Summit tickets just dropped, Emma Grede disease, eye patch-gate and more business tea

0:01Brussels clean up nicely at Sweetgreen. Maple glazed, roasted and edges perfectly caramelized. Sweetgreen's fall harvest is back on the menu and the season's most overlooked little green vegetable is dressed to be devoured. You know what to do. Order on the Sweetgreen app.

0:19Jasmine:My goal this month is to get every single one of you to switch your email marketing platform to OmniSend because you could save thousands of dollars a year on email marketing and still get all of the features that you need. Because let me tell you, when I was digging through and looking at what we're actually spending in our businesses on email marketing, I was pretty shocked. And that's just on platform fees. It just feels so unnecessary. And the more that my businesses grow and obviously my email list is growing, the more those fees are bloating too. So I did some digging to find a smarter swap for a platform that costs significantly less, but is still intuitive to use and has all of those features that you need to run a successful online business.

1:01Jasmine:And I landed on OmniSend. For businesses that are around 45 ,000 to 50 ,000 contacts, OmniSend starts at$413 a month for 600 ,000 emails, whereas the comparable Klaviyo plan is over$1 ,000. Making that swap is so smart. It's so easy. And it's going to give you thousands of dollars back every year that then you can put into actually growing your business. And that cost reduction, that is actually before you even apply our discount code. So if you add the code FFW35, that code will give you another 35 % off. And I know you're thinking, Jasmine, it is such a headache to swap email marketing platforms.

1:44Jasmine:You're already set up. You've got all of your flows, all of your segmentation built. And I understand. But if you move to OmniSend today, they have agreed that the team will migrate you onto OmniSend for free when you get your paid plan. So you could be up and running in just five days, saving 35 % on the platform. It is an absolute no-brainer. Make the smart swap to OmniSend today. Use the code FFW35 to make sure that you get that 35 % discount. If email marketing is just quietly chewing up all of your budget, check out OmniSend.com forward slash female founder world. Use that discount code or go and head to the link in the show notes.

2:26Jasmine:Hey everyone, welcome back to your weekly business group chat by Female Founder World. I'm Jasmine. I'm the founder of Female Founder World. Hi guys, I'm Nat. I'm a team member at Female Founder World and I am the founder of Beach Street Swim. And I'm Paige. I'm a contributor here at Female Founder World and one of the co-founders of Benny. I have been on the road for the last like three weekends in a row meeting so many of you, which has been so fun sampling. But I'm definitely under the weather, so I had to call that out. No, oh, you're the poor thing. Also, we need to talk about Natalie getting married on the weekend in the most crazy storm but it looked so beautiful and so romantic congrats oh thank you guys yeah if you want to check out the craziness you can check out my socials but we basically we're getting married in the nor 'easter on the east coast out on Long Island like on the very very edge of Long Island like as far east as you could pass I was trying to explain to my sister what Montauk is yeah you know yeah it's like hard to explain if you haven't been or don't understand the geography you're like in the ocean it was yeah we got married like on a cliff by the lighthouse like and basically I mean it's a long story but we were like let's just full send this because obviously you're like should we postpone should we cancel should we try and find a new venue and uh yeah it was uh pretty crazy well it was beautiful like genuinely so beautiful and the video of your ceremony on that cliff is just iconic like it looks like a Wuthering Heights scene or something you did the greatest edit of all time I don't know if that was you Natalie I'm guessing it was you because you're just a genius like this of the news clips like I've watched that oh my gosh no I actually I can't take credit for that I had a videographer like I had a content creator like I was I was off for the day but it's funny I've It worked like every other day.

4:18But no, I mean, yeah, all the content like we had to capitalize on the craziness. It was beautiful.

4:24Jasmine:And now you're married, ladies. So congratulations. Thanks, guys. Okay, guys, before we actually get into the show, let's talk about Summit because tickets have officially gone on sale and we announced our first round of speakers. And we've got so many more speakers to still be announced. But we had one just wild announcement that I wanted to bring to the show as well. and that is Whitney Wolf Hurd, the founder of Bumble, is going to be on the stage. I'm going to be interviewing her at Summit and this is a speaker that we have wanted at Summit for years and years and years. We have finally got her and I am so excited to be able to just take all of her knowledge and share it with the community at this event.

5:04Jasmine:We also have Tara Bosch who is the founder of Smart Suites and Snackers. She built a business that sold the$360 million in just a few years. We have Sif Haider from Array, Barba Rivera from Ceremonia. So many more incredible founders are gonna be on the stage. And if you listen to the show, you know Female Founder World, we are getting into the tactical stuff. Like I want you to walk away from these conversations, knowing how they built their businesses and what you can learn from it. And also what their predictions and what their moves are gonna be over the next few years so that you can get ahead as you're making plans in your own business, as well.

5:43Jasmine:So tickets are on sale, femalefoundworld.com, go and grab yours. We are, I think we might have one VIP ticket left at the, at the time of recording. So they will be gone, but we do have some general admission available, but this event sells out every single year. So please go and grab that. If you're a paid business bestie member, your discount code is in the top of your female founder world app. So go and grab that or just email support at femalefoundworld.com if you can't find it so that you can grab your ticket. I'll see you guys on November 15th at Chelsea Piers in New York City for Female Founder World Summit.

6:17Jasmine:I can't wait. Yay. First on our list to talk about today is a video that Emma Greed posted, which is in response to a question that she said that she keeps getting every time that she is on stage or doing a press interview. And it is about how she built her personal brand. And it kind of relates to this idea of Emma Greed disease, which our producer Hannah thought was an actual disease, but is not in fact an actual disease that Emigrate has. It's a viral social media term that's used to describe early stage entrepreneurs or career women, influencers who project that kind of glamorous aesthetic confidence, that polished lifestyle of a super successful, you know, billionaire CEO without actually having built the business first.

7:03Jasmine:It's this idea of optics over substance or fake it till you make it. and Emma Greed said in a video, and she very rarely does these kind of talking to camera videos. So when she does, you know, you stop, you listen, and you see what she has to say. She stopped and she said, look, I am constantly getting this question about how I built my personal brand. And she says, I did not actively curate this personal brand. She says, personal brand is not something that you can sit down and manufacture. It's the result of what you actually do, your work, your reputation, and the things that you create. And she goes on to say, yes, she's seen this idea of emigre disease.

7:42Jasmine:And she is all about, you know, the glamour and that lifestyle, if that's what you want. But what she's actually trying to encourage is doing the work and not avoiding the work. And that she doesn't think that building a personal brand is something that women should be worrying about at all until they have actually built the business, which I thought was very interesting did both of you see this post it's gone viral I think in this female founder circle recently yes I saw the post I saw her talk about it a few weekends ago on stage I am so I have every thought on this I want I'm so excited to get both of your thoughts on this but I'm a greed disease maybe I have it I've definitely seen it you definitely don't have it Paige you're the opposite of it oh no Paige you're doing the work that's for sure you're at trade shows every weekend.

8:33This is interesting. I think it's going to be polarizing, but also like Jasmine said, I've seen a lot of people agreeing with her. For me, I just always lean on the side of do what works for you because everyone personally is different. Everyone's content is different. Everyone's business is different. And if you're not a forward-facing person, yeah lean on your business and build it and you don't have to have this glamorous outside lifestyle but if that's what draws people in like for example I always think about Chelsea Park and she started out kind of as like a micro creator and people just kind of liked her vibe and her style and then when she really announced more and more that she had a business people were like all in.

9:23So I just think it depends so much on the person. And while this advice is great, I do think that you should take every kind of business advice with a grain of salt and apply it to yourself.

9:34Jasmine:The interesting thing I think is the interactions in the comments. I'm going to make sure that we put this video in the show notes. People can go and watch it and also read the comments because every female founder that you know, that's been on the podcast, that's in this world has commented or interacted or reposted or challenged or whatever this and I actually thought it was really interesting some of the people that you know were like I concur and second you know seconded this video in the comments it was like Aileen Drexler from Betches she's someone who really did you know she focused on building the business and she built a media product that wasn't necessarily about hers she wasn't building a personal following she was building it for the brand.

10:15Jasmine:And only now is she kind of posting her own content and kind of coming out as a little bit more of a forward-facing founder after this business is incredibly successful. It was Joanna from Knicks who also kind of agreed with it. Lauren Bostic, which I thought was quite interesting because I think she's someone who has really built a personal brand in the Skinny Confidential. She was an influencer and a creator before she built her business. And I would say that the two things have really gone hand in hand and she's been successful in her business partially, you know, because of her own personal brand.

10:47Jasmine:And so I thought that was interesting. And Barbara kind of pushed back on it, which I, Barbara echoed something that, you know, Barbara's the founder of Ceremonia. She's also an influencer herself. And she kind of pushed back and said, I love this sentiment, but is it really true? You've been building businesses forever. And it's not until recently that you started engaging in personal brand initiatives. it does feel strategic and not like pure coincidence as a result of building businesses. And I think what she's trying to say here is, sure, you built the businesses first, but after you did that, you did it.

11:20Jasmine:It does look like Emma is intentionally crafting a personal brand now. She's, this doesn't seem accidental. It definitely seems like an intentional thing. That's not just, she's not just famous because of the businesses she's built. She's gone out and built a media brand around her personal brand now. And I think that's an interesting thing to point out as well, that Emma is intentionally building a personal brand now. It's so hard because I think this advice, like I totally agree with you both. I think this like advice or this like guidance or kind of sentiment, it rings true, but it's also like, okay, it's 2026, you know?

11:57Like if I'm not speaking on a panel, my competitor is. And as a consumer brand, like I need to be where my people are. And I think the work often looks glamorous, even if it isn't glamorous. Like it's like XYZ flights this year. Like, ooh, that's so Taylor Swift. That's so glamorous. Like that's the work. And it's probably sitting at the very back of the plane. But you can like make it look glamorous. I don't know. I'm conflicted on this. I feel like it almost perpetuates my imposter syndrome more. I'm like, oh, another thing to be conscious of. Right.

12:30Jasmine:I did find it part of me was kind of relieved to see Emma say this because I thought yeah there's so much pressure online about building a personal brand as well as building your business and your brand and I find myself more focused on if I'm going to create a post it's going to be for the business account not for for my account but at the same time you know when she first got started building these businesses I do think it was a very different landscape to what it is now if you don't have capital and you don't have a network like I do think a lot of the time having that personal following and that personal connection with your community can be the thing that helps your business get ahead of a competitor and that might be the only differentiator that you have and if that is a superpower that you have like it's one of those things that maybe you should use but again I do think that we we have kind of gone a little bit crazy the other way where we've, it's been a little bit focused on, yeah, you should be building a personal brand, build your personal brand.

13:31Jasmine:And that's kind of my entire TikTok feed. And it does feel like a lot of pressure. So I was actually a little bit relieved when I saw Emma process where I was like, okay, this is, you know, someone telling me that I'm not going to lose out because I'm not like, you know, wanting to post some like glam lifestyle or doing day in the life vlogs every day. Totally. I think I want to hear Natalie, sorry, before I lose my thought, my cold meds thought I feel like doing the work is building a personal brand and I don't know if there needs to be like a convergence between the two because most roles you're doing something interacting with some human and that's literally building your personal brand I think like you were kind of saying Jasmine I think that's where it gets so crazy is like the posting every day or I know people like founders that I don't even know what their like product is anymore because they're just at every single event and that seems to be the business is just like almost like a socialite or something um so I like taking the pressure off that but Nat what are you thinking I do agree with Emma in the sense that having a personal brand is the byproduct of work but also I I think that the founders who are maybe forward-facing that doesn't necessarily mean that they're doing anything wrong I think both things can be true.

14:47And people just want to choose a side and try and figure out what strategy is best for them. And like I said, in the beginning, I think it's just, it depends on the person and the founder. And it's hard to say this is right, or this is wrong. It's so gray.

15:01Jasmine:Also the amount of women that I speak to who are building businesses and they pay themselves through the personal brand. And that allows them to continue because they're getting brand deals from the B2B tech providers and they're able to have this career as a micro creator that allows them to then have more runway in their business because they're not having to take that money from the business or work a full-time job. I do think that there's that argument to it as well. But again, I do think we have gone a little personal brand crazy where I do see what Emma is saying where we've kind of like tipped the scales where a lot of the time the focus does seem to be on this identity as a female founder rather than actually like doing the work and creating the business.

15:49Jasmine:And I actually think that's something that the female founder world community does really well in that the women in our business, in our community are actually doing the work and they are trying to build scalable businesses beyond just themselves. And I do think that sometimes when you see commentary like this, it's kind of what you said, Paige, where it's like, oh God, it's just like another thing to think about that am I doing this wrong? And I would, I would listen to it. I would take the grain of salt. If it would, if it resonates with you, amazing. But if you are someone who has had success through this strategy of building a personal brand, and that's allowed you to fund your lifestyle while you build this business, then why not?

16:27Me?

16:29Jasmine:Yes, exactly. Exactly. Something that she does, I would say, caveat in the video and in the comment that I was like trawling through. So you guys don't have to, is the difference between being a creator and a creator first brand versus building a business first and that these are different things and that if you're a creator then you should be doing what you're great at which is creating a creating content and um and that she sees kind of building a brand as like a separate to that but that you should be focused on one or the other uh which yeah it's interesting because I do wonder like I I find it hard to disagree with Emma Greed because who am I to disagree with Emma but I just think maybe maybe times are different I don't know to when she first got started what is so hard the one thing my like one conflicting piece because I do want to say like oh we have to these days it's like do men have to you know I don't know I don't know if they're thinking about their personal brand and like Julie and I were like we need stylists to like dress on brand and like our brand colors is a man have they ever thought of that like never you're so right but I I would challenge like I don't think the whole stylist thing I think there's like the difference between building in public and then also being obsessed with like projecting the successful lifestyle and but I do think that if your content is a channel for that you are able then to it just be another touch point in building your brand world and you're someone that can embody that show the problem and the solution that your product offers Like I do think that there is a power in that because businesses have built so much on content now.

18:08Jasmine:And oftentimes like founders have to be that distribution engine for their brands. But I would actually challenge that. I actually do think a lot of male founders are forward facing. Like I look at a lot of the tech businesses, Beehive, which is a newsletter platform, the guy who started that. He's posting on LinkedIn like every day about building in public in his business and sharing what's happening. I would say it's less lifestyle adjacent, but it's, I do think that a lot of these men are actually doing that. They just probably, you know, less pressure to be building a personal brand, but they are still using their voice in service of building the brand.

18:44Jasmine:And I think it's important to be able to differentiate between those two things. I love that Jasmine. I feel like that's a good piece of homework for anyone that's like trying to find their own way to build in public and you see or to, you know, a way that feels authentic to them to engage with the society we live in and help build their business, whether that is like a personal brand or if it's kind of this more, I know exactly what you're talking about, this male LinkedIn content. I feel like that's more what I do. I'm not a photographer or a model. So I resonate with that totally. I have to say that I do agree with Emma in that the strongest personal brands are rooted in a reputation you earn through actually achieving the thing and doing the thing and doing the work.

19:29Jasmine:And that takes time. That's not just smokes and mirrors and lifestyle content on the internet. It's rooted in what you've actually built. No one can take that away from you. But I do think that we have to be then careful about discouraging people from maybe sharing that or sharing the process as they go, because I do think that that can be a strategy that does work for a lot of people. but you just need to have those things going hand in hand. If it's going to be the strategy, it can't all just be smokes and mirrors and lifestyle adjacent content. It needs to be backed up by the work that you're actually doing and what you're actually achieving, because that's how reputations are built in industries.

20:09Jasmine:We're going to get back to the episode in just a couple of minutes, but first I wanted to bring you your build in public content challenge prompt for this week. So build them the build a public challenge is a program that we have going with Adobe Express, which is our recommended tool to create really any piece of content that you want to create. You can get a free account at adobeexpress.com and use it all throughout the challenge. This week, we're sharing one very simple piece of content that I actually posted this week. I love how it turned out. We already have hundreds of saves on this piece of content and it's very easy to film.

20:42Jasmine:And then if you use a tool like Adobe Express, it's also pretty easy to edit, but I do have some tricks to make it a little bit more simple. So I'm going to show you exactly what that piece of content looks like and then give you a couple of little tips on how to recreate it because it kind of looks complicated when you first watch it. Now, if you're listening to this and you're not watching it, I do recommend that you switch over to Spotify or a platform where you can watch the video because this is a tactical mini tutorial so that you can go away and create this piece of content for yourself today.

21:11Jasmine:Okay, we're all watching. Here's what the content looks like. Every day, once a week, once a month. Every day, once a week, once a month. Every day, once a week, once a month. As you can see, I'm sharing a lot of really helpful resources in this video. And the idea is that you're sharing three things that you're doing every day, every week, and every month in different categories of your business to help other people who also want to be using these tools. So I have broken them into categories of team building and comms, are sales and finance and marketing and content. So first of all, you just want to film your video.

21:47Jasmine:This took me probably two minutes to actually do this. I did a couple of takes and you are just saying the words every day, every week, every month, or every day, once a week, once a month, and pointing up and down on the screen. And you're doing that three times or however many resources that you want to share. So I wanted to share 27 resources. So I did this frame three times. Now you're going to upload this video to Adobe Express. Just go to adobeexpress.com and you can create an account for free and you're uploading the video here. Then what you're doing is you're uploading a photo and adding a caption, photo, caption, photo, caption with the text underneath.

22:23Jasmine:It's really simple to do. You just go upload and then you can create the thumbnail there. You can either use a screenshot of the resource or something that's relevant to the resource. So you know, your sales dashboard, if you can share something like that, or you can use the logo of the tool that you're using, whatever works for you. And then I do a heading here. Just as a reminder, you can upload your own fonts and create a brand book in Adobe Express. So I quite like it to like to do it for videos like this, because it just feels cohesive across all of our content. So you upload all of those, kind of make it similar size, make sure everything is spaced out by dragging and dropping.

22:55Jasmine:And then you're going to select all of these. This is the important bit and the tip that I wanted to share. You're selecting them all and you're going to right click and group them. And then that has created kind of one section. And then you can copy and paste in the timeline here. So you can see this is our first section. This is the second section. This is the third section of different resources. So obviously you want the first section with the the things you do every day appear for the first, for the full amount of that first third of the video. So you're dragging it all the way across and then you want to copy that group and then paste it.

23:43Jasmine:And then you want the second one to appear when you point to the middle of the screen and then you do it again underneath. And you want the third one to appear when you point to the bottom of the screen. And then you're just switching it out every week and every month in this text in the beginning. And then you want to swap out these images. Now to make sure that your timeline here doesn't get messed up, instead of uploading the rest of the images and dropping them in, you want to click replace because that will stop your timeline from needing to be edited and everything needing to be like dragged and dropped and adjusted.

24:16Jasmine:So this is the simple way to do it. Just click on it and then click replace and then you replace with upload and you'll upload your images. then you are simply copying and pasting this again and dragging them across the timeline for all three of these sections it's pretty simple if you're using this tool and you're locking all of those rows it does make it a lot more simple to create and this is a beautiful way to share your best resources with other people who are building and create a piece of content that really does get saved i find that when people see this kind of overload of resource recommendations their first instinct is to save this piece of content, I also would say, save this in the caption.

24:58Jasmine:When you post this, make sure you drop your link into the female founder group chat, tag us or send it to us on Instagram and TikTok. And I'll make sure that we can engage and give your content the love that it deserves. All right, let's get back to the show. Speaking of personal brands, so there and lifestyle, I feel like lifestyle was something like a thread that I wanted to pull on from that Jasmine, but there's two founders and a brand that I think has totally nailed this, which is 437 and Hila and Adrian. I live in Toronto, so I have known this brand since its early, early, early days, but they have just been in the news as of yesterday.

25:34Did you guys see their acquisition or their minority acquisition from Revolve? Yes, yes, yes. Very interesting. 437, if you don't know, launched 10 years ago as a swimwear brand by these two students out of Toronto. And I think they were probably five years in when they pivoted more to activewear, which we can totally dive into. But I know we wanted to talk a bit about the acquisition, but they have done such a gorgeous job, I think, of building a business that really serves their lives. I know they both travel a ton. The team only works Monday through Thursday. It's kind of this, I don't want to say girl boss, but it's like this kind of perfect like millennial girl boss dream and I'm stoked for them so Revolve has invested 15 million dollars for a minority stake in the business and how it happened was really

26:26Jasmine:cool I saw this sub stack that Adrian posted about how the deal came to be and I actually thought the statistics about how well that business is doing was really interesting and how it's just the perfect, like it is the Revolve girl because I saw on that Substack post that they are delivering an 80 % 30-day sell-through rate compared to the category average of like 43%. And that basically Revolve only placed their first order with 437 a couple of years ago. And basically every order has just sold out again and again and again. That is a crazy statistic. Like that's the dream. I think this is so smart.