Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / 6 quick questions with Lezlie Karls, Founder of Mid-Day Squares (Part 2)

Transcript

6 quick questions with Lezlie Karls, Founder of Mid-Day Squares (Part 2) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  questions. Question number one is what's your why? Why are you waking up every morning and putting your energy into midday squares?
• 0:18
  I have two why's. My first why is, you know, I get really excited about re-imagining, you know, how people consume chocolate. I think it's a really exciting mission. Like, you know, Hershey's and Mars and, you know, they built the confectionery department and we grew up on Mars and Hershey's as being the bars and the confection that we ate in North America. And I'm
• 0:45
  You know, those companies have done incredible things. I'm not here to shit on them. Like even with our stuff with Hershey's in the back, I love it. I mean, it's all good vibes, but Midday Squares is reimagining how you consume chocolate and reimagining what confectionery should look like. And that really fires me up. And then also like building this company allows me to, you know, hopefully one day do all these things that I want to do that.
• 1:13
  I might not get to do if I don't build a company to this magnitude. And some of those things are really simple, like, you know, opening up a little cafe in the Laurentians, which is a place in Montreal, which is like a little ski village and, you
• 1:29
  and coffees and whatever it is, like all these little things that I have in mind, becoming a bigger industrial builder and seeing that through. So there's, there's two things. It's like my love for food and re-imagining what it can look like. And then also having the ability to explore, continue exploring, continuing, continuing to tinker. So yeah, those are my why's for now.
• 1:57
  Really good ones. Really good ones. Question number two is what's been your favorite marketing moment so far?
• 2:05
  My recent favorite marketing moment that we did, which I absolutely love, is our five-year anniversary video. We basically did a wrestling campaign and I just loved it. It was so creative. It was so much fun. If you have a minute, go to our TikTok or our Midday Squares Instagram and
• 2:29
  and check out our five-year anniversary campaign. It was just, like, I'm a creative at heart, so doing that campaign with James was so much fun and just allowed me to step out of the operations, and it fired me up. It made me feel alive.
• 2:50
  We've made chocolate, but yet we made this wild, entertaining video that really is an analogy of the last five years, but in a fun, entertaining way. So that was one of my favorite marketing moments as of lately. I love that. Yeah, you've got to have fun with it. Got to have fun with the marketing. 100%. Question number three, what's your go-to business resource at the moment? Where are you learning things?
• 3:17
  Chat GPT. Chat GPT, I would say I'd start reading some books. I really want to dive deeper into what it means to be a great CEO. So I'm really focusing a lot on leadership and how to be a
• 3:38
  on that. And I'm actually looking forward to reading the Elon Musk book. I have three books that I really want to read that I'm not an avid reader, but I'm working to get more into reading. So the Elon Musk book that just came out, the Steve Jobs and the Phil Knight, you know, they built incredible companies. And so just understanding a little more into how it was done and
• 4:05
  kind of, you know, their thoughts. So I'm looking into that. And, and also just continuing with my business coach, you know, consistent weekly sessions.
• 4:16
  Yeah. Shoe Dog's a great book. Definitely one of the best, one of the greats. Question number four is how do you win the day? What are your rituals in the AM or the PM that bring you kind of happiness and feeling successful and calm in the mind? I would say that the gym. So I started weight
• 4:45
  about a year ago. And weight training has been super helpful to releasing stress. I used to do a lot more like HIIT or high cardio exercises, which I still like. I just don't do as much. But weight training, I do it at the end of the day, right when I get home from work, 45 minutes. And it just allows me to release stress. So that really allows me to
• 5:15
  go into my night feeling at ease. I've been, you know, again, just like kind of trying to do best day ever as much as possible. So sauna, spending a lot of time in the nature as much as I can, really enjoying my morning. So like just waking up, taking a minute, you know, having a coffee, listening to music, and just trying to quiet the mind and then getting into work and just
• 5:42
  like showing up to work, choosing to be happy because it's a choice and putting my best foot forward. And so when I get home, I feel purposeful. Then I hit that weight training workout and then just go into the evening and try to disconnect. Love that. Simple things, simple things. Yes, absolutely. And I love the simple things and small joys. Small joys are important throughout the day.
• 6:08
  What is the worst money mistake you've made in the business and how much did it cost you? Worst money mistake that we ever made in the business. I mean, there were so many. I have to say there were so many. I would say the most recent was... So when we were launching into Target, basically...
• 6:34
  Target put in this incredible order. We got super excited and all we wanted to do was fill it. And we kind of didn't think through much more. And so once we shipped the product, you know, Midday Squares is a short shelf life. We had to buy back some of the product on our initial launch, which costed probably about $200,000. And so that was a really...
• 7:00
  hard mistake to swallow. It was an oversight that we made. We learned from it. So basically, how do you not make that mistake ever again? You basically get the information from the buyer. You understand in your category, what product is selling the most and what are their velocities? So basically you take the highest velocities in the category or in your category, and then you basically back it up into the order because you have to understand like, can you sell
• 7:30
  are you going to be able to move product? And so you have to run the math. You have to do the math and you have to determine and basically take your average velocities and then say, does this order make sense in terms of when our product's going to expire? Can we sell all the product out by the expiry date? And if not, then you need to cut that order down instead of just saying yes and getting
• 7:57
  Obviously, as a company, you want to say yes to revenue, take the revenue, but instead do the simple math, do the velocities, understand what their highest velocity is for their best selling product, and then determine if the order makes sense or not. So now we apply that to every new customer, and we haven't gotten ourselves in a pickle like that since then. So that was the last big expense that I could think of in this moment.
• 8:25
  That was painful, but we got through it. That's a shitty one. That's a shitty big deal. Yeah. Last question. Question number six. I'm sure you have so many of these tucked into the bank and you've already shared so many, but what is just a crazy story, good or bad, from building the business of Midday Squares? There's so many that are just
• 8:48
  I thought this was pretty crazy. I mean, this is a really big marketing moment for us. I know you asked me what was my favorite marketing moment in the last, like my favorite marketing moment period. But this year we were, you know, I was in a therapy session and I got out of my therapy session. I got a text from.
• 9:06
  an acquaintance saying like, Kim Kardashian just pulled your product out of her bag. And I was like, what? And I didn't even know what she was talking about. She's like, yeah, in Vogue Italia, you need to see it. I'm freaking out. So I run upstairs. I get Nick. I'm like, I just got a crazy message that supposedly Kim Kardashian pulled the midday squares out of her bag on a Vogue Italia interview. So anyways, we're like, we start going on Instagram.
• 9:35
  And we don't see anything. So we're like, okay, this is probably just fake news. But then we go and we search, you know, Kim Kardashian, Vogue Italia, her interview pops up on YouTube. And then like a couple minutes into it, she's like,
• 9:52
  talking about what she keeps in her bag. And then she's like, and when I get hungry, I actually found these like midday square snacks that I love. It's like a healthy Reese. I don't know. She said like something that like literally sat, like it's literally our marketing, okay? Like what we would...
• 10:10
  you know, what people say about our product. And she pulls out peanut butter and almond crunch out of her purse. And it was just a wild moment. And we were just fired up about it. So that's a good moment. And I think like, that goes back to saying that when you have a great product, it gets recognition. So I think it does take time for sure and consistency and showing up and doing whatever you need to do. But, you know, like,
• 10:35
  people pay millions of dollars for Kim Kardashian to promote their products. And she just loved the product and she just took it out of her purse and shouted it out. And I thought that was fucking cool. And I respect that because it goes a long way for a brand, you know? Wow. That is epic. What a cool story to finish on. Thank you so much. I've loved this episode. I always love chatting to you. Love your energy. Love your vibe. Love your brand. I'm your hype girl.
• 11:06
  Thank you, Dune. Honestly, you're my hype girl. I have to say, you get me to come out of my comfort zone, to come on these podcasts, to hang, and you always make me feel comfortable. So I'm so fired up to be here. Thank you for having me tonight. And I really enjoyed our chat. Oh, thank you so much.
• 11:28
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 11:53
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• 12:15
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