How to Build an Iconic Brand: Mindset Shifts & Strategy Lessons from Olamide Olowe

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1:02Hi friends, Grace from the Working Hard podcast here. When you're stretching every dollar, a little goes a long way and Walmart Business is here to help. They make it easy to order what you need from tech and cleaning supplies to everyday essentials, all at low prices and with helpful tools like spend tracking and tax exempt purchasing for eligible organizations. Because when your operations are smooth, your impact can be bigger. Visit business.warmart.com to get started.

1:35What is up? I'm Grace Beverley and welcome back to Working Hard, the podcast shaped guidebook on how to improve your own life and achieve what you actually dreamed of doing. Because life's too short for boring podcasts and bad advice.

1:48What is up and welcome back to Working Hard. Today's guest is someone whose story is incredible and I really feel like it's shaping the future of the beauty industry and I feel like you'll really get it when you hear the episode. Alamide Aloe is a Forbes 30 under 30 entrepreneur, investor and the founder and CEO of Topicals, the skincare brand that's become the fastest growing at Sephora. She made history as the youngest black woman ever to raise$10 million in venture capital and before the age of 26 had raised$15 million in total. She first started her entrepreneurial journey back in 2015 when she co-founded Shea Girl in partnership with Shea Moisture, a brand that was acquired just two years later.

2:23In 2020, she launched Topicals, a skincare brand to target chronic skin conditions. On top of that, she's donated over$200 ,000 to mental health organizations and has been recognized by Harvard Business School, Google, UCLA and of course Forbes. This is an episode for anyone who wants to build incredible businesses and get really clear on what they're doing and why. I really wanted to dive into how Alamaday built topicals from scratch, what it was like raising millions as a young black female founder, her bold move to acquire cult haircare brand Bread and her best advice for anyone dreaming of following in their footsteps and building their own businesses.

2:54And before we get into it, do not forget to follow the podcast wherever you're listening to it on. Every Monday we drop new episodes to help you improve your life, whether that is in mindset, whether that is in health or whether that is in work. And if you're not already, you can also join us on Instagram at Working Hard Pod. Over there, we share lots of extra clips, lots of discussion about the episodes and different topics that are related. It's kind of like a community space for everyone here and is designed to be a little bit of an antidote to the kind of doom scrolling and actually help you become educated and improve your life.

3:25Alamadeh Aloi, are you currently more working hard or hardly working? I thought I was going to be hardly working, but I am definitely working hard. Damn, what happened? What is wrong? Summer has been very interesting. I think I thought I was going to spend the summer relaxing, but I acquired a hair care company. That's such a good sentence. I thought I was going to spend the summer relaxing, but then I acquired a company. I acquired a company. And so because of that, I am definitely working hard. And was the plan to like fully relax the summer? Had that been like an intentional plan? Yes, it's five years of topicals.

4:00So I thought by this time I could kick my feet up a bit and relax. And I'm grateful to have a really good team because I was able to do that at moments. But this year has been interesting, to say the least. You're a woman after my own heart. It's like the could have relaxed, unfortunately acquired a company. And now in this situation of my own doing, but still slay. Literally, I told myself, I was like, you need to relax. You need to do less. And then I was like, no, pick up a company. Why not? Yeah, perfect. I'm very interested in going into that because I remember seeing the announcement on Instagram and being like, now that is a move.

4:32I'm so excited to go into that. But first of all, for anyone who hasn't followed your journey, how would you describe what you do? I'm a cultural brand builder. I love culture and I love brand building. I make products for skin conditions currently through topicals and now hair care through bread. Amazing. And you started back at university. so you co-founded Shea Girl with Shea Moisture. How did that even happen while you were at university? I was an athlete so I ran track on scholarship at UCLA and when I was there I met Rochelle Dennis who was a gymnast. Her mom actually saw me coming down like the hallway and was like you look like an athlete.

5:15My daughter just moved into school and would you like to be friends with her? And we became friends. Yeah and I found out later that her dad was the owner of Shea Moisture which is one of the largest hair care companies. And when we were rooming together during our second year of uni, she mentioned that she wanted to start a brand like her dad's, but for young women. I knew nothing about hair care. I knew nothing about selling products in a store. But at the time I was studying pre-med. So I wanted to be a dermatologist. So I thought this might make sense for me to test out what it's like to work in the field of beauty.

5:45And I haven't looked back since. That's amazing. And what was the journey like actually starting that? Because it's one thing thinking, oh, yeah, I want to do this for young women and actually going about like you know setting that up and knowing how you're talking to customers and knowing what your products are yeah must have been a bit of a journey I knew nothing absolutely nothing um and but I loved it it was like a I would say an MBA a real life one in how do you get a customer to be obsessed with what you're building your products and I learned everything about community building how to give back to people while doing good the founder and CEO of Shamewist used to always say um community commerce this idea of community commerce right doing well by doing good how do you sell more product and in selling more product donate some of that money to the communities that you serve and so I learned just everything from that experience at Shea Moisture and took that into what is now Topicals.

6:35Yeah so what specifically would you say like if you had to pinpoint a few things that you learned and brought forward from I guess your first company to launching Topicals what would they be? I always say good products is table stakes, great storytelling is essential. I learned so much about storytelling through my time at Shea Moisture. And I'm a big film lover. And so I wanted to bring film into beauty, but in a way that felt cultured. So I'm also very obsessed with streetwear. Supreme, Stussy, I grew up wearing those brands. And I really wanted to bring that edge, that subculture to beauty.

7:11And so took those things, mixed them all together. And that's what became Topicals, this brand that I believe sits at the center of culture and thinks about skincare as an extension of your personal sense of style versus as something that makes you an outsider in beauty. Right. I think, well, first of all, you can really tell that from the way you've done branding and the way you do your campaigns and everything. It's very clear that it's not like this, just like this dry skincare must have almost like pharmaceutical side of things. It's like, no, this is, you know, yes, it's what you're wearing on your skin, but it's clearly the way you're expressing yourself as well, which is very clear.

7:45I don't know. It's very clearly like a community-driven brand in terms of like how your customer is understood even in things like the campaigns which I really love yeah again taking it back to film one of our most recent campaigns called faded by any means was the relaunch of our best-selling product faded serum oh faded I was literally gonna find a way to bring it up in this podcast that is so good because I have bad acne scarring and that I think you sent it to me actually and I still use that every day and it's so good and it's only i react quite strongly to azelaic acid like i i don't know it just makes my skin very sensitive whereas when i use faded it doesn't at all like it's so good it's the only thing i don't like properly react to when my skin is sensitive so the big thing about our product philosophy is designing products that are both effective particularly in darker skin tones but when you make something that works great for darker skin tones you actually make something that works better and faster for every skin tone and the second piece of that is skin barrier support So if you are attacking what is happening in your skin, but you're not replacing or supporting your barrier, you're just creating this loop where, okay, maybe you get rid of the dark spot, but your skin is so dry or irritated that a new pimple or a new spot forms and you continue that cycle.

8:53And so we wanted to break that cycle by having a balance of both. Yeah, that's so good. And I can I can fully tell because it's the difference between like I'm I don't have a great trait in the way of like I like when things feel like painful, I feel like they're better. I'm like, oh, amazing. It's taking off my whole skin surface. And it was just like wreaking havoc on my skin using this stronger stuff when like it clearly wasn't made for it. And like when you have sensitive skin and also acne prone skin, it's like, what the fuck am I meant to do? Because you're like, I want to like rinse this off my face.

9:26But at the same time, like you have to be using sensitive things. So, yeah, I mean, it's just such a good product. I really, really love it. Thank you. Thank you. But people hated the smell. That was the biggest thing. And it's funny because when we launched the brand, I was so mortified because the product wasn't supposed to smell. We had gone through so many versions of it where we didn't add fragrance because we didn't want to irritate skin. But somehow, someway, when we scaled the batch up, it smelled awful. It smelled awful. But that became a selling point. And like you said, this idea of if it hurts, it works.

9:55People were like, if it smells, it works. But after about five years on market, we finally were able to figure out a pharmaceutical manufacturing process that removed the scent. And so we relaunched it in March with this campaign, Faded by Any Means. And it was inspired by Paid in Full and Belly and movies that were really about hustle and that culture. but we flipped it and turned faded into a product that moves itself basically was such a best-selling product that people would do anything for it and so I love bringing storytelling and film into the work that I do because I just believe that life should be magical life should be fun and having a skin condition shouldn't feel like the end of the world yeah no I love that I love that and you could definitely tell that in all your campaigns Shea Girl was then acquired by Unilever is that right so shame moisture and its parents company sundell brands was acquired by unilever and shager was a part of that family and so it was super insane to say the least yeah to experience an acquisition at what was i started the brand when i was 19 and by like 21 to have seen that happen um was just it was wild and it was so interesting to me because i'd always been someone who's ambitious.

11:09I always say I'm type A ambitious, but I'm type B everything else. But to see this up close and personal made me feel like my interests, if I could mix them together in a way, I could probably create something that could grow that fast, that could be that valuable. I don't know if I've always known that I had a knack for business because I didn't necessarily consider myself creative. I think creatively now looks like so many different things, right? It can be drawing, painting, being a business person. But over the three, four years that I have been working on topicals, I've definitely learned that I do have that creative business mind.

11:45And I say this thing all the time, which is that money is attracted to me. I don't have to chase it. I don't have to go anywhere to find it. I just have to lean into my strengths and it appears, it magically appears. So yeah, I've really enjoyed the last couple of years really understanding how business and creativity can be a force for good both social impact through the work that we've done with the mental health organizations we've worked with and then also in culture in 2020 you started topicals what was the kind of spark for that because obviously you'd done what you'd done before with shagirl but it was i mean obviously that was intentional but at the same time there were serendipitous moments around like you you starting that and you finding the people to start that with and all of that.

12:30So what encouraged you to kind of go into something that was relatively similar, but not necessarily directly what you thought you were going to be doing at the beginning? So by the time I graduated uni, I thought to myself, I'm absolutely not going to medical school. Like you cannot catch me studying for another four years and another four years to do my residency. And so I realized that I really did like building beauty brands. and at the time my skin was breaking out really really bad I grew up with hormonal acne I grew up with ingrown hairs like all of the things all the skin conditions that you can think of I at one time had a combination of all of them and so I was breaking out and I had a bunch of dark spots and it was such an interesting time because hyperpigmentation as a category wasn't interesting to people it was really like skin bleaching or it was no one was even calling it hyperpigmentation or dark spots.

13:22And everyone was focusing on acne. And so I noticed that there was an opportunity to create a hero product in that category because it wasn't crowded. And that's where the idea for Topicals came and spent about two years fundraising, creating the product, doing all the things to make sure that when we launched, we were going to be successful. But the insight really was around hyperpigmentation and the fact that about 50 % of dermatologists say their medical school training did prepare them to treat skin of color and the fact that 95 % of clinical trials don't feature anyone who has skin of color.

13:54That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. That's madness. It was. There's so much data. How do they consider themselves like representative? I have no idea. Not even from a moral point of view, from like an efficacy point of view. It's like mind blowing. And if you take aesthetics, like estheticians, it's even worse. It's not, it hasn't until more recently been taught in aesthetic schools. So you go down the chain of people who are supposed to be skincare experts and the majority of them are misdiagnosing people or don't even know how to diagnose skin my sister's a great example she's had perioral dermatitis and she was a kid and we knew we did not know what it was until i started topicals because people were like maybe she has ringworm maybe she has this that that and the other she actually missed prom her senior year because she had um like a flare-up but didn't know what to do to help fix it yeah and it's the same as like when in i remember there was a like as there should have been there was a big campaign around the fact that like all rashes for example are going to look very very different on different skin tones so for example I remember when I was looking up so my husband he got sepsis when we first met and he had a rash and like none of the photos were coming up as like a rash on non-white skin yeah and I was trying to work out if it was like a sepsis rash and I was literally like this is fucking ridiculous like I cannot work out if that is the right thing and at the same time it's like that's like something like acne is going to look completely different something like scarring is going to look completely different and what you've seen on that obviously is not just a moral problem but also like an opportunity because like there are all of these people who walk into sephora or wherever and they're like well that little image on the sales thing like that doesn't i can't see myself in that so i don't even know like if that is something I am dealing with and I think you've done such an incredible job of not just providing for that market but also being able to really be like no we're gonna double down on this despite the fact that the industry is not serving this which also by the way obviously means that investors aren't interested in it and all of these different things because they're not seeing it as current quote-unquote success yeah because it doesn't exist yet and I feel like you've done that so well and so many people so many investors literally asked me how did you figure this out like if this is such a big opportunity how would you this person someone would have done it i was 21 so they were just like how the hell would you have known this versus you know the big companies that manufacture products um and i always say they're not me so they would never have figured it out because you need that cultural insight to be able to unlock that and i think that's what's so exciting about business right now is there's so many opportunities and if you can see the glitch in the matrix you can actually take advantage of these opportunities yeah and that's exactly what like diversity of thought and diversity of background and everything like actually gets you exactly it's like okay so you're sitting here being like but surely a big company would have thought of it and it's like well no not if they didn't have the right people in those rooms because no one was saying oh wait a second actually none of this product range would work for me or whatever it might be so it's like that's one of the biggest issues and we'll come on to talking more about investment but that's one of the biggest issues with such big funding gaps and such big like disproportionate funding going to like only companies started by white men yeah is like well you're not going to see the gaps because the whole market is providing for you so i know you're looking at that and you're being like well that's what's been successful in our portfolio so far so that's what we're investing in it's like okay what about all these potential companies that could have been made like the products for women the tech for women the tech for black women like whatever it might be where it's like i had an investor tell me once that oh i'm gonna take your product and I'm going to have my daughter use it and I was like babe so yeah like I said actually I said thanks for having me I'll see myself out no this is not gonna work the amount of times I've heard I'll ask my wife yeah yeah it's like but is your wife is she every woman literally like as I'm not actually sure if she's our target customer but like which doesn't mean there isn't a market for it yeah no 100 % and you got people and I guess your community now invested in Topicals what seems like so quickly, and I'm sure it was a huge amount of hard work, but what were the main levers you pulled, I guess, in terms of actually getting people invested in the company and getting people wanting to be part of that Topicals community?

18:11I think it's doing things that don't scale. I know that's such a cliche saying, but in the beginning, you really do need to earn everyone's trust. So there's a couple ways you can do that. One is through community building. So that's surprise and delight for your customers. So what are you doing that feels different and exciting and makes someone feel like it's an inclusive, exclusive opportunity, right? Like I'm someone that typically wouldn't have been invited into the in-group, but I'm now invited into the in-group because I am associated with this brand. I think another thing is aligning yourself with people who are credible.

18:43When we launched back in 2020, we were working with estheticians. This is when skincare Twitter was like a big thing. We were working with estheticians on skincare Twitter to do threads about what these different skin conditions looked like on skin of color. How do you treat them? I remember when the riots were going on, when people were being sprayed by pepper spray or the different types of tear gas, people were having irritation on their face. We did a thread that is probably our most viewed thread of the skincare that you use when you've been pepper sprayed. Really? Yeah. And those kinds of things, again, where you're not just talking about if you get a pimple, use this on your skin, but you're talking about the situations that people are experiencing.

19:23And at that time, if you remember, it was so tense. And so you don't want to be talking about moisturiser when people are talking about like human rights. And so I think we just found a way to intertwine our products with the experiences that people were having. Yeah. And that's very, first of all, you need to understand your customer well to be able to do that. Because when companies don't, that's exactly when they put their foot in it. Yeah. When they fuck up and they thought they were being like really hot take and actually they're really problematic. But at the same time, like it's very, it's very on your toes.

19:54It's very like truly knowing your brand and your community enough to be able to react is such a big thing. because if you didn't know your community enough, as I said, it wouldn't have struck the right chord and actually being able to know that that's like both what people are interested in and it's got a cross-section with the fact that like that's what your company does and it's an expertise you're able to give and really tapping into the culture. It's like something as powerful as that and like but also as small as that can really put you into the like cultural zeitgeist and being like this is this is where we are.

20:24Exactly that. I tell the team all the time you don't have to be everything to everyone, but you have to be everything to one. So you need to understand the archetype of that customer. What does she eat? Where does she go out? What music is she listening to? What are her political beliefs? Is she someone who is a gatekeeper? Is she someone who will tell people about what she's wearing, using? I think it's just so important to understand people because from there you can build your products into their life path versus having them come into your path. And And I think the path of least resistance as a marketer is exactly where you want to be because there's so many things that people can be buying.

20:59So if they're finding your product on the path of their life, I think there's so many brands right now that we can name that are so good at this where I feel like the customer feels like this brand was in my brain almost in a sense or like they understand me. They're like a friend to me. And I think because gone are the days of the larger like conglomerate type brands, just because you have distribution doesn't mean you're going to be successful. people actually have to have an emotional tie to you as a brand. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I have a stat here that you became the youngest Black woman to raise$2 million in venture capital.

21:30And before 26, you'd raised$15 million. First of all, how does it feel to have made history like that? Because I think, obviously, first of all, it's fucking incredible. And like what you've done has been so amazing. At the same time, there's so much that needs to change to make these stats like not the case and obviously that's what you're doing like you're you're stepping forward and like actually putting yourself out there and really doing these things but how did that feel do you know what's so funny um i say the same thing every single day that i wake up which is that i sell lotion on the internet like it's as big as that and i think you have to level set with yourself to say yes there are these really amazing things that are happening these barriers that are being broken but you can't lose sight sight of the prize.

22:18You know, they always say like, don't get lost in the sauce. And fundraising is the sauce and you can get lost in it very quickly. So level setting is super important to me because I think the highs are really high and the lows are really low. And so making sure that you're quite balanced, but also being appreciative and having gratitude for those moments. But yeah, I sell lotion on the internet. That's what I get up and do every day. But on the other side, I feel like I have a huge responsibility. And I think it's unspoken, but because I'm the youngest Black woman to do this, I'm held to a standard that a lot of people aren't.

22:51I think I have had to do more with less than my peers in the beauty industry. But I'm expected to do so much for my community, right? Whether it's who we work with, how we work with talent, all the different things. And so the team tries our best to juggle and balance these things. And I think it's super interesting as a brand that works with a lot of creators that typically don't work with other brands. So a lot of black creators, creators of color, you know, it sucks sometimes to not have the budget to work with everyone. I think that's been one of the things that we've tried so hard to do is to give as many people as we can an opportunity.

23:27And I'm so glad with who the people we've worked with. And I wish we could work with more. But there's this balance that I think is quite a tough one because people know that other brands will say, oh, well, this person doesn't actually fit what we want to work with. And we try to work with them. But you can only work with so many people. Right, of course. And because you're the first person who's been able to do that, it's like the – I can imagine how much responsibility it feels like falls on your shoulders, despite the fact that the reason that responsibility is there is because you're breaking barriers and have so much to concentrate on in order to make that a success like you're also not to put more on you but like the responsibility of knowing that you need to return that investment and like like tenfold or whatever it might be so that people know that the next version of you that comes along they can invest in and like the responsibility of you doing that you also i can imagine there's so much when it comes to like making sure you're as you say not just giving back to the community but doing everything right in the way that other brands are not expected to do it because we kind of just expect them to be a bit shit yeah and like that's a lot of responsibility it is I tell my board all the time that you know I know I have a fiduciary duty to return their capital 10x or whatever but that is the least of my worries yeah sure you're like you get your money back and then some like don't even worry about that but what I worry more about is do black girls get to dream if I fail if I'm the one that people took the chance on and I don't return the capital I don't knock this out of the park how many or how few black women will get to follow in my footsteps yeah and so for a large part of my life I was an athlete pressure I eat that for breakfast like I do really well under pressure so for a long time it didn't bother me but I think over the last couple of years as the stakes get higher and higher it's definitely something that creeps into your brain it's definitely something you think about a hundred percent and i can't i mean i imagine that is so it's heavy we also have seen like and this is absolutely not related in any way to you or me or anything but like the thing i think of again and again is like when we talk about like women raising funding the thing that comes up again and again is elizabeth holmes and it's like it's that that then like weighs on you so much because it's like not that i'm doing anything wrong but it's like the amount that's brought up and it's like if you also think about the fact that like women founded companies outperform by two to one like when it comes to you know returning their investors um investment it's like but the one thing we're focusing on is the ones that didn't work like the one thing we're focusing on is that and all of the like girl boss era founders that didn't end up returning the capital and like all of this and it's like it's just so much weight to carry because it's always remembered when it's Mind you, men lose more money than everyone.

26:15This is what I mean. It's like we outperform times too. And literally people are like, oh, but this one woman broke the law. And it's like, okay, should we talk about the amount of people who've broken the law when it comes to raising funding who are men? Because like you just don't remember them because statistically women aren't raising capital. Aren't raising capital at that rate. Yeah. It's quite wild. But to whom much is given, much is expected. And I just, I'm a winner. Like I just I believe in being a winner, having a winner's mindset. I never lose. I just that's the way I live my life is I never lose.

26:49And even though a situation may look like I've lost or I didn't get the upper hand. I actually did. Yeah, I did. No, I love that. I love both pressure of the privilege and also the like when you have the right mindset, as you say like this idea of like it might have looked to you like say you started a new venture and it doesn't work out or you started a new product line and it doesn't work out like that's business like that's literally how you do things that's the way you move forward at the same time I had three that did work and like whatever it might be it's like that is the only thing that's going to stop you doing that is if you don't do anything at all and like that's the way you move forward and I feel like it's such a good mindset to have and you can have either that side mindset or the like terrified other side mindset of like, well, something's going to go wrong.

27:36And it's like, yeah. So you need to make sure that you're trying like a thousand things rather than 10 things. Yeah. Yeah. I say this thing. I was, I feel like I was, I got a revelation. This was probably a little bit earlier in the summer because the summer has been a bit tough for me, just business. I think every business is struggling right now, but I'm seeing friends have to close their business this summer, which has been tough. And I think even brands that you're seeing do well. we're on the brink. Everybody's on the brink right now. And if you love your favorite brands, you should be buying their products if you have, you know, disposable income to do so because your favorite brand could be here today and gone tomorrow.

28:13That's how much if you make one or two mistakes. Or even not even mistakes, things like tariffs. Yeah. You can completely flip your business upside down. People are closing them overnight. Yeah. I had this revelation. I was reading the Bible and I had this revelation that Peter didn't drown because he couldn't walk on water. Peter drowned because he took his eyes off of Jesus and started to drown. And the revelation there is this idea that when you allow fear into your head, that's actually when you start to fail. It's not the fear itself. Everyone is doing things scared. Everyone is doing things that doesn't make sense that you've never done before.

28:47But it's this idea of when you take your eyes off of the vision of where you're going, that's when you start to sink. And so for me, I had to tell my team especially this summer as we're going through a couple of different changes is that you can't let fear get in because what fear does is it doesn't allow you to actually think critically it strips you of your creativity so you really really really have to stay locked in around your vision and not what the circumstances look like around you yeah and you've got really got to avoid being put in that like survival mode because as exactly as you say like when you're in survival mode it's very hard to be creative it's very hard to push boundaries it's very hard to just be like fuck it let's try it and the fuck it let's try it moments are exactly what what you need to like I don't know your next best project or your next best product or whatever it might be because it's like you just throw a few things at the wall and it's like that's what makes it so hard when it is a tough business climate which as you've said it really is at the moment and like a lot of businesses are struggling it just makes it so like yeah you you don't necessarily feel like you're in the headspace to be like oh let's do this let's do this let's do this whereas that's exactly what you need to do.

29:53But it's like two very converse ways of thinking at once.

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31:51Quo. No missed calls, no missed customers. And how did you find the fundraising process itself? Because I can imagine as well, when you're basically breaking down barriers and doing things that other people haven't done before, you're going to get a lot of doors slammed in your face it was awful it was absolutely awful it's like begging it's begging for like eight weeks and then at the same time they're like calling you at 1am being like oh can i have this whole model for three years there's actually no i don't need that number i need this one instead and then they're like oh it's kind of like dating but you're begging them to like be and you're like please give me money but you really you're lucky and like all it's a crazy process isn't it yeah a hundred no's I went through a hundred no's a hundred reworks of the deck at one point it was like the name of the deck was just like screw this deck someone give me two million dollars like that's how many times I'd revise the deck but I think the big things to learn there is a to find the people who invest at your stage in what you're doing so many people waste time and like pitching to people who they're never going to to invest.

33:02Yeah. They're never going to invest in a beauty brand because that's not what they do where you're investing or you're trying to get investment from someone who they only invest in businesses that have done 10 million in sales. You are not there. So cut that out first. I think the other thing is being receptive to people's feedback. Most people will maybe not understand what you're doing, but there is some sort of information or something that you can get out of that conversation that can help make your pitch stronger and make it better. And then I would say, yeah it's a numbers game like it's it's it is a lot of luck um and i would say obviously people who have the right kind of networks the luck is is a bit higher sure but it really is about knocking those doors and eventually you'll get there i always say i'm so glad that the right people said yes and the wrong people say no because it's like dating you know like you get so hung up on this person and oh but they were the wrong person babe like just yeah keep going yeah no you're so right i think such a good piece of advice out of that is like understand what that fund does as early on as possible like first question you ask what check sizes do you do yeah and like what's like I don't know some companies for example they will only some funds sorry will only invest if they get more than five percent of the exactly more than ten percent of the company or whatever it might be there was so many that like first time I was doing a funding round it's like I could have eliminated three conversations that I wasted so much time on but we were just beating around the bush and being polite and very British and it's like well we've just wasted everyone's time like I'm not there in sales or I'm not going to do this in terms of percentage or I'm not going to do two times prefs or like whatever it might be and it's like okay perfect well now I've wasted three hours of my time two times prep that oh yeah that is that is a word and I guess for for those who don't know what two times prep is people will say they want like double basically whatever they put in at minimum before anybody else yeah yeah exactly so a lot of people don't know too that a lot of founders walk away with nothing most times I am not that founder.

34:55One thing about me, I am going to make sure that I have gotten myself all the things I need to. So even the way I stacked my board, the way my vote matters, all of those things really mattered because I understood I was building a brand for an audience that my investors didn't understand. They could have been very supportive of me, and I really enjoy working with my investors, but this is business. And I knew that there could be a time where I wanted to do something with the business that my investors, my board, wasn't going to be happy about.

35:25Yeah. And I think that's what's so important. And that's what adds barriers to women in the industry when women aren't getting capital is also this knowledge gap. And I don't say that because women know less. I say that because when your network is less rich in terms of who's got that investment and who knows these things, you're probably not going to know these things. And as you say, so many women walk away with nothing because they did something like two times prefs, whereas it looked like the best valuation on paper. But like my first funding round, I went with the lowest valuation of all of the offers we got specifically because it had such friendly terms in terms of like, I mean, love the fund as well.

36:02But like it didn't have things. It wasn't going to rinse me. Yeah. And it's so hard to know those things. And I think that's one of the really frustrating things, too, when it comes to like, that's why I always say I'm like, my DMs are open. Like if you are going through a funding round and you want to like ask something or something like genuinely because it frustrates me so much the fact that someone will think, oh, well, I've got this$10 million valuation or$50 million or$100 million or whatever it might be. And then they're like reading the fine print and they're like, oh, OK. Yeah. So my investor is going to get two times their investment before I see a penny, despite the fact that this was my life.

36:36And also I don't control the board and I don't like all this stuff. So how did you learn those types of things? I read books and I watched movies and videos and did all the things I could do. I think I'd seen, because the Girlboss era was happening right as I was about to start to fundraise. So I was seeing kind of the fall of a lot of women. And people were saying, you know, they got pushed out of their companies or people were doing such and such. I also had really great mentors at the time. Shout out to Divya Gugnani, who's a multi. She sold multiple businesses at this point, but she fought for me, you know, whether it was like how we were going into Sephora, the margin splits or what my cap table should look like.

37:16She gave me a lot of advice. And so it really is about other women sharing these secrets with you because, you know, you talked about the valuation thing. So many people want a high valuation. But what people don't know what that means is that if you have not made enough revenue to make sense of that valuation by the next time you need capital, you'll be doing a down round, which basically means you are now taking money for less than the value of what you took the previous round, which is very taboo. But also it means you're losing more equity. And so that's one thing. The other thing is about raising more money just because people give it to you.

37:49I've said no to so much money. We could have raised 50, 60, 70 million if I wanted to, but we didn't because I know I have to return that capital. It is not free. And the pressures that come with the more money you raise, I didn't want them. And I also think a lot of people who are raising this money, are you actually running a real business? Because if you're just funding, using the funding to cover issues you have in the business, then fundamentally, you're not running a business. It's an expensive hobby. and so if you don't get to profitability if you're not looking at EBITDA if you're not managing your cash flow and that's all a lot of these businesses are whether it's clothing or beauty or food they are a cash flow business how much are you spending how much are you making and at when do you have to pay people to get your inventory and when do you get paid from your retailers that is purely what business is about when you're in a cash flow business yeah and it feels so like a lot of the stuff that feels more glamorous like the higher valuations the higher raise numbers like all of that it's like there comes a point when it will not be very fucking glamorous at all like if you don't look at those things and that is I think your point on like women being very generous with their time and knowledge is so important and actually I found it so true like I know I'm in a very specific situation but like even I don't know so many other founders have said as well women are so generous with their time and knowledge and a lot of the time you just need to ask like I remember when Tala was in like a really difficult situation and I was like having calls all over the place with like women who'd never fucking heard of it like they'd had one intro from me from a random person and they were like oh can you help this founder she's like currently going through this or whatever they would sit there with me for an hour and me being like how do I deal with this how do I deal with this how do I deal with this I've just had this from here I think we're going to run out of money at this point like what should I do all of this and people would literally like they were so generous and it's I know it's not just me being in my position because I know that other female founders have said the exact same thing and a lot of the time you just need to ask and the best people to ask I always say is people who are about like two steps ahead of you because it's not helpful I mean obviously it still is helpful to have someone who like owns a conglomerate yeah realistically the most helpful thing is someone who's like a round ahead of you or two rounds ahead of you and they've been through those issues and they're able to be like yeah this is how we dealt with that like it's more fresh in their mind those types of things but people are so generous so kind so so kind and I I love tenderness in people.

40:09I think that's been one of the things that I've really, over the last two years specifically, really appreciated about people is their tenderness. I think in a world where everything is supposed to be so angry and there's so much tension, I'm so glad to experience people in business, in life that are super tender and super kind. People have been extremely kind to me and generous to me. And that's why I feel the onus to return that favor back to people. I love that. And I totally agree. And I also think that, first of all, it's so easy to see the other side and I think that it is a choice to see that kindness and that tenderness as you say rather than just seeing who slammed doors in your face and all of those types of things.

40:48I also just feel like it's I don't know I feel like it's an important thing to aspire to when so many of the traits we're told about successful business are all these like ruthlessness and being able to say no and like all of these things which like don't get me wrong are important but it's actually like I would much prefer to aspire to be an entrepreneur that is also kind and generous and gives people a chance and like all of those different things it's like just because it's not a classic trait we've been told as like a good businessman like quote unquote I feel like that's very yeah I feel like that's aspirational to me and what would you say were the biggest reasons people decided to back topicals like was there anything that made you think oh that that convinced them to invest?

41:38Do you know what's interesting is when we were launching in 2020, you know, COVID, the pandemic was hitting, we were trying to show that we could build with less. And I think investors really like that. And so we launched this quiz called Skin, Sun and Stars, which was a mashup of your horoscope and skincare advice. So you'd put in your date of birth, your time of birth and your skin conditions, and we'd spit out a chart for you of your big three with ingredients and skincare advice on your skin conditions. We had 10 ,000 people play that game in one month. And that game probably cost us like$300 with a friend of mine who was like a coder to make.

42:12And we took that to investors and showed them that we know how to get people excited about a thing that seems boring. A lot of pushback I had in the beginning with topicals was how are you going to make skin conditions look cool and attractive to people when you're showing models with acne? Yeah, right. How are people aspiring to be a person with acne? And what they didn't understand is that people didn't want to aspire to be someone else. They wanted to aspire to be the most confident version of themselves. And through showing people who had skin conditions in our marketing, our billboards, it made people more comfortable and more excited to be a part of this brand.

42:46And so I think that's probably the early reason why people backed the brand. They thought the people who got it understood that we were speaking to this community in a way that they hadn't been spoken to in the past. Well, that to me is the biggest takeaway from that as well as it's like, again, you would not have been able to do that had you not truly known your customer so well. Like, you know that they'll find that funny and intriguing and they'll be like, yeah, I'll spend five minutes clicking around on this. Like, I don't mind spending my time doing that. Whereas like that type of stuff is what it costs conglomerates, like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands in consultancy to be able to come up with this fun idea.

43:21But actually, realistically, it's just you knowing your customer. Yeah, you really do have to know your customer in and out because when you know them, you can build for them. And so many people waste their time with marketing or with product that doesn't resonate with their audience because they didn't ask them. They made a product they loved, which sometimes can resonate with your audience, but most times you need to ask them what they want. Yeah, 100%. And you obviously, as we talked about at the beginning of the episode, you made the decision this summer to acquire a cult hair care brand in bread.

43:51What made you make that decision? Because that is such a bold move. And it's also, I don't know, as I said, I saw the announcement and I was like, yes, this is so good. Like, I love seeing this. So what was the reasoning behind it? there were so many reasons why I acquired the brand I really like the founder she's been a friend of mine literally since the day I launched topicals she actually launched a month before us and so we've gone through the peaks and troughs of what it's like to build a brand over the last five years and I think she has the best eye I think in terms of art direction and creative direction I've quite literally ever seen and I loved her vision of what she wanted to build and through the process of getting to know her, I started to understand where she wanted to do more with the business but maybe didn't have the resources to do so.

44:43And so this has been something I'd say has been in the making for about three years. Myself and Sochi, who's the president of Topicals, we had always said if we got the opportunity to work with Bread in a more full capacity, we would absolutely do it. And the opportunity came at the end of last year and we made it happen. And for me, the future of bread really is a brand that showcases hair and some extensions coming soon. Not extensions in the way of like hair extensions, but maybe. But more in the fact that we want to build a world around who we think the bread girl is. And I'm really excited because a brand like this hasn't really existed for this community.

45:20And so there's going to be a lot of fun, a lot of food, a lot of scent driven stuff coming out of bread. But I'm just really excited to do something that's a little bit more fun. Topicals is fun, don't get me wrong, but there's that clinical aspect of it. But hair care and some of the products we're going into are more about the experience that people have. And we want that experience to feel accessible to communities that it hasn't felt accessible to. Yeah, to me, in my mind, when I think of skincare versus hair care, I think of skincare as fixing problems. And I think of hair care as mainly optimizing.

45:50Like one of them's going from like bad to okay or good. And one of them's going from like okay to great. And so it's like a slightly different area in the customer's head in terms of like how you truly engage them and get them excited and get them spending their money. And I feel like, I mean, I've always loved Brent's creative direction as well. Like it's so different. Like you walk into a Sephora and it's like, I remember seeing it for the first time and being like, what's that? Like as in like you want to know what the bread with the little pouch is. What the pouch is. Yeah, it's so good. And she's just so great at it.

46:21And she's, it's self-taught. Like she's trained herself to have that eye. And so I'm really excited about what the rest of this year and next year looks like for Bread. And I think CODB, which is the holding company I acquired Bread under, I think the big story there is culturally resonant brands. Like, they don't have to be Black-owned. To me, I just want to build a portfolio, a family of brands that mean something to people and mean something to culture. I take a page out of MTV's book. I love MTV. I think in its heyday was such a good glimpse into what youth culture was. And I want CODB to be a reflection of youth culture in this day and age through consumer products, through financial technology.

46:59We're category agnostic. If the product service is serving this youth culture in a way that we haven't seen before, I want to be a part of it. I love that. I love that. And I can really clearly see the vision. I feel like it makes a lot of sense in terms of like when so clearly like what you bring to topicals is this true understanding of the customer and the community and like what their issues are and what they aspire to and like all of these what makes them feel comfortable and belong like belonging and like all of those things. I feel like it makes so much sense to have an umbrella of those things in different areas because that truly has been exactly what we've seen has made customers engage in the past five years especially with social media and with needing to feel a lot closer to a brand to actually buy from them rather than you know being happy if they're off in the distance just being a brand do you feel like the next generation of beauty empires are going to be built by acquisitions?

47:55I love that you asked that question. My hypothesis is that conglomerates of past, economies of scale to them meant manufacturing. It meant distribution. I believe it now is in audience building and community access. And so outside of beauty, just in general, I think what we're going to see is brands that they're not even in the same category, but they serve the same customer. And so you get, again, the economies of scale of selling the same customer something across their life versus selling them something that is just in one category. You know, there's a ton of beauty brand conglomerates that have a ton of brands, but I wouldn't use all the brands in their assortment.

48:35But I possibly could use brands across my life, right? In food, in beverage, in beauty, in clothing. So I'm really excited about what community means. And I know people throw that word around a lot because community isn't just people who buy your product. I've always told our team that we're successful even if people don't buy our products. If they come to an event and they find a friend, if they join TYB which is our loyalty platform and they make content and it blows up and now they have more followers. Those things that people do even if it has nothing to do with giving us a dollar does us better as a brand and creates this community.

49:14Yeah I totally agree with that. I always say as long as our customers are talking to us we're doing fine yeah and that to me is like so big because it's like yeah we could be selling things but if you're going onto our socials and it's like crickets and like no one I don't even care about people engaging with the product it's like are people telling you how their day was are people telling you when they got engaged wearing your product like are they telling you when they're like they fell over and like I don't know it was really embarrassing but like their pieces didn't rip or like whatever because they want to tell you the brand that like I wouldn't message brands saying that yes I really loved them and felt like I was part of that community so it's very much like a different view on things than as you say the big conglomerates have and that is also like the one edge that they really struggle with because it's corporate and therefore it's less close to this customer so if you can bring that closeness to community and genuine understanding of community to a number of different brands and like really codify that so that you can maximize that across the different brands i feel like there's yeah there's so much success to be seen in that i'm very excited to see it blow up And what would you say the biggest obstacles have been when it comes to scaling topicals so fast?

50:23Interestingly enough, because we've said no to a lot of money, our growth hasn't been manufactured through pumping money into marketing. Sure. Do we have big marketing budgets? Yes. To do things, you must spend money. I had seen more recently the founder of Cortez was talking about how he spent half a million dollars on his U.S. tour. And I think people have to be honest about the fact that it does take money to operate at certain levels. But you should be able to get people excited about you on a smaller budget. Or if you're spending that, how many people are people telling about that? Are you gaining two to three customers for every one customer you pay to acquire?

51:01So scaling really fast has been really interesting because, again, like I mentioned about the cash flow issue, is you could be selling out of a product, which sounds good to everyone else. But when you sell out of a product, you might have a lead time of three months. And sometimes you need the cash to give to the vendor or to your manufacturer. And once that money parts away with you, you might not see that money return back for another three to six months, depending on what your production cycles are, what your payment terms are with, you know, your retailer. And so I think for us, the big thing has been managing cash.

51:32We are always like line of sight on cash, line of sight to profitability because we want to build a sustainable business. I want topicals to live forever and ever. And businesses that grow too quickly die just as quickly, in my opinion, because the foundation is not steady. And so things work really well, and they break. And they work really well, and they break. We're in a breaking year right now, transparently. It's been really interesting because we're just getting into that next level. And getting into that next level means you have to rethink what you do. I've been telling the team that some years your customers hate you and they hate your outfit.

52:05And for us, that has been this year. And that's not to say that we're like we are growing from last year. We're up. Yeah. Really. We're doing really well. We're a bright spot in Sephora's skincare portfolio that, you know, right now skincare isn't doing the best. So it's like we're doing well on the outside. To get there has been a strain. You have to work for every single dollar. Like every customer, every sale is a lot harder and a lot more expensive. And so even if you're doing well, if you're spending more money to do well, you have to just constantly watch that cash balance. Because, again, we've seen with brands that are closing this summer, it's not because people don't love the product.

52:41It's not because the brand isn't great or the products aren't effective. Brands are dying because cash flow management. And if you can't get access to debt, which how hard is it to get access to debt, and you can't raise more equity funding, you're stuck. Yeah. Like you're absolutely stuck. Yeah. And it's obviously, I mean, for people who maybe aren't in the space, there used to be so much of a concentration on just getting to the highest revenue possible as quickly as possible. whereas now that's really flipped towards profitability. I don't know if it's been the same in the States, but it's like an overnight switch of like, oh no, if we can't see that you're profitable, we're actually not interested despite the fact that a few years ago, not even a few years ago, like two years ago, they'd be like highest revenue possible, we're happy with.

53:23And it's like that's one of the big challenges of being a founder is like the whole market can flip so many times. You can have the exact same business that a year before would have had five times the valuation. Yes. And it's like, like the goalposts are always moving. And it's like, you just have to be so close and you have to constantly be performing, but to so many different parameters that you don't even know exist. Did I talk too much? Why can't I just let it go? I wish I would stop. I wish I was thinking so much. I wish I was thinking so much. I wish I was thinking so much. Take a breath.

53:59You're not alone. Let's talk about what's going on. counseling helps you sort through the noise with qualified professionals and online therapy makes it convenient see if it's for you visit betterhelp.com random podcast for 10 off your first month of online therapy and let life feel better and how do you deal with those times when it's like a down year because like fucking hell do i know that feeling but it's like how do you stick to your guns how do you still try new things how do you not get too stressed about things like cash and still genuinely just know your I don't know just yeah as I said still try new things and still push forwards fortunately for us we have been up year over year since we started the business so we haven't had a down year but things get harder and harder so this year is a hard year and transparently I burn out like I think we're trying to avoid burnout but realistically to do this job, there's like 72 tabs open in my brain all the time.

55:03And so if I drop one tab or I forget something, that something can be a million dollar PO. That something could be, I don't know, like it could be anything. Like it could be, I don't know, a product isn't working for someone and now like it's an issue. Like there's so many things that you have to be switched on about and I this summer have really really come to understand that I'm good under pressure but there's something about sustained intensity over a really long period so started the brand or had the idea for the brand when I was 21 launched when I was 23 I'm 28 now seven years of waking up in the middle of night to think oh my god I forgot something or like how are we going to make that number are we gonna be able to deliver this thing on time for sephora it actually does weigh on you and i'm the type of person who because i like doing hard things you just will ignore it for a while just be like this is normal this is absolutely normal and then one day it will all come crashing down and it's happened to me multiple times i think june is probably the most recent time it happened to me and i was just stuck in a in a place where i couldn't think i couldn't do anything and I had to just go into self-preservation mode because if not everything was going to crumble and so I am trying to build better parameters around myself but I'm completely honest greatness asks everything of you I totally agree and I wish I feel so like toxic saying it online no when I'm like everything it expects it not asks it expects it and you kind of just can't be a founder especially not a venture-backed founder if you do not give everything all the time and like it is important to have boundaries and don't get me wrong I have much better boundaries than I did have even half a year ago but it's like as you said like I I feel that so much when you're like first of all it's constant all the time like your day can be ruined at any time any day any like I don't when you're at a fucking funeral like when you're like literally like on a birthday like whatever it might be it can be ruined and there can be hundreds of thousands like at risk there can be millions even like all of this all the time when that happens over something like seven years and when you're having that you always perform to that level because it's never like i can't deal with this because you do not have the choice to say i can't deal with this so it's like just having that oh like that like pressed into you over and over again and having zero control of being able to be like not now I'm going to put a boundary because you've taken millions of people's money and you're that is your job and also we're clearly very similar in the fact that like we do perform under pressure and like we're not one to be like am I afraid that sounds really hard like as in we're gonna do it but it's it's tough and as you said like it's I think it would be quite normal of someone to listen to that and be like okay but you have to have better boundaries and I just don't know how we could do our job without having like yes maybe some better boundaries and some abilities to like turn our brain off but at the same time it's I also think it would be selling a dream of the job if it wasn't just being like at the same time that's what it takes yeah I have that dog in me like that's exactly what you have to have you do not have the dog in you don't even try not even gonna lie to you don't even try and I say don't try because where the expectations of success, like what it asks of you, again, not ask, it's really the demand and expectation.

58:44If you do not have that dog in you, it will humble you so quickly. And like you said, I wish that it was easier and softer. And I think there are moments and people you can find tenderness in, but you have to be a winner. That's it. And Again, it doesn't have to be a winner who's ruthless or at all costs. A winner is someone that when you're down in the fourth quarter by 30 points, you're not thinking, I should give up. You're thinking, if I do this and move this around and I get this person to do that and I'm able to deliver this, we win by one point. Yeah, I do think a lot of entrepreneurs have like the inability to tap out, which is a bad thing, but also a very good thing.

59:22like it's what makes you good at it but at the same time it's like as you said if you're the type of person who looks at something and is very happy to be like this is not worth my time or not worth my stress then it's also that's not the job like sometimes you're dealing with most stupid shit and you're like no you're right this is not worth my stress and at the same time I'm gonna fucking do it and I can't cry about it and you know whatever and I think the big thing too that people don't understand is it's not even just about you as a founder having the vision but it's about getting your team on board for that as well.

59:52So in a time where it's really rocky, how are you getting people excited? And how are you also keeping people calm? I think being a CEO is about helping people be the best version of themselves through the work that they do with you at the company. And so it's understanding people, it's learning people. And I haven't always been the best at it. I think you learn how to be a better CEO because you yourself are learning yourself. But I think the more and more that I've learned how to understand people's desires, the people I work with, the people we're serving, our retailers, our investors, I know how to speak to you.

1:00:26I know how to get the best out of you. And so I think it's being a CEO is this balance of being the first person people come to when everything is going wrong, but also fortunately the first person people come to when the accolades are coming. This is why I say you can't get too high and too low because it's a new day at the circus every single day. There's something that is going to happen that will blow your mind and something that will absolutely take your breath away yeah yeah no i fully agree with that and what advice would you give someone to listen who's listening now who wants to grow their brand whatever it is like what's the main thing you would tell someone about being able to really get to where they want to get to and grow that business i want to say something generic but i'm like i should say i know that's always me i want to say something that really is going to be impactful to people because it's hard.

1:01:21It really is. I think start with less. So many people want to launch a full product line. Start with one product. That one product should feel like you took the customer's thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and wrapped it into a product that solves whatever, whether it's a skincare product, a clothing product. That's one. And number two is to get really, really good at storytelling. selling people used to tell me that I was absolutely wild by spending the money or the investment in making these campaigns why are you making movies to sell lip balm is what people used to tell me I sell a lot of lip balm I sell a lot of lip balm I sell a lot of eye masks actually the number one eye mask at Sephora so do the things that everyone thinks you're crazy for doing but do the things that you feel like are really important to you and elicit some sort of happiness and some sort of excitement for you, but also for the person that you're selling the products to.

1:02:17And then also be extremely generous. Be generous to other founders, be generous with your customers, be generous with your team and be generous with yourself. One of the big things I have learned over the last couple of years is to be tender and soft with myself. And since I've done that, I feel like life has continued to open up for me because you do beat yourself up and hold yourself to a standard. And so I think if you're trying to grow your business, if you're a founder and you feel like you keep failing. Also give yourself a little bit of tenderness because the world won't. So you'll need to.

1:02:48Yeah, you've got to become that like cheerleader for yourself. Not even necessarily cheerleader, just like support system. Like you have to know that like when shit hits the fan or when something didn't work for the 10th time in a row, it's like, cool, well, you tried the thing and that's a lot further than a lot of people get. So, you know, you've got to be able to back yourself in that way. Absolutely. And because I'd love to know, can you tell me your three ride or die topicals products yes and why they are so successful the first one is high roller ingrown tonic which was a product that i personally tested i test all of our products but this was a product that i told the team go back to the lab like 10 times because i grew up with ingrown hairs and they're so painful and they're not like a medical condition enough where you feel like you have to get like you're dying a dermatologist won't really see you for it but it leaves scarring it leaves bumps and so that is the best ingrown hair tonic so if you have ingrown hairs and it works really well for men or women if you have ingrown hairs any kind of bumps from shaving that's your go-to put it on about 24 hours after you've gotten a haircut where you've shaved and i promise you you will come back to the pod and you will say yeah this This is great.

1:04:04I've got to love that. Okay. Second product is the eye masks. I love that product so much because I challenged the team to make what we have called a billboard product. How do you make a product that people can see when they put the packaging away? You know, typically in skincare, you apply lotion to your hands and once the bottle's out of the frame, you don't know what lotion that is. So really pushed the team to think very much in the way a fashion brand would and landed on those eye masks, which have been such a hit for us. And so that's my favorite product. I do sleep a lot. that's one thing I will not lie to you I'm a napper I try to get my eight hours of sleep because my brain works so hard if I don't sleep I'm the exact same there's such a myth about like yeah not sleeping and I'm like babe I like I get my sleep yeah like if I don't get my sleep you will know you absolutely I'll have brain fog but I love the eye mask because even when you've slept it can't sometimes it's not great sleep because you're thinking about the 10 ,000 things so I love using the eye mask and then my other favorite product is the faded serum sometimes i'll cycle off because i'm using other products testing other things we're working on and i'll come back and be like wow this is really good this is really really good like you get not only your bright spot dark spots get brighter you also get like an overall glow and overall radiance skin texture is also really improved and within six weeks is when you see a good amount of results so love that product is a staple whenever I feel like a breakout or some of the dark marks aren't really improving faded is definitely my OG I use every morning snap love that love that and before we end could you tell me what the best piece of advice is that you've I think it's actually the worst advice I've ever gotten okay I've turned into the best advice okay which is people used to tell me that I did too many things that I was too much I wanted to do too much I saw so much for myself I was showing up in ways that felt like too much for people but by being too much I've created this life and I love that I've done too much because why would I want to live my life being less than who I am or being less than what I was called to be and so I love doing too much in my own little way and I think more people should do a lot like I love that death to nonchalance death to nonchalance I am so with that I also think we are so similar and I feel like it's um it's like that much might be too much for you but it's it's it's actually not enough for me I feel like I'm currently thinking of more things to do because I would like to do more things and I like doing things I have decks upon decks of businesses yes I and I actually saw one of your tiktoks where you were like I'm just giving this one away for free and then people were commenting being like you shouldn't do this you should start this and I'm like do you know what if I started every business that came into my mind i'm like come on girls yeah like more of this more of this yeah um so i absolutely think that people should be more of themselves and do more yeah i love that trying hard is actually the only way to get anything in this life and that's in love that's in friendship that's familial that's in work we have to do more and not more in this idea of going outside of yourself but just again death to nonchalance yeah like find what you're good at and do as much of it as possible in lots of different ways and as you said like i love that like trying hard is everything like it makes everything happen yeah it's not cool to do it until it's successful but like then you've just got to do it until it's successful like and if like if that's what you want if you want it to be cool then just like keep trying hard and like you'll you'll It'll eventually get there.

1:07:45Like you can't, if you're not trying hard, you're definitely never going to get there. People forget that what is now the status quo at one time used to be a new idea. Everything that we know now that is cool, at one point someone made that up, did the thing enough times, and then everyone followed it. Cool is just what everyone is doing. Cool is not necessarily, it's like it's a construct. And so I think embarrassment and shame are such powerful tools for keeping you small. And we have to get out of that. I think in life, we all have to get out of this idea that being yourself is shameful. I love that so much.

1:08:28And I fully stand by that. But thank you so much. You've been incredible. I feel like so many people will learn so much from this episode. and you're just a powerhouse and I can't wait to see what's next. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

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