Hacks to Hire A+ Interns and Bootstrap A Target Launch With CharCharms

0:00Hey, business besties. Welcome back to Female Founder World. I'm Jasmine. I'm the host of the show and the person behind all things Female Founder World. Today I'm chatting with Charlotte Tree Carton. She's the founder and CEO of Char Charms. Welcome to the show. Hi, thank you so much for having me. How do you explain your business and what you're doing to people that don't know you? Okay, in the simplest terms, it is the biggest water bottle accessory company in America. So we supply all of the water bottle accessories to the mass retailers. So if you don't know what a water bottle accessory is, which most people don't, imagine a Stanley and then imagine all the fun things that go on it.

0:37So straw toppers, straws, charms, bottle boots, pouches, handle charms, really kind of like jazzing up your water bottle. But we're water bottle agnostic. So we work on all water bottles. But now our business is actually more than that. We've expanded into shoe charms and bag charms and phone charms and all the charms and accessories. And let's share some of the milestones. Are there any milestones that you want to call out? I've got a few here as well. I think the biggest most recent one was probably Shark Tank. So we aired January of this past year 2025 and it was like such a surreal moment seeing myself on Shark Tank.

1:14So I would say that's probably like my favorite accomplishment so far of Char Charms and it was such a positive experience. You also hit six and a half million in revenue last year. You're fully bootstrapped. You started this business what like four years ago? Yeah. From your parents garage. Yeah. Talk me through getting started. You were at college at the time, right? Yeah. So I had the idea during COVID, just like sitting at home doing nothing. I'm like, what if you accessorized a water bottle? And it was an idea that never left my brain. So even through college and through my junior year, when I wasn't working on the business, I was like, oh my God, I have to do this.

1:47I have to do this. And I think that was such like a gut telling feeling that like I needed to pursue it. And so after my junior year, I was at University of Illinois. It's like one of the big 10 schools here in America. I finished my junior year was like the hardest year of classes. I'm like, okay, now is my time to go all in on this business. I got a 3D printer. I was prototyping. I filed for a provisional patent. I'm like, let's see what we can do. I got a mentor. And then we launched chargearms.com September of 2021. I think the most important part of my story is the fact that I started during college.

2:23Because if I had started any later, I probably would not have gotten to where I was. Why do you say that? I think the interesting thing is that like when you have school, it's kind of like your business is like, it's okay if it's not making money. And so I think it's so empowering to the founders that are in college today or in high school today or they still have a job where it's like you can work on your business for three to four years or whatever it is and like not have the craziest revenue and like it's okay. But that timeframe of that buildup is so important to kind of like hit the luck or like strike it lucky when the timing is perfect.

3:00So we were it was a really slow growth at the very beginning. Like I was only on Instagram posting. We had like a couple sales a month and slowly it started to pick up. And then I launched on TikTok. And that was really like the first big switch for us of like, oh, my God, this is a really big revenue generator now. I want to learn a little bit more about that because you got a you got a tiktok coach right yeah so I had two tiktok coaches I started with one and it was like so expensive I'm like this is not possible but the only thing that they taught me was like volume is everything so I took that lesson and I had a friend that was doing tiktok coaching and I'm like hey would you want to coach me he was like a couple hundred bucks a month I'm like perfect and really how I look at him as a coach is he is more of like an accountability coach.

3:53So more so the fact of that, like, okay, what are you posting today? Here are some thoughts and ideas that I have on these posts. And then post like three a day, no matter what, every day at 3 PM, I would be making content and I would be posting at five, six, and seven. Like I had alarms on my phone for like four months straight. I was doing this and we grew from like 10 to 20 ,000 to 30 ,000, 40 ,000, 50 ,000 to like 80 ,000 followers within those couple of months. And with that, our revenue just soared. So by the time I graduated in 2022, we were doing like 10, 15, 20K a month in revenue just from our website because of TikTok.

4:31Yeah. Wow. I want to get into the specifics about what is actually like working on TikTok and what you learned from that coach. And also if your friend, like, I don't know if he still does coaching, but he doesn't. Yeah, I wish. I was going to say, we're going to put the link in the show notes but that's totally fine tell us what you learned through him and what you've learned growing the business on tiktok since then totally so a couple basic tips that i've learned for tiktok and it's what i tell everyone is if you are going to commit post as many as you can every single day so it's like i was posting three times a day if you can do two times a day one time a day your number one job in the beginning of starting your business is selling and like TikTok is your one opportunity to do that for free.

5:11So if you can get to a million dollars just for posting on TikTok like that's what you need to do. So volume was everything for me like try everything try every format of video see what works see what doesn't. Oh my god one thing I like totally messed up on which I regret so badly in my TikTok journey is that when a video went viral I would just like move on and be like okay great let's just make you know keep making videos. And what I should have done, and I regret this so badly, is that when a video went viral, I should have made a bazillion more videos exactly like it. Right. Because you go to a creator's page and they're making all the same type of viral video.

5:50And like, that's how you really gain followers. And so I made this mistake of like, just bouncing around to a bunch of different styles instead of sticking with the videos that were doing phenomenally well. So yeah that was a big mistake and we probably would have been so further along I actually think that that's like a lesson for all things in business and marketing it's kind of like when something works just like do it again do it again do it again you don't have to be bouncing around trying everything at the same time like yes double down on what's working yeah 100 so I would say those are the two biggest things and then I think kind of the last thing on TikTok that I would say which is what I teach just people who like aren't even on TikTok or like TikTok savvy is if you don't know what to post, look at the people that you admire, whether it's in the same field or the same type of business and just like mimic viral content.

6:41Because that's how you learn, right? As you look at other videos and you're like, okay, let me try to remake that. And so I think that's a really easy way to start posting if you're like, I have no idea what to post. I'm always curious about those early days and how people afford to start businesses and like what it costs to get these, you know certain things off the ground you didn't have any investors you were just using savings you're fully bootstrapped which I think is so incredible especially when you talk about these retailers that you've launched into but how did you kind of fund getting started and what's that cost okay business besties let's switch gears for a second real quick I want to talk to you about this season's presenting sponsor Vistaprint they are sponsoring this entire season of the Female Founder World podcast and we love a supportive sponsor.

7:27So much so that we're actually working with Vistaprint ourselves to create the merch and all of those beautiful event perks that you know and love from our in real life Female Founder World events. If you haven't heard of Vistaprint, here's what you need to know. Vistaprint helps all kinds of business owners print all kinds of marketing products like super professional business cards, fun merch, eye-catching flyers and brochures, and a whole bunch more. And it's all completely custom. So you can do whatever you want. Whatever you're imagining right now, Vistaprint can print it. And if you're wondering if you're ready to be a designer girly, their easy to use website makes it super simple.

8:09Plus they have designers on hand to help you if you really need it. Right now, Vistaprint is giving all female Founder World podcast listeners a little something 25 % off your first order at vistaprint.com. Use the code FFW25 at checkout and step up your branding game. We put a link in the show notes if you want to learn more. Yeah, great question. So I was, I had a job selling insurance. I had another job selling coupon books door to door. Like I was in sales and I just put all that money into Char Charms. it wasn't expensive like I was buying beads at Hobby Lobby but you make it yourself yeah I was making it myself we were hand pouring resin into molds like make these little stick-on hooks and granted I was hiring like every high schooler in my neighborhood to come and work for me in my dad's basement like I would literally go and like knock on everyone's door be like hey I have this business I'm wondering if anyone's curious and like wants to work it's hourly I will pay you cash And so we had probably like a dozen different kids from the neighborhood helping and working with me, whether it's packing orders.

9:17So funding it wasn't that hard because we were hand making everything. They're really cheap items. And then we just put everything back into the business. When did you go full time and, you know, stop doing all the sales? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was doing sales only during the summer. And then, oh, and then my senior year of college, I was doing insurance sales too. So basically when I graduated college, I'm like, okay, I'm done with this. I'm going to go all in on church arms. Wow. Yeah. It sounds like last year was kind of this like crazy inflection point. I've got written down here that you did about 80 ,000 in revenue in your first, in like that first 12 months.

9:50But then last year you did six and a half million in revenue. What changed in those two years? Massive change. Yeah. It was really exciting. Retail. So we were fully direct to consumer for those first couple of years. and then when Stanley the water bottle brand just blew up we blew up with them and what happened was is we were positioned as the water bottle accessory company in the space like if you search water bottle accessories charge arms would pop up whether it was on google or tiktok and so Urban Outfitters was the first one to take the chance on us. They're such a good like boutique chain retailer to get started.

10:27Oh my god yes like they will take a chance on a brand new brand which I love. I think it's amazing. And the thing with Urban is like it's very in and out, right? They'll have you in for like four weeks just to test it and see how it goes. And I think that gives a lot of legitimacy because then you can go to other retailers. So Dick's Sporting Goods came to us afterwards. And so we launched with them. We did a test and then we went nationwide. And then Target came to us after that. And then we actually went immediately nationwide with Target with 17 SKUs, which like does not happen I think a lot of brands they'll do a test with Target they'll go online with Target maybe they launch one SKU or two SKUs and we did 17 immediately in 1700 locations wow and also what was your team at this time what like three people I had one person at the time okay and your bootstrapped how like the one thing that I hear from people is launching to Target is so expensive.

11:23How did you how did you do this? Yeah. OK. It was a really like this was probably the most stressful time of my business life, which I think like I look back on it. I'm like, oh, my God, I can't believe I like made it through that. I cried so much. Yeah. Or when we first got the Target order, I thought I was going to have to turn it down. And I didn't know how we were going to pay for it because I needed like 400K to fund it. And I'm have that money. I didn't have that in my savings. We had used all of our savings for the Dick's Sporting Goods orders to be able to fund that. Because one thing most people don't know about retail is that I have to pay my factory for the products.

12:03Then 90 days later, I finally receive the products. Then I ship them out to the retailer. And then 90 days later, they pay me. So that is a six-month process from me spending this money and then me getting the money back, if not more than six months. So the cash flow with B2B retail is like very difficult. Yeah, wow. And so I didn't have any money. Like the basically all of 2024, I was riding on credit cards. I was going to zero. I was asking my sister for loans. I'd be like, yo, I need 10k. Like, please, can you just wire it to me? Like, I was asking anyone I could to give me money that and I knew they knew I would pay it back.

12:40But like, I just need to clear my credit card balances. and so it's not that I was worried about it I just it was a time where we were very strapped on cash and so Target gave us an extension and I was able like they gave us an extension on the order so for example so they gave me the order I said I cannot fulfill this I don't have enough time to get the money I don't have enough time to make sure that everything's going to be set up for it. So they gave us a couple extra weeks and I had a private individual finance the order. So someone that I knew from college, I had not connected with him basically since college.

13:19And I was like, hey, I know you do this. Would you be interested in financing this? And so there's this thing called PO financing, purchase order financing, where you get a PO and you can sell that PO to someone and they're going to say, OK, cool. I own the PO. Once it gets paid I will pay you your share I'm like that I just need to do that to like move forward so he did that for my first order and it was like everything that we needed and it was amazing so yeah how did you make the launch into target successful we didn't know if it was going to be successful we it was a side cap so that's at the end of the aisle on the side so not end cap but on the side and it was 17 uh 17 products like I mentioned I didn't know what was going to work and what wouldn't.

14:01The buyer was leaning on us. They're like, you tell us what products, you tell us what colors, you tell us how many and the quantity. And I had no idea. So we kind of just took a wild guess that like, let's just do a little bit of everything. And we very clearly saw like this certain SKUs that were going to be the top sellers and then the SKUs that were going to be the bottom sellers. And then that's what's really helped our trajectory now moving forward with Target is we can use those initial numbers. What advice do you have for someone who is dreaming about a Target launch? Like how do you get, I know that it was inbound for you, which is amazing, but like how does someone get Target's attention?

14:41I think the great thing is that Target is looking for newness. Like they're in this phase right now. We all know, you know, the news around Target that's happening. And so I was at their summit last week. And so I'm hearing about their strategies. And so if you are someone that's looking to get into Target, it is show them why your brand is doing something different in that category. And so I tell founders, go into Target, bring your products, put it on shelf. Does it make sense there? Is it differentiated? Does it look good enough to be on a Target shelf? Or is your packaging like up to par? And if it's not, get it there.

15:17And if you can get it to the point where like this makes sense in this space, it is differentiated. It looks amazing. the packaging is awesome, then I think you can reach out on LinkedIn and to the buyers, message them and see if they respond. Let's talk about hiring. We were just speaking before the show. You said that your team doubled on Monday this week. So wild. So there's six of you now. There were three before then. Who was your first hire? How did you make that decision? And how has the team grown? I'm so curious. Yeah. So my first hire was my operations manager. was this when you were going into like going into retail yes so this was yeah march of 2024 it's like we already had our first nationwide dick sporting goods order i knew i could afford having a full-time employee and i brought her on i had known her previously and she was like ready to leave her old job and someone that i knew i could work with consistently yeah so that was something that i was like i know i can talk to her on a daily basis and like because of that i think i can hire her.

16:21And I think that she's just down to do anything because I didn't have a task list for her. I'm like, you're going to show up and like, you're just going to work on whatever I have and whatever is going to make my day easier. And so she did that. And she was like the crucial initial employee to help me deal with all the operations of all of our orders. And then our second hire wasn't until December of that same year. So it was a really long gap of me just having one employee. And then I hired my second employee. She's our marketing manager. Many months later, and I found her off of Indeed. No, wait, not Indeed.

16:55Handshake. Oh, yeah. So I found her off of Handshake. And I think that's more like student-focused, actually. And she was a graduating student. I'm like, great. She made some TikToks in that process. And I was like, OK, you're phenomenal. And so I hired her. And then I hired a he actually. So it's a crazy story because I hired him to be my sales manager, my third employee. and I pretty much realized I have to do my own sales. I thought hiring sales manager would like really help us expand our retail footprint and it just didn't work out that way. Like I think me being the one that was doing the sales and doing the outreach was just way more powerful when it's like the founders in the LinkedIn DMs versus like sales manager.

17:40Like no one wants a DM from a sales manager but when it's from a founder or CEO, like very different vibe. And so I didn't know what I was going to do with him because I had hired him. It was like three months later. I'm like, oh, like I feel so bad to have to like let him go. But I had been thinking, do I hire a supply chain manager? Because supply chain was like the bane of my existence. I'm on Alibaba every night, Jasmine. Like I am there 8 p.m. talking to China every night. And it was like draining me. And so I approached my sales manager. I'm like, hey, I think we need to try something different.

18:14like are you open to this and he's like yeah absolutely and he dove like straight in and it was the best thing that ever happened to me um and so that's I think that's one of those learning lessons of like if you have this opportunity to pivot you can do it there's nothing wrong with it like it's your business and you can kind of just like do whatever you want and so that was that and then yeah on Monday I hired three new employees wow okay what are the new employees doing okay so So one of them is brand manager, mostly because I have felt like I'm not doing a good enough job of like pointing everyone in the right direction.

18:49So we have a lot of contract workers and a lot of interns. And I think everyone's no one's working as a team. And so I needed a brand manager to like bring us together and be like, this is what we're doing as a brand. Here are the collections that are happening and how we're going to build out the campaigns for them. So really excited about that. And then I hired an e-com manager because we were really lacking in e-com in 2024 because we were so focused on retail. So see, like all of this is coming from a challenge. Like I'm noticing challenges. I hire someone. Like that's how I think founders hire best of like something's wrong.

19:23Let me see if I can bring someone in to fix it. And then my third one was a selfish hire. So she's in marketing. She's content creator and PR, but she's really my content creator. So she's going to be building my personal brand. okay talk to me about that it's been a wild time on tiktok for founder-led brands lately how do you feel about showing up like that i'm excited yeah i see that there's so much space out there and i'm not like i don't feel like i'm competing with anyone and just let me share my story and tell people what i'm doing and do it in a way that like i want to tell that story and the girl that i hired i think she brings out the best in me also like the kind of more fun and like goofy side so I want that I don't want to show up as like five lessons from the CEO like I want it to be like let's go get Duncan and talk about stuff and like what's going on at the office I love that so I'm excited about it I think there's going to be a lot to it so I think we're going to do newsletter I think we're going to really try to build it out especially since I'm hiring a full time employee for it I'm so curious about this switch like you a few years ago you were in college and like doing this little side hustle out of your parents garage and now you're leading a team of six you're like going to the office every day you've got like a nine to five how have you bridged that gap as a leader and a ceo to be able to show up like that like you're are you 25 i'm yeah you're 25 okay how great question i think i was very always just like leadership oriented yeah even in high school I was like part of all the clubs like president so I think I grew up with that but now leading a team is probably like one of the most challenging things and I hear a lot of founders say that so I think that I'm probably not alone in this of like figuring out how to manage and make sure that everyone is happy is a big challenge and so in terms of leadership I heard this amazing quote and I really, really like it.

21:24And it's, I own the ship that we're all on. And I'm also the captain of the ship. And so I'm going to steer the ship to make sure that it doesn't crash. And so like that is my job. And I'm also going to steer the ship to hopefully go in a direction to a land that we want to go. Right. I'm not just avoiding crashes. I'm also taking us to a wonderful place. And so I think that's something that I tell my team of like, it's so important that I own the ship because I'm not going to let it crash and burn and I'm going to take us to somewhere wonderful and so I'm just hoping that they trust me to grow it in the direction that I think that makes the most sense.

22:00So many businesses are built on interns in the beginning and finding great talent but it's really it's actually a question we see in the Female Founder World group chat all the time like how do I find an intern how do I hire someone I would love to know your advice on how to do that. OK. So reach out to the career counselors at your local high schools and community colleges and even regular colleges. Email them directly. Their emails are public. Like it's on the website. And just let them know that you are a local business and you're looking for interns. I like to do 12-week internships. If they're a high school student or early in their college career, I will lean towards unpaid if they have no experience.

22:39I offer this as a, you know, as a resume builder. And I think that, you know, I've gotten some backlash on that on previous TikToks that I've made about it. But I think like in today's day and age, an unpaid internship is fully normal. If they are someone that has experience and has done jobs like this before, I'll do a paid internship. If it's a second time intern, I do paid internships. I don't count hours in their first internship. so if you're coming in I'm going to give you five to ten hours a week of work based on my estimation of the work that I'm giving you and I'm going to meet with you once a week for 15 to 25 minutes to go over that project that you did and what we're working on next week which is such a good opportunity for someone who's just getting started to be able to get that proximity to you yeah yeah definitely so that's what we offer is we're offering them this opportunity to like learn so much and get feedback from me or whoever else that they're working with I recommend marketing interns.

23:34I had the most marketing interns. We've hosted 70 interns. Wow. Yeah. So I think marketing interns are the easiest to start with. If you can find a photography student, like huge because they'll come and do photos for you. So yeah, my favorites are photography, photo shoot coordinator. So that would work with a photographer. I TikTok interns are hard because you just have to, the skill set of TikTok is a little bit different. But if you can find someone good, tiktok interns are great blog writer blogs are so easy you just give them their keywords and like the seo that they need to hit on pinterest interns phenomenal because what does the pinterest intern do they just like run the pinterest doing what like three posts a day yeah pulling from any photo shoots that we are doing or like whatever is important so like right now my pinterest intern is doing all fourth of july stuff so she's making graphics memes pulling from images from photo shoots and posting them onto Pinterest with like cute captions.

24:31With like links back to your website. With links back to the website or to whatever website it's pushing, whether it's Target or Academy Sports or Walmart. So Pinterest, I love. And then, yeah, I think those are kind of like my top immediate interns that I recommend. Do you manage the, who manages the interns? I usually manage them. You manage them. Yeah. Okay. Wow. Cause that's, you know, that's a lot of people that's come through. That seems like a lot of work. Well, at the beginning, you kind of need to learn how to manage people. Yeah. And interns are a really easy way to do that. It's a really easy way to tell what actually moves the business forward and what doesn't.

25:05So like I would probably never pay for someone to like write blogs full time for us. But hey, if I can have someone doing it as an internship, like blogs here and there can move the needle like a little bit. Interesting. Yeah. It's such a good way to test. Yes, exactly. and how do you know if someone is good in the interview process for an intern excitement excitement readiness to learn I actually usually will have like a very broad internship like application and then when I interview with them that is when I'm determining what they're going to do yeah so they're not applying to do the blogs or the Pinterest I'm asking them like what's your favorite subject in school do you find yourself better at math or writing or science or graphic design and then based on all their answers like what are their hobbies what do they like to do for fun for fun then I come back to them okay I think you're going to be really good at this like how do you feel about that and if they're like oh my god like I would love to do that then it's like I think it's a perfect fit amazing I think when you look at some of the revenue numbers that you've had you've got this team now what does that mean for like you as the founder like are you are you paying yourself now do you have a regular salary how does that work yeah so I take my own salary at the end of the year based on profits.

26:22So if we like crush it, I'll take a little extra. And if not, I don't need that much. So I live a very modest life. Like I split a townhouse with my boyfriend in the suburbs of Chicago. I don't do anything crazy. I don't feel like I've made it. Like I don't own any luxury. Like I think that there's a lot of founders or CEOs out there that like they make their first million and they go out and just like ball out. Like that's not me at all. So I think that's been an interesting way and perspective to look at kind of like, I still feel like I have a very long journey ahead of me. But that growth from just two years ago, when I was like making TikToks in my basement to now we're in massive retailers, there's just been so many changes in like, I do have that nine to five job, like I show up at the office with everyone else at 9am.

27:10And I'm there until 5pm. And I'm having lunch at the office, like I have my co workers. So it feels very real. And I don't know what the next couple of years will look like. I hope it just is continued growth. But I'm really excited to continue to grow it. And I love change. Like 2024 brought the most change we've ever seen. And I think that's something that I'm constantly chasing is like change is a good thing. I want to see everyone evolving. I want to see our business changing. There's this another lesson that like I love is that the zero to one million is about like selling your one core product.

27:45And then the one to 10 and slightly beyond is like how many more products can you sell to that market? And so we're in that phase of like, what else can we launch? What else can we sell to retail? What else can we sell to our customers to continue to accelerate it? And that has a lot of challenges in of its own, like testing products and making sure they make a lot of sense is it's just so different. So what are some of the other products that you've launched? You started off with like the water bottle charms, but now you have other accessories. Yeah, so we did bag charms, which sold out so fast.

28:14We did phone charms actually early on in our journey that also crushed it. We just launched shoe charms, which are very trending. They were super trending in 2024. And I'm like, I think we're going to be able to bring them back. So shoe charms, I think that'll be a really fun product for retail, honestly. And then we'll continue to launch into this like accessorized everyday carry item. So whether it's an accessorized lip balm or lunchbox or wallet or whatever it is kind of just seeing like what else do people want accessories on do you think that you will raise money is that you know no you know we have cash flow yeah no so we can just like pay for everything we need yeah i love this view yeah how did shark tank happen i really wanted to be on shark tank like it was just a core of as an entrepreneur I had a lot of I still have a lot of these just like entrepreneur goals.

29:08Shark Tank, Forbes 30 under 30, maybe eventually being on the cover of Forbes, EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Like these are just some of my checklist items that like I feel like if I continue to grow, I can aim for those. And so Shark Tank was one of them. I really, really wanted to be on. And people always ask me like, oh, are you going to be on Shark Tank? And I'm like, this is a perfect product for it. So I actually auditioned three times. I didn't get on the first two times. But even if I didn't get on this third time, I would have continued auditioning. Like it was just a matter of time until like I got on.