💊 JAMIE NORWOOD // WINX HEALTH COFOUNDER

21:45Jamie Norwood:To implement that, okay. I'll call up our suppliers and see what they can do. I actually think it works. What? Yeah. It's kind of like telling the customer, like, you have to take action. If you have positive, like, there's a next step here. You don't just like throw it out. You don't just look at the line. You scan the code and then it tells you about all the stuff. Like you heard it here first. Jamie's got a great idea. I mean, it's crazy. We put these QR codes for the app like on the packaging, on the insert, like everywhere, you know, multiple places on the packaging. And still sometimes people are like, where am I supposed to scan?

22:22Jamie Norwood:And it's like, OK, like, you know, but then it's on us. Like it's not easy enough to understand. So we're continuously making updates. It's continuous innovation. On that note, let's talk about packaging. Yes. Now that I brought us to the silly part of the program. But the not so silly part of packaging is it's a lot of work and very expensive to rebrand. And you did it. Tell us about the rebrand. What was the hardest part? What was the most fun part? Why did you feel like it was the right moment to do it? Yes. The rebrand was, we felt like it was the right moment to do it because we launched our first product pregnancy test under the brand name Stix.

22:57Jamie Norwood:And it was a very like literal like sticks pregnancy test. We then launched into UTI, vaginal infections, morning after pill. And then now we have these like connected diagnostics. So we just felt like we needed a name before we launched on retail shelves that was less literal and more like a more like represented what we stood for, what our brand was growing into. And we chose the name Winks because we felt like it was like a nod or a wink to let, you know, the woman, the shopper, her know that we're really in her corner. We've been there before. We just thought it was like a little bit more playful and less literal stick metaphor.

23:37Jamie Norwood:And that process was definitely kind of grueling because at the time we rebranded before we pitched to Walgreens. before that deal. And even now, like always we're a small company, we're like always cash constraint to a certain degree, but we were extremely cash constraint when we did the rebrand. So like I literally did our packaging mock-ups on Canva myself and then hired a freelance graphic designer to like put them into Illustrator and like, you know, clean them up. It was really, really, you know, I'm the one coordinating with the printers on like the board grade and the color codes and I think all things considered for the resources that we had we did an okay job but we're actually now in a process of not rebranding but updating the packaging and we're working with an agency who does CPG brands like usually food brands and they're like so professional and amazing and the thought that they put into all of it and like you know their designer is the one like corresponding with our printers now and I'm like oh my god I I can't believe our packaging even remotely printed in the right color because he's like using all these terms and codes.

24:48Jamie Norwood:And I'm like, I just send them files. And I was like, do your thing. So definitely a learning curve. And just goes to show that sometimes you do need to spend money to have a really nice outcome. Yeah. But also that some but but that you don't. Right. Like you do and you don't because you did it. And that's what makes you so amazing as a founder is like, right. Like, if you don't have the money, you just find a way. Yeah. And, you know, I really honored that. Like, the designs that we did the rebrand ourselves, that's what's in Walgreens right now. And, like, when we showed our board the new designs, they were like, we like your current ones better.

25:25Jamie Norwood:And I had to be like, no. Like, you just like it better because it's what you know. Like, let me explain to you why this is so much better. But, yeah, you definitely can do a lot with a little. Like I am, I'm not a trained designer or anything, but like Canva is once you learn it, you can do anything. And it's the same with like any, you know, tool like that. You'd be surprised with how much you can do with just a couple of resources. Yeah. And the fact that a taste comes into this too. It really does because the fact that you have are so highly opinionated about this thing that's your, you know, your baby for lack of another word.

26:01And like you can, I mean, you got it in Walgreens, you know, on your own sweat equity. And then, of course, someone can come out, you know, someone else can come in and and improve the result or iterate or like find the lever that can make it fly off the shelf more. And and at the same time, like it's it's the fact that you were able to express your vision from, you know, the very beginning is what sort of like paved the path for that. So kudos to you. You are officially a designer now.

26:29Jamie Norwood:Thank you. it's all a real design okay you mentioned canva which makes me i love tools and uh and i love talking about tool stacks just like what are the things that you use every day that make your day and like my tail wags when when i go into slack i really like slack almost to a fault um and i'm curious to hear what tools are your favorite tools to use uh at work either for like yeah production communication, fundraising, whatever it is. Slack, for sure. Like that. I also like I want everything in Slack. I want everyone there. I'm always it's always open, like not right now, but literally always open for me.

27:09Jamie Norwood:I've always or the Lynx team has always used Asana for project management. I know there's so many tools. I just feel like Asana is like the best, at least for us. Yeah. Everything's in there. I'm also using Canva like every single day, multiple times a day. we use Figma for like more involved anything UX like for our app we're on Figma. Illustrator you mentioned or maybe that's well maybe that maybe you get to outsource that. Well now I'm using Illustrator I'm like we we have now I'm on Illustrator but only doing slight slight little tweaks because um our agency we're working with is over there in the UK and sometimes it's you know we're on deadlines so like I'm going in and I'm like editing little things but it is very i would not recommend just jumping in there it's it's hard now i'm looking at my tabs that i have saved we for retail media we use um all the retail media platforms so like gopuff doordash instacart um critio for walgreens.com like all of those tools and then g suite like google cal is the big one i don't use cynthia my co-founder uses that email superhuman i don't use superhuman I do.

28:23Jamie Norwood:She's always like, you don't use this. And I'm just like, Google is fine. I mean, Google's great. You know what? I find myself getting sort of addicted to keyboard shortcuts. Like if there is an app that Superhuman just did an extraordinary job of that. And so, you know, if there's an app where I can just float across the keyboard instead of like, I don't have a mouse mouse. I just have a trackpad. So yeah, once you cross the keyboard shortcut, But whatever that is that they put inside Superhuman is kind of amazing. Then cross to that side. And I will say, like, I have, like, my planner. I put everything in here.

29:01Jamie Norwood:Yeah. You've got to have, I don't know, I just, like, always have this open right in front of my keyboard. And, like, it's kind of amazing. I love that. Color-coded things. I don't trust myself enough. You're topical. I'm like, otherwise, they'd be all over my apartment, like, everywhere. But it's fun having an annual planner. I just ordered my 2026 one and I was looking through my 2025 and like, I'm like, oh my God, wow, we did so much stuff. It's all, it's all in here. You know, I, I feel like we're about to reenter like a bit of an analog era. I feel like we're being so enabled by like AI and have been, you know, cuddled in the arms of technology for so long and then whiplashed by, by COVID and just like the social anxiety of all of that.

29:45And I feel like something like a Rolodex, like let's bring back the Rolodex, you know?

29:50Jamie Norwood:Yeah. I also have been saying like forever that I just think that as the gen alpha, I guess, is now like almost going to college. Yeah. I feel like they're going to be the first generation whose parents were just like obsessed with their phones and then they're going to want nothing to do with their phones. Yeah. When they grow up and then like it's not going to be cool to like be on social media. That's my hope. That is my hope. but I think it's all going to change. And I think it's the same. I mean, you know, work tools are different, but I just think everything, like you said, is going to be much more analog and like back to the basics.

30:25Yeah. I have to give a look, that prompts me to give a little virtual hug and shout out to one of our clients, Tin Can, who is making this analog phone for kids. And I bought like one for them and all of their friends for it's Christmas time, depending on what time of year you're listening to this podcast, but we're recording it at Christmas time, the holiday season. And, and yeah, like these, I refuse to give my kids cell phones because I want them to touch the grass.

30:52Jamie Norwood:Yeah. But they want to talk to each other. How old are your kids? They're 12, 10 and 8. Okay. Yeah. So they're, why was it? We're totally on a tangent, but hopefully someone's getting some entertainment value out of this. I went to my oldest son's like holiday concert last night and a bunch of the other kids in band were like sitting in the back and they were just all on their phones they're all on their phones constantly yeah like yeah it was it was sad it was a it was a bummer yeah because their peers were like on stage you know playing music and then and like I don't know yeah it was just a weird moment for me I'm like wow all of these eighth graders are just like they're not even to the music that they're like friends are playing they're just taking selfies yeah it's sad and like just a different world completely so it sounds like getting it the yeah well you know resist yeah back to winks back to you what has been the most surprising part of this whole journey for you you could pick it pick a year it could be this year or or maybe since you started and kind of took the leap into founderdom.

32:03What's like a preconception that you had about what it would be like that is maybe turning out to be different?

32:08Jamie Norwood:I think like patience has probably been the biggest surprise slash lesson. When we started Winks, we, you know, within the first like 18 months raised venture capital. And it was all like you want to triple your business in the next year and grow and then sell within five years. And, you know, you hear all these huge success stories from other founders. And every time I'm on LinkedIn and someone else is like, I just exited my company and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I'm kind of like, I've like abandoned that belief that we're going to be this like overnight success. One, because it's been six years, seven years.

32:44Jamie Norwood:And two, like, I just think that building a brand that has longevity and can stand the test of time takes a lot of time. And I really think that Winx like can be a household name and like can outlast a lot of these competitive brands that like raise a ton of money and blow up and then disappear. Like that's that's another thing that surprised me, too. Like we've had so many competitors like pop up over the years that we find out about. And in the beginning, it used to like crush me. I'd be like, oh, my God, they just raised so much more money than us. Like they they're launching in Target like, oh, my God, we're done.

33:17Jamie Norwood:And then like three years later, they're gone. And I just think that things take time and patience and, you know, just to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. That's just been the biggest like surprise and lesson to me. Yeah. And I'm at a place where I'm like comfortable with it. I'm like, this could take years and years and years more. Yeah. And I don't know if we'll ever feel like, OK, we did enough. I feel that a lot. I always felt like David in like every fight that I've ever been in. And there's always like and I'm picking big fights. It's like, what am I doing? And, you know, I think one of the things that sort of a couple of things have helped to ground me in just the rinse and repeat of that war is the metaphor, like that battle.

33:58And one of them is to turn everything into a game as much as I can. Like, that's where I get the energy for. You never get sick of playing games, right? Like, so if you can turn this into a game, then odds are you probably won't you won't get bored and you won't be disheartened. That's really helped me. And another thing that's helped me and I'm along the lines of what you just shared is just like not to be scared when the competition comes swinging at you. Just like stay the course one foot in front of the other. And there is something to be said for just diligently applying yourself and like allowing time to pass and just knowing that you're good.

34:34Like you're just going to be there and you're going to be there. I think that helps to calm I think a little bit of what I'm hearing but maybe I'm I'm projecting uh onto you but you'll have to tell me if I'm right is that just the the calmness that can come from that right like knowing that you don't have to rush and it doesn't all have to be finished and like you can put your pencil down at 6 p.m and pick it back up in the morning and it's it will be there for you and I think that that is like a really healthy antidote to hustle culture Um, and like, I mean, sometimes I'm panicking at 10 PM cause I haven't like finished my inbox and, and Brian, my husband is like, Sam, just give it up for a second.

35:17And, uh, I admire, you know, I admire people who have that more naturally. And also I think it's a really important thing for us all to foster in ourselves.

35:27Jamie Norwood:Well, it's, there's definitely, it ebbs and flows and it's easier said than done, but I agree. I also think that I've noticed that colleagues and coworkers of mine who have children are always working at 10 p.m. It's like a and because I think it's like your kids come up from school you put work down you do all of that and like then when they go to bed you can have time to yourself again whereas like for me if I go till like seven I'm done you know so I think it's like easy you know different circumstances for everyone. I wouldn't tell Brian you said that. Literally like all the everyone I work with who's a parent is constantly firing emails at 10 p.m.

36:05Jamie Norwood:And at first I was like, what is wrong with everyone? And then I'm like, this is like the only time they can. Yeah. You took your break at five, you know? Yeah. I would love to hear a little bit about, and I'm just guessing into this. So you could tell me if the answer is not very much right now, but I'm always just curious about new products. Are you thinking of new products right now? Or are you, if not productizing, are there areas of your customers need that are like particularly inspiring to you at the moment or that you're listening to or hearing a lot of? We're starting to like explore and do a lot of research into new products.

36:42Jamie Norwood:We don't know exactly like what the product is quite yet, but we Q1, one of our like objectives is to do focus groups and surveys and a lot of market research so we can have like a better path to work on new product development for the rest of the year. So that's definitely a focus, but I don't have an answer right now. That's okay. The other version of the answer is I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you. So yeah, take your answer. Tell me a little bit about, like your co-founders have such unique relationships and I'd love to hear about your co-founder relationship and the energy that it brings to you.

37:24And maybe a little bit too about if you do kind of a divide and conquer the parts of the business that you find yourself sharing the most and then the parts of the business that you find yourself just sort of like, you know, as the main contributor to.

37:37Jamie Norwood:Yeah. Cynthia and I have been working together now for over 10 years and I've been working on Wings together for six, seven years. I obviously can't remember. You said it. Yeah. I don't know. Six. Oh, six, seven. Sorry. I have a 12 year old. Yes. So you're more aware. I'm like just learning about all this stuff. I do have a 13 year old nephew so he keeps me he keeps me young um but we definitely I mean our relationship has been what's kept the company going I think we've had so many very very challenging times where like one of us feels so defeated and the other kind of picks us up and we're like no we got this and we tend to like be always opposites in that way which is good like there's never been a moment where both of us have been like this is it like we're done or like you know we're kind of that balancing voice and reason and we've always had a very natural divide in how we like split up our tasks cynthia plays a much more traditional like ceo cfo role she fundraisers for us or has fundraised in the past she manages our board our investors she does the finances she manages our supply chain team and then i've had more of like a cmo role so like i do all of our like brand marketing creative and and what we share really is product we are both working all the time on improving our products and we will divide and conquer bits of that you know if something falls more into my lane like ux i'll do that but you know we we do really share that so that's where we come together and we work very closely but full-time we're only three people we have tons of fractional support and great part-time folks but like full-time we're very small so we the three of us work on like most things together.

39:21That's so cool. I didn't realize it was such a small team. And there's, yeah, there's something about building in that scrappy mode where it's just like, there's a lot of overlap. There's, and, and here's what, here's one of the things I love the most about it. Small teams have such high empathy for each other because they really understand each other's jobs. And the bigger it gets, I think one of the hardest things to manage in a larger team is like maintaining that empathy over time. Cause it's easy to just, everyone's got individual jobs to do and um there's something really special about like the about designing your organization in a way that biases it toward that inherently as opposed

40:00Jamie Norwood:to having it be something that you have to fight for yeah agree i i love i love love love having a small team i i feel like i'm the most in my element when it's been like the three of us and And I feel like it's more collaborative. We can also hold each other to like, like you said, like have empathy and hold each other at the same time to a high standard. Also, we get to work with really, really amazing fractional people that we would never be able to work with full time. So I think it's like the sweet spot. I mean, I'm sure as we grow, we will need more full time people. But for now, I'm like, keep it this way.

40:34Jamie Norwood:You're happy with it. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. And so that that kind of leads me to a little bit of a better understanding for how you're managing both like what's effectively a hardware and software business simultaneously, which is a difficult thing to do. Tell me a little bit about, yeah, just like what it feels like to be in both of those worlds at the same time. I like it because it's like there's constantly something new to work on or explore. And we have great partners in our contract manufacturers and also like our app we have a great part in telehealth partner like we are not managing anything fully in-house which comes with its own challenges because it's like always going to be a little bit more challenging when not outsourcing per se but working with partners um like it because like with the digital we can fill gaps that we're not able to fill with physical and with physical we can fill gaps that we're not able to with digital so it's a nice little like merger of having this like full comprehensive approach to health, but definitely not without its challenges.

41:38Jamie Norwood:I mean, there's always like a bug that we have to fix or there's always something that we need to change. So, you know, daybreak. And how are you? I mean, it sounds like you're working with some extraordinary people. How do you find them? Like what's your recruiting process for finding a great contractor or like a great technology partner? I think like referrals from people we've worked with and trust in the past or how we've found each specific person. Going back to like the very beginning, we did an accelerator in 2019. And there we met someone who had a supply chain consulting agency who we ended up working with one of his teammates.

42:13Jamie Norwood:She was awesome. She then ended up introducing us to now our fractional, like a COO almost. One of our investors introduced us to an advisor who introduced us to our fractional CFO. So like, I think just working with good people who can be vouched for is so important. I don't think I've ever had a good experience working with someone that I've just like cold emailed or has cold emailed me. But that's not to say it doesn't happen. I think it's just like harder because having people that, you know, I think it's such a good sign when someone's like, oh, you have to talk to so and so I worked with them at three different jobs.

42:51Jamie Norwood:I'm like, OK, I want to talk to them. Because if there's an employee or a teammate you want to keep it keep around in multiple different roles, like I feel like that's pretty rare. Yeah. And I mean, it helps shortcut, you know, the search so very much. Yeah. The longer I roll around in all of it, the more I just really have come to appreciate how much relationships impact commerce at every stage. I mean, we were talking earlier in our conversation about buyers and then like, you know, finding great colleagues, finding great contractors, finding great suppliers. So hard. At the end of the day, the humanness of it all is, yeah, just extraordinary.

43:29Jamie Norwood:Yeah, it's amazing. It's fun because it like just, I think anything relational is more interesting to work on. Yeah. So I like it. All right. Last little bit before we wrap up. Is there anything you want to share with folks that are listening, either personally about the product, something that's inspired you that before we wrap, they should know? I think that the big news right now is that you can find all seven Wings products at Walgreens. And we're gearing up for another really big, exciting retail launch in 2026. That is a secret for now. And yeah, just like keep us in mind if you ever have a question about your vaginal, sexual or reproductive health, follow on our socials.

44:10Jamie Norwood:We do tons and tons of educational content and it's a good time. awesome thank you so much for coming on thanks for sharing your experience thanks for bearing with my silly ideas and questions i love i love the qr code thank you so much for having me on this was really fun great bye we'll see you at walgreens bye okay that was the fake goodbye now i can do the real goodbye thank you so much for having me likewise and pass along my uh thanks and hugs to cynthia too she sounds like an amazing person well yes she's she'll be bummed to have missed this um yeah thank you so much for having me and i hope you have a very restful holiday season.

44:43Thank you. You know, I'm going to carry that with me. You've left an impression on me. Okay, good.

44:49Jamie Norwood:I mean, it's probably harder with, you said you have three kids? Three kids. Yeah. But they're, I mean, they're a little older now. There was a moment, you know, when they were, had three under four and it wasn't, they were, you know, they're just little, little bittles and that, and that was during COVID. So we were all like working from home with the three kids at home. That was, so this is a relatively, this is a cakewalk. They're relative. But that's fine. Sorry, go ahead. My sister has three of those same ages pretty much. And it's like, it's so fun because they're like little adults and we can just hang.

45:23Yeah. I mean, that's the beautiful that like it's a and it's a different kind of guilt, too, because now I'm like, oh, wow, this is fading quickly. Like my older son is he's like here. And I'm like, oh, you're I thought he was Brian the other day, like out of the corner of my eye. and yeah it just I never people always said it went fast and I never really you can't appreciate it right because you're a kid when they're saying that to you and uh but yeah they're just great little people and so fun to be around and um and I think I I hope I mean this is just me talking my own book but like I hope they are I'm having a great time working I'm working like a dog but I'm having a great time and mostly view it as a game and they have a lot of exposure to it and so I hope that they're getting some of that out of it, you know, like just watching, watching the world maybe move a little bit.

46:12Jamie Norwood:Yeah. I think it's, I'm sure they're learning a ton. Yeah. Well, love to your nieces and nephews and to Cynthia and the greater Norwood family. Thank you. All right. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks again. Hey, Zoe or Zainab will reach out and let you know when we're going to publish it. And then you can, you can take a look at anything. okay if did I say everything right? you'll reach okay amazing thank you so much wicked all right take care happy holidays bye thanks for joining us for another episode of Commerce's Chaos if you're listening have a feeling you know just how much good leaving a five-star review can do for a team drop us a review on Apple Podcasts and subscribe to Commerce's Chaos wherever you get your podcasts don't forget to subscribe to our sub stack also called Commerce's Chaos for more good stuff and actionable tools to build your business.