889 Bree McKeen: Founder & CEO of Evelyn & Bobbie

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro.

0:47Kara Goldin:Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical. Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job.

1:39Kara Goldin:Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire.

2:19Kara Goldin:Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Golden Show. What happens when one of the most worn items in a woman's wardrobe has not been meaningfully rethought in nearly a century, and someone finally decides to question the entire thing. Today's guest is Brie McKean, who is the founder and CEO of Evelyn and Bobby, an Intimates brand redefining what women should expect from their bras and undergarments. And Brie is a former Silicon Valley executive who spent years dealing with headaches, shoulder pain, posture issues, and eventually realized that the problem was something millions of women deal with every day, a bra and undergarments that maybe needed to be engineered a little bit better.

3:18Kara Goldin:So she left a promising finance career and set out to reinvent the bra from the inside out. I cannot wait to talk to her about the incredible patented EB Core technology, a wire-free system that Evelyn and Bobby has patented, designed to be the best bra. And I would say not just bra, but also other undergarments, too, that are really, really redefining what it means to be a product in this category. So, Bree, so nice to meet you, and welcome to the Cara Golden Show. I'm so excited to meet you and such a fan of everything that you're doing and Evelyn and Bobby. So welcome. Well, ditto, Kara. I'm so happy to be here.

4:10Kara Goldin:Support for today's episode comes from Square, the platform helping businesses run smarter. Building a business is one thing. Keeping everything running smoothly every day is another. That's what I like about Square. It brings the tools you need to run and grow a business together in one system. Payments, appointments, staff, inventory, sales, customer relationships, and more. And as a customer, you can feel when a business has those systems working. One of my go-to spots here in the Bay Area is Equator Coffee. They use Square and everything just feels seamless. Fast checkout, receipts sent right to your phone, even loyalty rewards.

4:53Kara Goldin:Whether you're starting something new or looking for a better way to run the business you already have, Square gives you the tools to take payments, manage the day-to-day, and keep growing. And right now, you can get up to$200 off Square hardware at square.com slash go slash Kara Golden. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash G-O slash Kara Golden. Run your business your way with Square. Get started today. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Rippling. Anyone who's ever operated a business knows the biggest challenge isn't getting information. It's figuring out what to do with it and doing it fast.

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7:06Kara Goldin:Head to rippling.ai slash Kara Golden and get the only AI built to give you full visibility and take complex actions across your entire organization. That's R-I-P-P-L-I-N-G dot A-I slash Kara Golden. Sign up for exclusive access today. Very, very excited. So for, so Brie, for listeners who were just hearing about Evelyn and Bobby, or maybe they have seen Evelyn and Bobby, heard about Evelyn and Bobby, but they don't really understand what the brand stands for today and what makes it different from other Intimates companies. I'd love to hear from you what that is. Yeah, when I came to this industry as an industry outsider, I was not a bra designer when I started this company.

7:58I saw an industry deeply lodged an outdated convention that did not serve us. So we threw out all the old ways of making bras, started from scratch, and ultimately created after 88 years of the underwire. It was patented in 1931. Our patented EB Core is the first true structural replacement for the underwire in almost a century.

8:26Kara Goldin:Wow, that's amazing. And you had a personal experience, which every great entrepreneur that I've met can tell their story. Can you talk a little bit about what was going on with you personally and why you decided, I need to go do this? Yeah, Kara, I'm a 34G. That is actually incredibly average in the United States. I had a routine of taking my bra off in the car before I put my seatbelt on. every day for me was underwire discomfort the weight of my bust would create pressure points on my ribs I had permanent divots in my shoulders I would get tension headaches almost every day at 3 p.m. and I ended up going on what I thought was going to be a posture journey thinking that my discomfort was something wrong with me and discovered that ultimately there was a massive set of problems in the bra industry that needed to change.

9:29Kara Goldin:You mentioned that you didn't have experience in the bra industry other than the fact that you were a consumer. What was the moment when you just said, maybe I can go do this, that you were qualified, that you knew how to actually start? I studied design thinking at Stanford, spent some time in that space and in the D school, the design school at Stanford. And human centric design, what they call design thinking, is a way of innovating. And as I did diligence on this opportunity, because I was sitting on the other side of the table doing due diligence for a boutique VC firm. When I started doing diligence on this idea, it was really clear to me that the woman's experience, the person who wears the product, was completely missing from the equation.

10:31It was not being considered. It wasn't being tested. And so I saw my outside perspective as an advantage. And I had seen that work in Silicon Valley. I recognized that there was this belief that this is the way bras have been designed. So that's the way to design bras. And it was completely wrong.

10:55Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical.

11:38Kara Goldin:Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week.

12:21Kara Goldin:With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. Hi, Kara here. What I've noticed with Bitcoin is that the conversation feels a lot more grown up now. It's less about whether it's worth looking at and more about how people want to own it over time. And once you start thinking long term, the platform you use becomes a pretty important decision. If Bitcoin is part of your long term strategy, consistency matters.

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13:48Kara Goldin:Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Bitcoin services provided by Block, Inc. brand. For additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app slash legal slash podcast. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Ritual. I've learned that it's usually the small habits we stick with that make the biggest difference over time. For me, taking a probiotic is one of those habits. Since probiotics only stay in the gut for a limited time, taking one consistently can help support the benefits. That's one of the reasons I like Ritual. They're incredibly thoughtful about what goes into their products and they're transparent about why each ingredient is included.

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15:27Kara Goldin:These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, to treat your or prevent any disease. And what was your first, if you can remember, going back to, I guess, 2014 when you were thinking, okay, now it's time to go do this. Did you write a business plan? Did you pick up the phone and start talking to people who might be able to give you insight? Did you talk to professors at Stanford? I mean, what was kind of the first step that you made? I started by talking to other women and that's a practice that we still have today. What I think lit the biggest fire in my belly that this became more about solving a bra problem for myself and ultimately I think about culture change around women's product design was that I would talk to women and say, hey, do you love your underwire bra and do you know what size you are and do you have a drawer full of bras that you just can't wait to put on?

16:25And we all, every woman listening knows the answers. No, she had 20 bras in her drawer. She wore one or two of them, the ugly comfy ones that she felt like she probably shouldn't be wearing. And most critically, Cara, when I talked to women about their bra life, immediately within a few sentences, the conversation went to what was wrong with their body. and I realized that the bra industry had become a marketing industry more than a product design industry and we had all all of us as women internalized this idea that if the product didn't fit or the product didn't work it was probably because there was something wrong with our bodies my shoulders are too broad my shoulders are too narrow I have this big rib cage I have this tiny rib cage my boobs are so big my boobs are so small it was like no our bodies are fine Let's be empirical about how human bodies present.

17:22And then let's change the product to actually work with the realities of our bodies.

17:27Kara Goldin:So EB Core, your patented technology, can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. So we take 120 band and cup sizes, which was developed in 1933, by the way. If you don't know what your bra size is, not your fault. It is the most confusing sizing system and ultimately doesn't work very well. We take 120 conventional sizes and bring it down to seven easy sizes from extra small to 3XL by using advanced performance athletic apparel manufacturing methods. So I share my supply chain with Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, all the big performance athletic apparel brands. And what we did with the EB Core was take a three-dimensional approach.

18:15So really powerful, high-recovery fabrics that we developed. Took 18 months just to develop these proprietary fabrics. And then we put a network of supports inside the garments. You can think of it as like a three-dimensional scaffolding or an exoskeleton. And then specifically replacing the underwire with more of a shelf. So it's a three-dimensional sling, if you will, that shifts the load of your bust off of your delicate neck and shoulder muscles and onto your core. So if you think about old school bras, old school underwear bras as kind of, I think of it like a bag that you hang over your shoulder.

18:59We're creating a shelf that sits on your core to lift from below. Now, this all sounds very engineered because it is, but when you wear it, it just feels like a second skin. And what we hear from customers all the time is that they forget they were wearing it.

19:16Kara Goldin:This episode of The Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive. in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical.

20:01Kara Goldin:Luckily, LinkedIn HiringPro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. HiringPro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to short-listing candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week.

20:43Kara Goldin:With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. Yeah, it is so comfortable. I love your products. And I have to say that I was skeptical because, you know, only having a choice of seven products, you're thinking, how could this possibly work for me? And it does. And I just think that it's so, so interesting what you've done. And especially because, as you mentioned, you hadn't been in this industry, but prior to this, you were working in venture capital?

21:33Yeah, in early stage investing. So, but on the investor side of the table. And so that was really helpful in venture formation, I think for me, but I, of course, still made plenty of mistakes as we all do. But yes, I think it was really a love for innovation that drove me to this. I mean, at the end of the day, I am a product person and it took thousands of prototypes to get to this design. It's interesting because when women try our products for the first time, it feels really new. Once you get it and you experience it, it is easier than it makes your bra life easier than it's ever been before.

22:15But, you know, these products are really snug when you get them. And then over three wears, it basically molds to your body for a custom fit. It's unlike anything else on the market.

22:28Kara Goldin:So you develop the product and launch it. And how did you figure out your go-to-market strategy at this point? Oh, Kara, our first product that we launched tanked, like just failed miserably. I had a talented CTO from MIT. We had algorithmic sizing and it was like so much newness and ultimately way too complex. And so mine is a fail forward story for sure. So we had to do massive layoffs, downsize the company and relaunch a completely different version using the same intellectual property. But that failure taught me everything I needed to know about the simplicity that women ultimately were seeking and that became the destination.

23:19But really, I would say our marketing, we're still getting our marketing up and running because we had to pivot and relaunch the company. Those were hard days, Kara. I lost a lot of hair. dealing with that.

23:39Kara Goldin:And would you say it was, when you look back on those, what do you think was your biggest mistake? Was it product? Was it go-to-market strategy? Was it, what do you think was the key thing? It was product. Yeah. I mean, we did, we launched a wildly innovative bra that now, knowing what I know now, I would have never attempted in less than 48 months. We did it in 12. And the product didn't match the design thesis and the intent. And I knew that and I didn't listen to my gut and we launched it. But you know, I'm grateful for all of it because it really taught me what I was missing from that human-centric design.

24:29and that was simplicity. At the end of the day, good design is simple.

24:32Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical.

25:16Kara Goldin:Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to short-listing candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week.

25:59Kara Goldin:With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. Yeah, no, definitely. And I think we've had so many founders on here who have talked a lot about that, like make it so simple and also make it easy for the consumer to be able to purchase something and not make it so complicated that they're nervous to do it in every single category. So then you regrouped and decided to come out with a different line of products.

26:44Kara Goldin:And how long did it take you to say, we need to stop, right? And we need to regroup. And would you say that it wasn't soon enough? I think oftentimes that's something that founders, you know, they're defending their baby, right? When the numbers don't lie. And we've heard numerous stories where, like in the case of the company I founded Hint, there were, you know, flavors where we were like, no, give it some more time. It'll be fine. But, you know, it was very clear that it was not going to make it. Did you have any kind of sense now that you probably should have pulled it earlier or anything else like that?

27:29I mean, my gut was screaming at me not to launch it, but I was under pressure from timelines and I had made some big promises to my investor. Right. So I pivoted pretty damn quickly, Kara. I had started working on the Defy bra. That was the first of the next generation of products. We had already started working on that. And so it launched, I think, within seven months of the initial pivot. But it was, we had to launch with such, with a lot less in terms of resources. So we definitely put some good money after bad on that first version of the company. But the first product, the Defy bra started selling out immediately.