Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Lilly Sparks built a Ghee company from $0-$10M in just 4 years before changing directions and launching her ethical porn site, afterglow (part 1)

Transcript

Lilly Sparks built a Ghee company from $0-$10M in just 4 years before changing directions and launching her ethical porn site, afterglow (part 1) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Lily Sparks for Female Startup Club. Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to the show. Today we're learning from Lily Sparks, the founder of Afterglow. Afterglow is introducing a new category to the world called erotic wellness, and they're building an online universe where porn is made by and for the feminine gaze.
• 0:30
  A universe where doing guided masturbations and partner exercises is just as normal as reading the morning paper, where women can both be celebrated and centred.
• 0:42
  In this episode, we talk through Lily's transition from building a CPG company from zero to $10 million in revenue and realizing it wasn't what she saw for her future, and then going through a transition into building her dream vision of what she was truly aligned with, Afterglow.
• 1:03
  And holy moly, is this story interesting. But before we get into it, as always, if you're on your phone right now listening to this episode, please do consider taking a quick screenshot of the podcast and sharing it to your Instagram stories or leave us a review in your podcast app to help other ears find us. And of course, you are always welcome to slide into my DMs or my inbox because you know how much I love to chat.
• 1:30
  Let's get into this episode. This is Lily for Female Startup Club. Lily, hi. Welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast.
• 1:39
  Hello, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to hear your journey today. You've got this incredible story from building a CPG brand to a crazy revenue number, switching to another crazy industry. It's all a thing. I don't really know too much of your story. I couldn't find much about that switch online. So I'm so excited to get into it, but I'd love to get you to start by sharing.
• 2:03
  giving us a bit of an elevator pitch onto what your brand is now and the ethos behind it. So my brand is Afterglow and we are porn that helps you have great sex. So I watch porn and if you're like one of 90% of people, you watch porn too. But 60% of people are dissatisfied with their sex life. And porn was ranked the number one place to learn about sex
• 2:33
  it does a super terrible job of actually helping us have satisfying sex lives. And our sex lives are so important to us, you know, like we're, we're animals. We like food, sleep and sex. And so many relationships are like destroyed because of, you know, people just aren't, don't have the skills to like communicate with their partner, you know, express what they want. We're, we're taught,
• 2:59
  you know, Cosmo is like 50 ways to please your man, but we're never really taught about how to please ourselves or, you know, how to have really satisfying sexual relationships. So at Afterglow, we are $10 a month subscription and you get access to a bunch of sexy videos that are more realistic, more relatable, show like a wider variety of experiences. We try to avoid like the same old
• 3:26
  tropes that, you know, step siblings and like racial fetishization and all of that. And then we pair those videos with guided exercises that you can do by yourself or with a partner and expert advice. So we really try to create a more holistic toolkit that helps people, you know, have the best sex in their lives. That's what we want to do.
• 3:48
  Wow, this is so interesting. I'm so excited to learn all about this. I have so many questions about, you know, what you're doing now, how you've made that switch, but I don't want to like jump ahead of myself here. So I want to like go back to the beginning, start at the beginning, circa 2015. I think I read when you were building the first business. Do you want to kind of take us back to that time to how you got involved with the Ghee Company?
• 4:14
  Yes. So I started my career as an accountant and I worked as an accountant for like eight years. And I looked at the, you know, the partners at the accounting firm and I was like, this is not who I want to be. But for a long time, I felt kind of lost in my career and like I didn't know what I wanted to do.
• 4:34
  And I actually had the really great opportunity to meet my co-founder in the Ghee company. And she kind of did all the sales and marketing. I kind of did all the ops and finance. And she needed somebody to help her cross all the I's, dot all the T's, make sure the Ghee got made every day. And when I was thinking about it, I was like, I could go back to school and get my MBA and end up...
• 5:03
  a hundred grand in debt, or I could join this startup and, you know, I won't make a salary for a while, but, you know, even if I do that, I'll end up like a hundred grand ahead. And so I did that, left my full-time job. And when I started at the Ghee Company, you know, the biggest dream that I could imagine at that point, because I had no startup experience whatsoever, was,
• 5:31
  was selling a million dollars of revenue. I remember I was like, I'll get a tattoo if we sell a million dollars of revenue. Like, that'll be so crazy. And two years later, we hit a million. And then we hit two million. And then we hit five million. And then we hit 10 million. And, you know, that experience just showed me
• 5:58
  that I could create change in this world. We created Ghee as a category in the supermarket. And the only marketing message we really needed was what is Ghee? Like people didn't know what Ghee was. We just had to tell them what it is. How do you use it? Simple as that. And coming off of that experience, I thought about what is the area in the world that I really want to create change that I'm really passionate about
• 6:28
  And that was why I started Afterglow. Oh my gosh. We have a lot to unpack here. Wow. Holy moly. From zero to $10 million in revenue in just a couple of years. First of all, that's wild. So, yeah,
• 6:41
  Your co-founder at the time, she had the idea. She's starting this business. She meets you. You decide to join her in the business. What does that look like? Were you both like, hey, let's funnel our savings into a bank account and get started and figure everything out together? Or was it already kind of established by the time you joined the business? Yeah, I joined it very early. And there's a really cool, it's like an NPR podcast. It's like dividing the piece of an imaginary pie. Oh, yeah, I've heard it.
• 7:11
  Or I've heard something around that same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Co-founder relationships are super interesting. And I'm sure you could do like 100 episodes just on that. For us, we talked about this is how much money you're putting into the business. We put in different amounts of money and kind of valued. Basically, I came in as like, I put in some money, but not as much as she did. And there was a piece of it that I was kind of an investor in that respect.
• 7:38
  And then there was a piece of it that I got for being an employee that I kind of vested into being, you know, co-founder and COO, CFO that I kind of vested into. And it evolved. You know, I had worked with her kind of as a consultant first while she was starting up. You know, that's something I really like to do.
• 7:58
  either when I work with companies or when, you know, I have kind of higher level people coming to work with me is I like to start if possible as kind of a consultant to see, I feel like once you've worked with somebody for 90 days, you know, if you like working with them or not, you know, what their strengths are, you, you know, if, if you vibe. So we did that for a little bit. And then I was like, you know, we, we, it was actually at natural products expo West.
• 8:24
  Expo West is like the biggest natural food event in the US for like the Whole Foods type products. And that was our launch. So we launched there and I saw people who were, you know, I had no startup experience, no food industry experience. And I saw people who had that experience, who were buyers, who were brokers, who were distributors,
• 8:49
  come up to our booth and also think that our product could go somewhere, believe in it, think it was really cool. And I was like, okay, like this, it's not just me. It's not just like the little craft fairs and farmer's markets we've been doing. This has real potential. This is worth investing my time in. I'd love to talk about the journey of like
• 9:12
  Zero to one, because from one to 10 is obviously very different. I think I read you guys raise some money. And of course, there's like the blueprint for getting money.
• 9:22
  Well, there's a blueprint for everything. But I think the one to 10 is like, you know, all the steps that you need to kind of do and all the channels that you need to invest in. But zero to one is quite difficult because you've got to really get that traction. You've got to gain momentum. You've got to educate the consumer, like you said. So if you had to summarize or distill into like a series of points or milestones that you went through, how do you get from zero to one as a new brand?
• 9:46
  Yeah, it's a great question. And it's funny you ask because with Afterglow, now I'm doing zero to one again. And I'm like, I blocked out how hard this is.
• 9:59
  Like, it's, it's so hard. And it's so confusing. But for the key company, and the only reason I'm not mentioning its name is just because, you know, there are some not sex positive people out there that might not want
• 10:18
  I just don't want to give them any flack for being associated with porn more than they need to. Running a business is enough trouble on its own. Totally. We shall refer to it as the Ghee Company. Yeah. But yeah, there were a couple of moments that definitely helped.
• 10:38
  Going to Expo and that launch was really big for us. It's also really crazy how much starting a natural foods company has changed, even since I did it in like 2015, 2016. So we did Expo West. We were in only about like five retail stores. We had a website, but we were really focused on e-commerce hardly at all. You know, we had a little Instagram going.
• 11:08
  Doing that, doing Expo West, doing that show that got us into Earth Bear, which was our first chain of about 50 stores. And that got us into distribution. So, you know, I feel like today a lot of and right. I think it's the right move. A lot of brands start more e-commerce focus to kind of build their first thousand true fans. We didn't do that.
• 11:37
  and getting on shelf. And we expanded really quickly and a little bit faster than the demand allowed. So we got those 50 stores. We got, you know, our local Whole Foods, we kind of got to like 200 stores and we're doing well. We're selling off the shelf.
• 12:01
  Then we got another, we got Ahold, which is a larger supermarket chain of like a thousand stores. So overnight we went from, you know, small to like big. And there was a moment there when we weren't really selling that well, because you can get on the shelf, but if people aren't buying it and getting it off the shelf and turning it,
• 12:27
  then you're going to get kicked out really fast. And being kicked out of a store is hard to come back from. Right. So what were you doing? So there was a moment there when we were, yeah, we were really nervous. And we started doing a lot of coupons and a lot of in-store advertising. Coupons are generally the most effective way to get people to buy your product on the shelf.
• 12:54
  People love coupons. As in like a promotion? Is that what you mean? Like a discount promotion kind of thing?
• 12:59
  Like on the shelf where it's like, you know, normally $14, now $10. Right, right, right. Beverage brands do like 60% of their volume when they're, it's called like being on deal when you have a coupon. Some brands do like, like beverage brands do like 50, 60% of their volume when they're on deal. Like it's crazy the amount of impact the coupon, like the on shelf, you know, tag coupons have.
• 13:27
  And then the other, another big factor, it was around the same time that this was happening that we did a lot of couponing. We started doing digital ads, which really helped. So everybody who came to our site, we did a lot of retargeting of them. And then one of the big factors of our success that I love to talk about is we got on Amazon.
• 13:52
  And for us, you know, the reason people were looking for ghee for the most part was Whole30 diet or bulletproof coffee. Oh, right, right, right, right, right. We got on Amazon at just the right time where everybody who is searching for ghee because food.
• 14:14
  They were trying a Whole30 or they'd read about this or they'd seen that. And they went to look for it on Amazon. They found us and they got us. And that was a huge... Because we could kind of like own that search term. And it was something people were searching for. That was a really big factor, I believe, in our success. And at that time, not a lot of people were selling food on Amazon.
• 14:42
  That's so interesting. Yeah. And now it just seems like the norm. You can do all of your groceries on Amazon in addition to just buying like shelf stable products. Yeah. Yeah. And it's crazy because like, yeah, now Whole Foods, like Amazon bought Whole Foods, like it's such like COVID made it such an ingrained part of our experience. But, you know, in 2015, 2016, it wasn't very few brands were...
• 15:09
  especially like we did Amazon advertising as well. We're like actually actively trying to capture people on Amazon. Got it. And so during that time, what year is it that you've kind of gotten to that seven figure mark? Yeah, it's, you know, I think it's, we launched, I think, 2014. I think we got to that seven figure mark, probably around 2016. Yeah.
• 15:36
  And then everything starts to kind of snowball. The growth starts to happen. And then we can't keep up with the demand. And, you know, we had this, we were making the ghee in this like tiny kitchen, like 500 square feet, like the size of like a, smaller than like a tiny studio apartment. And we had people in that factory, like 24 seven, we like,
• 16:06
  packed up against each other like sardines. It was crazy. So then it's like, you know, you always have, it's really hard to raise like the demand of the supply at like the same level. So it's always one thing or another. You build something to a certain point, and then everything breaks. And you have to like try and rebuild it with a new tech stack and a new co-packer and a new this and a new that and then take that from wherever you are to the next level
• 16:35
  Yeah. Our second big challenge was around finding a co-packer because ghee is hot butter oil. It is extremely slippery. The minute it spills, it's all over the equipment. And like I would go home and my dog would just attack my shoes because they smell like butter. They tasted like butter.
• 17:01
  butter was just everywhere. Like I still like the smell of ghee cooking. I have just like such a sense memory tied to that smell. Oh my gosh, I bet.
• 17:13
  I want to kind of fast forward now because we have a lot to get through and I want to talk about what you're doing now. But what was kind of leading you to the point of being like, I'm going to leave this business. And what does that actually look like? Because obviously there's a lot of courage that it takes to decide to leave something and start something new, start from scratch when you've just been through all of that. And I'm also interested in like the practical side of that. Like,
• 17:36
  Do you keep your equity in the business? Do you sell your stake to someone else? How did that journey look of first realizing that you're thinking about doing something else and then actually going through that transition? Yeah. So I left the Ghee Company in 2017. I had a terrible 2017. In January, I got divorced.
• 18:03
  And then in November, my dad had had cancer and got sicker and ended up passing away. Oh, God, I'm so sorry. Yeah, those kind of like life things ended up leading to a bit of a co-founder breakup as well. Just because I was going through so much and it was really time. Time to step away and it wasn't easy. It was.
• 18:31
  a lot of negotiations between us. And it's honestly, it's very, it was very similar to like getting the divorce with my husband and partner, like the process of leaving the business. It's, you know, now you have to get into all these financial things and contracts and, and all of this stuff. And I, um,
• 18:56
  It was really hard for me to leave. And I left. So even after, you know, kind of deciding to leave, I ended up staying another couple months to help transition everything, keep things going. I ended up keeping my equity in the company, but kind of leaving myself.
• 19:16
  leaving my board seat, leaving my involvement with the company. And at the time, that was really difficult for me. But now that I have a little more experience and have seen this happen with more companies, I recognize the value of having one person be in charge and not really having it be a question. I think having murkiness in authority at startups can be really toxic.
• 19:42
  Is that like as in sharing like the role of CEO? Is that what you mean? Like co-CEO kind of roles? No, I mean, I think it's different. It's more just like if anybody's not sure who is approving what or who can like if two people are not aligned and then they're like, you can mom dad them a little bit. Like, I think that's just really bad for the culture. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it.
• 20:04
  Wow, that's a crazy year and so intense. I can't even imagine. So this is 2017. But if it weren't for that, I would never have started afterglow. Exactly. Everything leads you somewhere. Every so often the universe is just like, okay, your life needs to change now. It got to that point where things started to break and now you had to like rebuild. So at what point are you like,
• 20:31
  I'm going to launch a porn company. Like what is that moment? What's the mindset? How is this coming about? Like tell us everything. Yeah. I had always, it was the thing I'd always dreamed of doing. Oh my God. Cool. Like when people would ask me if you had all the money in the world, what would you do? I was like, I would start a porn for women company.
• 20:55
  But it was just so out there. And I didn't know anybody, didn't know anything about the adult industry, didn't know anything about filmmaking, didn't know anything about running a tech company. And then I went on a 10-day silent meditation retreat. And on day seven, I kind of got this, like, flash of inspiration or message that told me now is the time.
• 21:25
  Like even though you don't have all the money in the world, like just go do it and follow your dreams and like make it happen. Oh my gosh, that's crazy. How do you tell your parents that you're starting a porn company and like tell your friends and stuff?
• 21:39
  Yeah, my friends were fine. My friends, I had no like worries or concern about. They're used to me, you know, starting the Ghee Company and like doing all of these, you know, wild things. So they were totally cool, totally excited, totally supportive. I was really nervous about telling my mom.
• 22:00
  Because I came from like somewhat a conservative family. You know, being an accountant was like a very normal thing for my family. We didn't really talk about sex growing up much. And I had no idea what she was going to say. And I told her about it. And her response was like, oh, yeah, women don't really like the cum shot, do they? Yeah.
• 22:27
  Oh, my God. You're like, wow, mum, we've reached a new level of closeness. Yeah. And shout out to your mum.
• 22:40
  I told my aunts and it was really funny because they were like, you know, the youngest one was like pointed at the middle one. She's like, oh, I learned about sex from her. And then the middle one like pointed at the oldest one. She's like, well, I was just telling you what I learned from her. And then the oldest one was like, well, I was just making it all up. And I think like at that moment.
• 23:05
  They, you know, I think they wanted to be supportive. They were being nice. But I think at that moment they were like, oh, this is actually a problem that needs to be fixed. Yeah, like we see it. We immediately see it. We see what you're saying now. And so at that time, was there anyone doing anything similar in the space? Like were there any companies that you knew doing this?
• 23:27
  Yeah, so there's Belessa and there's Erica Lust that do porn for women. But when I was thinking, you know, in the process of starting the company, I was like, well, why do I want to start this? Why is it important to me? Like, what's what's different about Afterglow? And, you know, I mentioned I got divorced earlier. You know, I was in a relationship with my high school sweetheart from age 15 to 30. Yeah.
• 23:56
  And we were each other's, you know, first and only partners. And I didn't orgasm until I was 24.
• 24:05
  And I always had wanted to like use porn as a tool to say like, this is what I want or, you know, open up that conversation. But I didn't, and I'm, you know, I was selling millions of dollars of butter. I'm good at learning things. But when it came to my sex life, I just felt so stuck and so alone. And like, I didn't have anywhere to turn to. And it's like, when, when,
• 24:31
  When we want to learn anything else, like how to change a tire or like how to ride a bike. There's so many YouTube videos. There's so much resources. There's so much information. Like, why shouldn't it be the same when it comes to sex, which is this super important thing that we all do? One hundred percent. And also like totally different conversation. But like, I'm sure it's got to have changed by now. But I also feel like sex ed is just so out of date or certainly was like, you know, when we were in school.
• 24:59
  All that stuff needs to change, like, a lot.
• 25:04
  Yeah, it's like how not to get pregnant and like how not to get a disease. Yeah, it's literally like just don't have sex. That's that's what you should think about. You're in school. Don't have sex. Yeah. So nothing about like it just creates this like shame around it that then when you do find a partner that you want to share that with you, you're lost about how to make it a, you know, like a loving, connected experience. Yeah.
• 25:30
  Totally. Absolutely. So how do you start the business? What are the first steps? What are the, what's the blueprint to building this company? Not knowing anyone, not knowing anything about the industry, not knowing it about like film. How do you start? Yeah. I just started like
• 25:51
  using my network, talking to everybody I knew and asking them if they knew anybody in the industry and kind of like working my way towards it. And at the same time doing research and reaching out to people, like cold emailing them and seeing if they would talk to me. And I think a lot of people would be surprised about how often people are willing to take
• 26:12
  you know, a half an hour, an hour of their time, just to talk to you if you're getting started and willing to, you know, answer your questions. And that was a hugely valuable, like exercise for me of, you know,
• 26:27
  researching, getting to know the space, getting to know the people. And then I'd always ask people to introduce me to new people and them to introduce me to new people. And I'd get more questions. So I did that for about six to nine months. And one person I reached out to, Rooster, was an ethical porn consultant, who,
• 26:47
  who that was like kind of that felt like a break, you know, and they were like, I have these guidelines of how to make filming more ethical, you know, here are a lot of the issues at play here, a lot of the people in the space I can introduce you to. They ended up introducing me to our producer who helped us produce our first films. So the first thing I did was I produced three films and then I did a crowdfunding Indiegogo campaign.
• 27:18
  And I saw that as practicing because at the same time as I was building the product, I was kind of practicing the marketing and practicing the pitch and seeing if people were into it, which...
• 27:31
  A lot of people think porn. They're like, oh, this is no problem. Like it's an easy business. Everyone's going to want it. Everybody watches porn. And even though that's true, that doesn't it's in any business, it's always hard to go from zero to one. You always have to push to find those first people. So that was really, that was really helpful. Kind of, yeah, starting our Instagram and like finding followers and like figuring out.
• 27:56
  It really helped me figure out my voice and how did I want to talk about the company and how did it. How what. Doing the customer research of like what were people interested in, what got their attention. I think doing customer research is a really good way for early businesses when you have an idea to like start honing that idea. What are what are the benefits? What do people care about in the space?
• 28:25
  So yeah, did the Indiegogo campaign and was 133% funded. And that gave us the money to launch the website.
• 28:35
  So how much money did you need to invest like personally and with the Indiegogo campaign to kind of like get you to launch, including like producing three movies, three films rather, which sounds like a very expensive task and building a website kind of that phase? Yeah. So we raised about 20, 25 from the Indiegogo campaign and I put in about 30K. So it was about 50K all in to get the website launched. And what year are we talking about for Timeline?
• 29:05
  That was about a year ago. That was about a year ago. Okay, great. So you launched the website. You've got your three films ready to go. How do you start marketing? Yeah. Then we licensed other films. So we had like about 50 films on the site. So during that time, I was lucky enough to find my head of marketing.
• 29:27
  who had a, she worked at Wanderlust, the yoga festivals, and had a lot of experience building partnerships. So one of the ways we've been marketing, and she's really great at, you know, building community and creating organic growth. So one way we worked with partner brands to help get the word out about Afterglow, like through their email lists, and,
• 29:52
  And we also submitted our films to Hump Fest, which is Dan Savage's porn festival. And we won an award there, which was awesome. So we got a lot of our first fans came from that, you know, kind of indie porn scene. And then kind of the partnerships, we did some with like sex toy companies. Yeah, anywhere we could talk about the brand, because we're extremely limited with what we can do on like paid ads with Instagram and Instagram.
• 30:21
  Facebook and Google. We're out here talking about it. Do you risk like having your channels taken down altogether? Like where does the line kind of sit when it's just even posting organic content on places like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok? We've had our Instagram taken down three times.
• 30:43
  We're currently on our backup. And the struggle is that it's really unclear and it's really inconsistently enforced where the line is. Like, if you told me what I needed to do, like, we never post anything explicit at all.
• 30:58
  We rarely even say like, we don't use the word porn. We don't use the word sex. Like we're really focused on educational content on all of these platforms. And we still are constantly like having to appeal things and fight and get taken down. And we don't have any information about what we did that caused it or how to fix it. Cause I'm like, just tell me what to do. And I won't, you know, it's like, I'm at the same time, there's all these Instagrams out
• 31:28
  fall, you know, completely within the rules and are able to continue on unchecked. And it's like, we're, we're literally out here just posting about like, information that people want about how to have great sex and can't do it. And it's super frustrating.
• 31:47
  What channels can you use? Kind of like I'm thinking OnlyFans comes to mind as something that you might be able to use as a channel. What other channels can you use outside of partnerships? And how do you use them? Like how do you grow your presence through something like OnlyFans?
• 32:05
  Yeah, we do advertise on Pornhub and we're actually going to be launching a channel on Pornhub soon because Pornhub is like the Google of porn. So I think that's a great way for people to find us. We do some podcasts at Podcast Advertising. We can talk about it with kind of like some like podcasts where the subject is around sex and sexuality. We're also it's kind of a longer term play, but working on more content marketing, more
• 32:35
  What is ethical porn? People are searching for these things. That's so exciting. And so where is the company today, a year in from launch? So we have about 3,000 customers. Oh my God, that's amazing. Yeah, and our goal is to get to 10,000 by the end of the year, at which point will be about breakeven. So that'll be really exciting.
• 32:59
  Are you going to go down the traditional path of like VC capital in the tech kind of business space? Or are you trying to bootstrap it? What's your kind of direction and approach to funding moving forward? Yeah, so we have a bunch of amazing angel investors that have helped us get to this point. And we have interest from VCs. You know, it's definitely a space that a lot of people cannot invest in and are not interested in investing in.
• 33:27
  But what we're doing is so different. And so, so that, you know, people who are like, more people are seeing the sexual wellness market is a $74 billion industry. It's predicted to be $126 billion industry by 2026. Like people like VCs see that and they get it and they want to invest in it more and more. And yeah,
• 33:52
  you know, we believe that we're going to like our mission, like my vision for Afterglow is to become the female centered playboy of the modern era. Like, that's so cool.
• 34:05
  Yeah, I did all this stuff around like, you know, breaking out of the norms and the shame that they had around sex and like making it less restrictive. It was from kind of a male perspective. And so now I feel like it's really time to have like that second wave of empowerment that like comes from a male perspective.
• 34:23
  And I think that like meeting like we the reason I started after Glow is porn is like that's where people are going to learn about sex. Like they're not Googling for sex ed. They're Googling for porn. So like to win the sexual wellness market, I think you have to meet for where they're at. Do you know Catherine Dockery from Vice Ventures? Yes. She's so great. I feel like that would be the perfect fit to have her like in your corner. That would be amazing. Are you connected with her?
• 34:52
  Yeah, we have spoken in the past, but nothing's come of it yet. Just in time, all in good time. What do you think is your key piece of advice for entrepreneurs in 2022, especially if you're in that kind of vice niche of some sort? Yeah, I think my key piece of advice is to make sure you're taking care of yourself.
• 35:17
  Because it's a marathon, not a sprint. And I think, I know, like, I succumb to this. Like, you always see on LinkedIn or on Twitter, like, all the great things everybody else in your space is doing. And, like, all you see is their highlights. And with yourself, you see all the ups and downs and the challenges and the no's and the rejection. Yeah.
• 35:43
  It can be really hard. So I think it's like, take care of yourself. Make sure you're surrounded by, you know, the good people, supportive people and keep going because I think it's sometimes you just have to like stick around long enough to like pick up some luck.
• 36:03
  I agree. I feel like I was talking to this founder on the weekend who was super successful, built this crazy huge business over the course of 35 years. So he sold it. He made a lot of money. He did it again. And he's done it multiple times since.
• 36:18
  But he was like, to me, the thing is, is it's just about like sticking with the thing, like stick through it, like all the hurdles that come your way, all the challenges, all the things, all the ups and the downs. But if you stick with it, that compounded effect, and I talk about the compounded effect so often on the show, but like, it's so underrated. Just that one tiny step every day and just thinking like, yeah, like in 10 years time, I'm going to look back and be like, oh, okay, here we are. Here we are.
• 36:45
  Yeah, it's like when I tell my story, it like feels obvious. It feels like it was like, oh, I just did like this thing and that thing and this thing and it worked. But it's like I'm not telling the story of the like 50 things we did that didn't really work and that weren't worth it and that didn't go anywhere.
• 37:01
  Totally. And it's like just part of the process. You know, I also feel like I don't know if you're like this, but I feel like I'm wired to remember the good stuff and not the bad stuff. Like you look back and you're like, yeah, it was kind of easy. Like, I don't know, like, you know, I did this and I did that and I did this and I did that. But you kind of forget the bad side of things because that just doesn't stick in my mind. Totally. Totally. A hundred percent.
• 37:30
  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.
• 37:54
  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.
• 38:17
  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.
• 38:34
  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.
• 38:58
  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.
• 39:21
  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.