Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / 6 quick questions with Julie Schechter, Founder of Small Packages (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 what you're doing every single day? Connection. We have the, you know, the loneliness epidemic like raging in the U S is a real, real thing. And, um,
- 0:29Like I experienced it in my earlier life. I know what it feels like to not have personal relationships that are strong and what it feels like once you build them back up. I want to make it incredibly easy for people to feel surrounded and connected to people who love them. Oh, so powerful. I love that. Question number two is what's been your favorite marketing moment so far in building the business? Yeah.
- 0:59Being on Good Morning America was pretty fun. I'm not going to lie. That was during the height of COVID. And our TV actually broke that day, which was a very inopportune moment. So we had to tune in on my laptop and watch it go live, which was somewhat hilarious. But definitely that one.
- 1:22That's so cool. Question number three is what's your go-to business resource if you have to think about like a book or a newsletter or a podcast? Nick Sharma sends out a newsletter every Sunday that I have found to be incredibly helpful and also incredibly granular like your show. So I think folks that love this would love that one as well.
- 1:49I love his newsletter. He does such a good job. Great. Question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM and PM rituals or habits that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated? Oh, man. I'm going to be really probably boring ones that everybody else also says, but I have to work out like every single day. I do it absolutely first thing in the morning. I schedule workout classes that I get.
- 2:19penalized for if I, if I don't go to, so I have that extra pressure. But I do that, you know, at like 6.30 every day and then come back and have coffee and just have that sort of like, you know, little bit of Zen time before you dive back into, can't, can't go directly from sleep to opening the laptop. That is like the, that's the killer mental health wise for me.
- 2:45Yeah, that is the killer. I'm so guilty of going straight to my phone. It's, it's real. I've gotten to a really bad habit at the moment. I need to get out of it. I mean, we can always switch. We can always go back. We can always switch. True. Question number five is what's been your worst money mistake in business and how much did it cost you? Oh my gosh.
- 3:08Let me think. Um, okay. So very, very early on, I want to say like a couple of months after we launched the business, Glamour magazine came to me. I have no idea how they found us, but they said, we are throwing this big, I forget what it's called, but it was some like big gala event that they throw every year.
- 3:31And they said, you know, do you want to be in the gift bags? Because we think this would be like a really fun thing to give to people. You know, we can't do the actual physical boxes because they'll be too big. But can you do gift cards? And I said, yeah, oh, gosh, yes, glamour. Of course. Absolutely love to. And so I like spent just an hour.
- 3:52absolutely insane amount of time and money, like printing out these beautiful gift cards and whatever. I don't think they even made it in the boxes or into the bags because maybe three or four of them got used. It was just this whole like dumb administrative thing. And so the actual mistake was not getting some sort of, you know,
- 4:17statement of work or some sort of agreement set up with them ahead of time and just doing this massive outlay of you know all of this product to go in um that was not great it didn't work out too well yeah i hate that for you damn damn lesson learned it was tough but lesson learned for next time exactly
- 4:40And question number six, last question. What is just a crazy story that you can share, good or bad, from building the business?
- 4:49Well, so we had our own warehouse for a while and we were managing it. We had employees on the ground that were packing all of the boxes. And we decided that we wanted to move over to a 3PL just to have everything be much more streamlined and accounted for. And so we were also in Techstars at the time.
- 5:18while we were trying to manage this move and Monica was getting married also that weekend, whatever, when this was happening. And so we're trying to manage a whole bunch of different things. She's mostly out of pocket because she's getting married. And I get a call from the warehouse manager, the man who sort of just ran the whole thing, not the 3PL, the one that we were already in. And he left me a voicemail that said, we've had a fire.
- 5:46Oh, no. And, you know, I'm trying to figure out exactly what the damage is and whatever. But, you know, I'll call you back. I'm sure it's not that bad. So I'm picturing like all of our inventory up in smoke as we're like thousands of miles away across the country. She's getting married. I'm not going to tell her anything that's happening and stress her out. Right. And he was like, it's pretty it's probably pretty bad. I think most of the inventory is going to be gone. Oh, my God. How are we going to come back from this?
- 6:16All day, tech stars, meetings all day, can't get in touch with him. He tells me back at 5 p.m. that day, and he's like, oh, yeah, it was just in the basement. It wasn't anywhere near your stuff. You're totally fine. You can move tomorrow as scheduled. She's like, okay. Manufactured heart attack that we did not need. Turned out okay. It's no big deal.
- 6:38Oh, my goodness. I'm sure I could come up with more, but that's the first most powerful heart attack that comes to mind when you say crazy story. A hundred percent. The roller coaster of entrepreneurship. It is wild. Absolutely. But it's worth it.
- 6:57It is indeed. Julie, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show today and share your journey with Small Packages and Present. This has been so fun. Thank you so much. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for having me. This has been great.
- 7:14Hey, 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.
- 7:39And 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.
- 8:01As 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. Thank you.
- 8:17Hey, 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.
- 8:42And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
- 9:04As 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.