Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / How this founder used her first failed business to thrive the second time around, with Provenance Meals Founder Caroll Lee

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How this founder used her first failed business to thrive the second time around, with Provenance Meals Founder Caroll Lee · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Carol Lee for Female Startup Club.
• 0:12
  Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. I'm your host, Doona Roisin, and on today's episode, I'm joined by Carol Lee, founder of Provenance Meals. Provenance Meals is a convenient solution for health-conscious people that don't have the time or energy to cook, designed by wellness experts and health-supportive chefs.
• 0:33
  In this episode, we cover her journey to launching a second business and what she learned through the first time around, the power of starting small and building slowly, and advice for founders who are just getting started. And remember to stick around until the end to get her ultimate Get Smarter recommendations. This is Carol for Female Startup Club. Carol, hi, welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Hi, thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure to be here.
• 1:02
  I am super excited to dive in and learn all about your business, but do you want to start by first introducing yourself and what your business actually is? Sure. My name is Carol Lee, and I am the founder and CEO of Providence Meals. Providence is an organic business,
• 1:20
  premium prepared meal delivery service. We're really focused, obsessed on health, on feeding our customers healthy food. And to us, that means organic, clean, well-sourced ingredients, real food, nothing processed, nothing artificial.
• 1:36
  And we also take out all of the inflammatory triggers that are out there that might be affecting our health without us really being aware of it. So to us, that's gluten, that's dairy, that's refined sugars. So it's just clean, whole food. We make breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks for every day of the week. And then we also have prepared cleanse programs. So.
• 1:55
  If you want to reset with a three-day feel-good fix or a seven-day Providence detox, we'll give you everything that you need to eat and drink for those seven days except for water and give you instructions on sort of how to follow this plan to reset your health within that short amount of time. Sort of the kickstart to a better eating routine. And we find that people really need that little bit of guidance and help and instruction to reset their health.
• 2:25
  Gosh, it all looks so delicious. I wish that you were also in London. I would be signing up immediately. I want to go back to life before Providence Meals and find out what you're up to and how the light bulb moment came about where you decided to start the business.
• 2:42
  Sure. I was working in San Francisco with a lot. It was the early days of the internet. And I was working with a lot of different startups and brand agencies, design, web launches. It was a really exciting time to be in San Francisco. And that evolved into me working eventually in-house at Gucci Group. I was doing a lot of luxury branding at the time. So Gucci Group, that included like Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent,
• 3:12
  And it was really exciting work. And there were some really great work perks. But ultimately, I was feeling unsatisfied with
• 3:20
  selling really expensive Italian shoes on the internet. And really, my passion has always been food. I've just always been obsessed with eating well, delicious food, reading about restaurants, reading about new restaurant openings, which is really a foodie at heart. And certainly living in California really fueled that with all of its fresh, clean, organic ingredients all year round. But I think if I really dig into what then launched Provenance,
• 3:48
  My mother passed away at the age of 66 of brain cancer. And that was a huge moment in my life where I just sort of didn't know what my next steps were. I was sort of lost in grief and it was a really challenging time. And then the following year, my husband's father died of heart disease. Then the following year, I had my first baby. And so I think the culmination of these three events made me really think a lot about our health
• 4:17
  preventative health, like what could have prevented this? What, you know, what are we putting in our bodies every day that can help or hurt our health? And then being pregnant, really understanding that everything I was eating was like forming the foundation of cells that was going to create human life. Like it was all sort of a bit of a mess in my brain. But when I look back, I think about how important it was to me to sort of
• 4:44
  think about what can we do, you know, as human beings to improve our quality of life and to prevent suffering and provide the foundation of healthy cells and cellular structure and biology. And that led me to nutrition. So I ended up leaving the e-commerce and the branding world and going to school for nutrition. And when I graduated, I started a health coaching practice where I was working with women a lot like myself who are just kind of at that point in their life
• 5:14
  The old tricks of getting rid of a few pounds wasn't working anymore. And we're looking for a little bit of guidance. And, you know, I give them great advice. It was like, go to the farmer's market, eat only grass fed beef and wild salmon. And these are busy working women in New York City. And they basically were like, that's great advice, Carol. But can you just help me get the food? Can you just give me the food to eat? Yeah.
• 5:36
  so that I can feel better. Because, you know, I've started every client with a simple elimination diet. And the results when people cut out things like gluten and dairy and sugar, and maybe even animal protein, in some cases, were pretty astounding for a lot of people, these symptoms that they had, that they just sort of accepted as like, okay, this is life, you know, like for men, like all the snoring every night, or just,
• 5:58
  you know, acne at the age of 30, like never had it as a teenager, but suddenly hormones were having an effect on them later in life. Just joint pain, all of these things would like miraculously clear up and conventional Western medicine looks at the symptom and they treat the symptom. But I think if you look at more traditional medicine and ancestral ways and how we used to eat as humans not that long ago before processed industrial food came about, you know, this is just
• 6:28
  clean, clean, real food, it doesn't lead to all of these health symptoms, you know. So I was just trying to get back to the source. So I started feeding my clients. I started working with a chef that I had worked with before in the past in another business. And we just started dropping off meals. I just started designing menus that were really nutrient dense and packed with superfoods and very balanced foods.
• 6:52
  And then that really just took off. That was the part of the business that people wanted more and more and more of. So eventually I stopped the health coaching and focused full time on growing Providence Meals.
• 7:03
  Wow. Amazing. Goodness gracious me. I feel like all the things that you described in your clients is the story of my life. I suffer from all of those kinds of things. When you were in that process of, I guess, validating the idea by, you know, having your clients interested in you providing the food, how long did that go on for? And how did you really know that like, that was what you were going to pivot the business into?
• 7:30
  Yeah, I started health coaching. I graduated from nutrition school in 2011. I started health coaching right away. And by the spring of 2012, I was like, I realized, oh, this is this is a problem that we're solving. This is a real problem that people have busy. And I was one of them, busy working professionals in New York City, tiny apartments, no kitchens, you know, maybe small children at home, maybe not. But either way, like,
• 7:57
  too educated to know that you can be outsourcing your meals to restaurants and take out, you know, or frozen foods and in the grocery store. But not enough time or energy or desire, or maybe even knowledge to cook healthy meals for themselves. Right. Like I always say, oh, it's, it's pretty straightforward. It's pretty simple. You just eat
• 8:17
  a lot of vegetables, cut out the processed foods. But when you come down, when it comes down to it, like actually doing that for yourself can be quite challenging. So it was a pretty quick transition, I'd say, to to starting this as a business and understanding that there was a big problem out there that I thought I could solve and
• 8:38
  And I could really help people and hopefully minimize any kind of suffering. And to me, it has always been about this preventative medicine. It's so much easier to prevent disease than to deal with it once you have it. Once you have a chronic disease, like to reverse it or a cancer diagnosis, to reverse that in your body is so difficult. But to prevent it from happening in the first place is not as difficult. Right. It's really about lifestyle. So in 2012, I really dedicated myself to growing the business as much as possible.
• 9:08
  And, you know, in the early days, I didn't really know what I was doing. I didn't really have a lot of knowledge around running a food business, marketing, finances, accounting, all of it. You know, but that that is part of the entrepreneurial journey. You really you learn as you go. You make mistakes and you pick yourself back up and you keep going. And every day you become a little bit wiser, a little bit stronger, a little bit more resilient.
• 9:34
  Yeah, totally. Goodness. I'm interested to go back still to that time in your life where you've just decided you've stopped doing the coaching and you're starting the meal preparation. What are the first steps? I imagine you need to move into an industrial kitchen and...
• 9:50
  You need to put funding towards towards building this business. What were those early steps like to get the business up and running? Those are really good questions. And again, it was all a little bit of trial and error. But to me, I remember the moment where I was talking to my husband and I had about forty five hundred dollars in profit from the health coaching business.
• 10:10
  And I thought, you know, with that money, if I just invest that $4,500 into the business, into finding a kitchen space, into maybe hiring another cook in the kitchen, getting a MailChimp account, you know, to start sending out newsletters, I thought, I think I can start something. I already had a couple clients at that point. I had about eight clients. They were from my coaching practice.
• 10:35
  So I knew I had some steady income that would come in. And I think this is really important is I really looked at those unit economics. I looked at the math and I thought, how much do I need to charge for these meals for my time, for my cook's time?
• 10:50
  in order to make this a successful business. So I had another food business in the past, which I had briefly mentioned. So when I initially left the agency and branding world, I started a small market in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It was called Get Fresh Table and Market.
• 11:07
  And it was sort of like meal kits. Actually, it was these semi prepared meals that had everything portioned out for you for busy professionals, busy parents, especially in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. They could pick up on their way home for work and they could just do some really simple cooking at home and finish it off. And then we had a lot of like really nice artisanal like made in Brooklyn goods. And this was back in 2006. So it was a little bit early. It was definitely before.
• 11:31
  Organic, local, and seasonal was standard for a restaurant that was promoting itself as healthy or a market. But with that business, I really had said to myself, oh, we'll build it and they will come. So I invested a lot of money into a build-out of a brick-and-mortar store. Obviously, I had to line the shelves with inventory, come up with recipes. I put all of this money and time into it.
• 11:58
  some unfortunate events occurred afterwards where my business partner just failed basically after a few months, she, we were 50 50 and she had moved to New York from Oregon to start it. And I think the combination of being homesick and just the stress of opening a new business was,
• 12:16
  investing all of that money and time and not immediately say there's no instant gratification, right? It's a slow process when you're opening a store, a storefront. She bailed and she basically wanted like all of her money that she had invested back in the space back into her bank account, which was impossible. It was in equipment. It was in rent. It was in security deposits, etc. So that that experience really came.
• 12:41
  It kind of traumatized me, honestly. And so when I thought about starting a business again, going from a consulting coaching practice to another business of providing food to people again, I was really wary. So that's why I focused on that map.
• 12:58
  so much. I didn't want to be in a financial position again where I was just scared. I was scared. How am I going to do this? How am I going to deal with lawyer fees now and buying out a business partner and all of that mess? A few things that I learned was like, okay, I'm not going to open up a brick and mortar location. That's really a huge investment of time, money, space that I wasn't prepared to make.
• 13:22
  I wasn't going to have a business partner. That was another lesson. I was like, I mean, obviously having a co-founder can be so incredible and so important. But for me, based on the experience I had had the first time around, I was like, you know what? I'm just, I like being able to control the decisions and the consequences. Like that will all rest on me. Sometimes that is a big burden to carry, but I felt that that was the safer bet for sure.
• 13:51
  I just worked slowly. And instead of throwing a bunch of money at it with this build it and they will come approach, I really built off
• 14:00
  every step of the way. So first I had eight clients. I asked, instead of investing a lot in marketing, I just asked those eight clients to help me spread the word. And I started a little monthly newsletter where my list gradually grew through word of mouth. I wasn't jumping into thousands of dollars of online advertising. I did a lot of research. You know, there weren't a lot of businesses that were doing
• 14:22
  a service like this at the time. I feel like I'm a little bit early in that world too. But in a sense, it's great because I've gotten years of experience now. It was 2013 where I actually became like an LLC and really launched the business. So I would say that year between 2012 and 2013, when it became quote unquote official is where I was just
• 14:45
  soaking up all the information I could. I was reading every entrepreneurial book there was. I was looking for other people who were doing similar things and trying to learn from maybe the mistakes that they had made and just really devoting all of my time and energy, but not money towards the business. And I think that really paid off because when you get into a situation where you don't have the funds and you get into that kind of stress fight or flight mode, I think that you
• 15:18
  desperation. So taking the time to learn what I was doing, make sure that the numbers were right. I think was really essential to getting it off the ground on the right foot. Yeah. It sounds like you really built the foundation of the brand in those early days by building slow rather than going super fast and potentially also burning out and that kind of thing, being a solo founder. Yeah.
• 15:45
  I'm wondering at what point it started to feel like things were really gaining traction and it was having that snowball effect of, you know, word of mouth and word of mouth and word of mouth. And you could really see that things were changing. Yeah, I think I...
• 15:59
  I'm kind of consider myself a numbers person. Well, no, you know what? I'm not that I'm good at math or accounting or bookkeeping in any sense of the term. I think I like money though. I think I like watching that. Right? So seeing the money come in, you know, and they're just the bank account number growing was super exciting. I think the turning point was when we had reached a certain level of kind of word of mouth and the numbers were growing organically.
• 16:28
  But then I reached out to some health coaches at Dr. Frank Lipman's office. He's a renowned functional medicine doctor. He's like one of the OG functional medicine doctors out there. He combines Western medicine with Eastern philosophy and acupuncture. He's an acupuncturist as well. Just a really smart guy who a lot of people really turn to as the authority on how to look at
• 16:58
  illness from the root cause instead of the symptoms. So that's the tenets of functional medicine, really going to the root. And I reached out to a couple health coaches in his office. I said, hey, I have this service. Do you think that your patients might benefit from this? And Dr. Lipman tried it. The people in his office tried it. They really liked it. They really had
• 17:19
  the philosophy was the same, right? Eat real food, like take out inflammatory triggers, focus on the gut microbiome. If you can pull these certain levers in your body that can really turn the corner on any health issues that you might be having, that's huge motivation to keep going, to keep eating and living a certain way. So-
• 17:39
  So having his stamp of approval early on, I think we started working with him in 2013. Then we started bringing in some of his supplements and protein powders into our storefront and even did a cleanse program together. That was a huge turning point. He's also the doctor to a lot of celebrities. And we started getting some celebrities as clients who I wasn't savvy enough back then to sort of
• 18:04
  ask like you know with influencers today you ask them to post in exchange for xyz or whatever um I wasn't savvy enough to sort of I think leverage some of the celebrity clients that we had initially and now I have a very intelligent marketing director who is able to help me see where there's really great opportunities at the time I was just really excited that some some big names were starting to eat our food and some of them did just sort of organically post about us and then
• 18:33
  And then the numbers just kept going up and then they just became a lot more structure around it. You know, it really was just me and a couple of cooks for a long time. And then when when that started to go, I started to build the infrastructure of the business as it is today.
• 18:47
  Gosh, how exciting. It sounds like there was obviously a little bit of serendipity there that you're able to get in front of Dr. Frank Lipman and have him on board because I imagine those kind of people are bombarded with different offerings and products and that kind of thing. So for it to actually go to the right person and them to enjoy it and then spread the word is just really incredible. It's so exciting. Yeah, I think that the timing was great just
• 19:17
  Of course, people talk about clean food and clean eating all the time now, but I think back then it was just, you know, it was very different. The idea of doing a detox or a detox still meant a juice cleanse. And so to have, I think, a business that really matched the philosophy of doctors who were looking to get better compliance with their patients, but didn't have tools that they could give them. You know, as a doctor, you can only make recommendations, maybe write a prescription and then
• 19:45
  hope that they follow your guidance. Whereas if you can give them a tool, like here's a delivery service, it will prepare the food that you should be eating and drop it off at your door. You know, there's, there's a lot less excuse to not do a program like that if you know it's going to benefit your health. Totally. Did you also then from that experience, knowing that it worked so well, did you try and replicate that in finding more practices that could recommend your product
• 20:15
  an intentional strategy so much as realizing like, yeah, more, it always comes from a place of service for me. So I always have wanted to grow the business,
• 20:26
  to help as many people as possible and to reach as many people as possible. So I felt like, yeah, working with other wellness practitioners was going to be the fastest way to help the people who needed the help the most. Like if you are already investing in your health by seeing a functional medicine doctor or working with an acupuncturist or a nutritionist,
• 20:46
  then you are more likely to adopt the lifestyle that goes along with it instead of just those appointments with your practitioner. So it just made a lot of sense to me to do that. I think later down the road, again, we formalized it and made it into our wellness partner network. But as we were growing, it just was obvious to me that, like, there's a lot of people out there who are suffering. They don't need to suffer. We can help them feel better.
• 21:15
  So we tried to reach out to them through healthcare practitioners. Incredible. And since then, during that time and over the years, how has your marketing evolved and what is the biggest driver for growth for you now, aside from the wellness partner program? Yeah. Well, the market, so I realized that I needed help with marketing probably around 2015, 2016. I was, yeah, it was a growing business and I really was still doing a lot of,
• 21:43
  by myself. Not the cooking, but it was probably still doing deliveries at that point. I'm not sure. Wow. My husband was enlisted often to jump on his bicycle and ride a bag up to the Upper East Side from Brooklyn. But I realized like, okay, if we're really going to grow this thing, we need to have a more coherent marketing strategy. It was really kismet at that time I met my marketing
• 22:12
  to how to take better food photography with your phone or something like that, that I was attending. And we went around introducing ourselves at the beginning of the session. And a woman said, oh, I'm a freelance consultant, a marketing consultant, and I love working with food companies. And a little light bulb went off and I was like, okay, I have to meet this person afterwards. She ended up working, Liz Mazze is her name. She worked with us for two years as a
• 22:42
  you know what, I don't even really want to work for my other clients. All I want to do is work on provenance. Like that's what brings me joy. And I was like, great. Hallelujah. When can you stop? Exactly. She came on board full time and has grown our marketing department and has just been sort of the linchpin in growing our marketing and the strategies that she's employing
• 23:05
  I think, you know, there's a lot. There's online advertising, obviously, which we've done a little bit of that. There's working with our wellness partner network and having them spread the word, starting to just...
• 23:18
  work with influencers a little bit now on social media. There's all the content and education that we put out, which I think is really important. And I think that draws a lot of people in because they recognize themselves and what we're talking about, something as simple as like,
• 23:37
  Aging, for example, right? Who's not concerned about aging well? You want to live a long time, but you want that quality of life to be high for that long time. So talking about how well we eat affects the aging process or talking about inflammation and what are some of the symptoms of inflammation? Is this you? Could this be the root cause of your problem? I mean, nutrition and food affects so many things. So there's so much content that we can put out there. Sometimes it's a real...
• 24:04
  problem. It's almost maybe one of our biggest marketing challenges is that food can help in so many ways and not just with people's health, but the environment, like how you grow food, the soil that it comes from, like regenerative agriculture. We only work with farmers that are growing organic, you know, no pesticides. There's just so many issues across the board of climate change, like
• 24:29
  subsidies for corn and soy and processed foods and big food, you know, as well as your personal health and development. So addressing all of that, and being in some ways a big part of the solution for that as well. It's a, it's a big nut, you know, but as opposed to just like,
• 24:48
  Acne and skincare product, you know, it would almost be a lot simpler if we just had one specific problem with one specific solution. But in a way, it's so big that I think that's been challenging. But I think Liz has done an amazing job of sort of getting that education out to our clients through our blog, through our social media posts.
• 25:09
  through our email newsletters. And then I think another marketing challenge is that food, the food itself is so special. It's not just healthy food. And I think people have a
• 25:21
  They have a, you know, there's a stigma around healthy food being like just salads or being bland and boring, like you can't salt it or something ridiculous like that. Or, you know, 80s dogma of like low fat or something. You know, I think people just have are still very confused about nutrition and it's so individual.
• 25:39
  So our food is so creative. It's so elevated. We have Michelin star chefs in our kitchen. We have people who have just come from the fine dining world and the menus are amazing. So we have all this messaging around health and how we can help you feel better and look better in your everyday life.
• 26:01
  And we bring in other areas of wellness, like lifestyle, like movement and spirituality. And then on top of it, we've got this incredible like fine dining creative menu. So we just have a lot to say. That's been sort of the challenge is getting that all across to people in the limited time and attention span that you have. There's so many brands.
• 26:21
  So many things pulling your attention away right now. So that communication is just is is key. And I think Liz has done an amazing job, but I think it's still like a big, a big challenge for us to tackle.
• 26:35
  Hmm. Yeah. That's such an interesting challenge as well, because it's obviously so good that you're able to produce so much content, but then the challenge of getting it seen and getting it in the hands of people who need it for a specific reason. Yeah. I totally see that. The target, like targeted audience, right? Like we want to speak to specific people about specific issues. Um, we have so many people that we could talk to about specific things. So I guess finding them and then making sure that they, you know, see us as a great resource, um, is kind of
• 27:04
  our next step. Yeah, totally. I feel like also, you know, when you're speaking, I'm like, yeah, I want all of that information. But the problem is I can't order your your products. But maybe there are like opportunities where I could order like a cookbook from you or something where, you know, I could access that content and be able to implement it into my day to day life from from here.
• 27:28
  Yeah, we just launched nationwide. So we are now available across the entire United States with our three-day Feel Good Fix Cleanse program. So that happened this year, as well as putting some of our individual products online to ship from our wellness shop, like granola and chili oils and delicious pantry staples. So who knows? Maybe international will be next to us. Let's see if we can grow that fast. But I would love to be in London. What an amazing food city.
• 27:58
  Oh my gosh, yes. So many great food opportunities here. What does the future look like for you? What's coming next year? So we did just expand nationwide, but with only this one cleanse program. So what we're experiencing now is people who never were able to try our food before, because we were based in New York, are now trying this three-day program and
• 28:21
  It's a good problem. They're like, great. I'd like to get more. We have a menu that changes every day, every week for our New York clients, right? The ones that we can reach through our local couriers through FedEx. We're not quite at that point where we can put...
• 28:37
  you know, a weekly changing menu into a box and ship it via FedEx and feel secure that it will arrive the way that we intended it to arrive. So that's what we're working on is how can we get that our daily essentials menu is what it's called. How can we get that to people all across the country? So we started out by opening an LA kitchen. So we're about to launch that and that'll come in early 2021. Providence Meals LA. It'll be
• 29:05
  similar in service as our New York company in that you can get this daily menu delivered to your house, you know, two, three times a week. And then with two hubs on either coast, we'll be able to ship more easily to surrounding areas. So whether it is shipping in a box with FedEx, or if it's just using our local logistics teams to kind of
• 29:27
  get further and further out to cover more of the Northeast and the West Coast. And maybe who knows, open a hub in the middle of the countries at some point in the future. But for the year ahead, that's what we're really focused on is expanding on a faster timeline to improve healthy meal options for as many people as possible.
• 29:49
  Gosh, that's so incredible. Congratulations. I'm excited to see everything come to life in LA. That sounds so cool. Thank you.
• 29:58
  I'm actually in LA now. I'm actually moved from Brooklyn to LA this year to help get this operation off the ground. There's a little bit of, I mean, we are, my whole, me and my whole team have always been fast movers. We're always trying to get the next thing done. And I'm just such an optimist at heart that I think, yeah, this is a great idea. Let's do this, you know? And of course we put in the planning and the strategy, but the timeline's always a little too optimistic.
• 30:27
  is what I find. So I'm trying to slow down a little, but at the same time, the strange upside of the pandemic for us, honestly, is that we're able to reach more people who are at home looking for healthy meal options more than ever. So we're just really extremely motivated to improve health, reduce stress for people, and just provide an option. I want people to know that we're an option for them
• 30:56
  as they are, you know, maybe having some stress or fear around their own health or just, or again, that preventative health is so key, you know, like feeding yourself the right way so that you can prevent any illness in future. So the opportunity to reach as many of those people as possible now just feels more, a little bit more pressing. Yeah, absolutely. It's the time.
• 31:20
  Definitely the time. What advice do you have for women who have a big idea and want to launch their own business? Well, I think being flexible is probably key. You need to think fast.
• 31:37
  be fast on your feet and be quick and assertive. Like I think that's, those are good qualities for a business owner. So if you have a really good idea and you feel like, you know how to get it to market, then I just say, be really confident in what that is and getting there. And again, be flexible. Things will change, but the confidence is key. And I think for female founders in particular,
• 32:07
  There's sometimes a little bit of imposter syndrome or self-doubt that can creep in. And I think to start your own business, it's a huge undertaking. Get everything prepared and ready, but be confident and move quickly and assertively towards what you want. And I think also double down on your values, like having your mission statement really clear, your why is so important because when really hard times.
• 32:30
  things come up, it's like knowing what those values are and why you're doing it. That's your North star into what, um, into what do you do next? That's your guiding light and principle. So it's also what makes your business uniquely your own, right? Like,
• 32:44
  nobody can do what you can do. It's just, there's a lot of ideas out there. There's a lot of copycats, but everybody is so unique and, and their why is so unique. So knowing that and not being wishy washy again, being confident, um, I think is really crucial to starting, starting a business. And then I think it's also really important to not, um,
• 33:07
  to maintain balance in your life because as a founder, in many ways, you are the business. And so you have to remember that you have to take care of yourself. And when you are taking care of yourself, you're taking care of your business too. So I think that it's really easy to burn out as a founder. So I would always just say like, know your plan, do it confidently, you know, but, but also take care of yourself in the process.
• 33:33
  Yeah, absolutely. And I really like what you say about knowing what your why is. And it's a really nice segue into the six quick questions part of the episode. And question number one being, what is your why? Yeah, I think my why is definitely to stop watching.
• 33:50
  preventable suffering, honestly. I was just, I've seen firsthand what illness can do to a person, to their loved ones. It doesn't have to be that way. So much of modern disease right now, we call them lifestyle diseases, diseases of civilization, Western diseases. Like these are the names that are given to
• 34:12
  cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, obesity, diabetes, like these things are controllable. There's genetics, sure, they play a part, but the science of epigenetics is finding that it's the lifestyle that we lead, the environment that we're in that can either activate those genes or keep them on the down low, essentially. So choosing health now is
• 34:36
  the bedrock for feeling good, performing better, living a longer, happier life. And with Providence Meals, that's my why. I want to give people these tools to help them reach their fullest potential, to really know what it feels like to be well. I think as we age, we just sort of forget how it feels to have a ton of energy when you're a kid, you know, or...
• 34:59
  to be the weight you want to be without thinking about it all of the time, or to just have like nice skin and just, you know, look your, look your age or even younger. I just want to help people feel that way. And that's then their motivation to do that for others, for themselves and to, and to, and just really like that leads to a better world, right? If everybody's feeling healthy, then I think some of the
• 35:23
  just the tragedy and suffering and drama and even just like bad moods start to go away when you're living, you know, your quote, best life. Totally. Oh my gosh. That's so true, isn't it? Question number two is what do you think has been the number one marketing moment that's made your business pop? Well, our nationwide launch this year really took our business to the next level. So I think, I think I've thought of,
• 35:51
  Providence as a small business, just me doing my thing, you know, for a long time. And even with the celebrities and with Dr. Frank Lipman recommending us,
• 36:01
  I think it was really this year that has been the moment where we finally were able to say to all these people across the country who have been emailing us for years saying like, when are you going to, you know, when are you going to come to Kansas? When are you going to come to Texas? When are you going to be in Illinois? Like, it's so exciting for us to be able to say like, yeah, you can order it online now. You can go onto our website and try our Feel Good Figs, try a cleanse program. Like, that has been amazing.
• 36:28
  the biggest like marketing moment that for us, like marketing our nationwide availability has been huge. That's so cool. Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What are you reading? What do you listen to? What are you subscribing to? So I guess normally I would say, um, like I'm part of a lot of cool networks of female founders and, um, that's,
• 36:52
  gone online. So I still, I still have my network, which is great, but I, I love surrounding myself with smart women who have maybe gotten a little bit further in their business than I'm at right now. I love learning from those women who have been through the trenches themselves. Um, but I, I,
• 37:10
  Love podcasts. I listen to podcasts all the time. I'd say that's probably where I hang out the most to get smarter. The Doctor's Pharmacy by Mark Hyman, Dr. Mark Hyman. The Expanded Podcast with Lacey Phillips, where she works on a lot of just like kind of focusing on your self-worth. Food Trainers is a great one. Fellow nutritionists that I know, Lauren Slayton has a great Food Trainers podcast. And for business, I love the pitch and how I built this on NPR with Guy Raz.
• 37:37
  I just love hearing other founder stories relating their experiences to my own learning something new. And then as far as books, I've been reading so much during the pandemic, which has been another silver lining of the pandemic because I felt like I never had the time to read before. So I've been reading some fiction, but a lot of nonfiction. I've been reading. I just finished Eat a Peach by David Chang, which talks a lot about his upbringing in Northern Virginia as a Korean, as a set of immigrants.
• 38:05
  And I am also Korean and a daughter of immigrants who grew up in Northern Virginia. So that's been really, really great to read, as well as Minor Feelings by Kathy Park Hong, another Asian-American who has her book is amazing. She puts into words a lot of the feelings and emotions that I had growing up Asian and a predominantly white society that I didn't know how to articulate or that I was even allowed to feel.
• 38:35
  my own upbringing and seeing how that has really shaped who I am today. So it's been, yeah, it's been great listening and reading and just having access to so many smart people in a way that I didn't even, I guess, I guess they were always there. But something about the pandemic time has sort of opened up this world to me of just really like learning and also looking inwards.
• 38:59
  Yeah, that's like self-care of doing the things that you want to do, but you haven't necessarily made time for, you know, prior to this year. I totally get that. I've been doing exactly the same. Question number four is how do you win the day? And that's around your AM and PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and productive and successful.
• 39:19
  Yeah, I know, I definitely know the days that I haven't won those mornings where I wake up and somehow find myself on email and slack at like 7am and then not really getting off until 7pm. So being on the West Coast, I feel like I work a much longer day now in many ways. But when I win the day, it's a completely different start. I will wake up, I feel rested because I've gotten to bed.
• 39:45
  early enough the night before gotten a good solid seven and a half, eight hours to maybe 10 minutes of yoga, followed by another 10 minutes of meditation. I have a pandemic puppy. We actually we got him last Christmas. So before the pandemic started, but he's been my buddy throughout all of this, as well as, of course, my husband and kids. So taking him out for a walk early in the morning and getting that fresh air and that sunlight early in the day.
• 40:14
  And then, you know, it is a lot of work being a founder and an entrepreneur. It means being on the laptop quite a bit. But but at the end of the day, if I can create a healthy meal for my family with lots of green vegetables, you know, sit and have that nice family dinner and talk about the things that I want.
• 40:34
  care about with my kids that they don't always share because now they're 12 and 15. So they're, they're starting to be much more into their friends and chatting with mom and dad. But I find that family dinner is sometimes we have some really great conversations around various topics at dinner. And that's, that's definitely winning the day when I feel like I can connect with my kids and husband that way. And then
• 40:57
  Trying to get off the phone at night is a terrible habit of just thinking I'll pick it up and look at one thing or another. And then next thing I've been scrolling on Instagram for half an hour. So putting my phone down and picking up one of those books that I have been devouring lately or listening to a podcast or maybe meditating again or journaling.
• 41:16
  Those are, those are really good days. I feel like I pat myself on the back. Oh, and then I should mention too, kind of, if I don't have like a formal sit down meditation at night, I love my skincare routine lately. So my nighttime skincare routine has turned into like self care, pampering session, meditation all in one. So I've been doing facial gua sha, which is, I don't know if you know what that is. It's like this,
• 41:38
  You basically like rub a stone across your skin. It's very soothing and it kind of breaks up the fascia, like a tight jaw. And then Koreans love the 10-step skincare routine. So I don't do quite 10 steps, but I do enjoy putting the products on, patting them in and just sort of massaging my skin and relaxing. So that's when I can fit that in, that definitely feels like a win as well.
• 42:07
  Yeah, goodness. That sounds like heaven. I'm lucky if I do like a two-step routine for my skincare at nighttime. I need to get back to being better at that. I actually found something that I started doing in the pandemic, you know, before we got on this call, I was, or before we started recording, I was telling you my addiction to my phone is just so serious these days. But something that my husband was like, you have to start doing this because he's been doing it for ages. But
• 42:33
  I, um, I downloaded the Kindle app to my phone. So every time I picked up my phone, instead of looking at social media or something, I was also able to just read for 10 minutes. Or like if I was commuting somewhere, like on a train, I'd just be able to like, you know, look at my phone like I wanted to, but actually enjoy my book. And I found that to be such a helpful, um, you know, moment of pause from social media, but to also enjoy something and you get that fix of still being on your phone. I thought it was, I thought it was very clever and well overdue that I hadn't done that yet.
• 43:02
  Perfect. That's exactly what I did. I actually put the Kindle app on my phone and I put it in the same spot on my phone where I normally had Instagram so that that muscle memory of my thumb just going straight to that location was actually hitting the Kindle app first. Oh my God, I did exactly the same. I took social media off my homepage altogether. At first, I actually deleted my Facebook, but I put my Instagram to the back and then I realized I needed my Facebook as well. So...
• 43:27
  But yes, love that. It's a great tip. Yeah. The addiction is real, though. It's a struggle. It's so real. Oh, my gosh. It's sick, isn't it? Where were we? Question number five. If you only had a thousand dollars left in your business bank account, where would you spend it?
• 43:44
  Oh boy, a thousand? Well, I wonder what happened to bring us to this point. What were the steps that were taken that got me there? Well, first, I definitely take some deep breaths. And then I guess, honestly, I would give it to my employees. I assume that that means that we're not in a good place. There's only a thousand left. I'd give it to my employees and I would sit down. I would figure out like what went wrong.
• 44:12
  and how to fix it. Because I think that's probably a characteristic of many entrepreneurs is like, when you're in the rock bottom, you, you get up and you keep going. So I, you know, whether that would be starting over, or I'm not sure what, but, but certainly, um,
• 44:29
  Certainly, I give it to the people who had gotten to me, helped me get to where I am today, which is all of those wonderful cooks and dishwashers and porters in the kitchen who are just, you know, slaving over a hot stove to make sure that everybody can eat well and the delivery drivers can get into it. It's everybody on time. Like that's that's theirs. That those last dollars are definitely theirs.
• 44:51
  Amazing. And last question, question number six is how do you deal with failure? And that can be around a personal experience that you've had or just your general mindset and approach.
• 45:01
  Yeah, I think that that experience that I mentioned before of opening another business and then going through all this financial drama and legal bullshit, it was, that was probably the biggest failure I'd had up to in my life. And that point, I had really invested all of my time and money and energy into something in it. At the end of the day, I salvaged it. I was able to sell my share of the business to a chef who wanted to open his own restaurant. So it kind of, it kind of worked out, maybe not so much financially at the end, but it
• 45:30
  I felt like I could say I had done my best and walked away from it. And I think, like I mentioned before, I took away so many lessons from that experience that to me now failure, I don't, it's hard, but I don't have as many negative connotations with the word failure anymore. Failure is learning. Failure is how you learn, you know, what not to do next time. So that's how I deal with it. I have a, I reframe it. I reframe it to being education towards future success.
• 46:00
  Totally. Goodness. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today, Carol. I've loved chatting with you and learning about what you're building and what you're creating for people around America. Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure being here talking to you.
• 46:20
  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.
• 46:45
  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.
• 47:07
  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. Thank you.
• 47:24
  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.
• 47:49
  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.
• 48:11
  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.