From the Army to Building a Brand That Makes a Difference

0:00I come from Denmark and in Denmark women don't have to be in the army. I was so attracted by the army. I was just supposed to go for a year and I actually ended up staying five years. It was really hard. I was, and many times I was the only woman there. It was actually only when I was around 38, 40 that I thought, you know, I'd really want to, I really want to start a business that made a difference. And so I have always loved jewelry. I want to start a jewelry brand, but I wanted to start a storytelling brand much more than jewelry. And then it evolved into a brand. with a strong mission. Welcome to the DTC Insider Podcast, where online business owners come to find actionable tips and tactics to grow their businesses.

0:40Now, here's your host, Brian Roizentl.

0:51Hey, welcome to another episode. I'm Brian Roizentl, your host, And today I'm joined by Elizabeth Crossley-Wright, the founder of With Love Darling. Hey, Elizabeth, thanks for being on the show. Hi, Brian. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, my pleasure. So you have an unconventional, at least for this podcast, and very interesting path to entrepreneurship, a very interesting background from serving in the Army and deploying on NATO missions to working at the UN. So why don't you take us back to the beginning and tell us what led you into the army in the first place? I come from Denmark and Denmark, women don't have to be in the army.

1:30And all my friends were going on gap years and they were traveling in India or being au pairs in Paris or something. And I thought, I just want to learn something. And I thought, I really want to learn to lead and I want to learn to find my boundaries. And I was so attracted by the army. I can't really explain why, but I think it was the structure and the fact that you were not wasting time and you were learning things and pushing yourself. And I was just supposed to go for a year and I actually ended up staying five years. And is there anyone like from your family, relatives who joined the army before you?

2:06Basically, all the men in my family had been in the army, but just as a reserve, like because they had to conscribe as men. they were it was obligatory for them but I don't think it was that it was just that I was just attracted to doing something different and somewhere where I sort of push my boundaries I think okay and what was your experience there like how old were you when you started there and how the experience shaped you personally well I was 19 when I started and and I left when I was 24 well it was completely different it was really hard I was and many times I was the only woman there, which I didn't mind.

2:43I mean, that was fine. But because I was the only woman, you know, women are a little bit weaker physically. So sometimes I often felt like I wasn't good enough or what I had to try harder or whatever. But what was good about these things is that you have these crazy exercises when they're training you the first few years. And I remember I was so scared. I was so scared that I wouldn't be able to keep up. And I was so scared that I would just sort of disappoint myself and disappoint my leaders in the army and my colleagues. And I remember before we went on one of those terrible trips, you know, where you come back with no skin on your feet and you haven't eaten for six days and you've walked, you know, 125 kilometers.

3:23And I remember he said to us, don't fret because you can do 10 times more than you think. And you can do about 100 times more than your mom thinks. And I never forgot it because I really think it's very important in your life, however you have those experiences, you need to be in a position where you're under pressure and where you come through. It doesn't have to be the army. It could be all sorts of different things, but it gives so much confidence when you're so under pressure, but you don't give up because you know that you're uncomfortable. You know that you are under stress and you basically want to get out of the situation, but you don't think that giving up is the way out.

4:02And I think that resilience, I don't think we have it enough in our society. sort of built in to childhood. It's certainly not the childhood I had because I had a super protected childhood. But that was a huge win because I can see that that experience have things have been tough since, you know, financial pressures or pressures with children or whatever. And it's giving me this resilience that things sound comfortable, but they're not impossible. And that's a really good lesson to have. So I would really say the army gave me that. Interesting. And yeah, it's interesting what you said as well about today's society.

4:33I am a father of twins. They are 70-year-old now, a boy and a girl. And, you know, there's a lot of conversations around the crystal generation and how fragile or, let's say, sensitive. I don't know probably the right word, but definitely we don't expose them as the previous generations were exposed to different things for different reasons. Even in the professional world, adults these days with AI and many other tools available these days, we have it easier than before to do some mundane task. Find me anything, give me the answer to this problem, do this for me. And I think that I was talking to a friend about this the other day and it's like we are not processing or consuming information and analyzing that.

5:23We are delegating that analysis. Whether it's right or wrong, it's a different conversation probably, but it's happening. So how do you think that besides the opportunity are a few ways of helping this generation, whether it's kids or, you know, teenagers about to become or to start studying in college or applying to jobs? What do you think that we are missing today and how we can get that back? So I think, you know, because I'm a mother of four and, you know, as you know, when you've got children, you're only as happy as your unhappiest child. You know, if your kids are suffering, you're suffering.

6:00And so there's this tendency and I've had to catch myself many times where we want to remove every obstacle from our children's path because we don't want them to suffer. We want them to thrive and flourish. But I don't think that's always good, actually. And one of my children, my second boy, who's now 18, he's actually just in Kenya now, living in the middle of nowhere. He's very resilient. He had some problems when he was little. And that really taught him to be extremely resilient. He got to know himself at a very young age, but he knows himself better than many 50-year-olds I know today. He really understands the dark corners of his mind.

6:39And my third son started a new school, and he wasn't really happy. and I said to the first one, I said, oh, I'm so sad because I think Alex is not really happy. I don't know what to do about it. And Max said, well, no, he is unhappy, but he'll be happy again. It's not the end of the world. You know, you are unhappy and then you become happy again eventually. And I thought it was wise in a way because it isn't the end of the world to be unhappy. And we have to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable and understand that, you know, Life is just a series of phases. And after something difficult, it does pass.

7:14And then something wonderful might follow. And I think that's that courage to have to sit with it and teach our kids, change is hard. Starting college is hard. Getting rejections is hard at a job. You're an entrepreneur. I'm an entrepreneur. The amount of no's you get and the amount of rejection you get, if you're not resilient to that, then you can't go on. then you can't have something of your own, I think. Yeah. So you were deployed on NATO missions, right? Yeah. What were those missions about? Of course, if you want to talk about it, and what did those experiences expose you to what you probably wouldn't have understood otherwise?

7:53Well, I think, first of all, I was on two NATO missions, one in Bosnia and one in Kosovo. And that was sort of at the height of NATO. And it's interesting in that in the world we are today, where sort of NATO is losing a bit of clout and a bit of importance. But for me, NATO worked very well at that time and it was respected and it really had some power in it. So I think we really made a difference in both Bosnia and Kosovo, you know, keeping the peace. We were peacekeeping. So we were set in basically as a police force to make sure there was no fighting going on and it worked. And under that umbrella, there were then set in sort of new government and new police forces and all that.

8:30So I thought it was an excellent exercise in international cooperation. And then just being in a mission area is interesting. I mean, you know, it wasn't as dangerous as some of the missions people have been in since in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there was some danger. And also being comfortable with that and trust yourself and your gear and your education and the framework of the army or the framework of whatever you're working in, your colleagues. I mean, it was quite a good experience, I think, to live under those extreme circumstances. Yeah. And what were the moments, if you remember, that you started to think about what we are going to tell the audience that you do now, of course, but it's related to inequality.

9:17Well, in that case, during those missions, probably conflict. and what were those moments, the first moments that you started thinking about that and the kind of impact that you wanted to have in the world? So one thing that really struck me when I was both in Bosnia and Kosovo, and that's only a two-hour flight from Copenhagen where I grew up, by the way. So Copenhagen is totally civilized and peaceful. And then the two-hour flight, there was just war and destruction and society had broken down. And, you know, when that happens in a war zone, the first thing that disappears is investment and entrepreneurship.

9:52And with that also hope disappears and there's no productivity and it's just a bad loop, basically. And so when I decided to start my business, I was sort of harking back to those memories of thinking, these are the people we need to activate. You know, these are the areas, you know, the people who can bring something to the market. We don't need another sweatshop in China. We need actually people who can build something with their hands and who really needs this income. And at what point did you start thinking about building a brand and becoming an entrepreneur? You know, I didn't actually think about building a brand back then.

10:32You know, that was when I was younger, when I was in the army. Then I studied law later. I worked a little bit for the UN. I had my children and it was actually only when I was around 38, 40 that I thought, you know, I'd really want to start a business that made a difference. And so I've always loved jewelry. I've just always loved not the value of jewelry. For me, it doesn't matter if it's diamonds or gold or if it's, you know, a string bracelet with a charm. For me, the value of jewelry is really in the way it's given and the story it holds. I love that whole thing, you know, why we wear earrings is that in the old days, sailors couldn't, they couldn't bring anything with them in case they drowned or got, you know, were nearly drowning.

11:16So if they went into the death, the land of the death, they would have to pay to get in. So they wore an earring, that was their money to get in. So those stories, I just think are so fun and it was always an inspiration to me. And so I want to start a jewelry brand, but I want to start a storytelling brand much more than jewelry. And then because of my experience on the Balkans in NATO, I really wanted to put the production in places where it could help people. And, you know, I was saying about the sports shop in China before, we don't need another factory. What we need is to engage. There's about 400 million people in the world who are in the handmade sector, which means that they have an income because they can braid a basket or they can cast jewelry or string a bracelet or do some wooden tools or something.

12:04And those are the people that I really want to engage with and encourage other brands to find those artisans. Because then it really, the trickle down effect when those people look after their families and their children to school. And that is really when you help, in my opinion. So that was my big inspiration to sort of create a loop where you created something beautiful, but you were also making a difference while you were building that. When did you start the brand? What year was it? In 2016, I started sort of, I didn't launch it then. I just started, I started going to India because I researched where was, where was, would it be great?

12:40Where could we find good artisans who worked with silver and gold? And so I did a huge sort of recce where I first online found all these different workshops and whatever. And I wrote to them and maybe wrote to 200 or 300 workshops. Only some answered me. And then I wanted to know if they were sustainable. Were they using recycled silver? Were they paying the artisans fairly? What were the work conditions? And then from that, many more fell to the side. And in the end, I was left with like a handful, five or six workshops. And then I decided to go out and visit them, see the conditions for myself, verify everything they had said, see the quality.

13:22And I ended up finding a fantastic workshop that I work with today. And it's just one of those experiences where you meet a kindred spirit. And my supplier was just fantastic. And we just shared the same idea in terms of human outlook, you know, try and do well by doing good kind of thing. So first off, it's the 10-year anniversary, right? Yes. Congrats. Thank you. That's a milestone. Even more with businesses, you know, coming and going. So congrats. second you said that you visited the workshops and to check you know the conditions and some other things so the the supplier you're talking about is in India you said in Jaipur in India yeah okay and what was it like like when you went there was it like do you expect seeing what you saw or was it something that you didn't imagine I don't know if you've been doing that before that I hadn't been to India before.

14:19So I was really, it was really a huge experience. I fell in love, I have to say. Like India is just, India is so much. India is the most sophisticated of the best of the best. But it's also like the lowest of the lowest, like it's just so, so diverse. And in that way, exciting because there's so many different sort of pockets of experiences there. I really like working with Indian people. I like the way they negotiate. I like the culture. I like the way their humor. It's just something that really speaks to me. And it was just fantastic. I mean, I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't that.

14:57I think I'd expected sort of more contrast, not in such a diverse, rich way. I think I'd expected more black and white, which it really isn't. It's funny. You know, I've never been to India, but I've been to Southeast region. And well, I live in Argentina. So, well, of course, to the U.S., to many European countries as well. And what I love the most about traveling is, you know, getting to see, especially in those places in which you spend time, not like two days, and you get to talk to people from there to experience the cultures, the values. I've been to the Middle East where I have family in Israel and some countries around the zone.

15:40And sometimes I always say that maybe I won't understand them and they won't understand me. And I'm not talking about the language. I'm talking about the ways they do things and the ways I do things. And that's okay. But it's things you don't understand them as much until you actually leave them and you're there with them and really see why. and you are immersed in that experience. So I find that fascinating. It was interesting. I had a conversation with a supplier because I was sort of taken aback by the vast poverty. And I said to him, I don't like when I take my tuk-tuk to meet you every morning to work that I see this woman and she's just sitting on there.

16:24I think she lives in the street. She's sitting with her husband. She's picking lice out of his hair. And I just think, what's for her in life? And he said to me, but she's free. I said, well, how can she be free? She has nothing. And he says, well, that's a freedom too. He says, look at you. You have flown. I lived in Canada at the time. You've flown 34 hours from Canada to come here. You've got four kids at home. So you only have three days in India where you're working nonstop. Then you have to rush back to your family and try and make some of this. You're not free, he said to me. This woman has more freedom than you do.

16:57And so it's not whether you agree with it or not. It's just interesting to meet people who have a different perspective of you, who look at the world differently. And that, I think, is a big richness. Yeah, it's amazing. So 2016, you found this partner in India and you started a brand. What, I talked to many brands and I learned from them and I included you among those people now. And I love the conversations. And there are some times that, you know, people who don't know or people who, let's say, They want to start a brand with a strong mission, a strong vision from a point of helping others as well.

17:38They think that, and you can validate this, they need to decide one of the two, a thriving business and profitable business and a business with a strong mission and values. And probably they don't think that the two of them are possible in the long term. So what did you think back then when you started this business? come through your head or it was never thought for you? I definitely wanted the storytelling to take center place. That was always the thing. And I didn't think it would be as big as it is. You know, when I started, I just wanted to make sort of jewelry for my community and my family and friends.

18:19And I didn't really start a brand, to be honest. I just wanted to have this creative outlet and to have this sort of storytelling. I think just for my own identity, too, that it was something I liked. It just felt like the right step to take. And then it evolved into a brand with a strong mission because we then decided to build all the collections around the global goals. So clean water, peace, equality, again, that strong storytelling of things that I think are really important also based on my background in the army and the UN. Super important to have that storytelling about a better world.

18:55And then people responded to that. And then that became, So it was sort of through my customers that the brand was built, if that makes sense. You mean through your customers? Well, because then you start having customers. And I didn't really know about Facebook marketing back when I started out. And then in 2020, someone said to me, well, shouldn't I help you with this? And we're the agency, we can help you. And I was thinking, I was very skeptical. And then I went from having one or two orders per day to suddenly having like 15, 20 orders per day, sometimes 30 orders per day because of the internet, basically.

19:28And because the way Facebook was set up back then, there were not the same protection of the customer that there is today. So you could really reach a lot with a very low spend. Now, today, it's much more expensive to acquire a customer. So we actually don't use Facebook as much. We use much more organic ways of getting customers. But I didn't know that I could have 30 orders per day. I didn't see that when I started out. So that's what I mean by then that response. Wow, there are actually 30 people every day who want my product. I couldn't get my head around that at first. But then you grow with that and you have the conversation.

20:03That's the great thing about being a direct-to-consumer brand is that you don't have that link of wholesale where you don't know your consumer. So let's say a great experience I had, for instance, was that when something goes wrong with an order, it doesn't get delivered on time. Or maybe sometimes the lock breaks or the threat bursts. I mean, that can happen. It's not necessarily a quality issue. It could just be, it could just happen, you know. And the customer will write to me saying, I'm really unhappy. I just bought this and this happened or whatever. And then I really believe that the most important thing on an online brand, it is to have trust.

20:41If someone is going to put their trust in you and at least be a repeat customer, they need to understand that you're taking them seriously. And if they have a problem that you'll respond very quickly. And so I'd always just send out a new piece of jewelry or try and help them with whatever the problem was or whatever. And so basically those bad experiences where people were unhappy with me, they have sometimes become my best customers because they like the way that I responded to them. And the jewelry is great and the quality is great. But that and I learned that from my customers. I grew with my customers like that.

21:14And that's why it's fun to have an online brand, in my opinion, because you learn a lot from your customers. You have this idea about what's going to sell. And then your customer is telling you, but no, no, no, we want it that way. And so if you listen to your customers, you could do well, I think. Yeah, I think I've reached that. I totally agree. And I always tell brands that work with us or brands that I talk to on the podcast as well, or in general, that, you know, the offline experiences, the retail experiences, let's say offline, give us the luxury of interacting face to face to customers.

21:48like in real life experiences probably are unmatched. When we go online, we lose some of those unless we don't want to lose them, right? Because it's easy to set up a Shopify store or whatever platform store, throw money at ads or organics and sell some products. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But getting in touch with customers, Sometimes it's up to the customers that take the first step and get in touch with the brand for whatever reason. But then brands could be proactive as well, gather data about customers and get in touch with them. I will say the same things. From all the brands I interview, one of the things that the ones I consider successful have in common is that they not only care about their customers, They build businesses about missions and visions they truly believe in.

22:44They get in touch with customers. They learn about them. They have periodical calls with them, sometimes in real life meetups or whatever form of interaction with them. Those are the brands that get products released by customers, named by customers. And typically, I think that's amazing because they tell you what they want to see next from you. Yeah, I agree. In your case, again, what are some of the ways that you said that some, you know, customers, you have conversations. How do those conversations typically happen? Some customers will write. I mean, because it's sort of mission-driven jewelry and a storytelling jewelry, a lot of customers will write to me about why they're buying this piece for someone or what it means for the person or whatever.

23:32And that's really fun to get that sort of feedback on the jewelry. Yeah, that's, that's great. Some, some brands, you know, of course, getting, getting an email from a customer. It's a match that it's amazing, but also for, you know, volume, but still useful. Some brands, you know, leverage post purchase surveys that are embedded on the thank you page. You can send them via email for the, let's say, uh, existing customers, but for every new customer to ask questions that are meaningful and not just attribution related. Like, how do you know about us? Social media, radio, TV, whatever. It's more about what do you like about our brand, our products, and things that help you understand them better at volume.

24:23Because, of course, ideally, you can call as many as you want, but everyone is busy and sometimes we don't talk to many customers. And that's probably a way to getting what we call zero-party data, which is the data from them, written by them using their exact words. That's a long way as well. Very true. So I know that we discussed India and we discussed the historic organically. I know you do some things with Kenya, but could you please tell the audience what exactly do you do there? Because I found that very interesting when I first heard about it. Yeah. So as I said before, we did start in India producing there.

25:04And then the fashion sort of pivoted a little bit towards more beading. People wanted beaded pieces. And I found these Maasai women through my sister who works in development in northern Kenya. And they're basically just women who are homemakers. You know, they just live in a steel hut. And they look after the livestock, after the children. They don't have running water. They don't have electricity. But they are fantastic at beading. If you look at what they wear, their dress, it's just fantastic. It looks completely amazing. And they're very skilled beaters. So we asked them to start doing these little different bracelets for us and with the little charms for the global goals.

25:45And they started this and we did it through a sort of organization that we found on the ground. And what happened was quite amazing that they would put the women together to fulfill our orders in groups of 10 and 15 women. And then they would sit there and fulfill the order and be together. But then the beating became almost secondary because it became a little bit of a community where they would share their problems relating to their husbands or their money problems or their children or health. And they ended up becoming this support network for each other. And my contact on the ground said it was really quite amazing that the women were, of course, grateful to receive money for their work.