Success Almost Broke Her: This Recovering Girlboss Built A Multimillion Dollar Wellness Brand

0:00The only way to achieve greatness is to see the fear and do it anyway. Six years ago, we had this crazy idea. We created these vitamin routines for specific hormonal life stages. One of your products is being consumed every second. What was that early foundational stuff that you were doing to get that traction going? I mean, our first year of marketing budget, we had$10 ,000. Are you working with a lot of influencers? Pull up a chair. So here we go. Hey, business besties. Welcome back to Female Founder World. It's Jasmine. I'm the host of the show. And today I'm chatting with Alex Taylor, the co-founder of Parallel.

0:29Welcome. Thank you for having me. People that don't know Parallel, what are you guys doing? We make targeted vitamin solutions for each stage of a woman's hormonal journey. And we are founded by doctors and moms as well. For you, care condos. I co-founded the business with a woman named Tori. She has a background in finance and operations. And then my other co-founder is Dr. Bioti. She is a OBGYN on the West Side here in LA with a very holistic bend to her practice. And in addition to my co-founders, we have a founding team of medical advisors that also weigh in on all of our formulations, as well as our education and our product.

1:06Amazing. I want to kick off with some milestones to help people understand what it is that you've built, because you've been around for only a few years, three years, is that right? Five years. Five years? Yep. Okay, five years, which is still like pretty young. And now you're selling one, or one parallel capsule is consumed every second. Yes. That's wild. It's wild. I still pinch myself when I hear that stat. It feels completely surreal because, you know, six years ago we had this crazy idea and obviously took about a year to get it off the ground. And now five years in, as of just a few days ago, it's just unbelievable what we've created.

1:43And it's really a testament to our team and finding a product that really met the market in a moment when women wanted something more comprehensive and something they could trust. Take us back to those early days of starting the business. I got the entrepreneurial bug very early. I knew early on that I wanted to start something after having been at a startup and selling the business and being part of that and seeing the excitement, but also the ability to shape and build brands. At the time, Who What Wear was about 20 employees and it was a daily newsletter, very similar to like Daily Candy. Talk about a throwback.

2:15So it was a daily newsletter, shopping focused. And I came in and had a vision that this should be a fully fledged digital publishing empire. And there's so much we can do here. And so I joined the business, became the president and executive editor in chief over all of the entities that would later come to life. So that included Birdie, Domain, we had a Gen Z publication, and then we eventually launched a consumer goods division, which I was at the helm of as well, where we started to develop products, really leveraging all the information and data that we got from our editorial content. I ran the business, helped spearhead all the fundraising efforts.

2:53I learned so much, but I was very young in a very elevated role. I was very aware of what I didn't know. And I was very conscious of the fact that I was very young. And I was always a little insecure about that. And so I got myself a coach and put some proverbial rings on my tree just to learn how to lead as a young person. And it was one of the best investments I've made. I he introduced so many wonderful practices to my life from not only how I show up with my team and really helping me fight back against that imposter syndrome, but he introduced meditation to me and just so many tools that I use now.

3:34So as I was running that business, I was being honored on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. And I only share that because I was there and I broke out in shingles to 28 at the time. and not only I also got shingles at 28 you did yeah we need I want a year yeah we need to do a separate podcast where I can hear all about you because I hate talking about myself um but I broke out in shingles and um I also started to feel not at home in my body it was the I know that sounds crazy to say but it is a very real feeling and I was suddenly lethargic I was really foggy I just didn't feel good. And also my doctors were like, you're 28.

4:19You should not have shingles. Like you're full, you know, this is, this doesn't make sense. So this set me off on a journey. And now looking back hindsight, you always have such clarity, but at the time it's like, what is this mess of life I'm in? You know, I'm, I've hit my stride in my career. I'm at the top of my game here. I am being honored. Like what's going on. Why is my body failing me when I need it most. And after nine different doctors and nearly a year of various appointments, I was finally diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. And, you know, autoimmune disproportionately affects women.

4:55About 80 % of cases are in women. Why? We don't know because women's health is vastly under-researched, which now I do a lot of advocacy work in. And this autoimmune disease would later shape my fertility journey, increase my rate of potential miscarriage significantly. Among other things, it would shape my pregnancy, my postpartum, and open my eyes to something that I just couldn't unsee. And through that journey of seeing all of these different practitioners and physicians to help me care for myself, I started to piece together this crazy vitamin routine. You know, when I was optimizing for my fertility journey, I was taking NAC and CoQ10 and a great prenatal.

5:36And then once I became pregnant, oh, you're building the neural tube in the early days. You need more folic acid, less later. So I just had this experience where I was piecing together this routine constantly. And it was just also really haphazard experience. You know, it was the time I was, it was like 2017, 2018 when I was starting this journey. It was like, you can have anything delivered in 20 minutes And yet, why is it so damn hard to take care of myself with my autoimmune disease? What I learned was that it was self-induced by stress. And the lesson here to learn is that no job is worth your health.

6:17No job. Doesn't matter how great it looks on the outside. At the end of the day, what is critical is your health and the richness of your relationships. and that was such an eye-opening experience for me as I don't want to say I was a girl boss because I don't think I was I don't think I was like a terrible person by per se I know they've there's a whole rap there but like I was working really hard I was the girl waking up at 5 30 doing soul cycle drinking my lemon water I mean like the whole trope and what I realized is like that's not happiness and my god I jeopardize my health like my potential unborn child my future for a job?

6:59What was I thinking? And so it was a really eye-opening experience. And so from there, I decided I needed to make some changes. So upon my diagnosis, my physician told me, you have to do three things. He said, first of all, reduce your stress. LOL. I'm a millennial. I can still say it. Like, what are you talking about? What do you mean reduce my stress? Like, I'm just a stressed person but I had to take that seriously and I had to think about what could I tangibly change to support myself maybe I shouldn't be doing high intensity workouts every single day and pumping my cortisol I have to think like when I look at Gen Z I'm like you guys have no idea how how good you have it with this like Pilates matcha situation it's so good and so healthy and balanced we yeah we definitely had it the other way we were just punishing ourselves every day it was wild and that's like another can of worms like culturally like how women believe they do have to subscribe to that type yes energy and mindset but at any rate the other two things you told me to change were um to reduce my stress I had to start taking a medication fine okay great and then the third thing was they recommended that I become gluten-free because essentially in very layman's terms, like my thyroid was attacking itself.

8:21And there are some associations between gluten and I won't get down that rabbit hole. But at any rate, I made those three changes and I committed, I changed my job. I went over to Urban and I joined Urban. But while I was there, I had my first born, my son. And I just couldn't get it out of my head that I wanted to start something. As a new mom, I felt failed, confused, frustrated. There were a few different ideas I had in mind, but it wasn't quite sure where it was. So, you know, I think a lot of people when they want to start something, well, what do I start? And, you know, it's pretty wild, but the universe will unfold and show you.

8:59I know that sounds crazy, but you know, it really did. And so as I was talking to lots of people about these different ideas that I had, a friend of mine that I'd met who was a VC said, you know, I'm talking to another woman who's kind of circling the same drain. She wants to do something in this space and she has completely different skillset than you. You guys should brilliant. And I was like, okay, like blind date. Love it. She set us up on a blind date and I show up and I was, uh, I had, my son was very young. I was still nursing him. So I was like, okay, I got 45 minutes. You got to get home and pump or feed the baby.

9:38We started to meet weekly and just start to dream and think about what could we create? Where is there white space? What's needed? What were our own personal challenges? And as we started to talk more, I shared more about my background and my experience. She brought in her own very different experience in terms of why she felt frustrated in the vitamin aisle. And when we came together, we thought, wait a minute, there's such an opportunity to reinvent this category and reinvent it from the ground up, built by women that really understand what we as patients and consumers need and want and expect.

10:11but also can we partner with the doctors and experts that know best? So together we created these vitamin routines, full vitamin routines that are made for specific hormonal life stages. So we started in the prenatal vitamin category and then we expanded to support her from menarche. And so if people don't know what menarche, that's actually when you start your period through menopause. And so we've created these vitamin routines that are created by our doctors. They put together the latest research, their clinical insights, and they craft a routine that not only includes your standard multivitamin or prenatal vitamin, but additionally, what critical supplements do you need during that stage to optimize your health goal, whether it be fertility or support that hormonal stage that you're occupying?

10:57I want to talk about the early days of the business and what you did in those first couple of years to get the traction that then later built this business where one of your products is being consumed every second. So much power is in the pre-work. You know, the, the work that is even done before you're in market. And that's really about, A, we knew we were entering a highly commoditized category. So how can we differentiate? And for us, we knew that opportunity was through a powerful brand, not just any brand, but I believe powerful brands are brands that are identity brands, brands that give someone a sense of place in the world.

11:34People want to feel seen. We vote with our wallets and we use brands to communicate who we are. I mean, I'm sure many of your listeners can look at their vanity and proudly say like, this is me. I use say, and I love summer Fridays and I use herbivore botanicals or whatever it might be. And that says something about them. That's so powerful. You know, you think of someone who walks around holding a MacBook laptop that says I'm creative, you know, whereas someone who's riding a Harley Davidson is I'm a badass. Like it's incredible how we as humans use brands to signal who we are and express ourselves.

12:06It's beautiful. And we thought, no one's done that in this category of women's health, specifically vitamins. And what an opportunity. How can we make this woman feel seen and supported and really make her feel proud to be part of something? So in those early days, there was a lot of pre-work done on what the brand is. What is the brand identity? What is our values? How is the brand expressed? What is our voice and tone? How do we differentiate ourselves from other brands in the space visually, as well as tonally through our voice that we're very proud of. So there was a lot of work done and we put together a pretty rigorous brand book, which is really where I thrive.

12:42And I love to spend a lot of my time in defining. So we did that. And then we stepped back and thought about what can only we do? And when we think about the skill sets that we have, you know, what can only the brand do from where does the brand have authority and credibility to be based on the structure we've established, but also, you know, between my co-founder, myself, what are the skills that we have that we can uniquely bring to this business? What can only we do? And my background, as you know, is in editorial and brand building and content and community. And so we said, let's lean into that.

13:19We also saw there was just such a gap. Women want to know more about their bodies. While there's a lot we don't know how about women's bodies with the wealth of knowledge we do have? How can we bring that forward? And so we did a lot of content development in those early days. We launched our Instagram. We had a pretty robust blog. We really tapped the top experts and voices in women's health or people that even had their own personal story and contextualize it through a medical narrative. And we brought that forth. And so we thought about it. Content was like our proverbial campfire. And if we could use that campfire to have people gather around it, we naturally create community.

13:55And we were talking about this a little earlier before we started recording, but when you sit shoulder to shoulder with someone and you're learning something and you're invested, there's also this je ne sais quoi, like this connection that you build that is very deep and profound. And so for us, it was really using content to build the brand. From there, we then leaned into a lot of influencer. We were very strategic with our influencer partnerships, you know, where a lot of brands will partner with an influencer and then move on to the next one the next day. for us we had two things we really needed to build into we needed to one show the targeted nature of our packs the fact that you can come in on our fertility pack and once and if you become pregnant and you move into our first trimester pack our subscription automatically updates you into second and third and then postpartum because we collect your due date and we can support you with the appropriate products of where you are in your journey and so we wanted partners that could go through that journey with us.

14:51And also the second thing is authenticity. Like if you really love our products, like stick with us, show your community. And that was critical. So we kind of took the influencer playbook and lit it on fire and decided how can we do this differently? And we invested in a lot of long-term partnerships that showed the commitment to our products, the respect and reverence for the clinical backing and the physicians involved, but also the commitment to, wow this really supports me through all these stages so we did a lot of that and then also just community building so whether that be events and gatherings really surprising and delighting our woman in a way that only we can understand how to do and only parallel has the authenticity to deliver on so we did a lot of that in the early days and then honestly gave away so much free product i mean our first year marketing budget was coming from my co-founder and i think account so it was like we had ten thousand dollars okay what are we gonna do to compete with the juggernauts and so we really thought outside the box we gave a lot away a ton of product we tried to be everywhere we could that really reinforced trust so if there was a partner or brand that had a high level of credibility and reverence for strong formulations clinical backings we made sure that we were part of that whether it be giving them product for their event gifting or just getting the product out there because that was also the X factor.

16:13It's rare when you create a product that also has great marketing. Like it's hard to create a great product and a great brand because typically you've got a founder that's really weighted in one side or the other. And that was the power of my co-founder and I, she is incredible at the business acumen. She is brilliant with finance. She's absolutely amazing. And I'm really good at what I do on the brand building side. And that really gave us a leg up. So that's also just a testament to the power of co-founders and, you know, getting a lot further than you otherwise could on your own and accepting help.

16:45So those are some things that we did in the early days that really established the foundation and that we built on the scale. I specifically want to talk about the influencer marketing piece, because I think it's really interesting in the way that you didn't just use influencers to, I don't know, I feel like influencers can be used as like a very much just like a brand awareness tall or to make a brand feel relevant or cool, but you did it to build trust, like genuinely build trust. Yes. What does it look like now? Are you working with a lot of influencers, a few influencers? Are they all still long-term partnerships?

17:13Yeah. What are you doing? So much. Okay, pull up a chair. So here we go. We have a lot of dimensions to our influencer marketing strategies. So in the early days, we first of all just had to tell the world, what is parallel and why do you trust it? That was like the first couple of years of what we were doing. and how does the product system work? How do people oscillate through the different SKUs and why do they love the experience? Then we moved into the phase of, okay, how do we amplify this and get more out there? Also, can we leverage influencers for both brand awareness and trust building, but also in a performance capacity to drive sales?

17:52And there's of course a few unicorns out there that can do both, but the reality is, is there's different camps and groups of people that are more effective for different KPIs. So we have a whole cohort of influencers that we engage to really focus on conversion-related partnerships. So they're really great at mobilizing their audiences, building trust and getting them to buy a product. Then we have other influencers that we purely partner with for impressions and reach and engagement that really ensure that we're kind of building that microphone of brand awareness, but they also have to have the trust factor.

18:26So oftentimes those partners are engaged in either multi-month or multi-year partnerships. We've had some folks with us for many years. I mean, a great example is Pia Barancini. She was a round zero customer, loved the product, was genuinely taking it, was recommended by her doctor. We actually love when people are recommended parallel by their doctor. And then we like to elevate that story because when we launched, we were in about a hundred different doctor's offices because doctors saw this and were like, this is a superior product. Yeah. I'm going to sample this to my patients. So at any rate, we really invested in a lot of those long-term partnerships and that's been incredibly powerful for us.

19:05Then there's the layer of the gifting and seeding and affiliate, you know, ShopMy cannot be understated. It's an incredible platform for brands as well as creators. And then we also do a lot of gifting ad hoc. We do targeted giftings. We do experiential giftings. And typically if there's a brand campaign gifting, there's a key message that's meant to be conveyed through that gifting and experience. And then we do a ton of surprise and delight with our own customer. I mean, she's ultimately our greatest influencer. She influences us. She's our muse. So we're constantly gifting her and surprising her with different things along the way.

19:42So if you're a customer, you might be familiar with some of those things. But, you know, that's also something that sparks great joy, but also supports the whole marketing flywheel. You know, you have to have boots on the ground, real everyday people out there evangelizing for your brand. And when we look at some of our exit surveys, one of the biggest drivers is word of mouth. You know? I want to talk about your funding journey a little bit now. So you mentioned at the beginning that super scrappy marketing budget, 10 grand. Let's see what we can do with it, which like I relate. Yes. I am very curious about what your funding journey has looked like because you've raised money since then.

20:18Yeah. It's been five years. When did you start taking on investment and why was that the right time to do it or not the right time on reflection? Well, first of all, my co-founder and I have been part of startups and high growth companies prior to starting our business. And we had seen the downside of raising a ton of money and chasing an unrealistic valuation. We saw a lot of that fallout over the past five years. And so we really took that to heart as a cautionary tale. We didn't have an ego. We had a lot of clarity of what our business was and what it could be. And so that actually allowed us to approach the fundraising process with more discipline and thoughtfulness than I think.

20:58You know, I think it's hard to turn down a big check when you're a founder, but sometimes you have to. Were people coming to you early on wanting to invest? I feel like they would have been. We, maybe if it was a different time, but the window of time in the universe where we launched Parallel was not a time that anyone was giving out any money. Yeah. So rolling the tape back, my co-founder and I in 2019 had had like this idea where like people do this. I don't know. And then we both said, okay, it's about to be the holidays. Like, let's go have a minute. If we wake up on January 1st and we want to do this, like, let's text each other and do it.

21:34So January 1st, we text each other. I'm like, let's do it. So we quickly, you know, incorporated the business, put together a pitch deck. Because our brand is about targeted nutrition, we couldn't just launch with one product. We had to launch with five SKUs. And the MOQs on those SKUs, I'll never forget, were 2 ,500 units per SKU. So it's not inexpensive to also like buy the product, do the packaging, get it all done. But we knew we had to do it that way to communicate out of the gate the parallel offers targeted nutrition for each stage of womanhood. We had to do it. And so like, okay, well, we'll fundraise.

22:12So March 8th, we did our first VC pitch, March 8th, 2020. I emphasize the year because we all know where this is going. And two days later, everyone's pocketbooks slammed shut, the world shut down, and we were in COVID. It was really scary. I just left my job. My co-founders, same thing. And we're looking at each other like, what is happening? I mean, the great unknown was looming before us. And it was really scary. And we thought, okay, we really believe in this business. We actually think women need this more now than ever. what are we going to do? We said, let's bootstrap it. I'm not an independent.

23:00I was not from a wealthy family. I've built all of my own wealth myself. My co-founder has her own, you know, backing in terms of how she kind of brought in her capital to the business. And we both decided to put in money into the business. And then we also went out to friends and family and brought and some friends and family via a safe note later. And I'll never forget, we looked at each other and we said, let's launch this in September, 2020. Like, let's just give ourselves a date. We launched September 30th, 2020. We made it. We made it by the hair on our chinny chin chins. We did it. And yeah, so those early days, it was really tough because all of the institutional capital was dried up.

23:43They were either investing in kind of saving the ship over here or there of their current investments. obviously there was a there was a large resistance to risk and then also all the goalposts you know moved you know seed rounds didn't exist pre-seed never again like these things just dissolved overnight and so we're looking at each other well like let's just bootstrap this bring in friends and family get it off the ground and within 30 days of launching the business we'd shipped all 50 states wow I mean we didn't how did people find you like we had content we did a really robust launch gifting brought in partners who then amplified like I mean you name it we did it but it was very scrappy I mean we all hand had the two of you it was the two of us and then we hired one person our first hire who actually worked for me for many years at who at where incredible human Her name's Carson.

24:38I have to give her a shout out. She is just so brilliant. She was our first employee. She did. She did it all. She was technically at the time our head of content, but you have to be a Swiss army knife. You got to be willing to roll up your sleeves and do everything. I mean, we, we did it all. What is the team back now? We have just under 40 employees. Wow. Yeah. In LA? All over. Okay. Do you go into an office or do you have an office here in LA in Santa Monica. And then about a third of our team is remote. Remote has been great. It's allowed us to retain incredible talent and give them the flexibility of being remote.

25:13And, you know, and I think in a post COVID world just changed, like you can get a lot done. A lot of our creative and brand team are together because some of that work needs to be a bit more in person, but you know, it's, it's working. Something that I'm really curious about your story is you started a business at a different stage of life than a lot of people who come on this show. Like you already had this big corporate career. You were already successful. And we were talking a little bit before we turned the mics on about this. And it's just a different decision to go all in to start a business if you're not a college student or a recent grad.

25:48And the income you have to replace is like very different. You've got dependents. I want to learn more about how you made that decision and why you decided to make that decision. and how you got to the point that you felt comfortable in it. Because I think there are people listening who are like, oh, I want to take that leap. But like, man, that's scary. I mean, wow. There's so much I wish I had known, but I had to go through it to learn it as we all do with life's lessons. But maybe this will be helpful to someone. But first of all, like that first pang of fear, the only way to achieve greatness is to see the fear and do it anyway.

26:28You have to go there. You have to go to the other side. Greatness is there, but it's the question of, will you go? So there's that first hump that you have to get over. And then you land in the world of logistics and reality. And for me, I was the breadwinner in my family. My husband was unable to work during COVID because he worked in film production, which had completely shut down. And on top of that, you know, I had to figure out the logistics. I was very fortunate to have a home, but I had a mortgage and I had children. to feed and responsibilities. And so that weighed quite heavily. But also on the flip side, I was pretty de-risked from an investment perspective because I was a seasoned executive.