How To Leverage Social Media To Sell Your Products l The Co-Founders of Womaness

0:28People get emotional about names. and you're hiding it, you can't sustain being a happy person. Back to the audience real quick. Obviously we're getting very consumer product nerdy, so that's where this episode's going, so bear with us. Attention is the number one asset. Vayner Nation, how are you? Excited for another fresh episode. We are here in the summer. Luckily, you are not seeing anything because I have a massive black eye because I took a huge elbow in basketball yesterday. Ross Brown you are on on call on alert Ross works at Vayner so it's really funny anyway and he was on my team by the way he was my own teammate that held me directly anyway Michelle and Sally are here I'll let them explain what they do for a living but this is fun I'm trying to do more podcasts with entrepreneurs and people on the journey and I think these two ladies will bring a lot of value to the audience and in return I hope a lot of you check out what they're up to so ladies Great.

1:26Thank you for having us. I'm Michelle. I'm co-founder with Sally for Womaness. Womaness is a modern approach to aging through supplements, skincare, and sexual wellness products. And really what we found was that so many women don't understand what's going on with their bodies as their hormones change in their 40s and 50s. And there was literally nothing out there. And we had our own personal experiences that identified this huge space. And so we built this brand to address this market and then realized, wow, this category didn't even exist. And it's really hard. It's awesome. Yeah. Tell everyone who you are.

2:09I'm Sally, the co-founder of Womanass with Michelle. So we really created a whole new category and it was based on our own personal experiences. So for me, I was in my late 40s going through menopause. Yep. And didn't realize that what I was experiencing was actually menopause. I knew that I was menopause, but I thought menopause was just hot flashes. And here I was like experiencing sleep issues, low libido. Yeah. Proud to say. Yeah, of course. I mean, it happens to, it's human. It happens to so many people. I think one of the great things of last 30, 40 years in society is we are de-stigmatizing a lot of things.

2:49I mean, to your point, like even menopause, like just like even it, right? To your point in the way that we defined it for two decades, hot flashes, even that in the first place was a whole new destigmatization. And now we're just going deeper and actually defining it properly instead of half pregnant. Yep, exactly. So again, I knew that I was going through this and I finally found a female doctor that educated me about menopause. And at the end of the appointment, she said, here's a list of products that you can get on Amazon. Checked out those products and I was appalled. Not because she didn't find the best products out there.

3:35She did. It was the caliber of those products. They weren't made with clean ingredients. The packaging was very outdated. The names didn't speak to modern women like us. It was all in all just not an inspiring experience. And to that point, what was your career about? How did you grow up? So I grew up at Target. I worked in the corporate office building brands, working with external designers, had an amazing career for 24 years. Right. So that is why your filter of looking at all this, you were bringing that one's professional self to this. Yes. And that made you see the opportunity. I was always known inside Target as like, you know, the one that was finding the white space, the trends, looking, you know, further out, trying to think about it.

4:23Why were you good at that? I think it's just part of my DNA as a person. You think it's intuition? I think it is a lot of it's intuition. I do. Michelle has the same sort of intuition. And how did you back up? How did you, what did you take, what would you do in your career once intuition struck? Did you have a process once you felt something? We did. What I, you know, at the beginning, we did a lot of research with women. Okay. Now you're going to, I'm going actually even for the back. In the target years, Would you just send those hot flashes of brilliance, pun intended, to a research department?

5:04Or did you have a process that you would dig longer into? So, you know, I left in 2010. So, you know, back when I was there doing kind of like throwing pixie dust out there to find the next big idea. It was really a few of us, I would say the merchant head of merchandising, myself, and maybe a couple other people that would really evaluate the idea. And if we liked the idea, it was like go time. Now it's all about making it happen. Yep. So, you know, I think it's - It was human talent. Absolutely. Human talent. So you were a target for a long time in corporate. 24 years. And then between 2010 and you doing this, what did you do?

5:46So I spent the next 12 years or so owning my own business, consulting, building brands. Very cool. And then I went inside at Click Brands, which owned Who But Where, and helped Hillary and Catherine, the co-founders of Who But Where, turn their brand from a digital brand into a very successful line of product and placed it at Target. Understood. And built out every component of that, along with the team, of course. I'm sure, of course. And for you, what was your career about? I started, well, I went to business school. After business school, I worked at Pfizer Consumer Healthcare. Then was at Time Inc.

6:25for 10 years. I worked at Real Simple Magazine. And talk about intuition. I went into the publisher. I was working at Pfizer. I had an interview at Real Simple with the publisher. And I looked at him and I said, this should be like Martha Stewart. We should have a line of products. I can figure this out for you. I'm going to build out all these different categories for real simple. And actually, that's how I met Sally because I went and pitched Target and we got the deal. But that I didn't know how to do that. I just said, this is what this brand should be because I was a huge fan of the brand.

6:58So I was there for 10 years and then was at Home Shopping Network for four. And Sally and I had been friends all this time. And we kept saying to each other, we are building brands for all these other people. One day for ourselves. One day. We can do this. But what's interesting about it is that, you know, you look at it from a real business perspective, like white space, focus groups, all the things. We launched Womaness and it took on a life of its own of being so personal because we are just destigmatizing something. Of course. And it becomes this thing where our customers are emailing us saying, thank God you're here.

7:33I didn't know where else to turn. What was the first SKU? We launched. We had 13 when we launched. Okay. Because we wanted to be legitimate in perimenopause menopause. So we didn't want to just have one. You wanted to be horizontal. Yes. We wanted a problem solution brand. Here's a fun question. We're getting, obviously on the podcast, jumping back, I'm very focused on it. Back to the audience real quick. Obviously, we're getting very consumer product nerdy. So that's where this episode is going. So bear with us. which one of the 13 SKUs did you think was going to do the best do you recall back then of which one you thought would drive it and did that materialize or did something else pop we thought let's neck would be number one it's the neck and decollete serum and it's got a very I mean it's great product it has a cooling rollerball great name let's neck and it's our hero product so we knew it would do well because the insight was, oh my gosh, so many people, men included now, hate their necks.

8:37Yeah. And it's a sign of aging. By the way, it's literally something I heard the other day. Just like normal, like life, just somebody, a guy bringing it up. Men are talking about their necks. Because it's one of the first signs of it. You know, you're kind of used to like looking at your face and then all of a sudden you're like on a Zoom call and you're like, what's happening? The wrinkles on the neck. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. The sagging and things of that nature. There's less oil glands there. The skin kind of thins faster there. So it was, we knew it was going to be a home run. Yeah. I mean, it's so much bigger than we thought.

9:09But it would be funny. Our second and third best SKUs are related to vaginal dryness. So we have a vaginal moisturizer. Yes. I thought it would do well. I was surprised that it's our second best-selling SKU on Amazon. And, you know, women will talk to us about their skin and they'll talk to us about other things and then eventually it gets to of course you know their vaginas are dry yeah that's real life yeah it's real life you know don't forget america's so funny like for everybody who's listening that lives in america like you'd be and let me say it this way for the people listening right now that are living in america that don't have the luxury or the serendipity or the life's trails to have had a lot of time outside the u.s like we are let me say this very simply as i can we are fucking prude this is a prude prude prude country yeah you know we're incredibly awkward when it comes to the birds and the bees and sexuality like like you know vaginal dryness is is not as like weird in europe and asia and other parts of latin america so you know i'm i'm proud of us i feel like this is i feel like sexual wellness I will probably never get to get around to this but I'm the kind of person that wishes at some point in his life that I could understand the impact on happiness in our 330 million or so Americans if we were better at not having so much stigma around sexuality I believe there is an enormous happiness and economic impact if we had a better relationship on this subject well it's about connection and intimacy and being you know connected to another person which overall is a problem today and shadows and shadows and darkness yeah are always bad always bad they're always bad and the more we're uncomfortable of talking by the way us being uncomfortable in talking about money as a society has hurt us so much.

11:17Yeah. Yeah. Like there's not a 22 year old in America that doesn't pop out, hit the streets that has any knowledge about money unless their parents taught them. Right. Right. It's insane. Well, in our own bodies too. As women. Yes. We don't even understand menopause. Yep. We did some research a couple of years ago and we had like the scale of menopause literacy and it was like 30%. That is a failing grade. I couldn't, I couldn't. And we're smart women. It's not a matter of intelligence. It's just, we don't talk about it. We're stigma. Stigma. The medical community is not trained in menopause. Yep, you're right.

12:00So there's all these factors. And then you're right, as a crude society, we're not openly talking about it. And you really take it out. And that's why women are, it's another reason why women leave the workforce. They're not feeling great. They're not sleeping great. They don't feel like themselves. They're sweating. They're having hot flashes in board meetings. And a lot of women are like, I'm out. And so it's not only out professionally, out in their relationships. Right. Absolutely. Dented, I wouldn't say out, dented in their motherhood. Yeah. Like it's a real fucking transition. Yes. And if you don't know what the hell's going on and you're hiding it, you can't sustain being a happy person.

12:44It's going to affect. This is a major issue. Right. And if you're not sleeping well, it's impossible to juggle all those things along with aging parents. Right? And then as you get older, you tend to pay attention to the news a little bit more, which will always fuck you up. Right. It's a compounded thing. So back to the business. How old is it? Three and a half years. and what's the most surprising positive and because there's so many entrepreneurs listening that you can inspire what is the most frustrating pain right now like god damn it look at us too we knew it i'll speak to mine v friends my intellectual property yes i am the guy when it comes to social media andy used to run my social media he runs v friends and we don't have it fixed the way I want to.

13:33It's like perplexingly funny to me. And it's because we're fighting on too many fronts. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And we take that one for granted because we're good at it. Right. How about for you two? What has been the surprising and maybe you have separate answers. Let's allow both of you to do that. What's been the surprising like this went way better. And it might again, these are entrepreneurs doesn't have to be marketing might be how well you two have worked together, or maybe how retail maybe because you were target gals, how well Walmart's treated you just business. What has gone surprisingly well?

14:03And what is a stunning three and a half years ago, I would have said to you, this is going to be a problem. You're like, impossible, Gary. What's a stunning frustration? Okay. What's gone well? I think - Surprisingly well. Surprisingly well. Right. Because the neck roller you thought was going to go well, it did go well. I'm talking, what has caught you off guard in the positive? I do think the reaction from our customers, I think the love and like the outpouring of support has been like surprising because I think we came out, we're very like business, you know, like our corporate careers and all that.

14:39And here we are so close to the customer. Practical. Yes. Oh, that part. We're so close to the customer and she tells us how she feels. And I think that's surprising to me. Like I didn't realize it would change our, we are becoming advocates for these women. I love that. Yeah. And I love that. We didn't expect that in our first, you know, like right doing a forecast and business plan. Surprising frustration. I mean, the word scale. How are you going to scale? Why aren't you scaling fast enough? Well, that sounds like you're either talking to retailers or investors. Either one. I mean, it's the vexing.

15:16I mean, talk about vexing. It's like how to spend your money. By the way, I'm sorry to interrupt because you whispered mainly investors. We're also in a very, again, I'm trying to make this valuable for the audience. We're in a little bit of a pickle where money got expensive. You know, like, you know, it would be a little bit more fun to have these convos five and a half years ago. Yes. when interest rates were where they were and things of that nature. So I'm sure, you know, but it's so funny that you said the thing that's going well is the consumer. The thing that's not going well is already investors.

15:46That's what I would wish for you. Oh, okay. Right? It's a lot better than the alternative. It's all about the consumer. Great customer, great reviews. That's the good part of the business. The hard part is the, you know. Getting capital at a price that excites you to accelerate your business. Exactly. How about for you too? I would say the positive echoes what Michelle is saying. I love - The surprising positive. The surprising positive is how open women really want to be. We've been doing these menopause parties where we have experts speak. We speak and women are having fun. They're drinking our hot flash margaritas.

16:26They're openly talking about their sex life. It's great. How big is the group usually? 35 to 50. Nice. and so I think that's exciting I think women call us personally and talk about you know their needs their sex life and you know I never thought I'd be Dr. Ruth especially with sexual wellness I never thought I'd be giving advice talk about an icon in this Dr. Ruth oh my god talk about way ahead of your time she was so ahead of the curve I know she's such an icon and the frustrating thing And the frustrating is our intuition was right to launch our brand in 2021. It was, we felt like this. It was coming.

17:10This groundswell was happening around midlife and women's health. And we knew millennials were going to age into perimenopause. What I'm surprised about is how long it takes when you're building a new category to educate everyone. Not just the consumer. is further ahead than the retailer. Than the retailers. Yes, for sure. And investors, some really get it and some don't get it. Yeah, forget it. Yeah, I get it. That makes sense. And so it's been really interesting when you think about, you know, four years later. Where is the product predominantly sold? What's the number one channel? Our D2C. Your personal D2C.

17:49Your personal D2C. Number two, Amazon? Number three. And Ulta Beauty. Very nice. We're in great partnership with Ulta Beauty. Do you know Michelle, the CMO? Yes. She is the fucking best. Yeah, Michelle. I'm obsessed with her. Oh, yeah. She's great. She's the best. Yeah. That's great. I was on a panel with her. That's very nice. So that's the third. Yeah. Is there a fourth? Working on the fourth. It starts to fragment from there. Yes. And we really want to focus. I mean, we have a lot of opportunity in just those three places. And how's supply chain? Good. Everything's made in the US. And during COVID, it was rough.

18:21Of course. Now we're in good news now. Yeah, yeah. What about marketing? We spend all our marketing dollars on meta. For DTC conversion. And Google. And Google. Can I give you a humongous piece of advice? Yeah, stop doing that. No, no. By the way, no. No, actually, I would argue that Meta continues to be the scaled underpriced platform. Literally besides Super Bowl as a media channel, Meta's value of actualized attention against what you buy is actually remarkable. the problem is that most people don't realize how much the DTC game has changed the last 24 months you need to make a much more specific strategic focus on organic social right now your performance team internal or external is predominantly if I'm guessing right because this is 99 % this may not be what you're doing but it's literally 99 % they're trying to do A-B testing and proper work on optimizing assets to convert against CAC and LTV.

19:25What happened in the last 24 months is organic social has changed from how I grew up, where you get as many followers as possible and a percentage see it, to the algorithm, the AI, is so good now. What you should be, what every brand of your size and age is missing is a bigger commitment to organic social. And when the organic social over-indexes, that becomes the performance ad. You were right. But the problem is and I know why I'm right and the reason there's 99 the other way the problem is it's scary to spend more money on organic because what if none of it does well then it goes to zero. The problem is you're in the hamster wheel of the Cat Canel TV game and you're in lower fun or performance and you're not building as much brand.

20:10You're getting it because it's such a great product and you were so right on the hypothesis and Holly Berry this and Washington, D.C. that. And I'm paying attention, so I'm aware you're hitting it. But you need to get very serious about organic social. Yeah, we agree. And you need to do more of this. Like when this, we'll send you the footage of this, you need to clip this and use it. Yeah, absolutely. I see you're filming some of it. We will. The founder story's huge. Yeah. But then just in general, the testimonials, as the stigma goes away and more women are willing to give you testimonials on video, that will be huge.

20:43But organic social, like TikTok, TikTok. is super important for you. And every woman has a story to tell. And they're interesting. But more importantly, TikTok gets so much organic reach when it hits. And it's much older than people think. Oh, yeah. I'm on TikTok all day. Of course. Everybody, everybody under 70 is. Yeah. And so those are some. Okay. I'm sure you thought about being on this show. We've got a substantial audience. By the way, a wild mix. the amount of category buyers at major retailers, the amount of investors, the amount of entrepreneurs, creators who may want to do things with you.

21:22You have a pretty substantial wide audience here. What have we not talked about before you skadoodle out of here that you maybe wanted to talk about before we got here, but the way the combo has been moving, I want to give you that opportunity. What did we not touch on? What do you want people to know? What are you curious about? How do I bring you value here for the last couple of minutes? I think one thing that we haven't talked about is, What is it like to create a brand in your 50s? I'm now 60. And it's a very different experience. I mean, it's good because you feel like you have more confidence, more wisdom.

22:00Your network is so much larger that you can depend on. Yes. And so I just encourage your audience to not be afraid to try something new in their 50s, maybe even 60s. Well, you've walked into the right place. I would argue that one of the core pillars of my content career over the last 20 years has been my devastation of how we treat age. Absolutely. Like, first, I mean, back to the roller and the neck. Like, first of all, you definitely know this. Women surely didn't look like you at 60. 30 years ago. No, really. I mean, the golden girls weren't in her 50s. You know, like the world's changed. That's because humans live longer.

22:41Right. The reason, like we, and so we're gonna, I mean, the thought of like starting a business at 60 in a world where many, many, many people are gonna live to 90 healthy. So what are you gonna do like for 30 years between 60 and 90? Like play golf? Like, I think that's, I promise you, this audience doesn't need to hear that message because I pound the shit out of it. Right, right. No, I think it's so exciting. And I know both our parents, Michelle and my parents, they worked into their 80s. Mom and dad. Yeah, both of our parents. I will die at my desk. I'm pretty convinced. Yeah. I'm hopeful.

23:21It keeps you healthy. It keeps you relevant. It keeps you excited. Yeah, what are you supposed to do? Right. By the way, big shout out to people that can quote unquote. listen a lot of people are not as fortunate as it sounds like your parents and us are if you hate your job yeah it's not very and it's your career and you hated it but you did it to take care of your family or whatever how life twisted well that makes a lot of sense of like i can't wait to be 60 of course and go to florida and fish but when you love it yeah the hell else are you gonna do right right or start you know and go fishing but maybe on the side do something you've always wanted to do too so i just believe that that's awesome you know i think it's so important to have but um yeah check out womanist.com that's yeah spell it out for everybody w-o-m-a-e i'm sorry w-o-m-a-n-e-s-s dot com so check out was that easy to get or did you have to buy that it It took us a year to come up with a name.

24:25Womaness was her daughter. We were literally like weeks away from going to present to our first retailer. That wasn't available.com or was? It was. It was available. Available. Yeah. What a good name. It was. It's a great name. Just$20 on GoDaddy. Like nobody. You didn't ever buy it. Nope. Wasn't taken. Well, we know we did. Remember? It was about$1 ,000. We had to buy the domains. Nothing. But it all cleared out. But it was so hard to get a try. to come up with a name. They're so, trademark is crazy. Trademark's crazy. And people get emotional about names. I'm very funny. Like every time my buddies or young entrepreneur, she or he or anybody get really caught up in it, I always remind them that McDonald's sounds like a corner Irish pub on the Lower East Side.

25:13Like what is Wendy's? What is Nike or Google? I really do believe that names are made. I really do. Yeah. But people get very romantic about the names when they're building a business. They do. Well, now I love our names. Of course. But it took us a long time to get there. Yeah. Well, anyway. But yeah, so obviously I've wanted your whole audience to check us out. Yep. And for anybody who's an investor or who's in retail, this category is only going to get bigger. 100%. Millennials are aging in. They are very comfortable with their bodies. 100%. 100%. And they're going to want to know what to do, what's going on.

25:49The addressable market. is enormous. And I think anyone that's paying even half attention knows that to be true. And I think what you two need to execute on is you want to make sure you're there when it really hits the crescendo and not regret. This is why I'm pushing you so hard on Organic Social. You have to outflank everyone from a demand creation. Every retailer is going to line up and investor is going to line up if everyone wants it. Right now you are in performance land. good news for the first time in the 20 year history of social media if you do brand on social it leads to better performance take things that over index organically and move them and roll them over take some of the money from working media move it over to creative because the creative effectiveness will be so much greater against the media you're spending yes everyone's so scared to take the selling money out.

26:44But when you take the selling money out and you put it into creative and the algorithm confirms the interest from the consumer and bring it back, all of a sudden you can take 10 % of your working media dollars out and get 2x the value and you build brand. Yeah, yeah. The problem is just like Super Bowl, the Super Bowl is the best ad in marketing, but if you make a bad 30 second video, you just waste a lot of money. The problem with what I'm saying is you actually have to know how to do it. But that's on YouTube. It's your business. You have to figure it out. So anyway, please take that. Thank you for being on your line.

27:18Thank you so much. This was great. By the way, all the young dudes, because there's a trillion of you listeners, send this episode to your moms. All right, see ya.