Bea Dixon (best of)

0:00Gwyneth Paltrow:Thank you for tuning into the Goop Podcast. Today's episode is made possible by Polestar. Those who know me know my car is my mobile sanctuary. It's one of the few places in the day that can feel really calm and restorative. So the space matters. That's why I love Polestar 3. It's an all-electric SUV with a kind of thoughtful innovation that I'm always drawn to. Things like massage seats, immersive 3D surround sound, and Google Gemini, which can answer questions, set reminders, and just make life feel a little more streamlined when I'm on the go. The technology is seamlessly integrated and complements the minimalist design.

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1:22And on the other hand, everything could be addictive if there's an emptiness in that person that needs to be filled.

1:27Gwyneth Paltrow:I now know that nobody changes until they change their energy. And when you change your energy, you change your life. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. This is the Goop Podcast. Bringing together thought leaders, culture changers, creatives, founders and CEOs, scientists, doctors, healers and seekers. Here to start conversations. because simply asking questions and listening has the power to change the way we see the world. Here we go. Welcome to the Goop Podcast. I'm Kelsey from Goop. If you listened to Gwyneth's recent AMA episode, you know she's taking a little holiday break, but we'll be back in the new year with an incredible lineup of guests.

2:10Until then, we'll be revisiting some of your favorite conversations from the archive, along with a few new guest-hosted episodes we're excited to share.

2:18Gwyneth Paltrow:Thanks for listening.

2:22Gwyneth Paltrow:My guest today is Beatrice Dixon, the awe-inspiring co-founder and CEO of The Honeypot. If you're not already familiar with it, The Honeypot is a line of beautiful feminine care products. The seed for The Honeypot began with a very unique vision that Beatrice received from her grandmother. As a founder and Bea's friend, it has been fascinating to watch her move from that source of inspiration into tactical strategy and execution. We didn't plan this timing, but Bea recently just took a big investment for the honeypot and I couldn't be prouder of her. Here's her story told best by Bea herself. Where are we even going to begin?

3:00I have no idea, but I have a feeling you're going to find a good place. Let's start with, it's a story that you've told many times.

3:11Gwyneth Paltrow:Yes. It's such an incredibly unique story, your origin story of the honeypot. And it's such a goopy story. It is goopy. So I wonder if we could start with you taking us back to the days that you were working in Whole Foods, you know, very aware of the mind, body, spirit, connection, integration. You know, you've been, even since you were young, had this deeper, broader knowing about everything really, but how much all of the things impact our health and wellness. So tell me you're in Whole Foods, you're 20. I am, I'm 41 and I was working in Whole Foods from 2010 to 2012. My public math, I was working in whole body.

4:14My public math is not mathing right now, but that's fine.

4:17Gwyneth Paltrow:Yeah. But yeah, around that time, I mean, I was like late twenties, early thirties. Yeah. In your twenties. Yeah. Being in the body section of whole foods. Yep. And how do you start to identify a white space in feminine care? Well, it's funny. So back in those days, I don't know if it's still the same, you know, you constantly, I mean, cause this is when like Whole Foods was like at its prime. It was like, it was like the grocery store, right? Free Amazon acquisition. Free Amazon, Amazon. Yeah, exactly. And I just remember I would meet with these brands all the time or I would meet with the broker.

5:02I would meet with the founder because even if it was a tiny brand and it got into Whole Foods, it was dope. Right. And so, and I remember being like, damn, that's really cool what they do. You know what I mean? And I remember meeting with all these people and I remember being like, I think I want to do something similar. Right. Like I want to go into, I want to create some kind of product. I had no fucking clue of what it was going to be. Right. And then.

5:30Gwyneth Paltrow:But it planted the seed that it was possible. A seed was planted that it was possible because I knew service business wasn't going to be the thing that got me to the kind of wealth that I saw for myself, you know. And so. So then you fast forward, right. I'm in the problem. I guess I'm technically in the last year of the last year and a half of me working at Whole Foods. But I get a bacterial vaginosis infection. And it is gnarly. Like it, every month after my period, I get this terrible, horrendous odor that you cannot even believe. And discomfort. It's discomfort. It's discharge. It's odor. And, you know, being being in your late 20s, you're supposed to be out living your life, having fun and using your body and doing whatever you want to do.

6:32Right. And but I wasn't in a place where I could do that, you know. And so it affected my life on so many levels because I felt like I couldn't get it together. I felt like I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I just felt like I had nowhere to go. And I did that.

6:55Gwyneth Paltrow:It's easy to get into a shame spiral about our vaginas. I was in the shame spiral. I was like in the I was in the depths of that shit, you know, because, you know, I would get in a car and you could smell me. Right. Like like everybody could. It wasn't like, you know, if I went to a public bathroom, you could smell me. And it was just embarrassing. And that went on for like almost a year or maybe like nine or 10 months or something like that. And you tried everything? Everything. I went to the doctor. I lived on Flagyl and Clindamycin. You know, when I would get a yeast infection, then I'd be on Diflucan and Myconazole.

7:37You know, I was using I was doing hydrogen peroxide douches. I was seeing an herbalist who was who was like get telling me herbal douches to make. I was living on Google. And I was you know, this is kind of like I don't know if social media had started, but it wasn't what it is today. Right. And so there were still Google forums that you needed to go on and talk to people. You know, I was living on these Google forums and I was you know, and I was going back and forth with people who had the same thing, who who who. Some of those people had BV for eight, nine years. It wasn't like they were, you know what I mean?

8:16That's how much of a horror this thing can be. And, but one morning, my grandmother, Mufaryfun Egun, she came and she, it wasn't a dream. To call it a dream is just, you know, it's not giving it its full appreciation and respect. But wherever we were, we were in a place and everything. But she had passed. So my my grandmother transitioned when my mother was seven years old. And so, you know, I never met my grandmother in my lifetime because clearly my mom wasn't seven and thinking about having a baby. Right. And so, you know, for me, obviously, this is it was a very remarkable moment. Now, that doesn't mean that's the first time that I ever encountered a relative on the other side, but that was the first time and has been one of the only times, as it relates directly to me, that it was so real, like the way I'm sitting here talking to you, you know?

9:27And so she just came and she told me that she had been walking with me because she's one of my guardians and guides in that she had essentially been seeing me struggle, you know, and she she knew what to do. So she had to just tell me, you know, and so as you can expect, I'm like, holy shit, you're here. What? Like, I want to talk to you. And she's like, girl, no, I'm not here for that. And I can't be here long. Right. So like we got to do what I came here to do. And she essentially gave me a piece of paper and it had a list of ingredients. And she told me that this was going to solve my problem.

10:11But I needed to remember what was on the paper. And so I just went to repeating apple cider vinegar, apple cider vinegar, rose, lavender, garlic, coconut oil. Like I remember it like water, apple cider vinegar. Like I just kept repeating it. It felt like I repeated it a hundred times. And then finally she told me to wake up and I woke up. And as I woke up, I woke up saying water, coconut oil, apple cider vinegar. Like I can remember it, you know, it was crazy. and then you know and then I you know I just I just got to it I figured what the what the hell

10:48Gwyneth Paltrow:all that can happen is that it doesn't work right like everything else exactly so you know so I went I went to work and I you know my mom was living with me at the time and you know and I went and I told her about what what my experience was and my all of my family especially the women from my mother's side. We all have similar faces and the shape. And I literally look just like my grandmother, just like I look just like my mommy, you know. And I explained and that's when she told me that that was definitely your grandmother, you know. And so I went to work. I compiled all the ingredients. I got everything.

11:30And I went home and I made myself a formula. Had no idea what the hell I was going to put it in, had no idea what to even do with it, but I just made myself something, you know? And the funny thing is what I made is essentially what our normal wash is today. But I made this for myself and I started using it right away. And literally within four to five days, because I had BV at the time, it was gone. And immediately when I used it, like within the first or second time, the odor was just, it's like the shit just vanished. Like it didn't even, like it wasn't even there so much that it didn't even, I wasn't even remembering that I had BV because I didn't even think about it for a couple of days, which was miraculous because every time I went to the bathroom or went pee or went, did anything, my reaction was always this visceral reaction with myself, you know, and, and so it was, it was crazy.

12:34And so when I did realize that it had worked, you know, my, my, my thing was,

12:39Gwyneth Paltrow:this is what I do now, you know, isn't it crazy when your body hijacks you in a certain way like that. And then it, when it returns to normal, it's, it's always amazing to me how quickly we forget. Yeah. It's like, it's like, it's like you're in like the worst city traffic in the middle of Manhattan. And then you just transition over to like the garden of Eden and there's like birds and sunnestine it. And there's, you know, but, but yeah, I mean, something interesting about us, I think as human beings that we, like, I think we want our baseline to be high. We want to feel good. We want to feel well and healed and abundant.

13:25Gwyneth Paltrow:So you take this formula and I want to know a little bit about like the tactical piece. Like, so we knew you were, you had this entrepreneurial spirit and then you had this incredible inspiration from your grandmother. How did you, cause I'm always fascinated by how people take inspiration and turn it into tactics and execution. So what was your, tell me a little bit about that part of the journey. What was next was, I was like, cause I'm a person who definitely believes in testing and learning. And I was just naturally born with that. Essentially what I thought was, well, I have to get other people to try this, right?

14:09Cause I need to see if it works for more than just me. It could just be me that it worked for. Right. And so what I would do then, because I worked in whole body and because I was so close to my team and they knew what I was going through with my own vagina. And so anytime somebody had a vagina problem, which was actually quite often, you'd be surprised. I wouldn't. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it. You probably wouldn't. But I but I was surprised. Anytime somebody had a vagina problem, my team sent them to me. and I would walk the john lady aisle five and so I would literally walk them through the department I'd get them their probiotics I'd get them their like you know their suppositories I tell them like the car I'd get them all the things that they needed and then I would walk them to the register and I'd say okay I'm gonna I'm gonna check out with you I'm gonna help you bag and then I'm help you take your stuff to your car.

15:11Right. Because I, you know, it was already on some wild shit that I was about to try to sell them on my product when I'm working at Whole Foods. But I was like, but let me get out of the building. And then I want to tell you about this thing that I do. And so I would walk them to the car and I'd say, hey, I have a product that worked for me. You know, you're going through the same thing I went through. Let me just give it to you. I don't even want you to pay me for it. The only thing I need from you is for you to tell me, is it too strong? Is it too weak? How does it feel? Is it soft? Do you feel better?

15:42Is it helping to quell your symptoms? You know what I mean? And the funny thing is most of the people that I told was like, yeah, why not? Shit. And so literally I did that for about a year and a half. And then somebody, because me and Simon had kind of been rocking together, I pulled Cy in right away because I was broke. I didn't have any money. I had money to pay my rent and to pay my bills and to try to figure out what I was going to eat. And so I went to Cy and I was like, bro, I need help because I had, especially in the beginning, I probably had 10 or 20 women on rotation. I say women because all of those humans consider themselves women.

16:29But I had 10 or 20 women on rotation in the beginning of that. And I didn't have the money to be buying this stuff. And so he gave me a$500 credit card. It was like a capital one, had a$500 credit card limit. And he would just pay off for me every month, you know, which was so kind. And so then, you know, year and a half later, we've probably given the product away to at least a hundred women. and again all those humans consider themselves women that's why i say that and and somebody came and one of size friends was like y 'all should go to the bronner brothers hair show and i i didn't know anything about the bronner's brothers hair show and so we're like okay we figure it out we go side goes to one of his friends troy pulls together some money let me back up though i got on my hands and knees and begged Simon.

17:27I mean, begged him literally on my hands and knees. Cause he was like, B, I don't know anything about vaginas more than I know about vaginas. You know what I'm saying? Like, like I, what am I going to do with the vagina business? He was running his own accounting firm. He was, he was in the, he was in music management. Like he wasn't thinking about what I was doing. He was just trying to keep me focused on something that was making me happy, you know? So I get on my hands and knees. I say, bro, please, please, please. If this works, if this can work out, I will never bother you again. Right. He's like, cool.

18:08So he goes to Troy. Troy puts up$20 ,000. We take that. We buy. By this time I had been doing research on like wholesale ingredient companies. This shit cost a fortune, but I didn't know any different, you know, and it's the way to start, right? You're just living on Google trying to figure things out. And I went and I bought up bottles, you know, I went to Uline, I got bottles and caps. I got, I got, you know, I got found somebody that was a friend of a friend who made some labels, you know, we were just thugging it. And we, you know, we ended up going to the Bronner Brothers hair show and we made an assembly line and I made the products and then somebody was there to bottle it and cap it and somebody was there to shrink wrap and use a hairdryer.

18:56It was crazy, but it was dope. And we did it. We did it. We made 600 bottles, G. We made 600 bottles, man. And we fucking went to the Bronner Brothers hair show. It started on Thursday. By Sunday, we had sold out completely. Wow. It was crazy. You know, we bought our little banner. We got our table and all our ingredients. It was cute, you know?

19:24Gwyneth Paltrow:Amazing. And that's when we knew that we had something. Because if you can sell 600 of anything in a weekend. Absolutely. You got something. And then that became that actually became our tactic. You know, what we did is we would actually go to hair shows and festivals and farmers markets and any place where we could go and get get in front of hundreds of people or even thousands of people. You know, you'd be at one hair show and then they they're marketing the next one. It was just a really interesting time. And that was how we reached the people. That was how we really reached our community. and then we and then I was able to get it into Whole Foods and then by this time I had left Whole Foods and I had became a broker and you know and and the cool thing was being a broker all I did every day was go to stores so I would I would do the same thing I did with Whole Foods I would go into the store I'd sell them the things I was there to sell them I'd walk out walk back into my car grab the honeypot stuff I'd go in and just be like hey look because these were like co-ops and like natural groceries.

20:33They weren't like Whole Foods. They weren't like a Whole Foods or a Kroger or anything like that. Right. They were normally like independent markets. And I would literally just go in and be like, yo, I have six bottles. I'm going to give them to you for free. If they don't sell, then I will never talk to you again. But if they do, then I'll see you in a month when I come back to do my run with all the other products I sell, you know? And so that was how, that was how we got it off the ground. Yeah.

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22:13Gwyneth Paltrow:What I love so much about, I mean, there's so much about the story that I love, but so many women founders always say like, how do you even start? Like what, what is the way? And And obviously there's no clear path or no clear rubric to follow, but like your story is so applicable, right? It's like to any woman who is feeling like I have this idea or I have something that will solve a problem and the kind of like ingenuity that you had and inspiration. And I think it can really kind of make a template out of that story. Like, okay, this is how I do it. Yeah. Yeah. And it was it was a different time, you know, I mean, it was like it was it was just a different time.

23:03It was right when like direct to consumer was getting really big. You know, everybody was raising shit tons of money. You know, it was just a different time. So you were able to get out in the world and just meet people and hustle and grind and be on your guerrilla marketing shit, you know, but it worked for us, you know, and I think the biggest thing that it did is it gave us the ability to meet our customer one-on-one. It was very like grassroots, you know, and I think with a product like this, that is necessary, you know?

23:45Gwyneth Paltrow:Yeah, because it's, I mean, it's quite intimate. I mean, it's as intimate as possible. And I think, you know, as we touched on before, there is so much shame women carry around their vaginas if something's wrong with it or, you know, anything chronic and no one can help you. And, you know, you suffer. You suffer physically and emotionally in this shame. And I also think, you know, it's really hard as a woman when you can't use your vagina. It is. It disconnects you from such an essential part of our femininity and our power, right? It is. Yeah, it is. And you suffer in silence. Yeah. and shame because you think that you're the only person going through this shit when the wild shit is mostly everybody's going to get some sort of a yeast infection or bv or uti or something right something but you but you know even stds at some point somebody's going to get something it's natural all this shit is normal right bv has been around since vaginas have been around right let's call the shit what it is maybe they didn't call it that then right but there is nothing under the sun that any human should be embarrassed about when it comes to their body if your body is talking to you and telling you that something's wrong the the and and look i'm not saying this to say that i don't experience shame right or that i don't experience you know embarrassment or to this day, like, of course, if some shit happens, I'm going to feel something because I live in this world and I'm human and I've been conditioned.

25:32Right. But what we have to do and what the thing that the thing that honeypot really focuses on is helping people to die to that shame, helping people to die to that stigma and helping people to understand that like all these things are normal. All you got to do is figure out what's going on, get yourself together so that you can get back to homeostasis, you know? And so, yeah.

25:58Gwyneth Paltrow:So then you go from that to, you know, now you have a huge wholesale business. You're everywhere. Target, Walmart, Walgreens, you know, you're a few years later. Yeah. Few years later. And I do want to touch on this exciting thing that's just happened because I feel like you achieved such a massive personal goal and milestone. And you've been wanting to do for quite a while, right? You sold? No, you didn't sell. Sorry. You took a big investment. Yes. Yes. From Compass? Yes. From Compass Diversified. Yes. Tell me about this process. Tell me about why you wanted to sell. Why was that a goal for you?