Latest / Earn Your Leisure / How One Idea Became an $80 Million Female Health Tech Company | Crystal Etienne

Transcript

How One Idea Became an $80 Million Female Health Tech Company | Crystal Etienne · Earn Your Leisure

• 0:44
  Speaker 1: All right, guys, welcome back. U l back home for
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: a little bit. So, yeah, this is this is gonna
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: be a very dope episode. It's always good to talk
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: to the entrepreneurs and people in spaces that we haven't
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: necessarily covered before.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: It's definitely a first for sure.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: For sure. I don't think I've even really heard of
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: this situation before.
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the term femtech is not a term that I've
• 1:07
  Speaker 4: heard before, but I'm glad I'm up on it now
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: because there's the industry that is when we talk about
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: recession proof in industries, definitely one always going to be needed.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: It's going to be needed, sure.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: So Crystal Etontien So, yeah, entrepreneur. So she founded Rugby Love,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: which is a fem tech company that's now valued at
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: eighty million dollars in just six years, and also co
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: founder of Cage, which is a fund that she has
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: with her husband they invest into into companies and has
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: been extremely successful in the in the world of investing
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: in entrepreneurship. So the fem tech phrase is something that
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I actually never even heard of before. Female technology, I
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: assume that's what and it's is it like female hygiene products?
• 1:56
  Speaker 5: Yep.
• 1:56
  Speaker 6: So fem tech is for like women's health, anything that
• 2:00
  Speaker 6: women's health, okay, and like personal needs.
• 2:03
  Speaker 7: A lot of people don't know.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: So like, what are some examples of fem.
• 2:06
  Speaker 7: Tech periods okay, menopause, so hygiene type things, because maternity
• 2:13
  Speaker 7: is with it too, okay. Yeah, so any.
• 2:15
  Speaker 6: Type of technology that is women health related, okay.
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: So it makes the products, makes the technology, makes it
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: a safer.
• 2:25
  Speaker 5: Process for all these the innovation invision.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: But she also received one of the largest funding grounds
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: for a solo black woman entrepreneur. So this is going
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: to be a variety of good conversations that we'll have
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: from you know, the business and investing and also raising
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: money as well.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: So thank you for joining us. Appreciate it.
• 2:44
  Speaker 7: Oh, absolutely, thank you.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: No problem. So all right, so let's get into this.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: So I want to start with the female tech. So
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: you kind of explained it briefly, but what made you
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: want to go into it and what specific do you provide.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: In the female technology industry?
• 3:05
  Speaker 6: Yeah, So the reason why ones go into it because
• 3:09
  Speaker 6: I was struggling with my sanitary pad. It's like for
• 3:13
  Speaker 6: a woman, we get our period like around like when
• 3:16
  Speaker 6: we're like between like nine and eleven twelve years old
• 3:20
  Speaker 6: and then you don't even realize that you had that
• 3:22
  Speaker 6: thing for decades. Like it's just come every month. It
• 3:25
  Speaker 6: is aggravated, it's stressful, and we wear sanitary pads, and
• 3:30
  Speaker 6: sanitary pads they just don't look good.
• 3:32
  Speaker 7: Y'all have the same one with a woman.
• 3:35
  Speaker 6: It'd be sticking out our underwear, the sanitary nilkin.
• 3:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah, like max pad.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Or well not tampar. You're not gonna see hanging out.
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but is different from ba Yeah yeah, but you're
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: not gonna see but you I.
• 3:49
  Speaker 6: Mean, yeah, tampon you don't see. But a Maxi pad
• 3:51
  Speaker 6: with the wings. I thought, yeah, men, y'all don't really
• 3:54
  Speaker 6: pay attention.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: I thought, I thought people just use tampons.
• 3:57
  Speaker 7: No, no, no, no, So.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: The past is one is one or the other.
• 4:02
  Speaker 7: Girls usually saw me, you saw period usually start with.
• 4:04
  Speaker 5: A maxi pad.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: So the pad is like the line that you put
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: that on a line of the panty, right, and then
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: the tampon obviously those inside of the vaginal.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: I was a health teaching.
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: Later, So the tampi goes inside of the vaginal canal usually,
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: so that is usually when people use that.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, you grow into that. But usually when you're.
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: Going to do things like going into water, people tend
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: to use tampons overpass obviously because of the look of
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: it all, but that it's it. But because you said,
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: like this is technology that's invented in the fifties. Yes,
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: and I know why he thought to like, hey, I'm
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: sure women everywhere felt like this is uncomfortable.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: Can we have something different? So like what sparked you
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: to say, let's change it?
• 4:45
  Speaker 7: Yes? So, first of all, the sanitary napkin was really people.
• 4:50
  Speaker 6: Most people don't even know it was actually invented from
• 4:53
  Speaker 6: a black woman, and most people don't even know that.
• 4:56
  Speaker 6: Like it just thoughted back then, like she invented this,
• 5:01
  Speaker 6: Mary Keller, she invented it. Nobody even knew that she
• 5:04
  Speaker 6: invented this sanitary pad. And now you know, like most
• 5:07
  Speaker 6: white people, they just get the credit for it, but
• 5:09
  Speaker 6: they didn't. So fast forward to me, I was just aggravated.
• 5:14
  Speaker 6: My pad was just sticking out. I was watching TV.
• 5:16
  Speaker 6: I was watching Windy Williams on TV, and I was
• 5:20
  Speaker 6: laying on the bed. My husband was at his business.
• 5:22
  Speaker 6: He had trucks and he was at home, and I
• 5:24
  Speaker 6: was just like, this is just like crazy. It just
• 5:26
  Speaker 6: looks nasty, like for the pad to stick out, And
• 5:29
  Speaker 6: obviously men don't even recognize that, like even though it bothers.
• 5:34
  Speaker 7: Us, y'all don't even recognize it.
• 5:35
  Speaker 6: Like you didn't even know what I was really talking
• 5:37
  Speaker 6: about just now, and you've probably seen it's probably been
• 5:39
  Speaker 6: around you fifty times.
• 5:41
  Speaker 7: Most people don't realize it.
• 5:42
  Speaker 6: So I was just aggravated with it, and I was like,
• 5:45
  Speaker 6: I have to do something about this, cause like why
• 5:48
  Speaker 6: after old these years, am I still dealing with this
• 5:50
  Speaker 6: problem in this way? And as a health teacher, you understand,
• 5:53
  Speaker 6: like it's something that every month we wake up, a
• 5:56
  Speaker 6: woman wakes up that gets her period every single month,
• 5:58
  Speaker 6: and we are really at cravated with it. Y'all don't
• 6:01
  Speaker 6: even understand, Like when you walking past people every day,
• 6:04
  Speaker 6: it is a stressful, like, oh.
• 6:06
  Speaker 7: I got my period?
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: Is he just crimp?
• 6:09
  Speaker 7: It's crams. It's the uncomfortableness. It's also the worry, like
• 6:12
  Speaker 7: if I had my period right now at this moment,
• 6:16
  Speaker 7: I'm sitting here wondering, like when I get up off
• 6:21
  Speaker 7: the chair with is the blood gonna be here?
• 6:23
  Speaker 5: Like it's that I had an.
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: Old girls class, and so like they were twelve and
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: thirteen or fourteen, and I'm trying to explain this process
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: to them, and then they in mine is there's anxiety
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: there right because they don't know what's gonna happen when
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: that day comes.
• 6:37
  Speaker 6: And anxiety is serious, like when it comes to and
• 6:39
  Speaker 6: some people don't know how to the majority of women
• 6:41
  Speaker 6: and girls don't know how to deal with that. So
• 6:44
  Speaker 6: that is what made me say like, I'm gonna create something.
• 6:48
  Speaker 6: I don't know what spalked me that day. I was like,
• 6:50
  Speaker 6: you know what, I'm gonna create something like to actually
• 6:54
  Speaker 6: like fix it.
• 6:56
  Speaker 7: And that's how it all started.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: And so what is did you create?
• 7:00
  Speaker 6: So I jumped off my bed and I'm just like,
• 7:02
  Speaker 6: I'm going to figure out something to hold my pad
• 7:05
  Speaker 6: in place so that you can't see it, because that's
• 7:07
  Speaker 6: how it started. That's what was bothering me, like the
• 7:09
  Speaker 6: fact that I could see my pad like out of
• 7:10
  Speaker 6: my underwear, and I was like, it's nasty, like but
• 7:14
  Speaker 6: it's not nasty, but it is nasty and I don't
• 7:16
  Speaker 6: like it. So I just got off. I drew like
• 7:18
  Speaker 6: an underwear. I don't know, I won't even call it
• 7:21
  Speaker 6: an underwear. I drew like a picture with like a
• 7:23
  Speaker 6: hole like so that it would like that I would
• 7:26
  Speaker 6: be able to put my pad in.
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: So my product actually caught it like a cup.
• 7:30
  Speaker 7: Nope, it wasn't a cup.
• 7:31
  Speaker 6: I drew like I wanted to make an underwear that
• 7:33
  Speaker 6: I was going to put the pad in like a slot.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: But like all right, so like when you play football,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: they have what's called a cup where it's.
• 7:40
  Speaker 5: Like oh yes and something like that.
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a cup that is inside the jockstrap, That's
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: what I'm saying.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: So that's what you did, kind of panties and you
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: slide it inside the pand where.
• 7:54
  Speaker 6: I wanted my pad where you don't even know that
• 7:56
  Speaker 6: it's there, like if I'm in the locker room with
• 7:58
  Speaker 6: another woman or whatever, you don't see it at all,
• 8:01
  Speaker 6: just like you don't see tampons. Most people were using
• 8:04
  Speaker 6: tampons so that you don't see it. And for the
• 8:07
  Speaker 6: comfortability of it. A Mexic pat was never comfortable.
• 8:10
  Speaker 7: It's just bulky.
• 8:11
  Speaker 5: It's just big.
• 8:13
  Speaker 6: And I wasn't a tampon where because I had pcos
• 8:16
  Speaker 6: so pos is when vestigated to describe it. Pcos is
• 8:23
  Speaker 6: something that a lot of women suffer from, like not fibroids,
• 8:26
  Speaker 6: but like how most women suffer from fibroids, PCO is
• 8:29
  Speaker 6: another form of a condition.
• 8:32
  Speaker 7: And sometimes you get your period for like three weeks
• 8:35
  Speaker 7: at a time, and I mean heavy three weeks. Sometimes
• 8:38
  Speaker 7: it could go for like two months. If you have
• 8:40
  Speaker 7: PCOS three.
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: Weeks too much straight straight? How is that even possible?
• 8:48
  Speaker 7: With PCOS? That's what happens.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: Does it stand for?
• 8:51
  Speaker 7: I forgot?
• 8:52
  Speaker 6: It's like Polly. I don't remember exactly what it says.
• 8:54
  Speaker 6: It's us the long word.
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  Speaker 3: And that cause is irregular period.
• 9:00
  Speaker 6: Like one day you could have regular, normal periods, like
• 9:02
  Speaker 6: for your whole life. And then one day I realized,
• 9:05
  Speaker 6: like wait a minute, I'm only getting my period maybe
• 9:07
  Speaker 6: like four times a year. But when it was coming,
• 9:10
  Speaker 6: it was coming like for one time, I had it
• 9:12
  Speaker 6: for like a month and a half.
• 9:14
  Speaker 7: Do you they can't really wear a tampon.
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: Because even if if you have a tampon in for
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: a long period of time, that.
• 9:20
  Speaker 5: Could be unstated push out.
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: You can't push out any I mean, if it's in
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: there for too long, it could be risky. Right, there's
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: this risk that come along.
• 9:27
  Speaker 6: With having so in reality, with PCOS, I really couldn't
• 9:31
  Speaker 6: I could wear it, but I'm gonna be changing it
• 9:33
  Speaker 6: like every hour because you're bleeding extremely heavy.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: A long time poly stolastic ovary syndrome.
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I told you it was long shot that Todd Davis.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: I know, yes, we we we had this in real time. Okay, okay,
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: So so I had that. So you have that? Is
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: there a cure for that?
• 9:55
  Speaker 6: No, you could take stuff, but it like to eliminate
• 9:58
  Speaker 6: it like a little. But I realize I was having
• 10:00
  Speaker 6: it because I which I didn't know at the time,
• 10:02
  Speaker 6: I was having it because I was in pre menopause.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: So is it a cause for it? Like I wasn't a.
• 10:10
  Speaker 7: Doctor about it.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: He just told me that I had it because I
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: you know, obviously I'm not an expert in the situation.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: But you know, I speaking of different women just watch
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: different documentary stuff like that, and they were saying, like
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: even periods, a lot of times, it's what you eat.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: It's the environment.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: It causes longer periods like they like traditionally in parishi
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: only be like two or three days. When you have
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: like a seven day period. It's like that's something that
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: you could traditionally be eating to the wrong diet or
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: you know, a variety of stress, different things that nature
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: can actually throw your cycle off, right, So is there
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: any cause for that? Now?
• 10:41
  Speaker 7: My JACTA never told me.
• 10:43
  Speaker 6: Mines could have been stressed because I was going through
• 10:45
  Speaker 6: a divorce, like with my first husband at that time,
• 10:48
  Speaker 6: so minees could have been that. But my whole life
• 10:49
  Speaker 6: since I had my period, My period would come on
• 10:52
  Speaker 6: in like two three days and then one day I
• 10:54
  Speaker 6: just noticed it was here, and I didn't pay attention
• 10:56
  Speaker 6: to it because I'm like, all right, because everybody complains
• 10:58
  Speaker 6: about their period. I never had a I never had
• 11:00
  Speaker 6: cramps any of that stuff. But one day I was like, okay,
• 11:05
  Speaker 6: like this is like the third time, and then it
• 11:07
  Speaker 6: would disappear and not come back after like a couple
• 11:09
  Speaker 6: of months.
• 11:10
  Speaker 5: It was.
• 11:11
  Speaker 6: It was severe, So that's what That's why I was
• 11:14
  Speaker 6: always wearing I mean, not Tampon's maxic pads.
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: So the technology you're making was really the actual garment,
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: not the pad. Right, So the pad is going to
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: be the regular thickness that's going to be standard. What's
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: going to change is the actual garment that it's going into.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, gotch you.
• 11:30
  Speaker 6: Eventually I did a pad to like a particular type
• 11:33
  Speaker 6: of bad at the start. No, it was just to
• 11:36
  Speaker 6: make that more comfortable, to secure it properly like under
• 11:40
  Speaker 6: like where I needed it to be so it don't move.
• 11:43
  Speaker 7: That's what it started from. That's all I wanted.
• 11:46
  Speaker 5: You're designing this, yes, Then I wrote a patent for it.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Then you wrote the pad, so that was the next
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: step to write the pattern.
• 11:51
  Speaker 7: Like a week after that I started writing the patent.
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: Then you're using it. So how do you get other
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: people now to use it? Cut you make it?
• 11:58
  Speaker 7: Oh yeah, so I live in New York, so that
• 12:00
  Speaker 7: was easy.
• 12:01
  Speaker 6: I just got on the train on the railroads from
• 12:03
  Speaker 6: Long Island to New York City.
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: We're not just walking around.
• 12:07
  Speaker 6: I went to the fashion district and found like a
• 12:09
  Speaker 6: couple of manufacturers who did not take me serious because
• 12:11
  Speaker 6: I'm walking around with a paper like I want to
• 12:13
  Speaker 6: make this underwear with a whole, but the money talks,
• 12:17
  Speaker 6: so I'm like, listen, just make what I tell you,
• 12:20
  Speaker 6: I'll pay you. And it was like okay, And I
• 12:22
  Speaker 6: found four manufacturers to make it like out there and
• 12:26
  Speaker 6: I pay them. They they really didn't take it serious
• 12:29
  Speaker 6: at all, and I took it and I just went
• 12:31
  Speaker 6: with that.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: So they made how many are you making to start?
• 12:35
  Speaker 6: So I made four samples first, well four different people,
• 12:37
  Speaker 6: because I wanted to see like how it came out.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then who were you testing on?
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: Like you're giving out to your friends like, hey, I
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: got this idea, I want you to try it.
• 12:46
  Speaker 7: Yes, So one of my friends was my guinea pig.
• 12:48
  Speaker 6: I would have her test it and style it and
• 12:50
  Speaker 6: all types of stuff. So she was my guinea pig,
• 12:53
  Speaker 6: and my daughter was my guinea pick at the time.
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: All right, So now now that it's tested and it's proven, yeah,
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: you gotta get this out to the people. Yeah, Like
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: now what's the plan? How are we getting fun into
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: manufacturer more? What's the next stuff?
• 13:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah?
• 13:07
  Speaker 6: So I always was well off with funds, but you
• 13:10
  Speaker 6: still even though you got money, you still like, listen,
• 13:13
  Speaker 6: I need to I need to figure out like what
• 13:15
  Speaker 6: I'm gonna do be cause I actually went all in,
• 13:17
  Speaker 6: Like I left my job, like I wasn't going back
• 13:20
  Speaker 6: to work nothing. My husband wants to kill me, but
• 13:23
  Speaker 6: I was like I'm all in. Like when I had it,
• 13:26
  Speaker 6: I just did it. I spent like thirty maybe like
• 13:28
  Speaker 6: almost forty days like writing the patent myself because I
• 13:31
  Speaker 6: didn't want to spend the six thousand dollars to pay
• 13:34
  Speaker 6: a patent attorney. And once the USPTO office told me
• 13:37
  Speaker 6: that they mess up too, I was like, well they
• 13:40
  Speaker 6: got mess up. They got mess up with my doll
• 13:42
  Speaker 6: and my mom would write it myself and mess up.
• 13:44
  Speaker 6: So I wrote that and then I started like preparing
• 13:47
  Speaker 6: to sell it, and then I just started researching. I
• 13:49
  Speaker 6: had no marketing background. I had a business background, which
• 13:54
  Speaker 6: is the best to have. I had a business background,
• 13:56
  Speaker 6: but I had no marketing background. I didn't even know
• 13:58
  Speaker 6: how to do a website.
• 13:59
  Speaker 7: And I did it. I figure it out.
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: So what was your career prior to this, Because you said,
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: I mean this is a I would see a transition.
• 14:04
  Speaker 7: I was a controller, so I was running a business.
• 14:07
  Speaker 6: I was running people's business and the operations.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: So okay, So you you have this idea, you get
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: it made, you test it out.
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: I'm assuwing.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: You probably tweak a few things, and now you're at
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: the stage where you say, okay, now I want to
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: actually get this out to the public.
• 14:21
  Speaker 7: Yep, I created a website.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: You create a website, You create the name for the company.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: What's what's the product's name?
• 14:27
  Speaker 6: Oh so when I first launched, it wasn't Ruby Low
• 14:29
  Speaker 6: panty prop, it was panty prope.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Got it all homework.
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: Bob Shop was talking about prandy sold about panty prop, so.
• 14:38
  Speaker 6: It was panty prop. That's what I always think. It's
• 14:40
  Speaker 6: funny when it comes out, So panty prop. The reason
• 14:43
  Speaker 6: why it's called panty problem because that's what it was.
• 14:45
  Speaker 7: I thought the names, I don't.
• 14:46
  Speaker 6: Want to tell y'all what it was going to be.
• 14:48
  Speaker 6: One of them was late we would be called blood.
• 14:50
  Speaker 6: My sister was like hell no, Like she was like,
• 14:54
  Speaker 6: don't do that. So the name was panty prop because
• 14:58
  Speaker 6: it was something that you prop in your panty that's where.
• 15:01
  Speaker 6: But I never had a problem with that name, like
• 15:03
  Speaker 6: from the time that I wanted to the time that
• 15:05
  Speaker 6: I rebranded. I only rebranded it because you can't really
• 15:08
  Speaker 6: scale the name panty prop. And we were selling globally
• 15:13
  Speaker 6: in like all countries, So all right, so.
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: How do you scale?
• 15:18
  Speaker 6: Like?
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: All right?
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: So once you get it going with you the website,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: you make the website, how are you promoting this?
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: Like, how are you marketing this?
• 15:25
  Speaker 7: So I started following.
• 15:28
  Speaker 6: I had a big competitor at the time, and they
• 15:31
  Speaker 6: had just raised like two point five million dollars. So
• 15:33
  Speaker 6: I was like, oh, okay, but my product was completely
• 15:37
  Speaker 6: different than theirs, like totally different. It's same concept, but
• 15:41
  Speaker 6: totally different because we still have like the whole, like
• 15:43
  Speaker 6: the gusset that actually secures it in place.
• 15:47
  Speaker 7: So I just thought it being where they were being.
• 15:49
  Speaker 6: So say, if they were being in say Google, I
• 15:54
  Speaker 6: was like, okay, Like if I Google, like my keywords,
• 15:57
  Speaker 6: they were popping up.
• 15:58
  Speaker 7: So I was like, let me figure out how to
• 16:00
  Speaker 7: be where they are. So I figured that out. I
• 16:03
  Speaker 7: called Google up and Google had a number at the time.
• 16:05
  Speaker 6: I don't even know if they still have it, but
• 16:08
  Speaker 6: they had a number at the time, and I called
• 16:09
  Speaker 6: them and I was like, listen, I want to do ads.
• 16:11
  Speaker 6: How do I get my ad up there? I want
• 16:13
  Speaker 6: to be like right below them, And they showed me
• 16:16
  Speaker 6: how to do that. I used to pay them probably
• 16:17
  Speaker 6: like five ten dollars a day in like ads on Google,
• 16:21
  Speaker 6: and then I started on Facebook. Facebook back then did
• 16:26
  Speaker 6: not have reps unless you were spending like a lot
• 16:28
  Speaker 6: of money, which I didn't know. But I figured that
• 16:30
  Speaker 6: one out too, Like I figured out how to do it.
• 16:32
  Speaker 6: I would just read, I would look at YouTube, videos,
• 16:35
  Speaker 6: and I figured out how to do it, and within like,
• 16:38
  Speaker 6: I officially launched in January of twenty sixteen. So I
• 16:43
  Speaker 6: came up with the idea in August of twenty fifteen,
• 16:46
  Speaker 6: wrote the patent in September of twenty fifteen, did all
• 16:51
  Speaker 6: that stuff, like the manufacturing and everything like through that time,
• 16:54
  Speaker 6: like the samples and they get in like a small run,
• 16:57
  Speaker 6: and then I officially launched in January of twenty sixteen.
• 17:01
  Speaker 6: By March of twenty sixteen, because everything went so fast,
• 17:06
  Speaker 6: I was able to get all my products out. So
• 17:07
  Speaker 6: my next product was my period swimwear that I'm the
• 17:10
  Speaker 6: inventor of, and that went viral and then we've just
• 17:13
  Speaker 6: been up since then.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: The online marketing is how you got it out. Yeah,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: online marketing ads and stuff like that. Yeah, and social
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: media wasn't really you didn't really use social media.
• 17:21
  Speaker 7: To now I actually just got I'm just learning social media.
• 17:24
  Speaker 7: I literally just got one air like so.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: Word, I'm moufing online marketing.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So you did the SEO Association optimizers.
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: So when Google, yeah, well at the time I was
• 17:33
  Speaker 5: doing that, but yes, yeah, so.
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: When it's when you search period panning, yep, there's some competitors.
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: We'll get into those later, but yeah, there's some competitors
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: and now you're coming up with them.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, got, you got.
• 17:44
  Speaker 6: And one of the big things, like with the SEO,
• 17:46
  Speaker 6: another big thing that I did, I was writing blogs
• 17:48
  Speaker 6: that I didn't know was SEO at the time. I
• 17:51
  Speaker 6: just was writing blogs. I would use Fiver, I would
• 17:54
  Speaker 6: pay if there was one girl on it, she would
• 17:56
  Speaker 6: give me some real good blogs. It's like one of
• 17:58
  Speaker 6: my top blogs to this day. I pay like literally
• 17:59
  Speaker 6: five dollars for that blog. And I didn't know it
• 18:02
  Speaker 6: was SEO at the time, but I was given out
• 18:04
  Speaker 6: information because that's what I had read like if you
• 18:07
  Speaker 6: want to if you want to bring people in, give
• 18:10
  Speaker 6: information that's relevant.
• 18:12
  Speaker 7: So I just started writing blogs pertaining to what my
• 18:16
  Speaker 7: product was.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, so how how fast does this scale? Like when
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: you first start, like numbers wise, like how many units
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: were you moving?
• 18:27
  Speaker 6: Like I don't even remember the units, but I used
• 18:30
  Speaker 6: to tell my husband. He lasts about it now to
• 18:31
  Speaker 6: this day. I used to be like, I just want
• 18:33
  Speaker 6: to sell twenty items, Like if we sell just twenty
• 18:35
  Speaker 6: of these things today, I'm good and we know twenties
• 18:39
  Speaker 6: not a lot, but That's that was my thinking back there.
• 18:41
  Speaker 6: I just wanted to buy, you know, to twenty of them.
• 18:44
  Speaker 6: But it scales rapidly, So like the first year, I
• 18:47
  Speaker 6: think I did Like that year in twenty sixteen, I
• 18:50
  Speaker 6: think I did like close to three hundred thousand, and
• 18:52
  Speaker 6: then the next year it just shot up to over
• 18:54
  Speaker 6: a million. And then after that it was always like
• 18:57
  Speaker 6: revenue in revenue, actual revenue in.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: It's how many products is it's to the underwear and
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: then the swimwear.
• 19:04
  Speaker 7: So that first year was the underwear in the swimwear
• 19:07
  Speaker 7: at that time.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Later we start having activewear, yes, okay, and.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: Then the swimwhear. It is the same idea, but it's
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: just something that you can go swimming in.
• 19:13
  Speaker 6: So the swimwear has actual just another piece of technology
• 19:18
  Speaker 6: in it is not like some of my competitors. They'll say,
• 19:21
  Speaker 6: is waterproof, waterproof? Who wants a waterproof swimsuit? Like they
• 19:23
  Speaker 6: don't know because they're not the inventor of it. I
• 19:25
  Speaker 6: am our swim where is actually water resistant. So if
• 19:29
  Speaker 6: you see that they say waterproof.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: The swimwhear, do you have to it?
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: That is the pad right, like it's built in.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: You're not wearing a pad. You're not wearing a tampon
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: on the planet, right, This is one thing yep.
• 19:40
  Speaker 7: Got it just looks like a regular swimsuit.
• 19:42
  Speaker 6: And if you have your period, you on vacation, because
• 19:44
  Speaker 6: that's the worst with a woman, when you go on vacation,
• 19:46
  Speaker 6: you have your period and you gotta worry about it.
• 19:48
  Speaker 7: So it serves for that purpose.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that in the flow of water. Usually
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: water sows down the flow of blood during the metro cycle,
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: so not really always though, you never know.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so okay, so you're moving, you're moving these units,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: and he was like drop shipping, like you have like a.
• 20:10
  Speaker 7: No, I'm we're shipping all from my house, so.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: You just have a bunch of products in your basement. Yep.
• 20:16
  Speaker 6: Every time, every day I would go to the manufacturer
• 20:19
  Speaker 6: pick up and it was they were in Brooklyn. My
• 20:21
  Speaker 6: manufacturer a big manufacturer in Brooklyn, and they used to
• 20:23
  Speaker 6: do for like a lot of stores. I would leave
• 20:25
  Speaker 6: from Long Island, go get fabric.
• 20:27
  Speaker 7: In the city.
• 20:28
  Speaker 6: Now I'm in my car and not on the train,
• 20:30
  Speaker 6: go to the city and then go to Brooklyn and
• 20:32
  Speaker 6: then head back to Long Island.
• 20:34
  Speaker 7: Every day every day to pick up.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: My son, Oh, your son was going to school, and yeah,
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: my son.
• 20:39
  Speaker 7: Was younger at the time he was I had to
• 20:40
  Speaker 7: pick him up from the bus.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: You were picking up product every day, shipping it out
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: every shipping out once a week, and shipping out every day, No,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: every day, shipping it out every day yep.
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: As people make orders online yep.
• 20:49
  Speaker 7: So when I come back, all the orders to be
• 20:51
  Speaker 7: sitting there.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: So how did you I'm assuming you're still not doing
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: that now? Oh no, so when did When did you?
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: When did you start to streamline the process a little
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: bit more efficiently the officially.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Progress.
• 21:03
  Speaker 7: Yeah, so the first year it was no.
• 21:07
  Speaker 6: I would say, like the first eight months, it was
• 21:08
  Speaker 6: all me. If you even called, like you didn't know.
• 21:11
  Speaker 7: That you were talking to me. I was like all
• 21:13
  Speaker 7: different sizes of people.
• 21:14
  Speaker 6: In twenty sixteen, and then in twenty seventeen, I hired
• 21:17
  Speaker 6: my first employee. My husband was my employee all the time,
• 21:21
  Speaker 6: like when he would get off his own business for work.
• 21:24
  Speaker 6: But and at that time I was trying to convince
• 21:27
  Speaker 6: him because we were moving so rapidly and it was
• 21:30
  Speaker 6: just becoming too much. Because like that ride that I
• 21:32
  Speaker 6: would tell you I did every day from and if
• 21:35
  Speaker 6: anybody knows New York. Going from Long Island to the
• 21:38
  Speaker 6: city to Brooklyn back to Long Island, that is a
• 21:41
  Speaker 6: whole day process. And then I had a child who
• 21:44
  Speaker 6: was in elementary school that I had to get off
• 21:47
  Speaker 6: the bus by three o'clock.
• 21:49
  Speaker 7: It was crazy.
• 21:49
  Speaker 6: So when I would get him off the bus, then
• 21:52
  Speaker 6: I would have express orders sitting there for me.
• 21:54
  Speaker 7: I would have to ride to FedEx, come back and
• 21:56
  Speaker 7: be another express order. It was just a lot.
• 21:59
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't even know how I did it now
• 22:01
  Speaker 6: that I think about it. But you know, like when
• 22:02
  Speaker 6: you in the grind, you don't even I didn't feel
• 22:05
  Speaker 6: it back then.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: So how are you managing the inventory?
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: Because that a lot of times when people get into
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: businesses with it selling products, the inventory is an issue?
• 22:15
  Speaker 6: Right?
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Do I have too much and then I'm not selling?
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? Do I have it? No?
• 22:19
  Speaker 7: It was no inventory for me. It was just like
• 22:21
  Speaker 7: you buying it, I am gonna have it, and I
• 22:24
  Speaker 7: am you gonna get it.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: So did the capital that it took to get that
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: that was something that you had saved or ready fund.
• 22:32
  Speaker 5: Your price my own funds.
• 22:33
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I always saved my money since I was seventeen
• 22:35
  Speaker 7: years old.
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: Okay, so you've always been financially disciplined, always, Okay, but
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: you obviously you're seeing competitors come into the space at
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: the same time and they raising money, and they're raising money.
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: At a certain point, are you looking at it like
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: I have to go that route too if I want
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: to be in the same breath as my competitors, or
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: I'm just going to keep doing Like at some point
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: you have.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: To realize this.
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 22:57
  Speaker 6: Once, I when I first thought it, I knew nothing
• 22:59
  Speaker 6: about the VC world, like how I know now, which
• 23:02
  Speaker 6: is like most black people, we just don't, like, we
• 23:05
  Speaker 6: don't know that you can actually raise funds to like
• 23:08
  Speaker 6: scale your company.
• 23:10
  Speaker 7: So I didn't know anything about it.
• 23:12
  Speaker 6: But I had saw that, like I saw the headlines
• 23:14
  Speaker 6: with my competitive raised that two point five million dollars.
• 23:16
  Speaker 6: So I was like, oh, they raised two point five
• 23:19
  Speaker 6: million dollars. So I looked into that and I was like, Okay, well,
• 23:23
  Speaker 6: let me see if that's what I want to do.
• 23:24
  Speaker 6: I tried it for probably like two weeks because raising
• 23:28
  Speaker 6: funds is a full time job and it was taking
• 23:30
  Speaker 6: me from the business.
• 23:32
  Speaker 7: These people, these vcs, they they they just.
• 23:35
  Speaker 6: Waste your time, and I don't like people wasting my time,
• 23:39
  Speaker 6: so I just gave up after that, like after like
• 23:41
  Speaker 6: two weeks. So I don't really want to say I
• 23:43
  Speaker 6: tried to raise funds at first. I was in two thousand.
• 23:46
  Speaker 6: At the end of twenty sixteen is when I first
• 23:49
  Speaker 6: tried it. By January, I was January twenty seventeen, I
• 23:53
  Speaker 6: was like, I ain't doing this no more, and I
• 23:55
  Speaker 6: wanted to focus on my business because it was already
• 23:58
  Speaker 6: just like going so much. So I just kept reinvesting
• 24:02
  Speaker 6: that money and going to the manufacturers, getting stuff and
• 24:05
  Speaker 6: sending things out.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: So when did you? But you did raise money eventually
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: in twenty nineteen.
• 24:09
  Speaker 7: So in twenty eighteen at the end, I took it
• 24:11
  Speaker 7: serious to raise.
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: Funds and you raised fifteen million.
• 24:15
  Speaker 7: I did a fifteen million dollar deal, So.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: All right, walcomes through that process.
• 24:19
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 24:19
  Speaker 6: So in twenty eighteen, now I had a few more employees.
• 24:22
  Speaker 6: We had just moved into our first office. So I
• 24:26
  Speaker 6: was like, you know what, because I remember it from before,
• 24:28
  Speaker 6: like this is a full time job that I have
• 24:29
  Speaker 6: to do this, and I joined Jason Calacanis's launch program.
• 24:34
  Speaker 6: Jason Callahanis is known for like he was the first
• 24:37
  Speaker 6: investor in uber and stuff like that.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: Cool.
• 24:39
  Speaker 7: He's real cool.
• 24:41
  Speaker 6: And I said, you know what if if they don't
• 24:44
  Speaker 6: take me, I'm not doing it no more, like I'm
• 24:46
  Speaker 6: not trying to raise anymore.
• 24:47
  Speaker 7: I was trying like for a month at that point again.
• 24:49
  Speaker 6: And then as soon as he saw like I told
• 24:51
  Speaker 6: him the numbers and in the VC world, like the
• 24:53
  Speaker 6: numbers were supposed to talk, right, but now when you
• 24:56
  Speaker 6: were a black woman, it don't. But for him, he
• 24:58
  Speaker 6: was like, you haven't raise no money yet. And I
• 25:01
  Speaker 6: think at that point I probably was at maybe like
• 25:03
  Speaker 6: seven million dollars, which I didn't know at the time.
• 25:06
  Speaker 6: To me, that was a little bit like seven million
• 25:07
  Speaker 6: dollars like, oh my god, are they gonna give me money?
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: But he looked at it like, wait a minute. You
• 25:13
  Speaker 6: got seven million dollars. You got seven million dollars that
• 25:15
  Speaker 6: you brought in in revenue in this little bit of
• 25:17
  Speaker 6: time and people telling you no.
• 25:21
  Speaker 7: He was like, oh, all in. So I did that program,
• 25:24
  Speaker 7: and by the end of that program, it was like
• 25:27
  Speaker 7: a four month program.
• 25:28
  Speaker 6: I actually was flying back to San Francisco every week,
• 25:32
  Speaker 6: probably like two three times a week. I didn't want
• 25:35
  Speaker 6: to move there because I don't like to San Francisco.
• 25:37
  Speaker 6: I would just get on the plane and go every
• 25:39
  Speaker 6: single week. And by the time that that program end up,
• 25:43
  Speaker 6: had fifteen term sheets from investors, and then I had
• 25:47
  Speaker 6: one from an investor overseas in the UK who actually
• 25:53
  Speaker 6: had become my.
• 25:53
  Speaker 7: Investor at that time, and they didn't want anyone else
• 25:55
  Speaker 7: in the deal, so I had to turn down the
• 25:58
  Speaker 7: other fifteen. That reason why I decided to go into
• 26:01
  Speaker 7: the program, and then I took the one the one deal.
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: Talk about the process, right, we always hit the phrase
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: that the most disrespected woman on the planet is a
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: black woman, especially when it comes to VC. Talk about
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: some of the struggles that you saw you phased during
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: that process that almost made you say I'm not doing
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: this song.
• 26:18
  Speaker 6: Yeah, So the VC world, because once I've decided if
• 26:22
  Speaker 6: I'm going to raise funds, I got to research, like
• 26:24
  Speaker 6: what's entailed with it, everything, so I completely understood it
• 26:27
  Speaker 6: the second time around, not the first time, but the
• 26:29
  Speaker 6: second time. It's a business transaction. So unfortunately in society,
• 26:36
  Speaker 6: people don't like doing business with black women.
• 26:38
  Speaker 7: It don't matter what we say, what we do.
• 26:41
  Speaker 6: How we look like when it comes to being a
• 26:43
  Speaker 6: business woman, we are just not respected for some reason.
• 26:47
  Speaker 6: So I'm showing up at the table with say seven
• 26:51
  Speaker 6: million dollars worth of sales, and they're telling me no,
• 26:54
  Speaker 6: And I'm like, aren't like what I researched was like,
• 27:00
  Speaker 6: isn't the whole purpose for you to make money? Like
• 27:02
  Speaker 6: you have to make your LP's back money. So I'm
• 27:05
  Speaker 6: showing you I have an audience. And I had already
• 27:07
  Speaker 6: had my audience. I knew exactly who my audience was
• 27:09
  Speaker 6: at that time. I had clicked off all the boxes.
• 27:12
  Speaker 6: Whereas if I was a white woman or a white male,
• 27:16
  Speaker 6: you know, you gore raised with nothing, just a simple idea.
• 27:19
  Speaker 6: A black woman just can't do that. So I had
• 27:24
  Speaker 6: met James from Black Ops and he said, you know
• 27:28
  Speaker 6: what he said. He said, I used to be like you,
• 27:31
  Speaker 6: cause I'm walking in there like I know this, I
• 27:33
  Speaker 6: know that I know this. And he said, you know what,
• 27:36
  Speaker 6: he said, just just make them feel like they're on
• 27:40
  Speaker 6: top of the world. And he said, I don't know
• 27:42
  Speaker 6: if I could do that, Like I really don't, but
• 27:45
  Speaker 6: he said no, I didn't think I could do it either.
• 27:47
  Speaker 6: And he said, how you do it is even if.
• 27:50
  Speaker 7: You know it, don't say it. And just tell him
• 27:53
  Speaker 7: that is a good idea, like oh, like, even if
• 27:55
  Speaker 7: you know it, I did that and it worked.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: But why is a black women do I have even
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: say that again, even if you don't know it.
• 28:04
  Speaker 6: So even if you do know it, act like you
• 28:08
  Speaker 6: So say if you say something to me and I
• 28:10
  Speaker 6: know exactly what you're talking about, you're explaining to me
• 28:12
  Speaker 6: in detail. Most times people will be like, oh, I
• 28:15
  Speaker 6: know that already. You can't do that as a black woman,
• 28:18
  Speaker 6: like in the VC world, I have to sit there
• 28:20
  Speaker 6: and say.
• 28:21
  Speaker 7: Oh, that's a good idea. Okay, you know what, I
• 28:24
  Speaker 7: think I'm gonna try that, Like, why.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: That's a great idea.
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: That's so that's I mean, it's ridiculous, right, The numbers
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: are there, But this is part of the game that
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: nobody sees, right because a lot of times we don't
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: even we don't see, we don't hear the stories of
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: black women in the VC world and trying to raise funds.
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: You said something understant about your audience and you knew
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: exactly who that was, and it made me think, well,
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: I feel like your audience is everybody. Every woman is
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: at your audience, So who was the target audience that
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: you're telling to the VCS.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 28:57
  Speaker 6: So when I first launched, I thought it was gonna
• 28:58
  Speaker 6: be millennials. Millennials, hey, my product because it's thicker.
• 29:02
  Speaker 7: My product audience is moms with teen and.
• 29:05
  Speaker 6: Tweens, parents teens. Yep, it's teen and tweens. And I
• 29:09
  Speaker 6: figured that out within the first six months.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: So were you always like, was the product ever like
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: branded as a black company or no.
• 29:19
  Speaker 6: I always stayed in the background. It was just ran
• 29:21
  Speaker 6: like corporate. It was ran corporate like what I knew, Like,
• 29:24
  Speaker 6: just run it when you negotiate, when you talk about it.
• 29:26
  Speaker 6: Nobody even knew that Crystal Ettien was the founder. So
• 29:30
  Speaker 6: you need to do it on purpose, Like I just
• 29:32
  Speaker 6: didn't want to. I wanted to run it as a
• 29:35
  Speaker 6: not focused on me, but more of the product, so.
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: You able to sell to everybody.
• 29:40
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I could sell to everybody, but I know who
• 29:42
  Speaker 7: my audience is.
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: Who's your audience?
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: Race?
• 29:45
  Speaker 7: White women? Yes, okay, And I always wanted it to
• 29:49
  Speaker 7: be black women. But with black women. I'm a black women.
• 29:52
  Speaker 7: I had a daughter, Like, you got to talk to
• 29:53
  Speaker 7: us differently.
• 29:54
  Speaker 6: Like black woman is not going to like you tell
• 29:58
  Speaker 6: a black woman, okay, put your daughter in the pool
• 30:00
  Speaker 6: with the swim where with her period, a black woman's
• 30:04
  Speaker 6: gonna be like, I gotta try this out first, like
• 30:06
  Speaker 6: like even me, I ain't throwing my daughter, you know
• 30:09
  Speaker 6: with that, But a white woman will. She's like, this
• 30:13
  Speaker 6: is gonna save the day, and this is how it is.
• 30:16
  Speaker 6: I would because I was just different with my daughter.
• 30:19
  Speaker 6: Even when it comes to like women's health, like it's
• 30:21
  Speaker 6: just different.
• 30:22
  Speaker 7: Like a black woman.
• 30:23
  Speaker 6: When I gave my daughter birth control pills when she
• 30:26
  Speaker 6: was going to college, some of my friends was like,
• 30:28
  Speaker 6: you've built Like like I'm like, I'm promoting it, but
• 30:31
  Speaker 6: it's like, no, I ain't promoting it like my Like no,
• 30:34
  Speaker 6: I want to make her and set her up for success.
• 30:37
  Speaker 7: Like my daughter just graduated law school.
• 30:38
  Speaker 6: She ain't never been pregnant because I had those conversations
• 30:44
  Speaker 6: with my daughter and she's you know, was on birth
• 30:48
  Speaker 6: to droll pills like at that time.
• 30:50
  Speaker 7: But a black woman and white women, we just.
• 30:53
  Speaker 6: I don't know, it's just it's just different. It's just different,
• 30:56
  Speaker 6: and like we just we just want to protect our
• 31:00
  Speaker 6: orders more. I don't want to say white women don't
• 31:01
  Speaker 6: want to protect their daughters, because they do. But black
• 31:03
  Speaker 6: women we just like we can't throw our daughters. We
• 31:06
  Speaker 6: just can't throw you out there to the wolves. We
• 31:09
  Speaker 6: got to test it first, so it's a different conversation
• 31:12
  Speaker 6: that would have to be said. And the reason why
• 31:15
  Speaker 6: I think the white women are more of my customer
• 31:19
  Speaker 6: base is because what I did in the beginning when
• 31:21
  Speaker 6: you ask me about my competitor, like being where they were,
• 31:24
  Speaker 6: it was like I went out where they were.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: And then in like promotional all that, did you use
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: like white women as like models or something?
• 31:31
  Speaker 7: Oh?
• 31:31
  Speaker 6: No, I used everybody. Yeah, because I wasn't like, like
• 31:35
  Speaker 6: the white women just kid to me. I didn't ask
• 31:38
  Speaker 6: for them, like I love them that they they are.
• 31:40
  Speaker 6: And I would love black women to really like talk
• 31:42
  Speaker 6: to their you know, daughters about their health much earlier,
• 31:45
  Speaker 6: or their period or their personal care and hygiene.
• 31:48
  Speaker 7: We just like it's just like shunned like to talk.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: About Yeah, I have the conversations.
• 31:53
  Speaker 6: Yeah, some people do, but the majority you know does not.
• 31:56
  Speaker 6: It's like I don't want to talk about it.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: It's like talk to that he's a health teacher.
• 32:01
  Speaker 5: No health teacher.
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: I mean It's cool though, because again it makes the
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: conversation even more comfortable, right, because it can come from
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: mom or could come from Dad, And so it makes
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: my daughter like like, hey, I can go to both
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: of you for this, that's understandable.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Hey Dad, I need you to go here to get this.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: So that's great.
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: I want to go to the name change right, because
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: panty Prop was the name. But at what point is
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: it now when you're raising or trying to raise, you
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: change the name.
• 32:29
  Speaker 7: After I raised?
• 32:30
  Speaker 5: After you raised it, so I raise it got real?
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so why do you change it? And how do
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: we get to the name?
• 32:35
  Speaker 7: So after I raised, when you raise a fund, deals close,
• 32:41
  Speaker 7: you know, wires thought.
• 32:43
  Speaker 6: Coming in, like the pressure comes on now And I
• 32:46
  Speaker 6: don't ever feel pressure for nothing, but I felt pressure
• 32:48
  Speaker 6: like the next day after that first wire came through,
• 32:52
  Speaker 6: I said, okay, like I knew what I was getting into.
• 32:55
  Speaker 7: It's a it's a business deal. So now it ain't
• 32:57
  Speaker 7: just me, it's literally not me.
• 33:00
  Speaker 6: It's like, now there's a board that even though I
• 33:03
  Speaker 6: controlled the board, like I negotiated very well, my attorney
• 33:06
  Speaker 6: was really good, negotiated. I still control the board, but
• 33:09
  Speaker 6: it's still you. Still you have an obligation and a
• 33:12
  Speaker 6: vegetiary duty, like to do certain things like when you
• 33:16
  Speaker 6: take someone's money. It's not borrow money from your aunt
• 33:20
  Speaker 6: your mama. Is a business deal and that a lot
• 33:23
  Speaker 6: of people don't understand. Also, so changing the name was
• 33:29
  Speaker 6: because when you raise funds, you are basically telling the
• 33:32
  Speaker 6: world and telling your vcs and all their LPs that
• 33:35
  Speaker 6: gave them the money. I'm going to scale this and
• 33:38
  Speaker 6: I am going to make you a return. They're not
• 33:41
  Speaker 6: giving it to you, you know, to just sit it
• 33:45
  Speaker 6: there and not do nothing, so you have to start scaling.
• 33:48
  Speaker 6: So the word pany actually is like offensive in some
• 33:54
  Speaker 6: countries because at first I was like, no, like this
• 33:56
  Speaker 6: is because we've never had a problem, No one's ever
• 33:58
  Speaker 6: complained about the name, like our custom anything. So I
• 34:01
  Speaker 6: was like, we're going to lose everything that I built up,
• 34:03
  Speaker 6: like over these last three years, well it was like
• 34:06
  Speaker 6: three and a half years at that time. We're going
• 34:07
  Speaker 6: to lose everything. And I didn't want to change your name.
• 34:10
  Speaker 6: And then I was talking to my investors, my investors
• 34:13
  Speaker 6: that were in, and they was like, you know what,
• 34:15
  Speaker 6: just like think about it, but we need you to
• 34:17
  Speaker 6: change your name. And then I really thought about and
• 34:19
  Speaker 6: I said, you know what, like I'm a fair game.
• 34:23
  Speaker 6: I really thought about it. And I said, you know what,
• 34:25
  Speaker 6: as long as we don't lose nothing, then let's change it.
• 34:28
  Speaker 6: And then that's when I change it to Ruby Love.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: Ruby Love.
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: And you talked about having vcs, but a lot of
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: times when people raise capital, they lose equity in their company.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: And so how did you go about that? Right? They do?
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: You don't want to dilute yourself to the point where
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: you don't have control of the own the thing that
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: you built.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: Yes, how was out for you?
• 34:47
  Speaker 7: So two things.
• 34:49
  Speaker 6: One, I'm a solo founder, so right off the back,
• 34:51
  Speaker 6: I have the edge there solo founder. If you are
• 34:55
  Speaker 6: two partners, you start off with fifty to fifty, so
• 34:59
  Speaker 6: right there you have to elude it way down.
• 35:01
  Speaker 7: But the most important is not the dilution. It's actually
• 35:03
  Speaker 7: the board.
• 35:04
  Speaker 6: That most people don't understand is who controls that board,
• 35:07
  Speaker 6: because that's when you see founders getting fired and things
• 35:11
  Speaker 6: like that, or saying they stepped down, whatever whatever they
• 35:13
  Speaker 6: want to call it.
• 35:14
  Speaker 7: It's fired.
• 35:14
  Speaker 6: Though, Like if you control the board and the vote
• 35:19
  Speaker 6: is always in your favor, you still got to discuss it.
• 35:23
  Speaker 7: But as far as like the equity part of it,
• 35:25
  Speaker 7: that really is not a big deal.
• 35:26
  Speaker 6: But I didn't lose that much equity because I already
• 35:28
  Speaker 6: had I negotiated because I bootstrapped it, like I already
• 35:32
  Speaker 6: bootstrapped it to I think at that point we was
• 35:34
  Speaker 6: a like twelve million dollars.
• 35:35
  Speaker 7: So I'm not gonna give you fifty percent of my company,
• 35:38
  Speaker 7: Like why would I do that?
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: He went to the negotiation knowing that this is the number,
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: whether it was twenty, this is what it is.
• 35:46
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it was a five hundred thousand dollar legal bill
• 35:49
  Speaker 6: likes to negotiate like that whole entire thing.
• 35:51
  Speaker 7: But it worked at all the way in the end,
• 35:53
  Speaker 7: even to this day, it worked out in my favor.
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: So did you have another round raising after that?
• 35:58
  Speaker 7: Nope?
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: That was just then. That was it?
• 36:00
  Speaker 7: Yeap in twenty nineteen.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, so and then you invest you have, so let's
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: talk about that. When when did that start and how
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: is that going for you?
• 36:12
  Speaker 7: Yeah?
• 36:12
  Speaker 6: So after my company was like all set up, like
• 36:17
  Speaker 6: I had like fifty four employees, like everything, like the
• 36:22
  Speaker 6: I put the operation like in sound like where it
• 36:25
  Speaker 6: just operates.
• 36:27
  Speaker 7: I think me and my husband was just like you
• 36:29
  Speaker 7: know what, like this is like missed up? Like what
• 36:31
  Speaker 7: happened to me?
• 36:32
  Speaker 6: Like all these years like building this quick scaling company.
• 36:36
  Speaker 6: It's like really messed up. And then we were like,
• 36:38
  Speaker 6: we know what we want to help people. We want
• 36:40
  Speaker 6: to help black women that are being ignored. And that's
• 36:42
  Speaker 6: when we just said, we're just going to put our
• 36:44
  Speaker 6: own personal wealth.
• 36:44
  Speaker 7: We don't have no LPs.
• 36:45
  Speaker 6: Not that we use our own money, like most of
• 36:47
  Speaker 6: the people that are giving out money, it's not their own,
• 36:51
  Speaker 6: it's not their money, it's LPs.
• 36:52
  Speaker 7: But we use our own funds to do that.
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: And how much money have you invested so far?
• 36:57
  Speaker 7: So we invest all the time.
• 36:58
  Speaker 6: We invest either a thousand to twenty five thousand dollars
• 37:01
  Speaker 6: because we get you like at the like the we
• 37:04
  Speaker 6: call it soil.
• 37:05
  Speaker 7: You know it has like preceed we live under preseed
• 37:08
  Speaker 7: because some people just don't some people just don't understand it.
• 37:13
  Speaker 6: And my goal in his goal was to get take
• 37:16
  Speaker 6: that black woman and like really show her like everything
• 37:19
  Speaker 6: I told y'all of protecting yourself early and not just
• 37:24
  Speaker 6: thinking this your mom's money.
• 37:26
  Speaker 7: So we invest in just in black women, black women period,
• 37:31
  Speaker 7: like to do it.
• 37:33
  Speaker 6: Like in not even just like monetary ways, like we
• 37:36
  Speaker 6: just invest a lot of our time and everything into
• 37:39
  Speaker 6: black women.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: Has anything worked out so far.
• 37:42
  Speaker 6: No, because it's everything is well new, Okay, yeah, we
• 37:44
  Speaker 6: just thoughted that in two thousand and twenty I think no,
• 37:48
  Speaker 6: twenty twenty one.
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: Actually, well, fundamentally, what are you looking for and when
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: you're investing, right is it? Obviously you said black women
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: number one? Yeah, but what what are you looking for
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: inside of these companies to say, all right, this is
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: worth an investment. And once you've made that, do you
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: stick with them in the sense of like a mentorship.
• 38:06
  Speaker 7: Yeah, so we do mentor.
• 38:10
  Speaker 6: As far as like what we're looking for, We're looking
• 38:12
  Speaker 6: for a company that you believe that can scale, because
• 38:15
  Speaker 6: you could scale anything like it could it could be
• 38:18
  Speaker 6: a paper clip and that could be scaled. It's the
• 38:21
  Speaker 6: person and how you go about executing that.
• 38:24
  Speaker 7: That's what people don't understand. It ain't really about the idea.
• 38:27
  Speaker 6: It's about like what you do with the idea, Like
• 38:29
  Speaker 6: if I could scale an underwear, you know, with a
• 38:32
  Speaker 6: hole in it, like anything could be done.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: So what are some of the biggest mistakes that you
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: think people make when they when they're trying to get
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: VC money.
• 38:41
  Speaker 7: They think it's a loan. They treated like a loan.
• 38:44
  Speaker 6: I get that all the time, especially like the level
• 38:46
  Speaker 6: of the women that we like want us to invest
• 38:49
  Speaker 6: like they don't know anything. So that's what that's what
• 38:51
  Speaker 6: we started noticing. I would have people crying the phone
• 38:54
  Speaker 6: to me like, oh my god, when I tell them
• 38:55
  Speaker 6: your business is not scalable right now, they don't get
• 38:59
  Speaker 6: the right now, so they think it's alone. That's one
• 39:04
  Speaker 6: of the mistakes that they made. The second one is
• 39:06
  Speaker 6: they just they take it personal where you shouldn't take
• 39:11
  Speaker 6: it personal. Like anything a business, you cannot take that personal.
• 39:13
  Speaker 7: Personal is personal. Business is business.
• 39:18
  Speaker 6: And those are two of the biggest mistakes that especially
• 39:22
  Speaker 6: black women, that we make.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: When it comes to VC. And we've heard both sides
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: of the coin, right where it's you know what, if
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: you don't have to take anybody's money, don't because you
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: don't want to have to answer to someone.
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: And then obviously there's the other side where it's like, well,
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: if you want to scale and to grow, not because
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: you need the money, but because you want to expand
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: you do it. Does that in between phases like what
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: am I supposed to do? So I notice plenty of
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: people who listen to the show and they try to
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: add that phase, talk about the pros and concept of
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: doing both, because you've done both, right, you've had the
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: business without it, try to get it, and obviously you've
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: had the business with the funds raised, and.
• 40:01
  Speaker 7: Then I also have the business without the VCS.
• 40:03
  Speaker 5: Either there you go.
• 40:04
  Speaker 7: So there is no in between stage. It's either are
• 40:08
  Speaker 7: you able to and willing to deal.
• 40:11
  Speaker 6: With what it is to scale your business? There is
• 40:13
  Speaker 6: no in between. You're either going to take it or
• 40:15
  Speaker 6: you're not. I actually feel a lot of people would
• 40:19
  Speaker 6: be like, oh, but you had a fifteen million dollar deal,
• 40:21
  Speaker 6: Like you know, what are you complaining about? Like why
• 40:23
  Speaker 6: you don't have VCS anymore?
• 40:25
  Speaker 7: Like why did you get all your shares back? Like
• 40:27
  Speaker 7: why did you do that?
• 40:29
  Speaker 5: Why did you do it?
• 40:30
  Speaker 6: I feel like if I didn't have VCS, my business
• 40:33
  Speaker 6: revenue would be over two hundred million at this point
• 40:37
  Speaker 6: because of where I was, I was already on a
• 40:40
  Speaker 6: fast fast, fast fast. I feel like VC for me,
• 40:44
  Speaker 6: from my particular situation was a hindrance. Why because we
• 40:48
  Speaker 6: were ready so fast and so scaling and it was
• 40:52
  Speaker 6: a very it was already you know when you.
• 40:55
  Speaker 7: Like you think about everything.
• 40:56
  Speaker 6: Like before you do it, Like that's where it's like
• 40:59
  Speaker 6: the grind at the time. You have to answer the people,
• 41:01
  Speaker 6: no answer the people, and you have to do certain things.
• 41:05
  Speaker 6: So now I have to hire a big C suite.
• 41:08
  Speaker 6: We're paying people.
• 41:09
  Speaker 7: Every Body in.
• 41:10
  Speaker 6: The sweet seat is getting over two hundred thousand dollars.
• 41:13
  Speaker 6: If you would have told me that prior, I'm like, oh, sure, no,
• 41:18
  Speaker 6: Like I can't do that.
• 41:19
  Speaker 7: So that's one.
• 41:23
  Speaker 6: You have.
• 41:24
  Speaker 7: It's a lot of time consumer.
• 41:25
  Speaker 6: You gotta have board meetings and board meeting and just
• 41:27
  Speaker 6: like getting in a boardroom and just like sitting talking
• 41:30
  Speaker 6: about stuff, you have to prepare for that.
• 41:32
  Speaker 7: You have to literally now I have fifty four employees.
• 41:36
  Speaker 6: Now I'm responsible for fifty four employees that really I
• 41:39
  Speaker 6: would say that probably half of them wasn't even needed
• 41:42
  Speaker 6: at the time.
• 41:43
  Speaker 7: When you get into VC, they don't tell you.
• 41:45
  Speaker 6: It's like this unspoken thing like where it's they don't
• 41:50
  Speaker 6: tell you and it's not said, but it's like, Okay,
• 41:55
  Speaker 6: I gotta do it because it has to be done.
• 41:57
  Speaker 7: I have the money.
• 41:58
  Speaker 6: And now you also feel like, and I'm very frugal
• 42:01
  Speaker 6: like when it comes to like money, so I don't
• 42:03
  Speaker 6: even spend And that's one of the problems that me
• 42:05
  Speaker 6: and my VC's actually had like my partners, my investors,
• 42:10
  Speaker 6: is that yeah, okay, I have the money, but that's
• 42:14
  Speaker 6: not relevant to us. Like vcs goal based on most
• 42:18
  Speaker 6: of the world goes based on everything on data. And
• 42:20
  Speaker 6: sometimes data is good, don't get me wrong, but sometimes.
• 42:25
  Speaker 7: Data is not the answer.
• 42:26
  Speaker 6: Like it's just not It's like real life, real grind
• 42:30
  Speaker 6: like in this And sometimes I would ask them like
• 42:32
  Speaker 6: are you you over you over there across the seas,
• 42:35
  Speaker 6: like are you in this building every day?
• 42:38
  Speaker 7: Are you receiving these emails every day? And it's not.
• 42:41
  Speaker 6: So it's a it's a grind. So VC money is
• 42:45
  Speaker 6: not for everybody. Everybody wants it. Everybody literally wants it
• 42:49
  Speaker 6: because they want the headline. But if you think past
• 42:51
  Speaker 6: the headline and you look under, the headline, is not
• 42:54
  Speaker 6: for everybody.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: Could be a hindrus.
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: It sounds like from your experience that taking the VC
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: almost stop a little of the innovation from you.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: Right, Like you lost a little bit of the grind
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: that got you to this point.
• 43:06
  Speaker 6: Never lost the grind, it was the grind with the
• 43:10
  Speaker 6: trying to explain it and then now taking time to
• 43:13
  Speaker 6: do that and then like second guessing yourself because you
• 43:18
  Speaker 6: have someone you have their money, and you're like, Okay,
• 43:22
  Speaker 6: I want to do the right thing because I want
• 43:23
  Speaker 6: to do the right thing by my investors, and I
• 43:26
  Speaker 6: want to do the right thing by myself, and I
• 43:28
  Speaker 6: want to do the right thing by my customers. And
• 43:31
  Speaker 6: that when you put all of that together, it's a
• 43:34
  Speaker 6: lot for people to deal with past the headline.
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: So you wouldn't have done it.
• 43:40
  Speaker 7: No, that's why I got all my shares back.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: No, okay, so you saw your path to two hundred million,
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: it slowed you down. Where is that path now?
• 43:50
  Speaker 7: So what I did last year was.
• 43:54
  Speaker 6: I decided, you know what, because we were going for
• 43:57
  Speaker 6: so many years, we were scaling so fast, there were
• 43:59
  Speaker 6: things that first of all, my VC should have told me.
• 44:02
  Speaker 6: We were still running our own VC firm, I mean
• 44:04
  Speaker 6: our own fulfillment center, like in our building. First thing
• 44:08
  Speaker 6: they should have told me was like, don't run a
• 44:09
  Speaker 6: for filming center. I don't even know we were in
• 44:11
  Speaker 6: a for filming business. But you know, when you just
• 44:12
  Speaker 6: keep going. You know that story when I told you
• 44:14
  Speaker 6: I was going home, picking up my son, going to
• 44:17
  Speaker 6: do the things. All I did was just hire new
• 44:19
  Speaker 6: people to do that. But I should have not should
• 44:21
  Speaker 6: have outsourced that to a three PL so last year
• 44:24
  Speaker 6: in twenty twenty two.
• 44:28
  Speaker 7: A three pl so. A three pl is where they
• 44:31
  Speaker 7: actually shipped your stuff out for you.
• 44:33
  Speaker 6: We don't do no shipping in the building, like no
• 44:36
  Speaker 6: more for like since last year, I scaled that out
• 44:38
  Speaker 6: to a three pl which should have been done, especially
• 44:42
  Speaker 6: at the rapid rate that we were shipping.
• 44:44
  Speaker 7: We never had enough people to like, actually get it out.
• 44:46
  Speaker 6: If you look at our reviews, all of our bad
• 44:48
  Speaker 6: reviews are based on people not getting their item.
• 44:50
  Speaker 7: It's not on the product. It's like I didn't get.
• 44:53
  Speaker 6: My stuff on time, which is people saying, oh, that's good,
• 44:56
  Speaker 6: that's those bad reviews are good.
• 44:58
  Speaker 7: But no, it's like you have to that out.
• 45:00
  Speaker 6: But if I would have went to a three pl
• 45:01
  Speaker 6: years ago, saying, like in twenty sixteen seventeen, even when
• 45:04
  Speaker 6: I was only shipping maybe ten twenty items out, that
• 45:07
  Speaker 6: should have been done right off the back. And then
• 45:09
  Speaker 6: I also would have not spent so much on payroll
• 45:11
  Speaker 6: because payroll is the biggest expense. That that was one,
• 45:18
  Speaker 6: so I had to scale it back in order to
• 45:22
  Speaker 6: prepare it to be sold eventually. So there was so
• 45:26
  Speaker 6: much stuff I had to outsource customer service. One point,
• 45:30
  Speaker 6: we had eight people in customer service service, a customer
• 45:33
  Speaker 6: service awartment, handling customer service. There's no company that should
• 45:36
  Speaker 6: be handling customer service. You should manage customer service, but
• 45:40
  Speaker 6: you only need like one or two people. But we
• 45:42
  Speaker 6: were actually having a full customer service. Outsource it because
• 45:46
  Speaker 6: now you're just managing the company. That was another thing
• 45:48
  Speaker 6: I did. So I did all of this last year,
• 45:52
  Speaker 6: and I scaled the company back. We actually stopped advertising
• 45:55
  Speaker 6: in June of two thousand, no like May of twenty
• 45:59
  Speaker 6: twenty two. Up to this day, we still do not
• 46:01
  Speaker 6: advertise right now. I skilled it all the way back.
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: So it's word.
• 46:07
  Speaker 7: Well, we built up over the years, built up almost
• 46:10
  Speaker 7: a million and subscribe.
• 46:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so that's the data.
• 46:15
  Speaker 7: Yep.
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: So this is a subscription based service. Is that subscription
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: based subscribers?
• 46:22
  Speaker 7: We have a subscription like for like for a product,
• 46:24
  Speaker 7: but it's not like our biggest thing. It's just people.
• 46:26
  Speaker 7: We just have a customer base. We have a large
• 46:28
  Speaker 7: customer base.
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: So how do you this is a lot a lot
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: of people and this is world wide right yes, global?
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: So like when do you add a new product because
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: that obviously we add them already.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: So this is it.
• 46:41
  Speaker 7: Yeah, any more products we would innovate to a different.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: Category underwear, swimwear, activewear. Yeah, act where it was recently at?
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Where was that at it?
• 46:52
  Speaker 7: That was all done in like the first year.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: Okay, So you have all those three products and we're
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: just selling those.
• 46:57
  Speaker 7: Yeah it three products we have a lot of.
• 47:00
  Speaker 6: One of our biggest items is actually our first period
• 47:02
  Speaker 6: kid after like our actual like I'll swimwear and our
• 47:05
  Speaker 6: underwear as our first period kid. So it's a kid
• 47:08
  Speaker 6: where parents could talk to their kids when they first
• 47:10
  Speaker 6: get their period.
• 47:11
  Speaker 7: That is like one of our big big products.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: Do you are you in schools?
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: No?
• 47:18
  Speaker 7: So I did no retail.
• 47:20
  Speaker 6: I was asked to do retail, and I did it
• 47:22
  Speaker 6: once I was in Macy's. Once I pulled my stuff
• 47:24
  Speaker 6: out because I was making way more money online. Retail
• 47:27
  Speaker 6: is just like retail is for branding. Back then, I
• 47:29
  Speaker 6: didn't think like that.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: So it's all online really no marketing, and it's super successful. Yep.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: This is rare.
• 47:39
  Speaker 7: It is rare, but it's doable. It's a lot of work,
• 47:42
  Speaker 7: but it's doable.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: Okay. So all right, so your plan is to sell
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: a company, absolutely, and you have a timeframe.
• 47:53
  Speaker 7: So back then when I first raised the funds, it was,
• 47:55
  Speaker 7: you know, they give you seven to ten years.
• 47:57
  Speaker 6: But now like I'm preparing it. Scaling a company and
• 48:02
  Speaker 6: then preparing it to sell it is two totally different things.
• 48:04
  Speaker 6: So yes, like now at this point of view, somebody
• 48:07
  Speaker 6: was to ask me today, like in the next couple
• 48:09
  Speaker 6: of years, because I just put everything operationally sound like
• 48:12
  Speaker 6: the way a company that's gonna get acquired should be.
• 48:16
  Speaker 7: I just did that last year, okay, And.
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: What's your rational if for I wanting to sell it?
• 48:26
  Speaker 7: Okay?
• 48:27
  Speaker 6: So I think every company, and black people are gonna
• 48:32
  Speaker 6: kill me because we know how we feel about it.
• 48:36
  Speaker 6: But I think that every company, the majority, I would
• 48:39
  Speaker 6: say ninety eight percent of companies, if you are really
• 48:42
  Speaker 6: trying to build like generational wealth in a legacy, you
• 48:48
  Speaker 6: need to sell it. Most people, especially us as black people,
• 48:51
  Speaker 6: feel a legacy is I'm gonna pass it down, So
• 48:55
  Speaker 6: my kids, I'm gonna do this.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: How can we have anything if you sell everything?
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 49:01
  Speaker 6: What people don't understand that I actually explained this to
• 49:03
  Speaker 6: people that I'm mentored to, Like, do you really think
• 49:07
  Speaker 6: that the Hiltons is running the Hilton still but we
• 49:09
  Speaker 6: still think of them as running it. No, it's just
• 49:12
  Speaker 6: the legacy, like that's what you're known for, and it
• 49:14
  Speaker 6: going on living their life and doing other things. Like
• 49:17
  Speaker 6: every time a black person, especially a black woman, sells
• 49:21
  Speaker 6: her business, we've just seen it happen this year, every
• 49:24
  Speaker 6: single time, it happens everywhere all mad when in reality,
• 49:28
  Speaker 6: we really should be congratulating that black woman because that's
• 49:32
  Speaker 6: another one of us being able to.
• 49:35
  Speaker 7: Build that legacy and generational wealth.
• 49:38
  Speaker 6: Like at this point, now we ain't gonna be the
• 49:41
  Speaker 6: Mary Keller's where you forget that we created the sanitary pad.
• 49:43
  Speaker 6: It's like, no, I made that, Like I created that
• 49:47
  Speaker 6: and now my kids and my grandkids and this is
• 49:50
  Speaker 6: able to live off of that legacy. And that's what
• 49:53
  Speaker 6: people don't understand. And I think it's because people don't
• 49:55
  Speaker 6: understand like how VC works, how getting a company acquired works,
• 50:01
  Speaker 6: or getting it to IPO works.
• 50:03
  Speaker 7: They just don't understand that.
• 50:04
  Speaker 6: And that's where the I don't want to call it ignorance,
• 50:07
  Speaker 6: but that's where the knowledge needs to be taught. And
• 50:11
  Speaker 6: anybody that I mentor I talked to, I explain that
• 50:13
  Speaker 6: to them and then they finally get it. They're like, oh,
• 50:15
  Speaker 6: like if I think about it like that, now I
• 50:18
  Speaker 6: actually get it. It's not like you leaving the black
• 50:21
  Speaker 6: people behind. It's actually like no, like I'm doing this
• 50:24
  Speaker 6: for us because we sold it. Now I could cash out,
• 50:29
  Speaker 6: and that legacy is always You will never lose the
• 50:32
  Speaker 6: founder title. I'm only losing the CEO title. And the
• 50:36
  Speaker 6: CEO title is a.
• 50:37
  Speaker 7: Lot of work. Like who wants to do a lot
• 50:40
  Speaker 7: of work?
• 50:41
  Speaker 6: If you think about like say like a Jamaican restaurant,
• 50:44
  Speaker 6: like just one Jamaican restaurant, like they be slaving in
• 50:47
  Speaker 6: the air, Like that's why the man every time you
• 50:50
  Speaker 6: go into a Jamaican restaurant, they got an attitude. Yes,
• 50:55
  Speaker 6: but if they actually took that one Jamaican restaurant and
• 50:58
  Speaker 6: scaled it into ten and then made it a franchise
• 51:01
  Speaker 6: and then somebody brought that one day, you still always
• 51:04
  Speaker 6: will be that founder.
• 51:07
  Speaker 7: Unfortunately, our kids they don't want that. Then I knsey
• 51:10
  Speaker 7: say that I'm gonna work that hard and I don't
• 51:12
  Speaker 7: blame them.
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: What's your exit plan? That's important.
• 51:16
  Speaker 7: It's important.
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: Never entered before you know how to exit. So have
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: you had offers along the way, I've.
• 51:21
  Speaker 7: Had offers last year.
• 51:22
  Speaker 6: They were lobull because my revenue went down because I
• 51:25
  Speaker 6: stopped advertising and I had to scale it back, but
• 51:28
  Speaker 6: I kept The reason why I had to do is
• 51:30
  Speaker 6: because I kept going for years.
• 51:31
  Speaker 7: It was very transactional.
• 51:32
  Speaker 6: Like the company we got all those sales because it
• 51:35
  Speaker 6: was very very transactional, but it wasn't prepared to really
• 51:39
  Speaker 6: be like operational sound to prepare.
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: For a sale.
• 51:42
  Speaker 5: So I did.
• 51:43
  Speaker 6: But they gave low offers because like the revenue went
• 51:46
  Speaker 6: down because I scaled back.
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: Any of the people or the company that offers you
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: surprise you at all or was it like your competitor
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: that you knew were watching you and watching the growth.
• 51:56
  Speaker 6: No, No, it was just companies that just come out
• 51:59
  Speaker 6: of the woodwork. So we had two offers for like
• 52:03
  Speaker 6: to buy it, but it's lobulls. I know it's worth
• 52:05
  Speaker 6: way more than that, and you're offering it at a
• 52:07
  Speaker 6: time when like I'm scaling it back, So all we
• 52:09
  Speaker 6: have to do is.
• 52:10
  Speaker 7: Just scale it back up. We actually ran out of cash,
• 52:13
  Speaker 7: like most people don't even say that, Like the company
• 52:15
  Speaker 7: ran out of cash?
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: How did that?
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: So?
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: How did that happen?
• 52:19
  Speaker 6: Operation is expensive, like to do all those things that
• 52:23
  Speaker 6: I need like it is, it is a lot of money. Like,
• 52:25
  Speaker 6: so first of all, if you're running your own fulfillment,
• 52:27
  Speaker 6: since we have a ten thousand square foot warehouse, we
• 52:29
  Speaker 6: had to move that whole entire thing to a three
• 52:32
  Speaker 6: pl that's expensive with trucks.
• 52:34
  Speaker 7: You don't even that one caught me by surprise of
• 52:37
  Speaker 7: how much it was. So it costs a lot of money.
• 52:41
  Speaker 6: Whereas money that you were using for advertising, now you
• 52:44
  Speaker 6: got to use it for this, Like this is business
• 52:45
  Speaker 6: that ain't personal, like I always tell people, like my
• 52:48
  Speaker 6: personal life is a okay, Like I ain't got no problems,
• 52:52
  Speaker 6: I ain't got no financial problems. I ain't got no
• 52:55
  Speaker 6: issues at all, Like I am personally good. But when
• 52:58
  Speaker 6: you ask me my business, I'm oh, lord like take
• 53:01
  Speaker 6: me away. And people people can't even get that, like
• 53:05
  Speaker 6: how is like your business aggravating you?
• 53:07
  Speaker 7: But your personal life is good? Again because it's business.
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: So when you run out of cash from a business standpoint,
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: I mean that's gonna that could affect the personal right right, No,
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: I mean if I run out of cash, right, like
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: our business was out of cash.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: Business a business was out of cash.
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: Right and I got to go home and then I
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: have a wife, like you have a husband, Like, how
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: are these I mean y'all doing this together?
• 53:31
  Speaker 5: You pay yourself, how are these conversations going at home?
• 53:34
  Speaker 6: Well, you always that make sure you can pay yourself.
• 53:36
  Speaker 6: So running out of cash, we still have a big
• 53:39
  Speaker 6: audience that we still are selling. It's just not being
• 53:42
  Speaker 6: scaled the way it was.
• 53:43
  Speaker 7: Like that's what people don't understand.
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: You.
• 53:44
  Speaker 6: Yes, you do run out of money, but every day
• 53:47
  Speaker 6: there are still sales being made. Now you just have
• 53:49
  Speaker 6: to reorganize finances. You gotta cut your payroll down. You
• 53:53
  Speaker 6: gotta do things like that, and those are things that
• 53:55
  Speaker 6: people don't understand, Like we literally.
• 53:58
  Speaker 7: Ran out.
• 54:01
  Speaker 6: Cash, but we are operationally and we are still in
• 54:04
  Speaker 6: a good position. And then we also have great brand
• 54:08
  Speaker 6: equity and great branding. Whereas we built up a business.
• 54:12
  Speaker 6: I literally built up a business that people want to buy.
• 54:15
  Speaker 6: So we ain't never bad. It's just you might have
• 54:18
  Speaker 6: a headache some days, like oh lord, But as long
• 54:22
  Speaker 6: as you could keep the lights on it, make your payroll,
• 54:24
  Speaker 6: you know, and get your orders out because it's a
• 54:26
  Speaker 6: consumer product, it's not service.
• 54:27
  Speaker 7: As long as you can do that, then you're good.
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: You still have a.
• 54:30
  Speaker 6: Business and it's still if I was to shuck the
• 54:32
  Speaker 6: business down tomorrow, which it wouldn't, but if I say
• 54:35
  Speaker 6: if I did, somebody still would want to buy it
• 54:38
  Speaker 6: because of the brand equity that is therese Yes, so.
• 54:43
  Speaker 7: It's yes, you ran.
• 54:44
  Speaker 6: When you hear people run out of cash, Yeah, they
• 54:46
  Speaker 6: ran out of cash, But like, was your business in
• 54:48
  Speaker 6: the sound position to keep going to keep bringing in cash?
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: So you live in a eight million dollars stay, I do, so, yeah,
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: talk about the challenges of that.
• 55:04
  Speaker 7: Oh so that's my person, Like, that's where that challenge
• 55:09
  Speaker 7: comes from. It's a lot. Most people will be like,
• 55:11
  Speaker 7: oh my god, like I want to you know, I
• 55:13
  Speaker 7: want to.
• 55:13
  Speaker 6: I want to live in a mansion and I love it.
• 55:16
  Speaker 6: Me and my husband have lived in That's what we do.
• 55:18
  Speaker 6: We flip mansions, right, so living them to maintain them
• 55:22
  Speaker 6: in a lot. My taxes is one hundred thousand dollars,
• 55:25
  Speaker 6: our landscape and bill last year was like three hundred
• 55:27
  Speaker 6: thousand dollars.
• 55:28
  Speaker 7: It's a lot. So me and him always ask people
• 55:30
  Speaker 7: like do you want like, I know you want to
• 55:32
  Speaker 7: live here. I know it looks nice. I know you
• 55:35
  Speaker 7: want to drive the mayback like he does. But do
• 55:37
  Speaker 7: you want to maintain that stuff. Everybody always want it,
• 55:44
  Speaker 7: but they don't want to know what comes with it.
• 55:48
  Speaker 6: But for us, that's a business too. Like we live
• 55:51
  Speaker 6: in the mansion. The mansion just take way longer to
• 55:53
  Speaker 6: sell than like how people flip houses.
• 55:55
  Speaker 7: It takes way longer.
• 55:57
  Speaker 6: Like we buy them for cash, we fix them up
• 55:59
  Speaker 6: really fast. And with mansions in the States, you cannot
• 56:03
  Speaker 6: You can't just put like cheap stuff in there, like
• 56:05
  Speaker 6: you got to get like the good stuff, like a
• 56:07
  Speaker 6: refrigerator's like thirty thousand dollars like to go in.
• 56:09
  Speaker 7: So we just have an eye for it. We love
• 56:12
  Speaker 7: to doing it, and then we just like living well.
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: So you got the wolf applying there.
• 56:17
  Speaker 6: We have wolf at our last mansion. This one we
• 56:19
  Speaker 6: did Viking and true old Viking.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thirty thousand hours for the freeze.
• 56:23
  Speaker 5: There's a lot.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: So this is fair. I've seen it. So so y'all
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: have that. This is part of the real estate portfolio.
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: Are y'all doing that specifically in New York or y'all
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: throughout the New York?
• 56:36
  Speaker 7: Okay, Long Island, Long Island, And it's a hard market.
• 56:42
  Speaker 6: Long Island is a hard market because your money is
• 56:46
  Speaker 6: sitting there, like we just pay cash for it, so
• 56:49
  Speaker 6: like we have money just like sitting there. But like
• 56:52
  Speaker 6: if you pay four million dollars or other than cash
• 56:54
  Speaker 6: and you could get back eight nine million dollars, it's
• 56:57
  Speaker 6: okay to sitting wait for that for like two years.
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: What made you want to get into that market of
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: flipping mansions.
• 57:02
  Speaker 7: I just always liked real estate.
• 57:04
  Speaker 6: My grandmother in the eighties, which when I was younger
• 57:06
  Speaker 6: I didn't realize it. My grandmother, a black woman, was
• 57:10
  Speaker 6: buying in selling houses in Queens and Long Island, which
• 57:14
  Speaker 6: in the eighties was like not easy to do, and
• 57:17
  Speaker 6: she owned twenty three houses at one point, and I
• 57:21
  Speaker 6: just loved it, like going.
• 57:23
  Speaker 7: With her, like a fixing up the houses and things
• 57:25
  Speaker 7: like that.
• 57:25
  Speaker 6: What I didn't like, I would never be a landlord
• 57:27
  Speaker 6: because that instance dealing with her when I was younger,
• 57:30
  Speaker 6: like as a young child, turned me off from tenants,
• 57:34
  Speaker 6: like I called all types of names from her tenants
• 57:38
  Speaker 6: collecting rent, So I would never be a tenant. I
• 57:42
  Speaker 6: know a lot of people flip and they want to
• 57:43
  Speaker 6: do the airbnbs. I know that my personality is not
• 57:47
  Speaker 6: for tenants. So the easiest way to do that is
• 57:50
  Speaker 6: to do what I like, and I like, I've always
• 57:53
  Speaker 6: loved mansions in the States, so why not do that?
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: So you're selling to the one percent? Yeah, pretty much.
• 57:58
  Speaker 7: That's why it takes like a year to sell.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: Ye.
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: So do you have a team that helps you run
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: outlaies or you just you're doing this yourself?
• 58:06
  Speaker 6: You're oh no, no, no, not for privation, No, no, no,
• 58:08
  Speaker 6: we have people that we call in like real contracts. Yeah,
• 58:11
  Speaker 6: well you're dealing with the States, with these towns, especially
• 58:13
  Speaker 6: in Long Island. No, you got to do everything right.
• 58:15
  Speaker 6: You gotta get permits, you get an extension. You can't
• 58:17
  Speaker 6: just like throw the wall top. No, they will come
• 58:21
  Speaker 6: and tell you to take all your wolf down because
• 58:22
  Speaker 6: I think they're my Simtobay can't be like PVC. It
• 58:26
  Speaker 6: has to be like a particular type of pipes and
• 58:28
  Speaker 6: stuff like that. So, No, we have people that come
• 58:31
  Speaker 6: in that we hire companies to do that that we've
• 58:32
  Speaker 6: been dealing with over the last couple of years.
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: Though, So what's next? What's next for you the next
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: year or two?
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: I know, obviously planning and sell your company, so you're
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: working on that, but yeah, any other initiatives or anything
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: else that you guys are working on looking forward to.
• 58:47
  Speaker 6: Yeah, so preparing for the sale in the next couple
• 58:50
  Speaker 6: of years to keep flipping mansions and the States probably
• 58:55
  Speaker 6: our next one, though you're only gonna live in that
• 58:57
  Speaker 6: one and then do another one because it's the first
• 58:58
  Speaker 6: one we lived in through contry diction. And then the
• 59:02
  Speaker 6: next thing is we took our investment firm and now
• 59:06
  Speaker 6: made it a brunch black women conversations that actually scaled
• 59:10
  Speaker 6: up real quick, like we just even just we just
• 59:12
  Speaker 6: went on Instagram with that maybe in like April, and
• 59:15
  Speaker 6: we almost have like ten thousand followers for that. That
• 59:18
  Speaker 6: is bringing a group of because I have high end
• 59:22
  Speaker 6: friends and I have low end friends. So bringing a
• 59:25
  Speaker 6: bunch of women at different levels, because at every level,
• 59:29
  Speaker 6: everybody still always got the same problem, especially as a
• 59:31
  Speaker 6: black woman.
• 59:32
  Speaker 7: There's a black woman, all black man, we all usually
• 59:34
  Speaker 7: have the same problem.
• 59:34
  Speaker 6: I don't care how much money you make or what
• 59:36
  Speaker 6: level of status you at, we still deal with the
• 59:38
  Speaker 6: same stuff. And it's been working. We've done my team.
• 59:42
  Speaker 6: I have a small team for that that handles like
• 59:44
  Speaker 6: the social media and the operations for that. We do
• 59:46
  Speaker 6: the brunches and we do them at my We do
• 59:48
  Speaker 6: them at my house.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we say high income and relaxed income. Yes, it's
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: never low, yes, just relaxed.
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you, this is a great conversation. How can
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: people follow you on social website and information?
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 6: Yeah, so my company is Rubylove dot com. My Instagram
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 6: is I am Crystal at Tien. But bear with me
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 6: on that one because I only got along like a
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 6: year and a half ago, I think, and I'm just
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 6: even learning Instagram.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 7: And then our investment firm.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 6: If they're people are interested for me and my husband
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 6: to look at their company, or if they want to
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 6: be invited to the brunch, they could go to Black
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 6: Women Conversations or Cajuncolt dot com.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and all your competitors out there and with the
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 4: X stop playing. You know who you are, Ruby Love,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: that's the brand exactly.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: Well, thank you guys for rock orders. We'll see you
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: next week. Peace.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: Peace,