hat, even if it's for us or for someone else, to look nice. So if it's gonna look like there's too much on the hat. put it on the back, we take it off. Like that is priority is like we're making you a nice hat. Danielle: Yeah. I do think it's cool though for like other brands like that you're partnering with, especially like the coffee shop and the your client, they want people to know it's your Locals Social Club: Yeah. Danielle: guys' hat. So it's cool that you can design it for them. It's obviously branding for them in their business, but to be Locals Social Club: Mm-hmm. Danielle: able like a forty seven hat, like we all know, like when you have your hat or like Locals Social Club: Yeah, you see it and you know it. Danielle: so that's very cool. Locals Social Club: Yeah. Catie: We have to get from nine to mom hats going with you guys eventually. Locals Social Club: Yeah. yeah. Yeah we'd like to. Catie: I'm such a hat person though. Like twice, three times a week I've got a hat on. but it's really cool to think about that. And then w I know like eventually, can you guys talk about more what you do for corporate? How how what you guys actually do outside of local social club? Locals Social Club: Yeah, so I'm a licensed licensed clinical social worker. I do more like supervisory type of clinical work for a really large healthcare company. so I'm fully remote, which has been making this a lot easier for me, not having to like drop the kids, run into an office. Like I can drop the kids, come home, work, get them, come back to work. but so I'm doing that all day. nothing related to this at all, but it's flexible, which has been nice. and nice to be a little bit further removed from the phone. I'm also full-time remote, which is so nice. I have a pretty demanding job. I work in product development for SAS products for a large biotech company. But I think what's really nice about how we segregated our roles a little bit is I'm constantly on meetings all day long. And I'm able because I do work with the manufacturing side of things, even though I'm exhausted at the end of the day, I do am ab I'm able to work kind of through the nighttime with the manufacturer. So it's kind of a round the clock type thing. And it's interesting. I was on the way, I was like, okay, what questions are we gonna talk about? And I was like, well, my answer about how I manage it all is I compartmentalize. But the truth is I don't. Like I am just it's impossible to compartmentalize. It's like one second you're thinking about what it snack I'm getting for the kids. And the next thing second I'm like talking about strategy. And then you know at night I'm talking about what color fabric I need. So it's always this constant kind of switch in your head that goes from like a a working mom to a CEO of snacks to like whatever it is. It's just Danielle: Yeah. Catie: The true. Locals Social Club: a constant. It's it's impossible to compartmentalize, I think, with everything you have going on. I mean and we operate like primarily on our phones with each other. Like we will get on a phone call with each other every once in a while, but usually it's to be like the other day we did something so silly. Like we made such like a crazy mistake. So like Kristen Confident would be like, what did my God. But other than that, it's typically like we are texting. We now know like what time we wake up in the morning and like what time we're in bed. Like I'm like, okay. It's like a six third and Kristen's off or it's nine o'clock, like she's in bed. Like I No, and so we just pretty much like open our eyes and start. Like we are texting all day, we share notes, like that's where LSD like lives is in our notes app. So we're doing it all day long. So it is it becomes a little chaotic at times to be like you're in a meeting and then I'm like, my Christmas texting here, like it has to be Danielle: Mm-hmm. Locals Social Club: something LSC related, then you're like trying to look at that and then you just have to I don't know how we do it, but sometimes we get a little jumbled, but really trying to be present with our families when we can. We for a while we're just Like so Danielle: Yeah. Locals Social Club: consumed by this in the beginning. and we started to notice like this isn't fair to our kids that because our work is like literally on our phones, and we'll do this all day, every day, we needed to sort of set those limits. So we try and do it more, especially on the weekends, we don't do LSC as much. Like occasionally on like a Saturday morning, we'll be like, quick ideas, hold on. Catie: Here's Locals Social Club: but we're really respectful of like, hey, you know, I have this going on with you know, my son today, like, okay, have fun, like I'll talk you later. so we try and set those boundaries and we've been doing less of we did a lot of like markets that was taking up a lot of time. So we're trying Danielle: Yeah. Locals Social Club: to like make sure what we're putting our time into for LSD is really important because we don't have all this time to give. So we're trying to make sure we're prioritizing stuff, which is hard. Danielle: Yeah, I think Katie and I definitely feel we had that conversation yesterday. Catie: The yeah, the the l literally Locals Social Club: Yeah. Catie: it's like the little time you have. How do you prioritize what goes to Locals Social Club: Yeah, yeah. Catie: LSC versus the kids versus making dinner versus all of those things? but I feel like one of the things like that Danielle and I have been seeing a lot is that a lot of mom entrepreneurs, and I don't know if you guys feel this or not, are getting that urge to like leave corporate and do the things they're passionate about. Have you guys had that feeling? Locals Social Club: Yeah, always. I think that's honestly Catie: Yeah. Locals Social Club: why we started this. Not that we don't like love our jobs, but there's something which so funny because nothing we do in our corporate jobs is creative, like at all. And Catie: Yeah. Locals Social Club: I wouldn't say we're like creative. Like I don't think I would describe either of us our our husbands wouldn't be like, they're so creative. But for Danielle: Right. Catie: Yeah. Locals Social Club: some reason this has like unlocked this like creative, like void that I think we both And we feel like so energized by it and excited to do this. And we always say, we're my gosh, if we could do this full time, we would be so happy. Obviously, it's stressful and there's like a lot Danielle: Yep. Locals Social Club: happening, but it's truly something we are so passionate about and really like genuinely brings us joy in a way that I don't know is possible in corporate America. I think it's just a different thing when it's like your baby. Yeah. I think the Danielle: Yeah. Locals Social Club: other thing too is. Our families have truly bought into this as well. And having them, our kids are so connected to the brand. They know LSC. They know what LSC means. They love wearing the hats. They, you know, my son went to a new camp this summer and somebody's like, I like your hat. He's thanks, my mommy makes them. Like, they're so connected to them. and we love that. If they couldn't be so part of this journey and feel connected. I don't think that it would bring us as much passion as Christine was describing. I think we just look at it kind of like another job, if you will. but it's it's become truly amongst the eight of us, like a a it's part of our core at this point. So having them feel a part of that, I think, is just so much more of a driver for us to. Catie: Yeah. And the hats are so aesthetically pleasing. I have to ask, like, who does your graphic designer design all of it? Or have you guys had have you like made some mood boards and inspo and and tapped into what creative sides you do have? Locals Social Club: Yeah, so we always come up with the color. We really there's like no rhyme or reason to how we do a I'm sure we should be like picking Catie: Ha ha Locals Social Club: a design and a color, but we're just like, What color are we Danielle: Right. That's what creatives are. Locals Social Club: feeling? So like with this summer one, we knew we wanted to do two hats. we had never done like a true patch on a hat and we for some reason both we always tend to be aligned with what ideas we have. So we're both like patch, right? Like we gotta do a patch hat. We like doing like fun, bright colors in the summer. And then I don't even know how we just got into we were like, we should do like a like weathered pink, like a sun faded pink, and just took that and ran with it. so we will our poor graphic designer, we will sketch something out on a piece of paper for her. Literally with our kids' markers. Yeah, typically. Danielle: Perfect. Catie: Love that. Locals Social Club: We're like, you can like do this, right? She's like, you guys. Literally, she's like, What is this? Catie: She's like, what did they just send me? It's a cran. Locals Social Club: So we make her some sketches, we'll show her like colors that we're doing. She doesn't have anything to do with like the fabrics and all that. It's more just like a working file she does for us. But then we do like a zoom with her, we talk it through a sheet, we tell her we're like, You are in our brains. 'Cause we don't really explain a whole lot to her. We're like, you know, the vibe and she's like, I got the vibe. Danielle: Just translates it. And I think that people don't realize because Katie and I made from Nine Amount hats in the beginning with our logo, like because we wanted to wear them. The logo itself, when you're in business and you're trying to create like trade show stuff, if your logo isn't right or the file is wrong, the embroidery is jacked. Like it looks horrible. So it does Locals Social Club: What? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Danielle: take a lot to get it to like translate from your brain to the Locals Social Club: Yeah. Danielle: paper to the machine, because that's not always the way it works. Locals Social Club: I mean, even like we had one design we were so set on we were gonna like stack the letters. And our graphic designer was like, This the way it was stacked, she's like, This spells out like ALS. And she's like, It looks like you're doing like a hat for ALS awareness, but okay. So like that's our own Catie: Yeah. Thank you, Christine. Danielle: Yeah. We didn't do that. Cool, cool, cool. Locals Social Club: devices. I don't know. But it's nice to have someone sort of like cross check us and be like, Hey, on a hat, that's not gonna translate, but if you do it this way it will. So It's always our ideas and she really just brings them to life. She puts like a little creative spin on them. Or if we're like, Can you just add a little something? Like something's missing. Catie: Yeah. Locals Social Club: She tends to like know what it is that we're thinking. Catie: I love that. So what is on the horizon for the rest of the year for you guys? What's the main focus? Locals Social Club: So, really just trying to grow the brand. We're focusing a lot on like the matching dad and son component of it. We didn't start that way. We started with only toddler hats. Catie: Mm-hmm. Locals Social Club: something we realized that dads wanted the hats. Like that's our biggest feedback. Danielle: Christmas. Catie: Yeah. Locals Social Club: Yes. The Father's Day was like a big we just never thought of it. so that's really we're pretty committed to that. We have some like exciting new coming out. Yeah. We have samples coming in at the end of this or beginning of next month. We have two new samples coming in. And then we are going to be delivering the apps to the local coffee shop probably in a week. So we're super excited about that and have Catie: Yeah. Locals Social Club: them in that community too. So we're still, you know, we're we're still just ideating every single day. I don't think there's necessarily we always say that we're each other. Like sit down and have a strategy. But whenever we sit down, we it's we have so many ideas that we just keep on we're like a snowball. We just keep on building and building and and trying to but at a at our core we will continue to be making our standard snapback hats. Probably again going into the larger sizes, but we do really want to start to explore what that custom hat looks like. And then we're also trying to get into some hotels as well. We Danielle: Ooh, I love that. Locals Social Club: are so busy and like all over the place we've learned recently we are wholesaling with one like smaller boutique hotel. which that's really been like since we started really it would be so cool to do like a custom like stay local or local whatever for a specific hotel chain. so that's something we're I mean we're always exploring. I was away recently, Kristen was like, I'm gonna take a meeting with an airport vendor to see if we can put our hats in airports. Like we're just like We're up for whatever. Catie: Any opportunity. Yeah. No, that's sometimes how you have to do it in the beginning. Well, Locals Social Club: Yeah. Catie: it's been so fun chatting to you guys with you guys. We love having other mom entrepreneurs on the podcast. But if anyone listening is interested, we'll have all the local social clubs linked in this on Spotify. You can find them on our Instagram. And we do have a code for everyone out there if you're looking to get started with your local social club hat journey. You won't be able to stop. Fair warning. Locals Social Club: Yeah. Catie: but you can get 20% off with code F9TM. So from Nine to Mom. so Danielle: Okay. Locals Social Club: Yeah. Catie: I like ha couldn't get that to stick in my brain, but we got Danielle: You got it. Catie: it. We got I got it out. So make sure you guys use that. you guys have seen the hats already if you guys follow us on socials. But thank you guys both so much for being on. Locals Social Club: Thank you. So nice chatting.