Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / This Gen-Z brand asked 5000 teens what they wanted from a skincare company, and then created exactly that, with Shai Eisenman

Transcript

This Gen-Z brand asked 5000 teens what they wanted from a skincare company, and then created exactly that, with Shai Eisenman · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Shai Eisenman for Female Startup Club.
• 0:12
  Hey everyone, and welcome back to the show. I am Dune, your host and hype girl. And today we are learning from Shai, the founder of Bubble. We're talking through the approach she took with community and a specific blueprint for how they actually got 5,000 teens involved before the launch. They use the Geneva app, by the way, which I thought was really cool. And a few thoughts on fundraising and why we should question what's being celebrated in the media. Yeah.
• 0:42
  If you haven't heard of it just yet, Bubble is a skincare brand for teens that's replacing those brands we've been using for decades while being super fun. I highly recommend checking them out on TikTok. It is definitely a vibe.
• 0:58
  When I asked Shai what she would do with $1,000 of no strings attached cash, she immediately said market research on the platform Perksy, which was the first time being mentioned on the show. So if you would like $1,000 of no strings attached cash to spend in the biz, remember that we just kicked off our monthly cash giveaway and you can put yourself forward by going to femalestartupclub.com forward slash one triple zero hyphen cash hyphen giveaway.
• 1:28
  As always, please do shout about us to the entrepreneurs in your life who would benefit from these founder stories and insights. It means so much to me when you do that, and it also helps new ears find us. So let's get into this episode. This is Shai for Female Startup Club. Shai, hello. Welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Hi, thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here.
• 1:58
  Me too. I'm so excited that you're here. I'm so excited to talk about your brand and learn a bit more about what you're doing because I wasn't able to find tons of information about you online. So let's get started by getting you to give us your elevator pitch for who you are and what your brand is. So I'm Shai. I'm the founder of Bubble. Bubble is the next generation skincare brand created
• 2:27
  for young skin. So if you see every possible skincare brand out there, there are skincare products for every age, every price point, every skin type. But then when you look at teens and younger generations and lower price points and something that is targeted towards acne and targeted towards being more accessible, there's literally nothing out there. All the brands that
• 2:52
  teens are still using today are still Neutrogena and Cetaphil and Clean and Clear and Mario Vadescu and CeraVe and all these brands that are
• 3:02
  they usually are not very excited by them. They're not really, you know, it's a bit weird and hard to say this, but they don't really want to use them. It's not like they open the box of their Neutrogena and they're like, this is the best thing I've ever used. Their mom bought them. Their mom bought them in the supermarket. And it's the same brands that I used. And it's the same brands that my mom used. And some of them are even the same brands that my grandmother used.
• 3:27
  So really wanted to create a bubble to change that and to create something that will give them something healthier and better that they'll be excited about, but will actually help them clear their skin and create kind of use something that they'll love and would actually work for them.
• 3:43
  Yeah, it's definitely an exciting brand. I think I actually first discovered you on TikTok and was like, wait, what? This is so fun. Obviously, the packaging is super cool and super unique, but let's not get into that just yet. I sometimes get ahead of myself. I want to go back to that like early initial story. Let's start at the beginning. What got you interested in this space in the first place? And what got you interested in starting your own business?
• 4:14
  So I, um, this is actually, I'm very grateful for this to be the third company that I'm actually running. I've had kind of a different path because I started my BA at 15 and started working full-time at 16. And, um, I managed a company at 21 because somebody decided to basically place a bet on me, which I made every possible mistake, but it was an amazing experience. So, um, yeah.
• 4:40
  And I got exposed to the beauty world by working on a project with one of the former CEOs of one of the beauty giants. And I fell in love with the industry. And this was the first time that I actually discovered that you don't need to be a chemist to start a beauty brand. This always seemed to me as something that you need to be a term, you need to be a chemist, you need to be have some kind of background in the industry. And suddenly I realized that it doesn't really work this way. And it's
• 5:06
  that you can actually create brands in a very different way, in a very different perspective. My passion was always about very emotionally driven purchase behaviors and always about really something that is very, very, very focused on creating the emotional connection with the consumer. And that, you know, there's a very different feeling when you buy something that is more of a necessity.
• 5:29
  rather than something that you love, something that you want to look at in your bathroom or that you want to look at in your closet. And I was always fascinated by this emotional kind of connection to consumers. So I wanted to create a brand that is all about that. So spend time researching and just spend a very long time trying to figure out what is still missing and what is still
• 5:51
  in this industry hasn't been invented because this was back then, this was 2018. There were 500 new brands coming into the market every year. And the industry was so saturated of millennial brands that it felt like there's no room for any innovation and any new development. And then I started looking into the teen category based on a conversation that I've had with actually a teen. And I was shocked.
• 6:17
  Because it seems like the whole explosion of millennial brands didn't affect them whatsoever. And that they were still using the same Neutrogena that I used. And then when I started digging into this more, I was just very shocked about the fact that there was nothing available for them. Nothing exciting, nothing that they loved and nothing that actually worked for them. They were all still using Proactiv and
• 6:42
  So felt like this is a beautiful opportunity to create something that is going to be better for them, that is going to be right for them, that they're going to be excited by and that they'll actually want to use. Because I think as a teen, we all know that feeling of not wanting to wash your face and not wanting to remove your makeup. I also personally have a five-year-old. So I see this as like a really great way to kind of give younger people something that is better and healthier and that they'll be excited about.
• 7:09
  Totally. Gosh, how exciting. I know that you launched technically last year, October, November-ish, and you were in development for like a year and a half before that. When I see your brand now, I position it next to the likes of brands like Glossier and Starface that are kind of bold. They look great on a shelf. They are that Gen Z kind of vibe.
• 7:36
  And I get the vibe that you didn't start small. And I'm going out on a limb here to say I get the vibe that you weren't starting with a bootstrap kind of mindset. Are you able to share kind of what your approach was going into building the business in terms of finance, capital, but also in terms of your vision for the brand and what you wanted it to become? And follow on question for that. Is that comparable to where you are now?
• 8:06
  So I think we've been working on the brand for more than two years before we launched. And it's been a super, super extensive process. And I think, you know, you mentioned some beautiful and amazing brands that I think I'm very excited and proud to be mentioned alongside them. But I think we see our goal as something different. We want to be that brand you pick up instead of the Neutrogena, instead of that CeraVe, instead of that
• 8:31
  clean and clear. You know, we all rubbed pure alcohol on our skin with the thoughtful approach of clean and clear. So we really wanted to create a brand that is going to be changing what teens are currently using rather than adding something on top of it and adding something that there'll be fun for them.
• 8:52
  I meant aesthetics wise. Yeah. Just to clarify. No, no. All good. I just wanted to like mention it. So we got into this in a very different way because we started everything with very extensive research. So we started with conducting focus groups with 200 teens. Then we did like full quantitative research with 900 teens. And then we created a community of 4,600 teens that for teens.
• 9:16
  months and months. And until today, we're talking to them, spending all our time talking to them to really kind of understand what are they using? What excites them? What are they passionate about? How are they different from millennials like me? And how can we create something that they would actually love? So everything we've done was rooted in tons of research. And obviously, research costs money. We've had to fundraise and
• 9:40
  But I'm a huge, huge, huge believer, despite that, into how fundraising is not a milestone, but it's more of a tool to achieve certain milestone. It's a tool to launch a brand. It's a tool to achieve certain revenue thresholds. It's a tool to get into a retailer. So this is why we're not big believers like we've raised X amount of money from this and this investors.
• 10:03
  but rather more of like, how do we get to, you know, nine figure revenues? How do we get to be in 10,000 doors? How do we get to be available internationally and focus on these milestones? We have some amazing partners and amazing investors, and we've been very, very fortunate to be
• 10:21
  able to have like some initial support on the, like to have some initial funding, but then to focus in a really great way on how to create the business to be profitable and focus. I wouldn't call it bootstrapping because obviously we fundraised, but how do we scale this with as little fundraising as possible and as little funding as possible rather than constantly get into the fundraising game?
• 10:46
  I think it's really interesting what you say about not publishing kind of the details of your fundraise. And that's something I wasn't able to find online at all. And it's funny because when you see people on the pages of Forbes or the pages of
• 11:02
  tech crunch. It's really celebrating that enormous raise, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars versus like what you said, the milestones. And then there are these brands who are reaching those milestones, but also they've just been bootstrapped, but they're not being celebrated in that kind of like way. It's like the new hustle culture is like this new, you've got a fundraise to get on the pages. Yeah.
• 11:27
  or get this like stamp or something. So I think that's really interesting that you're taking that path. And I love that.
• 11:33
  I'm trying to understand like when you thought about the vision and I guess I don't know how you want to like, which way you want to take this, but like when you thought about the vision, were you thinking like, Hey, I'm going to give away a lot of equity straight up to fundraise a lot of money and basically grow this huge ginormous business or like, what was the kind of thought process for you? I guess what I'm trying to say is when I think about myself and my own journey, when I'm,
• 12:01
  thinking about money for raising the non-alc brand. There's so many different camps and thoughts of advice out there. And of course, you've just got to like find what's comfortable for you and like which direction you should go. But I speak to people, for example, I spoke to someone in M&A recently and his advice was like, hey, if the US is your market that you want to focus on in the beginning, raise a lot of money.
• 12:22
  like give away a lot of equity, just go out there, take market share, like spend the money to get in those doors that you want, spend the money to acquire customers, do all that stuff. And then of course there's the flip side of people being like, wait as long as you can bootstrap for as long as you can, and then go and raise money or see if you can not. And it's hard to know which direction to take. So I'm always interested to see what other people's thoughts are. So I think,
• 12:50
  The way I look at it is, first of all, every business is different and every path is different and every founder is different. For us, it was, we had to manufacture the products. It was, we had like minimum for manufacturing. We had to conduct a lot of market research and we wanted to create a really thoughtful brand. So this had to come with fundraising. I wouldn't say serious. I would say very minimal fundraising for a company in our stage, but we had to get external funding.
• 13:17
  I also invested a lot of my own personal capital, but still like it was very minimal compared to, I would say, other brands in our stage. I think it really depends of like what's the industry, what's the product, what's the milestone that you're looking to achieve.
• 13:34
  every path is very, very different. And every path has so many different factors, right? Like for example, if it's, what's your margins? What's the retailers that you can get to? Some of them have slotting fees. Some of them have, you know, additional things and additional ties attached to it. What is your ability to manufacture? What are the payment terms that you can get with your suppliers?
• 13:57
  It is so many different combinations. What is the marketing strategy? Is it the type of industry that requires extensive marketing? Or I think every industry requires extensive marketing, but I think some industries requires a lot more. I like to call it like how many times does a user needs to see you before they actually make a purchase? So some industries requires like nine, 12 times.
• 14:20
  before they make that decision, like skincare, just because skincare is a very emotional thing. And you're very nervous, especially when you're younger, to try something on your skin. And some industries requires less of convincing, right? Like, I'm more likely to try some new cool water than I am likely to try a new skincare product on my skin. So I think it really depends. And I think a big thing, and that's something that
• 14:46
  was challenging to me at first, because this is my second startup. And I think in the first one, I was kind of trying to find what is right for me based on looking at other founders and like what other people have done. And, you know, I have friends that raised $600 million and I have friends who completely bootstrapped the business to be generating 200 million in revenues. So it was really, really challenging to see and try to think, okay, what's right for me and what's
• 15:12
  And it's so many different factors. You know, margins is a huge part of it. Because some industries truly allow you to bootstrap beautiful business just because of the crazy margins. And because of the fact that it doesn't require a lot of manufacturing. A lot of services businesses are like that. So I think it really depends. For me, you know, I never looked at funding. And I never looked at fundraising as something, you know, when I saw all these headlines like,
• 15:41
  X company just raised $200 million. For me, that seems like this is actually, you know, and it's very, as somebody who, you know, wants to be successful in the beginning, you're like, they're so successful. And this is amazing. But then I started looking at it as like, wow, that's a lot of capital to take from investors. And you actually need to justify that valuation now. And you actually need to like.
• 16:08
  to get your company to be acquired or IPO'd in a price. So obviously funding makes your chances better and money makes your chances better to achieve these milestones. But this could also end up in like this huge, huge, just very bad situation. Because if you took 200 million from investors and you're not finding the end path to actually justify that, that's a very, very, very challenging situation.
• 16:35
  Totally, totally. And we're seeing that kind of thing, like businesses who have taken on, you know, huge amounts of funding unraveling. And yeah, you can see that sometimes there can be a lot of stress on the founders. I 100% agree. But I think it's more than that. I think there's like culture in today's world.
• 16:53
  Because there's a lot of money out there, because there's this huge inflation. There's this culture of like, let's pay $2 for a user that is going to give us $1. And it's something that, again, I think at a certain point of time of your brand, it could make sense. But generally speaking, I think a lot of us forget the fact that eventually the goal of a business is to be profitable.
• 17:19
  And I think so many brands are so focused in this fundraising game and into getting into certain milestones based on investing so much money in marketing that they forget the fact that the true goal is actually to show that this business can be profitable. It could take three years, it could take five years, it could take 10 years, but that's the end goal. And I think this is why it's like,
• 17:41
  Sometimes it's so easy to get caught up with these big headlines of like X raised Y and forget that it's not about that. That's not a true milestone. I totally agree. I totally agree with you. I think about this kind of thing all the time.
• 17:56
  And it can make you feel really like, oh, they've hit that. It feels like a goal instead of like it being just part of the journey to get to the goals. And it can make you feel very like, oh, like, of course, you know, it looks all easy. And I know what you mean.
• 18:12
  I want to switch topics to talk about your marketing. I'm super interested to hear kind of what you were doing in the lead up to launch and then what you've been doing kind of since. Obviously, you guys have this incredible presence on TikTok. You work with a lot of influencers that I could see, both some who are really notable, smaller, that kind of thing. So I'd love to hear your strategy and your approach and what's working. Amazing. So,
• 18:41
  The way we look at it is, again, like 2021 is such a much more challenging landscape than 2016 was and 2015 was. So it's a very, very different ballgame. And there are so many new brands coming into the market. And there are so many competition on the same number of users. It's not like, you know, suddenly the world has expanded, but there are.
• 19:04
  so many new brands coming into the market every day that just the competition has become so challenging. And because of that, the way we look at our marketing strategy is a very, very multi-layered approach. We have what everyone is doing, which is paid ads, which we're constantly in the world of iOS 14.5. There's so much we're trying to do there and so much we're trying to learn there.
• 19:29
  And then we have our other areas, which are more brand building focused, which is more of the celebrities and the influencers and more around brand ambassadors. And we have the celebrities we work with, which are the face of the brand. And then we have the micro influencers, which we have.
• 19:45
  a roster of over a thousand influencers, which we work with on a regular basis. And then we have our brand ambassadors, which we have 2000 brand ambassadors, which are constantly where we have a community with them. We constantly are in touch with them. They try all our new products and they're truly a part of the team that is shaping bubble.
• 20:04
  So we constantly work in these kind of different areas to get the brand out there and show different things and different initiatives we're doing. If it's back to school, if it's new products we're going to be releasing, if it's our Walmart launch, and it's the constant between these different areas. Again, the constant thought around, it takes a user nine to 12 times to actually make the decision to purchase a product.
• 20:30
  So you need to show them different angles of the brand. You need to show different perspectives. The celebrities we work with are truly amazing and they've been a part of the brand way before we've launched. We are very proud to be working with them and they're just amazing group of people that have been a true part of shaping the brand. And they're the face of the brand. So, you know, they are doing so much and actually like from getting the brand out there to helping us create new products and try all our new products and
• 20:59
  just be a part of kind of our thinking process and our strategy.
• 21:03
  Yeah, I saw you were working with Hiram for your like skincare quiz and skincare education. And when it falls to those kind of celebrity relationships that you have, and obviously you're doing things at such scale to have 2000 ambassadors to have, you know, 5000 people in a focus group to have a group of celebrities, not even just one that's just so incredible.
• 21:29
  When it comes to those top tier people that you work with, tactically speaking, how do you approach a partnership like that? And like from even just identifying to then actually reaching out, like what is it that attracts them to you and to say like, yeah, let's work together. Like I agree to put my name next to yours. So it's something that is actually important.
• 21:52
  has been a really interesting process and a pretty big learning curve. There's a lot of areas around it and there's run, there's always agents and managers involved and there's always, and it's a lot around, you know, creating relationships and very different. But I would say that the biggest thing for us was the fact that we created a community and we constantly listened to consumers because the moment we started listening to consumers, we started identifying people that were on the rise and,
• 22:21
  And we started identifying people when they were right before they started like peaking. So like right before they started becoming these huge names, we all know. So like, for example, the Outer Banks stars. So we had in our community a Netflix room and we saw every teen out there talking about Outer Banks in the first kind of week that the show came out.
• 22:44
  And the moment we started seeing that happening, we were like, OK, we have to talk to these people because this is going to be the next Stranger Things, the next Riverdale. Like this is going to be insane. And then we started building relationships with the agents and the managers and with the talents, which.
• 22:57
  I would say like the talents that we work with in Outer Banks have been such an amazing part of the brand. And I personally love them so much. But we've been talking to them from literally the first week that the show came out on Netflix when no adult knew that this show even existed. So this was a very, you know, this was kind of the process of like, how do we find these up and coming names?
• 23:19
  that are going to be right for the brand that are going to be right for what we want to create, but not in that moment in time that it's because certain moment in time is just impossible to get these relationships. Yeah. So for us, it was everything we've ever done was always about how do we listen to consumers because they know best. And that helps us kind of understand the
• 23:48
  When I was pitching to investors in early 2019, I said, we are going to be the first brand on TikTok. And then obviously the pandemic happened. Everybody went on TikTok and it was eight months before we launched. So this was impossible. But we didn't like see it coming because we were so smart. It's just because we saw teams using it. And then we figured, OK, we need to be there.
• 24:13
  My follow-up question to this is I feel like everyone says build community. That's like a known thing, right? Build community, build community, build community. But how did you actually build these focus groups of 4,000 people into a room or a Facebook group or a Geneva home or whatever? Like, how did you find these teens and get them excited about what you were doing? Like, what does that look like?
• 24:41
  So we actually did like an Instagram ad, which was very simple, very straightforward, like saying, do you want to be a part of a skincare launch? And then a lot of teams just joined. And that process was amazing because it managed for us to scale very quickly in terms of building our brand ambassador program and building kind of a relationship in our market research and understanding our consumers. But it also has challenges because the Internet is filled with trolls.
• 25:08
  So we had a lot of challenging moments in the community because of that before we launched. But it was all kind of a part of the process. And we've learned a ton from it. But this was kind of our way. And we've done it nine months before we launched. So it was for us a way to really kind of understand our consumers, but also to give them something better during quarantine and be able to support them. And we gave them like free access to dermatologists or dermatologists in the team. And we gave them.
• 25:35
  the ability to talk to our product developer to learn more about their skincare products and just, you know, get to talk to each other and just have something to be a part of when it was so lonely in quarantine. So we, this was such a, an amazing part of kind of our journey.
• 25:50
  I love that so much. I feel really like specifically inspired by that as an idea of like a clear blueprint of how to do it. And I have a million ideas in my head racing. That's really, really cool. Thank you for sharing that. When you say there was challenges that come with that and trolls, what do you mean specifically? What was the challenge from that? It's just think of all the terrible things you went through in high school.
• 26:17
  and all the challenges you went through in high school, put a group of a few thousand teens in one chat room,
• 26:23
  and just let your imagination work, basically. Got it. One further follow-up question while we're on this. What tech did you use for the community? Geneva. You used Geneva? How great is Geneva? Yeah, which was actually made me excited to hear that you said, was it a Geneva home? Because we were, I think, the first group on Geneva. We were there when it was like pre-pre-beta modes.
• 26:50
  So I'm like excited that now people are like doing it. That's so cool. It's an amazing platform. We have a private network for female startup club entrepreneurs and we are housed on Geneva. Thanks to one of my listeners telling me about it because I'd never heard about it. And I love it. It's so great. And I love the team too. They're really nice people. Agreed.
• 27:11
  What do you think your superpower is? You've done a lot. You're young. Your brand is amazing. It looks cool. It's doing cool stuff for the world. What's your superpower? I think superpower is a big word. I think it's, it's, and I think it's also like, it cannot be again in today's environment, it cannot be one thing, but I would say like the
• 27:42
  and that I would just love more brands to do is by listening to consumers. So when I launched my last startup, I came into this like, and it ended well overall, but it was like the whole process of like, I think I know best. I have this problem. I'm going to solve this. This is what, um, this is what I'm going to do to fix this.
• 28:04
  and just created this entire product based on a vision without truly listening and understanding if other people had that problem. And with Bubble, the approach was completely different. It was like, we know nothing, let's listen to our consumers to truly understand what they want, what they're looking for, what they're excited by, what they hate. Why are they using certain products? Who buys their products? How do they choose products?
• 28:31
  And that was what changed everything for us, even with the decision. So we just launched in nearly 4,000 Walmarts a few weeks ago. Thank you. Which we were super excited about. It was an amazing journey. So it was like an amazing process to work with this incredible company. But the choice of Walmart wasn't an obvious choice because being in New York City, you know, you don't even have a Walmart. So you have a very, very different kind of perspective of like,
• 28:59
  where to put the brand out there. And then when we listened to consumers, we saw that 41% of them are once to twice a month in Walmart. And then we figured, okay,
• 29:10
  This is definitely, definitely the right place for us to be and to create that accessibility and to create the product that we wanted to be out there and we wanted to be available for everyone. And we realized that a lot of teens don't have a credit card, so they need to pay in cash. So this is why Walmart is a perfect choice and they don't have a car and they need to get their parents to drive it. Like Walmart has the best accessibility from a retailer perspective. No other retailer has this kind of accessibility.
• 29:38
  So this was like the main kind of reason why I think everything we've done was so rooted in research. Gosh, I love that. That is so cool and so interesting to hear it coming truly from that perspective. Incredible. Thank you. What is your key piece of advice for entrepreneurs who happen to be women? I think it's because women...
• 30:07
  First of all, there's the imposter syndrome that I think we're all experiencing. But I think in general, we tend to criticize ourselves so much more than men. And we tend to feel like if we failed, or if something happened, that it defines us. And that is what will dictate the rest of our journey. And that will dictate everything we will ever do. And I think that's the main reason why it's
• 30:35
  It's such a different, like from an emotional perspective to be a female entrepreneur, it's such a different perspective to be like a male entrepreneur. Because a lot of other female entrepreneurs tend to forget the fact that sometimes failure is a part of the journey and that these little situations are not necessarily defining us. And they're not going to define our journey. And the best thing that I would say I've learned is the fact that
• 31:03
  We all have these things. We all have these moments of, you know, if it's with an employee or with an investor or with anyone in our life that something happened that was challenging for us or hurt at us or made us think a certain thing about ourselves.
• 31:23
  And in that moment in time, or for the next couple of weeks after that, we will obsess over it and we will constantly think about it. And this will be, we'll feel like these big things are, will define everything we ever do. And I think the biggest thing to learn is perspective. First of all, that failure doesn't define you. That situation doesn't necessarily reflect on you. And even if it does, just learn from it and move on.
• 31:50
  And remember that these moments and these things that you're obsessing about in the bigger picture are not really relevant. These are things that we will, you know, looking back a year from today, two years from today, five years from today, we will completely forget about them. Like the things that I was obsessing over two years ago, I don't even remember today. So it is so important to not let yourself get caught up with these small things.
• 32:18
  And let yourself think that they define you because they don't matter. They truly, truly don't matter. So just understand that perseverance and just letting sometimes things go and not kind of overthinking them is the best way to deal with them. I love that. And it reminds me of something that my husband tells me because I tend to overthink and I tend to feel bad about stuff. And he says, yeah.
• 32:44
  is it going to matter tomorrow? Is it going to matter next week? Is it going to matter next year? Is it going to matter in 10 years? And if it matters tomorrow, you know, whatever, like dwell on it for a second, but like, who cares if it matters tomorrow, as long as it's not going to matter in a year, as long as it's not going to matter in 10 years, it doesn't matter. It truly doesn't matter. So I always try and keep that perspective. Now, I love that. Thank you. I love that too from him.
• 33:10
  At the end of every episode, I ask a series of six quick questions that some of which we might have covered, some of which we might not have, but I ask them all the same. So question number one is, what's your why? Why are you doing what you're doing? To create a difference, to give people something better, something that they deserve, to help them learn something about themselves, help them kind of.
• 33:40
  Even if it's about, I don't know if you've ever tried our products, but we have this huge manifesto in every box that we ship, which is about your skin doesn't define you. Just kind of getting people to understand that these things are not necessarily what will define you or everything for the rest of your life. So how do you make that change? And how do we, it sounds so corny to say this, but just make the world a better place.
• 34:07
  I hate saying that, but it's true. I think it's most entrepreneurs that's their why. Totally. Yeah, I love that. Question number two is what do you think has been the number one marketing moment that made the business pop? So I think like it's a very interesting question. Um, I think it's like the moment we understood that there's a lot of interest was a week before we launched. We did the bubble gum picture.
• 34:36
  which I don't know if you saw this, but basically the nine people that are the face of the brand posted in the exact same moment in time that they're all like some of the biggest Gen Z kind of creators and influencers posted the same kind of huge bubblegum picture and in the exact same moment. And then everybody started asking why my feed is flooded with bubblegum pictures. What is this? And it was the exact same picture, all of them.
• 35:04
  And obviously they tagged bubble and they said something big is happening in one week. And that was kind of how the hype started building and people started getting us like, what is happening? What is coming? And that was like a beautiful kind of moment in time. But again, like I feel like it's all pieces of so many different. It's just a huge puzzle. Like there's so many little things that happens along the way. So it's always a combination. That is so cool.
• 35:32
  Oh my gosh. I love that. Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What are you reading or listening to or subscribing to that other founders could benefit from knowing about? Podcasts. I think the very obvious one, How I Built This by Guy Raz, and I read books. I don't read as much as I would love to. I used to read all the time.
• 35:58
  But now with the kid and a startup, it's just like impossible. But just love reading, love learning and just love listening to other people's stories. Do you have a number one business book recommendation? Not anything that I would say that is not like very well known. The Gnome. Yeah, got it.
• 36:21
  Question number four is how do you win the day? What do you do in terms of habits or rituals that makes you feel happy and successful and productive? It's going to sound so sad.
• 36:33
  clean my emails until 1am every day. And then like to get my team is constantly making fun of me because if I hit like, I get like 300 emails a day. So if I finished a day with like 26 emails, this is like this huge achievement. So everybody knows if I'm like, I managed to clean my mailbox in the team. But there's not like a ritual or anything. It's just like, I feel like moms that are entrepreneurs, especially for younger kids,
• 37:03
  are kind of constantly trying to get by of like between school drop and like between like breakfast and between of like pickup and like putting kids to bed and then getting back to the laptop. So it's a constant struggle. And I wish I would just say like I meditate every morning and I do breathing exercises. I try to do that. It happens maybe once a month.
• 37:26
  I mean, parent entrepreneurs deserve a medal. I definitely think that. That's amazing. Superwoman. Question number five is, if you were given $1,000 of no-strings-attached grant money, where would you spend it in the business? And I know that $1,000 isn't a lot of money, but it's more to point out where's your most important spend of a dollar. Market research, for sure. A platform called Perksy that allows you to just...
• 37:54
  conduct market research in an amazing way and independent market research, because our community is amazing for qualitative feedback and understanding the landscape.
• 38:04
  But when we want to understand things that are tied to us and like brand awareness and things like that, you have to do an independent research. And it's a beautiful, amazing platform to do so. We probably conduct the research there every two, three months easily. Wow, that's so cool. I've never heard of that. I'm super excited to check it out. Thank you so much. I'm going to link it in the show notes for anyone who wants to check that out too. And last question, question number six is how do you deal with failure? What's your mindset and approach when things don't go to plan?
• 38:32
  So I used to, as I mentioned before, like it used to be so hard for me and I used to obsess over it and I used to like overthink it and I used to think it defines me and just, I used to handle, like I used to handle failure very bad.
• 38:47
  And somebody who I'm very close to is like one of the most successful CEOs I know told me, you have to start understanding the failure is also an option. And I think it was one of those moments that changed kind of my perspective. Now, I just like kind of do the whole, you know, and get back to business. It's just changing that mindset. And I know it's very easier said than done.
• 39:15
  I'm changing that mindset of thinking like this failure is everything and just understanding, okay, that's a little part of the journey. It happened now. It's very annoying. It's very frustrating. I'm probably going to dwell on it for like a minute. Move on. Like, here's the next thing. Totally. I love that.
• 39:33
  Shai, thank you so much for taking the time to be on Female Startup Club today, sharing your learnings, sharing your brand and everything that you're doing. I'm so excited for you and I can't wait to see what comes next. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. It was so great speaking to you. Really appreciate it. Thank you.
• 39:55
  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.
• 40:19
  And 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.
• 40:42
  As 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.
• 40:59
  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.
• 41:23
  And 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.
• 41:46
  As 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.