How to Build a Beauty Brand People Believe In (ft. Tower 28, Danessa Myricks Beauty, Crown Affair)

It's easier than ever to launch a beauty brand—and harder than ever to make it last. In this first-ever Aspire founders roundtable, Danessa Myricks (Danessa Myricks Beauty), Dianna Cohen (Crown Affair), and Amy Liu (Tower 28) get honest about what it actually takes to build and scale a brand people believe in. These aren’t early ideas—they’re Sephora-scale businesses: Tower 28, launched in 2019, now with a reported $228 million valuation; Crown Affair, launched in 2020 and scaled from roughly 55 to 600 Sephora doors, with a dry shampoo that has ranked #1 in the category; and Danessa Myricks Beauty, a profitable-since-launch business that had already grown to roughly 500 SKUs before entering Sephora. From getting into Sephora and staying there, to raising capital vs. bootstrapping, to building community you can't reverse-engineer—this is the real playbook for 2026. In this episode, you’ll learn: What separates brands that last, and why launching is easy but sustaining is hardHow to build community with soul, purpose, and missionThe truth about retail and the operational and financial discipline it takes to scale in SephoraHow to fund your vision, what outside money is really for, and why finding aligned investors is keyHow founders evolve with intention and decide what to control, when to delegate, and different ways to lead a brand through growth

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Emma Grede?

  Today on Aspire, I'm doing something we've never done before, our first ever roundtable. I'm sitting down with three women who have built some of the most distinctive brands in beauty. Danessa Myerex, founder of Danessa Myerex Beauty, Amy Lu, founder of Tower 28, and Diana Cohen, founder of Crown Affair. They've all taken very different paths, different products, different customers, different approaches to funding and growth. But what connects them is an incredibly clear point of view. And that's really what this conversation is about. The mindset it takes to lead or create anything with conviction. What I love most is how personal the conversation became. These women are so clear on what they believe, what they're willing to protect, and where they're willing to let go. Whether you want to start a company

• 0:52Emma Grede?

  or you're simply trying to build a life and career with more intention, there's so much here to learn from. Here we go.

• 1:06Emma Grede?

  First of all, I cannot tell you I have not been this excited since the first episode. Welcome to our first ever roundtable on Aspire. And I cannot think of three people I would rather speak to than the beautiful, incredible, and talented three founders that we have around the table today. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here. It feels like that. It really, really feels like that. Now, listen, I want to break straight in and we're going to talk about each of your businesses specifically today. But we're going to go so much deeper than that because what I wanted from this roundtable specifically was almost like a peek behind the curtain for our listeners.

• 1:47Emma Grede?

  There are so many conversations that we have as founders in our group chats, maybe just with our best friends, but not necessarily out in the open where people can learn. And you guys are all at very different stages in your business. You all run the most incredible brands, but where you come from, where you are now, the decisions you've made have all been wildly different. And I think beauty is just one of those spaces that feels unbelievably glamorous, but it appears that it's very easy to enter. Super easy to launch. Super easy to launch. You see the viral TikToks, you see the Sephora sales, you see the influencers. But actually, launching and building something that actually lasts are two very, very different things. And so you three today, who have all built in completely different ways,

• 2:32Emma Grede?

  the wonderful one and only Danessa Myerex, Diana Cohen, and Amy Lu, all sitting with us. And I want to make sure that we just have as much of an open conversation as we can. And I knew that you three somehow would be the ones to do it. Today is not just another founder episode. What I want to understand is much more about the decisions that have made your businesses exactly what they are today. What mattered, what absolutely didn't matter. You might do it differently. When the money helped, what the money actually cost you, what changes when you scale, and what all three of you know that would actually help the next founder on their journey. So let's actually just start right there

• 3:14Emma Grede?

  because I want to make sure, if you don't already know and buy all three of these brands, you really should. But let's start there because it is really so difficult to build something that actually lasts. And if you wouldn't mind, can you just talk to me just a little bit about your brand, what it is that you do, and how you serve a community of women that were really underserved?

• 3:39Speaker 01

  I would start off by saying we connect hearts and minds to beauty. And that sounds kind of ridiculous, but for me, it's literally at the baseline of everything. For me, the brand started because of how I was feeling as a human, not being seen, not being spoken to. And just through my journey as a woman and as an artist, I realized that there are a lot of people who felt the same way too. And a lot of people like to narrow it down to like race or that I'm a woman, but it has nothing to do with that. There are so many people who no one talks to at all. They forget that they're there. I find the beauty industry talks at people, not to them. They tell them what they need to do as opposed to help them explore who they are. And so what I believe that I'm doing as a brand is,

• 4:22Speaker 01

  number one, having a conversation around beauty through a much broader lens, where everybody can be heard, see themselves in it, and know that they're being considered. And so what we do is we create multi-use products that are very problem solution. We bring fun back to makeup. And also the biggest thing is we bring education to it because so what, you show this beautiful shiny thing, but please tell me how to use it. And so we wrap all of that into just this really beautiful conversation around beauty.

• 4:50Emma Grede?

  Yes, you do. And I use it every damn day. Every single day. It's the truth. Diana, to you.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  I mean, I started Crown Affair because I realized how important hair is to all of us. I think our relationship with our hair impacts how we move through the world. And like Danessa just said, so much of beauty is yelling at you. And hair in particular uses such aggressive language. Fix, tame, manage, repair. And it's like you come from this really disempowered place. And I love my stylist who I've seen for 15 years. And I love the art of hair. But 80% of the time, I'm just home. And I felt such a disconnection to these beautiful salon products I was using, but I felt like I didn't know how to actually use them at home. And hilariously, Crown Affair started from conversations with my friends who were like, what are you doing to your hair? Lay it down. I'm like, here's a Google Doc.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  I was a total nerd coming from, I'm like, I'm going to put this in a little Google Doc. And I put together the 12 things that I swear by. This was pre-TikTok days, but it did go viral for the time. And so many people were requesting to join. And that was kind of the lightbulb moment for me of like, there's such a huge disconnection between like how we actually take care of ourselves and that hair is also a journey and it takes time. So the whole brand universe of Crown Affair is anchored around time as the core brand pillar. Time is our core currency. You can't get it back. It is the ultimate luxury. So it's a combination of creating this world that is about taking your time to take care of yourself, but also presenting the customer with really elegant and high-performance solutions that give you your time back because I need time back, like all of us.

• 6:27Emma Grede?

  Oh, yeah, you do. And listen, if you don't have the hair towel, you are absolutely missing out. Like, I never understood why I would need one. And I got given one. I was like, that is genius. Like absolutely the most genius, simple, beautiful product.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Totally. I used it last night.

• 6:42Emma Grede?

  There you go. Full endorsement around the table.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  There it is.

• 6:46Emma Grede?

  Amy, talk to us about Tower 20.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think similar to these two, I think so many of us have created brands around problems that we were trying to solve for ourselves. For me, I've been a longtime beauty executive. So it's been at this point 24 years in the industry, but I've had eczema for even longer than that. Being an executive and in a space where you're trying to go to market week meetings and show the next, you know, best-selling skin perfecting product, that at the same time, you're like, wait a minute, my skin is really challenged, myself is really vulnerable. And so I was really looking for products that were not only clean and safe, but also high performance. And it was really hard to find those two things in the same product. And I grew up in an industry working for brands that had celebrity makeup artists. And I knew it had to be something that was really good.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  The bar had to be high from a performance perspective. But at the same time, I wanted something that could make my skin look better immediately and not worse in the long term.

• 7:42Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  And then on top of that, I think the thing that we really do well is that we create this world. So Tower 20 is named after a real lifeguard tower here in LA at the beach in Santa Monica. And so much of that is like a sign of safety. And I think so much of what we do is a love letter to the community, to the people who really have not perfect skin. There's a lot of makeup out there that is great for people who have perfect skin, but sometimes you need something that goes over a texture, that goes over rosacea eczema. We're the only beauty brand that is 100% compliant with the National Eczema Association. And now rosacea and psoriasis are both part of that too. We make skincare products and makeup products. And so really so much of what we do is just that it's kind of a love letter to my younger self.

• 8:26Emma Grede?

  Oh, I love that. Isn't that the way to start with this? A love letter to your younger self? I have to tell you, in my house, we're obsessed with the SOS spray. That's how my, my daughter, who really needs a shout out because she's the number one Sephora queen. She's the one who's telling me, Mom, here's what, here's what you need to be one. But we're not going to give her credit for knowing you guys. But the Tower 28 SOS spray is something I use almost every single day. We absolutely adore it in our household. But one thing that I loved as I started thinking about each of you, you have these incredible brands, but I met all of you through a seat at the table, through my dinners. And it was so amazing when I decided to put this together. I was like, I don't know if they know each other.

• 9:11Emma Grede?

  I wonder if they like each other. They're not really competitive, but we're all competitive. We love each other. You do. I'm so happy that I just found that out 10 minutes before we started.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Our group chat last week was blowing up.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  Nice to see each other.

• 9:24Emma Grede?

  Well, I hope that makes for an excellent conversation. So let's just dive straight in. So much has changed in this business, especially with the advent of social, especially as we think about the level of competition. It feels like a new brand is launching every single week. So is it actually harder than ever to build something that actually lasts?

• 9:44Speaker 02

  It's easier than ever to launch and it is harder than ever to sustain and to stay. Back in the day, there weren't so many, there wasn't money available. There weren't contract manufacturers. There were department stores and to survive in a department store was really a money game. So now there are, I mean, I heard there were 20 to 30,000 brands coming from Korea alone to America right now through basically TikTok, Amazon, Olive Young, et cetera. So I think it is very difficult right now.

• 10:14Emma Grede?

  And how do you feel about that? First of all, I should ask you, do you agree?

• 10:17Speaker 01

  I think it's really hard to keep people's attention.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  And so you have to dig a lot deeper. I think it's going to be very difficult for a brand today to last if they don't have more than just their product. One is so easy, well, for some people to copy some people's products. Not ours. Well, we kind of have a lot of on top of those, but it's so easy for somebody to start tomorrow. Look at, oh, this is what she's doing. I'm going to make it really fast. There's always somebody who's going to make it for you. To get attention right now is so easy. You can buy it very easily with social. Like you can have zero followers and be viral tomorrow.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  So you need a lot more to make it stick. And I think the brands that are going to really last are the ones who are digging a lot deeper, who have a different point of view in terms of who and how they're serving people. And also that there's a connection to those people too.

• 11:12Emma Grede?

  Absolutely, no doubt. And we have to talk a lot about what it actually takes for a brand to survive. But if you were starting your brand again today in 2026, would you? Like if you had zero to start with, would you do it right now?

• 11:26Speaker 02

  It's such a good question. When I launched Crown Affair in 2020, it was already starting to be a different game. It was six weeks before COVID. And what has happened in the last six and a half years is just, I'm sure we all feel it. It's like the ground has shifted underneath us entirely. But that is why the soul and building something timeless and with purpose matters. Because attention is the game now. It's the core currency. And I always say this, it's not just how many people you reach, it's how many people you move.

• 11:52Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  And that could be with a message, like what you're doing, that could be with a product. And we all know product at the end of the day is king.

• 11:58Emma Grede?

  A hundred percent is, but when you talk about attention, I also think the other thing that's so key and important in any brand is trust. And so when you start to see, you know, so many of these like influencer brands and, you know, people with big followings, like I'd love to understand if somebody came to you tomorrow and said, I have this like giant community, this huge following, and they wanted to start a beauty brand. What's the first question you would actually even ask?

• 12:23Speaker 02

  Why?

• 12:24Speaker 03

  Why? A hundred percent.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  There's a lot of reasons why you can start a brand. Some people start a brand because they just want money. There's a lot of different ways to make money and you can decide that you're going to use your money to just make a lot of money pumping out a lot of products. And that is a way. I don't think that's a forever way. So I think everybody has to decide what kind of brand they're building. How long do they want to be here?

• 12:45Speaker 02

  How fast do you want to grow?

• 12:47Speaker 01

  How fast you want to grow and actually, you know, what kind of impact you want to make, you know? I think that's all a big part of it.

• 12:52Emma Grede?

  It's a huge part of it. So when you look at actually what it takes to make and create a successful brand, I want you guys to rank these things for me, right? Product, branding, community, founder, story, retail distribution.

• 13:09Speaker 03

  Oh, that's hard.

• 13:10Emma Grede?

  Go on, just give me the three. What actually truly determines a brand's success?

• 13:14Speaker 02

  I think it's a little bit of everything, which is the hard thing to swallow. Because it used to be like, there was a period of time on, if you had a cute brand on Instagram and you could just like feed Instagram and do paid ads, like you could win.

• 13:28Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  And that's not really true anymore. Like now you kind of need, like for me, for sure, I didn't have any influence to begin with. And so being with Sephora really was so incredible for me because it created, they helped build the brand for me. They had a captive audience and they helped me tell the story. That was incredible. So some of it is, but like to the point of what you said earlier, if I had this huge following and I came in with that influence, maybe I wouldn't need the retail distribution as much. Product is king no matter what you do. Like it doesn't matter what you're doing, if you have influence or not, you still have to have great product. But the stuff around it, I think it kind of is how you would rank order it is dependent on who you are and what you bring to the table.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  Isn't that hard to make a great product is the thing, like.

• 14:11Emma Grede?

  Oh, controversial, really? You think so?

• 14:13Speaker 03

  I think, I think there are amazing chemists and scientists who can make a great product, but it is, you can't reverse engineer soul and purpose and mission and community. So I don't want to say extraordinary product is table stakes, but you will not be around if you don't have extraordinary product. So I don't want to say that's why it's not important, but that is like baseline.

• 14:31Emma Grede?

  Yes, it's the cost of entry.

• 14:33Speaker 03

  It's the cost of entry, extraordinary product. I think what's really hard to reverse engineer and why people keep coming back is the soul, the purpose, the community. And we see this with community across, the why, like, and I think it's really important to like, not be everything to everyone, like know who you are making product for, know why you're showing up for them, help them, support them. Like, I really think that's what allows it to sustain. And I also think just like making timeless product. You have to realize that people will enter your brand at different times. Like someone might enter a brand five years from now because it's their first big girl purchase in this category. You know, I see this all the time with hair, like people really come into Sephora for makeup to play. It's so, I would buy all my makeup at Sephora growing up and building this category with them now.

• 15:17Speaker 03

  It's like, you really have to understand the customer journey. And I think that's where all the other pieces of that equation come in. But you do need to do it all. I think some are more just table stakes now versus what you think about over time.

• 15:28Emma Grede?

  So let's just talk about and dig into what community means. Cause I feel like it's one of those things that's thrown around so much. And if you're all sitting here saying that it isn't necessarily just about audience and following, then how do you distinguish the difference? Like what is community and how do you create it, make it and keep it?

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you have to know who you are. I think you have to figure out what your authentic truth is and what resonates for your customer and why they're buying you. Cause again, people are voting with their dollars, right? They're voting for what they believe in. And so I think so much of it is figuring out your lane and staying in it. And I was just telling Diana, we were on a panel a while ago and I've never forgot. I remember her saying like blinders up, like you just have to have blinders up and you have to do your thing.

• 16:10Emma Grede?

  Yeah. Meaning you're not taking in what's happening on the outside. It's like you have a single minded purpose and you're going to do that.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  No one can be you. Everyone can have the same idea, but no one can be you. And I love, I love what you just said, but what you said about community, just a little like, at like, hey ma, that to me is community, whether it's a neighbor or a group that you're a part of. Like community is actually helping each other.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  And I think community, as you said, gets thrown around a lot. Is it an influencer dinner? Is it a this, is it that? That is helpful for awareness, but real community is doing a solid for someone. And I want to be like, hey, use this, it's good. And I think that's what I come back to is like, how are you helping people? How are you spreading the gospel? Like that's, and being on the ground and connecting with people, I think is like the most impactful way to build community.

• 17:05Emma Grede?

  Talk to me about virality, right? Because it's one of those things that's thrown around. You've all had your viral moments, girls. We know them, we saw them. But let's just talk about what actually happens when a product goes viral, when you have one of those viral moments. What happens once the algorithm moves on? Tell me what your teams are doing and tell me what happens like in that moment and then after that moment.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  I think, well, I know virality is, is a tricky thing because there's a super high that you get, but then there's a lot of low that no one else sees. And I think if you are viral at a point where you don't have operational excellence, everything can be dismantled and fall apart. I also think if you're viral and you don't have strong community, that's problematic too. It's not just about the relationship you have with your community. It's the relationship that the people within the community have with each other too. And I think it's important that you are leaning into that connectivity. Because when things go viral, there's always a good and a bad. And you want, when you run out of product.

• 18:04Emma Grede?

  When you run out of product, because you will.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  You will, your community to be like, you know, because there's going to be people who know nothing about you. The thing about virality is that you, you didn't have those, that time to nurture that person. They don't know who you are, why you're here or anything. They were introduced through a product, somebody else saying something about a product. So those aren't really your people. So when those people come, now you have your community that is here for you. And then you have all these other new people who could care less. You're a single mom of two and you've been building this brand for whatever, like where's my product? Or I've been waiting for two weeks or it's been six months or, or. Or or or or and it's your community that's gonna hold you down like hey, don't worry, she's got you. You can trust her. You can this, you can that.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  But also, what happens inside your office is kinda messy too, because the fight to get more product, you can lose a lot of customers not having, even if it's their favorite product, you can lose a lot of people not having that product available. So if you run out of a six month supply of product in two days, like then what? How are you nurturing those people? How are you keeping them with you? Those people had a problem that you were solving, now they're looking for the solution somewhere else.

• 19:14Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  So a lot comes with it. Yeah.

• 19:17Emma Grede?

  Diana, what is your experience of having viral moments? And what's what's actually happening internally with the team at that point?

• 19:23Speaker 03

  I mean, there's been two moments. The first one is I do a twist and clip air dry technique that went viral, and I think that was crazy. Just the way that people comment and engage. And what's great about that is from a business perspective, it was a few different products that were starting to go viral. So we had a little bit more of an even heat with the inventory piece. But the dry shampoo, because we have the powder, translucent powder, dry shampoo with the kabuki brush. It blew my mind, like number one dry shampoo at Sephora over all the big guys. And there's a few of us constantly kind of ranking each other over and over. But that was such a huge moment. And I think it's what do you do about it? If you sell through the product, but then honestly, strategically, going back to your core products. You need to have a few products. Like there are businesses, and we all know them, that it's like one SKU.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  That's the business. But I think as a brand founder, if you're out there really thinking about the different ways someone can come into the brand. So maybe for us, it's the dry shampoo, also the towel, also the leave in conditioner. Like if something's out of stock, I think it's just about building a strategy that's even heat. So when you do have that moment, it doesn't shake you and you have your foundation.

• 20:27Emma Grede?

  Totally. I'm interested to understand, because I do feel like community is such a double edged sword and virality and social media, like, you know, it's all one of the same thing, right? And it's either fully putting all the wind into your sails, or it's like literally sucking the energy out of you. Depends on the day of the week for me. But I wanna understand like how you relate to and you think about feedback. Like when your audience is perhaps not so happy with you, like how do you know? And how do you think about instinct over like the available data and what's happening in the comment section? What does that actually look like?

• 21:05Speaker 03

  I think so much of it is exactly that. It's instinct. Like you can look at the data, but I think we as founders, we can also kind of feel it, right? And I think, again, with feedback, so much of it is you have to think about who's saying it. So you know how much of it is for you or for somebody else, right? Because I think we all have bad reviews, we have trolls. Sometimes the bad reviews are valid, right? There's something in there that you're like, oh, is there something I should glean from it? But I think, just to quickly go back to the problem with virality, I think it's getting the product into the wrong hands. And so if you get the product because and somebody buys and they don't know why they're buying it, and they're maybe not the right person for that product, that is actually, I think, a lot of times where you get that negative feedback,

• 21:47Speaker 03

  because they're like, I'm using, so our SOS spray is a product that you know and love, but it's sitting in the makeup section. We are a makeup brand.

• 21:56Emma Grede?

  Oh, so people are trying to hold their makeup with it, like fixing spray?

• 21:59Speaker 03

  People are like.

• 22:00Emma Grede?

  Oh, no, honeys, you use that after the gym. You use that after you washed your face and you.

• 22:05Speaker 03

  By the way, I'm sitting between my two favorite sprays right now.

• 22:11Speaker 03

  Very different use cases, right? And so I think that is the problem with virality is you get something out there, but people don't really know. They buy it, they spray it, and they're like, I don't think it's that good of a setting spray. I'm like, well, it's not a setting spray.

• 22:22Emma Grede?

  A setting spray. And that's interesting, because when you have something that's almost like a category defying products, and you've actually got to teach and educate people what it is, how to use it, what the best use case is, that's a different thing. And if you're coming in because you're part of the community, you've taken the time with the brand to understand, to know what they're about. If you're not, then you're absolutely right. It's tricky.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's tricky. But that's why I love the comment section.

• 22:46Emma Grede?

  Because they will.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  You and Vanessa. Like from day one, I'm reading every comment, every DM, and I'm doing my own like gut math from the words that are saying. But I think when things go wrong and when somebody has a negative comment, the best thing to do is to respond to it. If one person is saying it, there's somebody else that's saying it or thinking it too. And so I wanna talk to all of those people, because one bad experience can turn them away from the brand as a whole. But just an educational moment can fix it all.

• 23:14Emma Grede?

  So what does that look like? Give me an example. Give me a real example.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  I mean, one of our most viral products, the blurring bond powder,

• 23:22Speaker 01

  which is like, it's a new category. It's a new product. Like there's nothing that existed like it before. There's no one for one. So there's lots of questions always. And when somebody has a bad experience, I go right, I take their video, I clip it. I'll DM them and say exactly what happened. And I will clip their video and say, hey, did you guys see this video? She's actually right, you know? Because this doesn't work when you do this, this, or this. But if you do it this way, you're gonna have the best experience. So here's what I'd love you to do. I want you to use it again, and I'm gonna send you this and this to use with it. And then tell me, come back and tell me what your experience is. And whenever I do that, the comments are like, yeah, she's right. I use it every day.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  I've never had that happen, because you use this instead of this. Like your community jumps in and then rallies with you. And then that thing doesn't just hang in the air. There's no running from it. Like if you're confident about what you're making, who it's for, to your point, and you're there to educate, like it's not a problem for me. So good or bad, I'm responding.

• 24:25Emma Grede?

  For sure. And I feel like there must be so many decisions that you make as founders that essentially your customer isn't going to understand. And so I'd love to really know, like, when have you made a decision that perhaps customers didn't initially understand, but you thought that it would be absolutely essential to what you were doing?

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Launching in Sephora.

• 24:44Emma Grede?

  Yeah. Same old.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  People like to call my brand like the brand of the people, because the community literally built this brand with me. And a lot of people only know like the last few years of the brand, but I've been building the brand since early 2000s in my basement. So there are those people who are like, this, she's building for us. Like she's building for the pros. Like we've been there with her. Like I belong to them.

• 25:07Emma Grede?

  Because you're an artist.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:09Emma Grede?

  Right? It's like you are a makeup artist. You've been in the game for the longest time. People have a relationship to your work.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 25:15Emma Grede?

  Then they have a relationship to you, and then they have a relationship to the brand that you feel.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Exactly. And they were like, oh, she's launching in Sephora. She's never gonna make the kinds of things that she made before. She's gonna dumb things down. She's not gonna be as interesting. Like those are all the things that came up at that moment. And it was a scary moment for me, because I was like, wow, that is my core community. And they're like, wow, she sold out a little bit. It wasn't everybody, but it was a lot of people.

• 25:42Emma Grede?

  So how did you deal with that in the moment? I'm interested, because again, you are, you're beloved by your community. And when you've got a big opportunity like that on the table, there must be a part of you that goes, listen, I've been in my basement, but I don't wanna stay in the basement. We need to come up. We need to get air. We need to like do things and we need to move forward. So what's the decision making look like? And at what point do you understand, actually, I need to move forward for me and for the future and for all the customers that I'm yet to have?

• 26:11Speaker 01

  It's kinda like if you have a new baby. When you have a new baby, you can't forget the old baby. You have the old baby. You have to, you have to put in more work to let them know that you're here for them. I haven't forgot you. You're the reason why I get to have the new baby. Right? So I had to double down for the community that was there for me. And I think a big thing that changed too is, you know, anybody who followed me for a while, and I like being behind the scenes. I wasn't somebody who was on social and talking. And if I was, you only saw my fingers. But I think when I launched in Sephora, everything changed. I started having a conversation out loud with my community on social. And I think that made all the difference, because I didn't want them making assumptions of why I did a thing. I wanted them to know the soul behind and the reason why I did a thing.

• 26:56Emma Grede?

  I absolutely love that you talk about that, because I speak to so many first time founders that are in their 40s or in their 50s. And they're like, Emma, I cannot do this social media thing. And I'm like, you can. You absolutely can. Now, you're gonna find your lane. You don't be need to dancing and TikToking and doing what the 20 year olds are doing. But you found such a beautiful lane and a comfort level. Like it just feels like you, right? You have your way of speaking, your artistry is on display, and you found your lane at your stage of life and the stage of your career that you're at that just makes so much sense for your brand. I love, I love that you were able to do that. And Diana, one of the things that I think about you is that you have such a distinct point of view

• 27:38Emma Grede?

  that you really own. And you can really tell that you weren't following what was out there. You were like, here is a space that I believe should be occupied, and I'm gonna make the products that I think will do well. And I think that there's so much power in having such a point of view and an area that you're passionate about. How do you know to go with your instinct over the trends that are happening? And how do you protect your own taste level when you're just starting out?

• 28:08Speaker 02

  It is the only way I want to build this thing is I want to make products and a brand universe that I want to occupy. And it's really hard. I have to tell you, you have to like metaphorically sit on your hands because it's really easy to see what's working for someone else. Oh, that worked for them. Let me mimic them. Oh, that worked for them. And if it is not in alignment with who you are, even you mentioning the social media thing, like I don't sing and dance. I don't really do that. I just don't. I just don't want to wake up doing that. And I love that I have friends who do that and it works for them. But it's the same with building a brand. You have to build it in alignment with who you are. And the taste piece has been really interesting because as you grow and scale and show up in places like a Sephora, I've gone through a very personal journey that's like my taste isn't everybody's taste.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  And the confidence over time that I've found though is like my people find me and we find each other.

• 28:59Emma Grede?

  Do you think that it's possible right now to build a major beauty brand without the founder being a public figure?

• 29:07Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm literally the founder that you just mentioned. I am the woman who started at 40 and doesn't really do a ton of social media. I'm like literally the only person here who doesn't have a social person filming content of me right now.

• 29:19Emma Grede?

  Is that true? You don't? There's so many people here, girls, I couldn't tell. I couldn't tell. We're running the world. I don't know.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  I mean, I honestly look up to people who can do it. It's just not my lane. I actually love a podcast because I love a chat and I love depth and I love conversation. I've been on panels. There's a version of it that I show up in, but there's a version of it I don't. And I think that has been a really conscious decision for me because it's not both what I enjoyed it to and it's not what I like to do.

• 29:48Emma Grede?

  I just, but I love that you say that because even as you speak, like I am, I'm like in shock because I'm like, oh yeah, like you, you don't because we just get so, you know, we're just like so in it and you literally just go like, that's not for me?

• 30:05Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I do a little bit of it, but I do the version of it that I am comfortable doing. So like I won't do like a get ready with me. I'll probably never sit there and put makeup on in front of a camera for you. But the version I do was I will tell my story and, and that's really true to me. But I think it's just like what Diana said, I'm not dancing.

• 30:24Speaker 03

  No, but you know what? Doing your makeup on camera is really hard and I give credit to all these people.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  No, but that's same.

• 30:30Emma Grede?

  I can't do it because I don't understand like where I'm supposed to look. Like I need the like a mirror. Like when my team have asked me to do that with the, like, I can't. No, it's just, there's some things I think are generational.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  What I've found, well, two things. One, you may not show your face, but you lead with your story. Your story is so clear. And so I don't think there's anybody who doesn't know the origin of your brand. And I think being founder forward is just another way of telling your story over. You know what I mean? So I think for you, that makes sense. But I think, you know, what I've learned in my experience, I'm very introverted, but what I've found is that it connects me deeper to my audience because they are that person too. And so I struggle doing my makeup to camera. Guess what? So do they. It's really about like, what is this bigger story that you're trying to tell? For me, initially I was like, I started this business because I needed to make money and I need to, to fuel like my family.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  And I saw that there were people who are missing, but as I grow in the brand and this community grows, I know that there's more for me to offer. There's more that I want to give. There's more stories that I'm telling. And so I know that there are a lot of women out there who are like me, changing their whole life all over again at 30, at 40, who need to see somebody else doing that same thing. There are a lot of people who are just frankly, just scared, just like I was. Seeing me show up makes them less scared. I know that my role as a founder is more than just building this brand. Like I'm, I'm helping a lot of people see themselves in a different perspective, a different way.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Because they see me as a single mom who started her life all over many times, being successful and showing up even when I'm scared, they want to do it too. So I, I kind of, me showing up the way I do now is a little different because my purpose is bigger.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Who I'm trying to serve has gotten bigger. It's not just the customers consuming my product. It's a way bigger audience that I didn't know was there.

• 32:30Emma Grede?

  You have got that so right. Now I really want to get into the nuts and bolts.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  There we go.

• 32:35Emma Grede?

  There's some juice here and everybody knows I'm just like chomping at the bit to talk about money. Hello. I can't believe I made it this long. But what I really want to understand is fundamentally what changes within your business when a partner like a Sephora comes on board? And what does it demand from your business operationally and financially? Because for so many people, that's where things start to crumble, right? Even they're not finding the right retail distribution or they find it and they're like, damn, like this, this, you know, it's not the right time in the business. So I'd really love to understand what that's meant for each of you and to talk about it in the most open and honest way that you can.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Sephora made our business in such a big way. We went into, we launched in April of 2019 and like I said, I didn't have any influence. So it was like an Instagram mood board and a Shopify template. And that's all it was. And I didn't even email my friends to tell them this happened. I was like, oh, let's just see what happens. And we were in Sephora.com by September. We were in every single store at Sephora on a half shell by, by March of 2020. So we went into full distribution and we went in fast. And Sephora likes to say, and I think it's true, it's harder to get into Sephora than it is to get into Harvard. It is really difficult. I had a background of working with Sephora for a long time, so I had relationships, but it didn't mean I knew I was going to get into Sephora, right? And when I got, no.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  And I didn't know if I was going to be able to stay. I mean, literally the whole time I was like, even when we were on Sephora.com, I was like, how many sales do I have to do? Are you going to take away the in-store launch if I don't hit my numbers? And what is the expectation? Like I'm like a good Asian girl. I'm like, what are the grades that I should be getting in order to stay here?

• 34:19Emma Grede?

  You understand this because you've been on the other side. You're experienced at all of the incredible brands that you were at. Like you, you know how this is. So it's not surprising to you.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  We've all done it a little bit differently, but like I worked for other people for a long time and I really learned as like a number two and I got really close to founders and I had a seat at the table. And I think that was the way I got more comfortable with jumping into it. But the thing that Sephora does, I think is really incredible is it really creates discipline because you then have to get on a track of like spring, summer, fall, holiday. You have to know when you're going to ship product because it takes six weeks to get to, you know, everything becomes much more of a work back schedule and you have to get really organized. When you're on a D to C site, it's like, I don't know, what do you, what do you want to do?

• 35:05Speaker 03

  I live for D to C. So fun fact, but Amy was the first founder, Sephora founder I talked to after I found out that we were going to be launching in Sephora.

• 35:13Emma Grede?

  Amen.

• 35:14Speaker 03

  And I remember standing on my balcony in Miami, talking to Amy, being like, what are all the things I need to know? Because I came from D to C land. And by the way, I love our D to C e-commerce. Like when you were even talking about earlier, like there's so much we can do that is just harder to do at retail.

• 35:27Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 35:28Speaker 03

  Whether that's like limited edition products. We have a cleansing scrub that is so extraordinary, but we can't sell it in retail stores because it, the margins don't make sense. And I refuse to make the product worse. So there are certain things that I really get joy out of with D to C, but Sephora land is like, it is like, it's that feeling like going to Disney in a way where it's like they're the best at doing this. They know exactly what they're doing. And when you enter that world, it is kind of like putting on your big girl pants.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:55Speaker 03

  Like you go from like, this is fun. This is cute to like, oh, we really need to show up. And I never like worked with Sephora ever. It's so funny because I remember founders texting me being like, your end cap looks so beautiful. It looks so beautiful. I'm like, but it's so, it's not optimized. Like it was this beautiful art display, but it was not up to code, if you will, of like optimizing this stuff. So the last three years for me has just been a journey of like really understanding what works in store. It's been low and slow, you know? I didn't have the choice. We didn't launch on next big thing. I know some people get next big thing. You get different exposures in the store and animations. We were given 55 end caps, which an end cap for those listening, you know, is like a full, you know, a full proper shelf display. We had four shelves, but 55, I'm like, how are we going to reach people?

• 36:40Speaker 03

  All this marketing, they walk into stores, it's not there. But I'm so grateful for this journey and I say this to all the Sephora founders, if you can grow over time, going from 55 doors to two years later, 200 doors, to then 600 doors. And you get to go into the store and talk to the beauty advisors and educate. It really does take time and it is a big learning curve, but it is such a gift for us. It is entirely new audience, an entirely new community. And I'm a little bit luckier because hair, I joke, is kind of like the Cinderella of the category. Like we're kind of, you know, the, the final, you know, category that people are coming in for, but to get people excited about that and build it with them has definitely changed my experience.

• 37:17Emma Grede?

  I always say in retail, you want to earn and you want to learn.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:21Emma Grede?

  And learning can't be done with anything other than time. And Vanessa, I wonder if you can talk to, because I feel like you are one of the brands in Sephora that actually brings in a bit of a different customer to perhaps what, you know, I guess like the day-to-day bread and butter of who the Sephora customer is. And so in my mind, and tell me if I'm wrong, like maybe slightly more of a bit, maybe again, you, you felt the pushback, right? From your community, but there's also that question mark, I guess, as you go in, like is a brand like this, with this type of audience going to be successful?

• 37:55Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. And it's so funny that you say that because when Sephora first reached out, it was like the end of 2019. Honestly, I missed like a million of their emails. They almost gave up on me because I was too busy building the business. I wasn't going to have the email.

• 38:08Speaker 03

  Girls, I'm a sad email. So no slack.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Finally, I got like the one last, hey, um, do you want to come here or not? Can we talk? But, um, it was interesting because when they first presented it, I honestly, they would tell you that I was like, I don't think, I'm nervous. Um, I was like, because I've seen people launch in Sephora and fail. I've seen people who spent so much of their life building something on their own, their own D to C with their own audience and they go there and everything falls apart. And so that was my biggest fear because at the time when we launched in Sephora, the brand has been around for 20 years already. It's a part that most people don't know. I had 500 SKUs. Five hundred SKUs? That's crazy. Like, on your own D to C, you can do whatever you want.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  I had a certain relationship with my audience. You want it, I got it. There was no six-month runway, a year, two years to make a product. What shade do you need? All right, two weeks later, guess what, guys? I got, you know, I had a different way of operating my business. I was like a true indie brand. And so I'm like, I go to Sephora, I'm gonna be a fish out of water. And then also, our products were a hundred percent different. There was no like-as. Anything that we had, there was no like-as in the store. And so it's kind of like getting married and moving into your, your, your husband's house. You're in somebody else's house right now. There's a whole new way that things work. It's not as comfortable, right? You have to learn a whole new way of being.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  And in the beginning, there was a lot of tension. Happy, healthy tension. There was never a fight. But tension made it the best. And amazing partner from day one. But it was me just fighting to stay who I was and to like, hold on to my identity, like what this brand means and should look like for me versus, oh, but this is the amount of space that you have. And this is what we think will sell in our environment. And so honestly, the first year, even though we did really well, we grew super fast. Like, we went from dot com to, to next big thing, to gone, to all in the same year. Like, it was just like, because I think we were all surprised on how well we did. But that was, I think, the hardest year for me because there was a lot of conversations

• 40:20Speaker 01

  on all of the products that I think make the Nesquik Beauty what it is, is not in this store. But all of my attention has to go to Sephora because their goals, right? And so I can't like, split my attention. I can't have multiple conversations. Like, what about all my other 400 SKUs? I can only talk about the ones that Sephora took. And then initially, we had that tiny one shelf on the next big thing. I wasn't really telling the full story of my brand. I honestly felt when we launched in Sephora, I started from scratch, all over again. Because it is a net new customer. And this is not the customer that the Nesquik Beauty had been servicing all over. So I had to learn how to re-communicate every single product so that it was digestible.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Like, all of our assets, like, things that I used to be able to say on social and everybody got, like, what are you talking about? Literally, I started all over. So even though it was exciting, it was the scariest thing for me. And I almost, like, I was really afraid for like, how we're showing up. It took a lot of conversations for us to align on, okay, please, just take this. I know there's nothing like this in your store, but I guarantee you, like, that's what makes us special. If you put it there, you know, just, just trust me. And when they did, we were able to align on like, what we think the best fit is. That year, where we had that alignment, the brand 4Xed in that one year. And I think that's the thing that everybody should understand.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  And you talked about, what are those conversations? Like, this is a relationship, this give and take on both sides. And it needs to be healthy. It needs to be done with kindness and with love. There needs to be proof points. Like, when Sephora didn't want to launch something, I launched it on my D to C. And I'm like, see? Told you. I'm doing this. You guys can, you know, participate in this too. It was a lot of that.

• 42:21Emma Grede?

  What does it really look like when you know there's a ton of money and a ton of opportunity on the other side of the table, but perhaps it ain't the thing that you thought you were gonna do?

• 42:31Speaker 02

  I mean, honestly, I've made every mistake. So there are times that I have...

• 42:34Emma Grede?

  Oh, let's talk about it.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  There are times that I've gone and done what Sephora has asked us to. And there's times that I've kind of stuck a little bit more with my gut. And there's times that there's been a compromise. And it's a little bit of everything, right? And the truth is, like, when you're doing really well and you're hot, they are much more amenable to what you want to do, right? And sometimes you're not right. So like, for instance, we launched a product that was so juicy and like, melty, and I loved it on my lips. And then we launched it in a Sephora Favorites kit. And we started looking at the, the actual reviews. And the reviews were either like, basically like a one or a five. And it was like, I love it, I love it, or that shit melted in my bag. And I was like, oh my God, this is my worst nightmare, that it melted.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  And so we actually, and the truck was still coming. It was in the truck, because we had only done the Sephora Favorites, which was like, I don't know, 20,000 pieces. But like, the actual single SKU was still being delivered. And I was like, stop the truck, do not receive, turn that shit back around.

• 43:36Emma Grede?

  Really?

• 43:36Speaker 02

  And like...

• 43:37Emma Grede?

  An expensive mistake.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  And it's an expensive mistake. But like, sometimes you don't see the thing that is real because you don't want to see it. Like, I loved it, but like, when I really thought about it, I didn't, we didn't do the full, like, testing to like, see what we... After that, we sent it to Arizona in the heat, in a ship test. And we were like, did it melt? Yeah, guess what it did?

• 43:57Emma Grede?

  But it's so interesting that you had the conviction to turn the truck around. And having that conviction to say, this thing isn't right, and I'm gonna go left when everyone wants you to go right, is such a huge job of a founder, but it takes a lot of guts.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  But nobody else can make that decision.

• 44:12Emma Grede?

  Nobody else can make that decision.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  And it goes back to what you said in the beginning, it's trust. And that is the thing that you can't, you spend so much effort building the trust of the customer, that, but it's so easy to lose it.

• 44:24Emma Grede?

  Diana, give me an expensive mistake. Tell me what you, tell me what you've done wrong.

• 44:27Speaker 03

  You know, it's so, I mean, I'm so intense about our product and ingredient quality, like, everything. And by the way, I remember being like, we're launching a leave-in and it's in glass. Like, that was crazy to people. Like, the quality of the component, I want it to reflect what's inside. Like, all of this stuff really matters to me. So there have been many times where like, we've had to just evolve what we're doing because it's at a scaled, you know, it's just you have to be really intentional about it, but I will never ship anything. My whole thing is like, I want it to arrive at your door, or you get it at Sephora. And you're like, the value of what this is is so good. I think that's what we have to remember as founders, is like, we're coming in with our soul and creative expression. And when you decide to partner with a retailer like Sephora, they're actually just trying to make you better. And they're trying to like, refine.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  And actually, this creative exercise to synthesize what it is you're doing to more people changes your life. It's changed my life, it's changed all of our lives. You can still make the thing on your D to C. And I think that's what you need to remember creatively.

• 45:25Emma Grede?

  But what happens if you've got a great product? If you've built with conviction? If you've done what your heart desires? And you feel that you've got a community and you have something special, but you don't get the Sephora moment? Then what?

• 45:37Speaker 02

  I actually think the hardest thing in business is like, not if you fail or if you succeed, but it's that middle. It's that middle area where it's just like, you get one hit, but you're like, it's not quite enough? And is it something that you should stick with or not? Like, that, that ambiguity is really hard.

• 45:56Emma Grede?

  Facts. I mean, when you fail, at least it's definite. You're like, this shit don't work. But you're absolutely right. When you put something that kind of tracks, and every now and again, there's a glimmer of light, and you're like, but it's kind of nearly there. Like, that's so hard.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  The thing that I would say my husband really did for me at the beginning, because we did put some of our personal money into it, but very clearly at the beginning, he was like, we have five years max that we're gonna try this, and we're gonna do it for, like, and how much money? Like, what, where are we gonna top off on this? And I think having some boundaries like that, really, for me, it helped, no doubt, for a relationship too.

• 46:31Speaker 03

  I deeply believe that what is not meant for you will not miss you. And you have to trust that. And I know there are a lot of people probably listening right now and are like, I, all I dream, my dream is to get into Sephora. I think if it's right and the timing lines, it will work. But in the meantime, just keep showing up every day, one inch at a time. And as you build the business, people will go in and ask for it. And it's, you just, you cannot abandon yourself. You have to keep going. And if it's supposed to happen, it will. Like, I really believe that.

• 46:58Emma Grede?

  Twenty years on D to C. Come on, tell us.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  What I would tell anybody who's looking to start right now is to take time out of the equation. Just take it out of the equation. Do what you can with what you have right now. And just, you know, allow your journey to unfold for you. I love that quote, "As you begin to walk on the way, the way appears." That literally defines my entire journey as a founder. Just take a step. Do a thing, you learn, you fail, you win, you learn, you take another step, you do a thing, it kind of unravels for you. Soon as you start looking, all of your intuition disappears. When you start looking from side to side, and I think a brand's magic is their intuition.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  You know, just hearing you guys tell the stories about the mistakes and the products that you believed in, and no matter what, you want to keep this one D to C because that, you believe in that. You know, I've had so many of those stories too. Like, our top-selling SKU is the SKU that nobody believed in. Nobody wanted me to launch it. Nobody wanted me to launch a bomb powder. The name is too long. What is a bomb and a powder? Is it a powder or a bomb? You're in Sephora. You have to tell them if it's a bomb or is it a powder? It cannot be both. Like, there's a universal and this tinted. No, just launch the universal. No, my gut tells me. This is how I see it. This is the way I know it's going to work. That intuition and that gut is so important. It's what defines you and your brand. So, tunnel vision.

• 48:28Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Knowing what's true and what's right for you, and just patience. Patience is a gift I wish I can give every founder.

• 48:36Speaker 03

  Creating your own definition of success is really important. We don't need to be like billion-dollar brands. Like, the idea of everyone needing to be a billion-dollar brand, I think, is one that is really hard to compete with. But like, my husband always says, he's like, "I thought you were going to be selling products at farmer's market. This is great." You know, like, "I didn't know what you were gonna do."

• 48:54Speaker 01

  And what about you?

• 48:55Speaker 03

  And they say that, like, you know, happiness is like the difference between expectations and reality.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 49:00Speaker 03

  Right? And like, your expectations move as things move. But like, that's what I love about what you said. It's like, have like that thing in front of you and do have high expectations. And then, it's okay if they move, but it's also okay if you can like, get it to stop moving. And maybe like, a nice lifestyle business is great.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:19Speaker 03

  For you and your family.

• 49:20Emma Grede?

  I mean, I feel like this is exactly what I wrote about in Start With Yourself. It's like, if you have a vision for what type of life you want, what type of business you want to run, and then you're able to just say, "And this thing is going to just take some time." The way that you come into it, the anxiety dissipates. It's like, because all of a sudden, you're like, "Great, this thing, I'm gonna enjoy the actual work. I'm gonna enjoy what it takes, the journey that I'm on to get there. I'm gonna take the highs, I'm gonna take the lows." But the thing that bothers me the most is that so many people just don't start, and specifically women. And I think the big thing about everyone sitting around this table, we started.

• 49:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:59Emma Grede?

  You got out the gates, and you just had a go. And that's gonna lead me to the next subject, because we're gonna talk about money. Because so often, so, so, so often, the conversation that I have with founders and aspiring founders is, "I just don't know where to start. I just don't understand the piece about the money." And what's beautiful about the three of you is that you all have funded your businesses in extremely different ways. And I want to understand the choices that have shaped the companies that you were each able to build. Now, Danessa, we have heard that, you know, you had this company for so long, and you bootstrapped the company to make 500 SKUs, which I still, and we'll talk about that later.

• 50:42Emma Grede?

  But you spent years funding the company yourself. Amy, you took a very, very different route because you had this incredible and very impressive career. And then, you built all of that up with kind of like, this decades of knowledge. And then you decided, "Okay, I'm gonna go out later in the brand after bootstrapping and having, having the boundaries that you and your husband set together." But then you went out and you raised a significant amount of capital. And then Diana, again, very, very, very differently, you actually raised outside money from the outset, from the beginning. So, we really have all the ways, all of the things here. Now, before we get into kind of like, the individual experiences, what do you guys actually believe outside capital is actually for?

• 51:24Emma Grede?

  And can you just talk to the audience about your appreciation and understanding of that as people that have actually taken outside capital?

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that saying, when they say, "Money will make you more of what you are." When you bring money in, if you are not like, buttoned up, if you do not have operational excellence, if you do not have clarity about who you are and where you're going, if you don't know what the next three and five years look like, you're in a lot of trouble. You're just kind of like burning someone else's cash. You're like gambling with somebody else's money. I really do think that, from my point of view, you should understand, and I think all our experiences are different. For me, I was never ready to take money. If somebody gave it to me, the brand wouldn't exist today. There was so much I needed to learn first. For me, I was building the plane as I flew it.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  And so, the evolution of what my brand looked like was so different year over year. I think when the money came, it was time, because that money was used to scale. I couldn't go any further without it. You know, I couldn't just be a solo entrepreneur doing all of the jobs. At the point we were in the business, I needed to bring on a team. We wouldn't be able to grow any more in the space that we were. We would run out of cash. If we wanted to grow more, there was not enough cash to fuel it.

• 52:46Emma Grede?

  At the end of the day, you are fueling your business through your outside artistry, right? It's like, you are a working makeup artist.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:53Emma Grede?

  But I want to understand, what did bootstrapping actually force you to do within your business? And how did you, like, what did you become, like, disciplined about?

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Oh, everything. Because, I mean, when people ask me, "How much money did you start your business with?", it's zero. I had an idea. I wanted to do this thing. But guess what? Next week, I have to go do a job. And then, when I get that check, I need to decide how much is going to feed my family, and then how much I'm going to use to invest in this business. And then, literally, week over week, that's how I built the brand. So, when it's your money coming out of your pocket, and it's like, your children's food money, you think about that money a lot differently. So, discipline at the highest level.

• 53:36Emma Grede?

  So, talk to me about what your investors actually were able to do for you. Because I feel like, you know, sometimes you get investors that are just about the money. Sometimes you get investors that are really like proficient around distribution. Some of them are like operational whizzes, and they'll actually come into your business and help you with certain functions of the business. What has worked for you?

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness. I'm obsessed with our investors because they are operational wizards. And I think the biggest value they brought is helping us to build team. Because they know what it takes to take you from A to B, from B to C. They know the quality of the person. They know what the infrastructure needs to look like. And that's, those are things I would have never known. I would have made mistakes all through that. And so, it's like, they got in front of that and told me stories and gave me examples and allowed me to choose. And I think that was really beautiful, that we work on this together as a team. But the people, like, the right CFO, the right, you know, operators.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  I would encourage anybody to start there first, because I kind of did it backwards, you know?

• 54:42Emma Grede?

  From a team perspective?

• 54:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, from the team perspective. I was just excited that people were excited with me. And, you know, "You love what I'm trying to build and my spirit and my heart. Come on, come on in. Let's do it together. No one's giving you an opportunity? I want to be that woman that gives you the opportunity."

• 54:57Speaker 03

  Oh, Lord.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  And I'm so grateful for every team member that has ever been with me. But I also, I think I destroyed a lot of people too along the way, because I was putting people in roles that they weren't ready for, or they didn't have the expertise for. And like, that breaks my heart. Now, you know, hindsight is 2020. So, I would tell everybody to start with your leaders first. That's one thing that, you know, our investors trained me on, and it makes the most sense. That operational excellence, that expertise in those key areas, those leaders first.

• 55:31Emma Grede?

  Start with your leaders.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  Start with the leaders.

• 55:34Emma Grede?

  Start with your leaders.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  It makes all the difference.

• 55:36Speaker 03

  That's expensive. And that's why.

• 55:38Speaker 02

  And that's why I have to raise money.

• 55:39Speaker 03

  And that is why I raised capital, because my now CEO was my first hire. She's been with me for seven years. There was no pot of gold for me. I needed to raise capital. And had I not taken on that capital, I would not have been able to hire Elaine. And she has been with me this whole time, and we're keep going. And that was part of why I decided to do it before launching.

• 55:59Emma Grede?

  But I'm really interested in that, because raising capital from the outset is really taking a huge bet on yourself, right? And because you don't know what you don't know at that point. But to your point, you would never have been able to bring in that CEO at that period had you not, you know, been able to raise that capital. What else did the money allow you to do that otherwise would have been an impossibility?

• 56:23Speaker 03

  You know, first of all, and to your earlier question, like, what does money even allow you to do? Money is rocket fuel. But if you put it into the rocket and shoot it, and don't know where you're aiming the rocket, you're gonna go in the wrong place. So, my philosophy around fundraising in general is, raise as you go. So, I came from high-growth venture-backed startups. It's also all I ever knew. You know, I was the eighth employee at a web.

• 56:45Emma Grede?

  In the glory days of them days, you see, you see the good, the bad, the ugly, the most insane side of it, right?

• 56:52Speaker 03

  All of it, all of it. And you know, these companies were almost acting like they were tech companies.

• 56:56Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 56:57Speaker 03

  And crazy.

• 56:57Emma Grede?

  And they would.

• 56:58Speaker 03

  And they were not. So, raising $100 million for whatever it was, a luggage company, a mattress company, the math was not mathing, to put it very gently. So, by the time that I came in, I'm like, "Okay, let me actually break this down very tactically. How much are wages gonna cost? How much is the first inventory order gonna cost? How much would it cost to set up the website? How much does it cost to build out the brand?" And there are a lot of startup costs. You don't, these are not recurring costs. You don't need to rebrand the company every year, you know? So, I literally broke it down line by line and was like,

• 57:26Speaker 02

  Like that gets me to like one and a half million.

• 57:28Emma Grede?

  And what did you raise from the outset?

• 57:30Speaker 02

  So I raised two million.

• 57:31Emma Grede?

  She gave herself a little bit of runway. She did a map and then went.

• 57:35Speaker 02

  You know, it's funny, it was 1.7 and I think a lot of people didn't believe in us. I actually really only had three investors from the outset. And then, once we launched, people were like, can I get in?

• 57:44Emma Grede?

  Yeah, do you know, it's absolutely true that it's harder to raise two million than it is to raise 20 or 200. Let me tell you, because the funds that you're talking to are so much smaller. And so it becomes a bigger piece of their pie and I stand by that. It's really hard to raise two million bucks. I really wanna know your journey because it's again, very, very different from everybody else. You really understood beauty operations, right? It's like that was your role and you knew what it would take to scale a business like this. And I'm wondering if that experience actually made you more conservative or more bullish when it came to going out? A, first putting your own money in, but also then when it came to this pretty sizable raise that you did. Like, how did your past experience lend to that?

• 58:26Speaker 02

  I mean, I think the commonality here is you do what you need to do and you do it based on what you already know. Right? Like, I did not have the precedence of, maybe I saw these tech companies raising money on the news, but I didn't think that that was a possibility for me. I didn't know that that was, anyone would let me raise money, right? So it just didn't feel, it felt too far away for me. So when I raised my initial money, which was $500,000, I did it through friends and family. I wouldn't, but I, I knew I needed to raise money because I knew I also wasn't somebody who would be able to make that trade off mentally about my kids eating or not, or whatever it was. Like, that just wasn't in my mental capacity, right? Like, I wasn't able to put it on my credit card.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  That's just not the way I, I, I wasn't able to take that kind of a risk. And so I knew that I wanted to raise money. I think it did, I was always really conservative, but that probably comes less from the work and more from my upbringing, that I was raised in a family that was like, never have any debt, always be able to pay for yourself, always have savings. And I think that was one of the things I really had to learn. And honestly, I'm still learning. I'm still learning how to like, take bigger bets and like, test and learn and be able to spend it a little bit more freely to see it coming back. And I think that was also the reason why I ended up raising money the second time and I took on an institutional investor, was because honestly, the numbers just got big.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  So we went from, you know, we launched and we doubled or tripled every single year for years, up until 24 to 25.

• 59:57Emma Grede?

  And then at the, the second round, you raised what, like 28 million dollars or something around that?

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  It was in that ballpark, yeah. And, but that was something, I waited until frankly, I didn't honestly need the money. So what I was raising was really smart money. I was raising to find a partner that could help me see around the corners because I was in a state where I was like, I've never been in a business that was bigger than 50. And now we're north of 100, like it's a different ballgame. And to your point, like, I don't think that I know everything. And so I'm, I was really looking for someone who could help me figure out this next piece of the pie. And I think that's really what I've gotten from it.

• 1:00:34Emma Grede?

  So what are you looking for beyond the check?

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  So I really wasn't looking for the check, to be honest with you, right? Like.

• 1:00:40Emma Grede?

  But you did raise 28 million bucks, so.

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  So I, I wanted to have the, I, I, we were really profitable already at that point. I wanted to have the cash to be able to do more things than I wanted to do, like hire people. I also took some money off the table, if I'm being honest.

• 1:00:56Emma Grede?

  Thank you very much at that point.

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  And honestly.

• 1:00:58Emma Grede?

  As you should.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  We took the money off the table and did nothing with it. And I was like, and because everyone told me, don't like, just take a year and figure out what you're gonna do and how you're gonna feel about it. So at first, we really didn't do anything with it. And then, when we were in the Palisades and that happened, I cannot tell you how good it felt to be able to buy another house and to just be able to like, take care of my own problems. Like, that was, that was the first time I really was like, wow, this is what money is for. This is what it can do for you. And I felt so grateful to the business and to my partner at that time, too, that they were able to make that happen. But I think the thing that I did by waiting until I didn't need the money, but our business was like, honestly, in such a good position,

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  I had a lot of choices from who I was going to raise money from. And the thing that I did that I think people can hopefully learn from is if you do it at that point. First, I dated for a long time, right? Like, all of the, when, by the time, like, from the beginning, like, anytime I saw someone at a conference, you're like, okay. And I would do what you're saying, I would back channel. I'm like, hey, they invest with, you know, what are they like as a portfolio company, as an investor? And so I, I paid attention. When I got to the point that I was ready to invest, I only went to six private equity groups. And I said, okay, I'm ready. Do you want in? I'm gonna give you access to a data room. I will give you one hour of my time. Here's a Mad Libs of what the term sheet is going to look like.

• 1:02:29Emma Grede?

  I have never done that shit. That's unbelievable.

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  I was like, I want control, control and control.

• 1:02:34Emma Grede?

  Why was that important to you? Like, to control the process in that way?

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  Because I think, again, you learn from what you see. And I had been in businesses with other founders where I saw them lose control. And I was like, that's not gonna happen to me. Your name is on the product and you are losing control. And I saw it happening as an employee and I was in those board meetings. And I was like, I don't want that.

• 1:02:58Emma Grede?

  No, I, I love it. And I only ask because I really believe in the adage that how you start is how it goes. And so when you are managing a process like that, like, they know who they're getting into business with, right? They understand that this is not a company that they're coming and taking like, for a responsibility for, they're gonna take advantage of. It's very interesting.

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  Well, and to that point, like, I didn't need the money and I didn't need, I technically didn't need the partner, right? So they knew that, I, I knew I had leverage in that moment. And for me, I really feel like I chose an investor that really cares. She has been an operator and it's a woman. And those are all things that are important to me. And so I actually did not go with the highest valuation, but I did go back to her and I say, I got another higher valuation at some point. You know what I mean? And like, tried to negotiate a little bit differently. But I think ultimately, you do what you know, right? And so some of it is like, you're trying to not repeat a mistake that you saw. And then you're also trying to make sure that you keep whatever you need. And for me, it was control. I wanted control of the company.

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  I think the most important thing, especially early on, is philosophical alignment with growth. Because you have to realize, I took, by the way, I've taken over 400, 500 investor meetings at this point in my career. I would walk into there and being like, oh, you worked at all these D to C darlings. Do you wanna build the, this and hair? And I'm like, the opposite of it. I don't think spending a million dollars and making a million dollars is a good business. You need to be so much more efficient. So, A, that, and B, I knew I wanted to build a genuinely prestige brand. This is not a growth hack. I'm not trying to trick anybody. I just want to build quality products. So took, kissed a lot of frogs to get to my first investor who like, saw what we were doing. And to this day, has been the best investor. He is like, you need me, not gonna bother you. I think there's a lot of pixel pushers out there.

• 1:04:47Speaker 03

  Not all money is created equal.

• 1:04:49Emma Grede?

  That's for sure.

• 1:04:49Speaker 03

  It does change as you grow, but my advice for founders, if you are looking to raise money, like, be philosophically aligned with your investors in the early days and let them let you cook. Because if they try to push you too much, you will end up with a totally different brand by year two or three.

• 1:05:02Emma Grede?

  I couldn't agree with anything more. Because at the end of the day, different investors are looking for different things. And you need to make sure that what you want and they want are the same. Are you the type of person that I wanna be in business with? And when the shit hits the fan, because it always does, are you in it or are you flighty and moving somewhere else? And so I think when you talk about philosophical alignment, it's like, are we in this for the right reasons? Is your horizon for a sale the same as my horizon for the sale? Is what you believe this brand is, i.e. in the premium space, how you're gonna allow me to continue to grow this brand? Or are you actually trying to get me to sell something for $299 at Target? These are all what philosophical alignment really looks like with your investor.

• 1:05:45Speaker 03

  And they will show their truest self when you are in negotiation. So if you have a term, first of all, best advice, get a good lawyer. Protect yourself, especially in those early days. I have a lot of friends who signed sexy term sheets that were not good deals for them, you know? And an investor will show their true selves. If they're, if they are pushing back on terms that are actually hurting you as a founder, four years later, five years later, these things matter. And that's, that is not aligned with who you are.

• 1:06:10Emma Grede?

  One of the things that has fascinated me about you, and I'm very excited for you to talk about it, is the fact that you're not the CEO of your company. And I feel like we have glorified that role so, so much, especially again, in female founder circles. Will you just talk a little bit about that decision and why it's the right thing for you and your business?

• 1:06:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a great question and it's so funny because when we were all introducing ourselves earlier, you guys are founders and CEOs. And that's something that I said in my body for five years. Hi, I'm Dan, I'm the founder and CEO. And you, you embody this thing. And, you know, for me, I, I've worked in the consumer space for a long time. And I've seen sticking points for other brands where the founder doesn't necessarily let go. And I think that's the hardest part of it. So it has been an extraordinary amount of personal work to kind of, again, sit on my hands. And I'm really grateful I have Elaine. I think that's the big difference is that I've had this person from day one. I don't have a hired gun as a CEO. I do think that would be a different experience.

• 1:07:10Speaker 03

  If I was like, bringing in so and so with 25 years of experience, so that would be a different journey. But I think with, with Elaine. It was already happening. She was doing the role. Like, at the end of the day, what a gift for my business to be at a place where like, you know, once you hit certain numbers, the 50 million, it's like, maybe I shouldn't be CEO anymore. Like, let me actually spend my-

• 1:07:30Emma Grede?

  No shame in the game. Like, maybe you shouldn't be CEO anymore. Maybe you should never have been CEO. Like, the role that I love the most in my life is my role at Skims. Right? It's like, to be Chief Product Officer is my dream of a job. But it took me a really, really long time. It took me sitting down going, what's all the shit that I don't like versus all the stuff I do like? And I do think that somehow we imagine that you don't call the shots unless you're the CEO. And I'm telling you, that is not true. As I speak to each of you, I hear that concern about a loss of control, a lack of control. And again, that is to be expected as founders and operators of your business.

• 1:08:11Emma Grede?

  What are the things that each of you believe, despite the size of your team and how far you've come and however well you're doing, that you still need control over? And you still need to fully understand despite having built real companies with real infrastructure and real teams?

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  I feel as a CEO, there's a few things that you are responsible for. One, you have to have a vision so big that, one, people want to follow you and, B, they can see their dreams coming true within your dream, which is a very hard thing to do. So that's one. Two, you have to build systems and team and structure so that you don't need to be there. And I think that's two. But three-

• 1:08:53Emma Grede?

  Amen.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. What I think is really important is that you set the tone and the energy for everyone. Like, you have to be like the most optimistic person. You have to create the belief. And for me, I haven't found that person who I think could do that better than me.

• 1:09:11Emma Grede?

  Fair. Diana, what do you feel like you have to understand personally over what can be delegated?

• 1:09:17Speaker 03

  I mean, I always say I'm the first 10% and the last 10%. And everything that 80% in the middle is I let go and I let my team do their thing. So it could be anything from like a budget of a campaign, a product development, a hire. Let me in the beginning. I want to set the tone with you. And then I'm going to let my team, whoever it is, even investors, do their work and then come back to me. And I think that is how we've really been able to grow the business, is me not touching every single part of it. That has been huge. And I love what you shared because there's a quote from a French philosopher that's like, you can teach a man to build a boat, or you could teach him to long for the sea. And by teaching them to long for the sea, they're going to figure out how to build the boat. But it's no longer my job to be like, this is how the boat's going to be made, this is this.

• 1:10:02Speaker 03

  So for me, it's about being that vision, being that voice, and giving space for someone else to teach them how to build the boat, who are honestly better at building boats than I am.

• 1:10:13Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm going to be really vulnerable and tell you, I'm still figuring this out.

• 1:10:16Emma Grede?

  Not a good delegator.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I, yeah, maybe.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  There is a part of that where it's like the thing, you know, everyone says like the thing that gets you here won't get you there. And I think it's absolutely true. And I, I am really in the business and that is something that I'm really trying to figure out right now. I am trying to figure out this fit. I mean, to be honest, like, I don't think I have. Listening to you, I'm like, God, I envy the fact that you have such clarity around it.

• 1:10:43Emma Grede?

  Today.

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  Today.

• 1:10:44Emma Grede?

  Yeah, tomorrow may be different, yeah.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I am trying to do exactly what you said, figuring out like, what are the things that I like to do? What am I actually good at? Frankly, like, there is something where I've always just been a part of a team. So a lot of the time, I just felt like I was just doing my same job I've always done. And then I realized, oh, there's like a weight to my words. Like, when I say I don't like something, it's no longer a brainstorm, right?

• 1:11:08Speaker 03

  That's the hardest thing to realize, by the way. Not, I think every founder out there can really, it's so hard to even realize that you might be intimidating because you know every piece of your own story. You're like, little old me?

• 1:11:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:11:18Speaker 03

  I said that? Like, people are taking it? Yeah. I think that's honestly one of the hardest things, which is a funny thing to talk about, but-

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  It is a really weird thing. And then you have to figure out like, okay, then how do I say it in a way that will make you feel okay? And so I, I've, you know-

• 1:11:35Speaker 03

  This is why I leave the room, guys. This is why Elaine's like, please leave for at least 30 minutes and then come back.

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  It's hard. It's hard. But I, I will be honest, I think I'm still on that journey. And there are things that I do well. There's definitely things that I don't do well.

• 1:11:47Emma Grede?

  I am so happy that you expressed that because I think there are so many founders that feel exactly the same. And so many senior peoples and leaders that feel exactly like that. They haven't quite figured it out. And it is a journey and it does take a little bit of trial and error. But that's why I think conversations like this are so important and indeed, relationships, like the group chat that you have, right? Because learning and listening and seeing how somebody else has done it and having the honesty around it to say, you know what, I tried this. It didn't work out so well. I'm still figuring it out. And even just the, the sort of framework of you saying the first 10 and the last 10, it's like, I'm going to try something similar.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  I'm like, I'm going to try this.

• 1:12:27Emma Grede?

  Right? But it's, I, I think it's really important. And again, why we need to be able to have these conversations and have them honestly, because it's not helpful for anyone to hear the lying, cheating, crappy version of this. That isn't really true. And I think it takes a long time. For me, the key has always been people. And I think the reason I've migrated people through businesses is that you create relationships and you create a shorthand that is not really easily replaceable. And when you do lots of things, like having those relationships and those people that have been able to make great livings and hopefully make some good money along the way, and they can transition into different roles

• 1:13:10Emma Grede?

  and grow with a company or switch into something else is such a blessing to me. But it always comes to people. It makes it so much more fun. But I think for me, the, the right people in your organization, there is just no replacement for it.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  You have to have like the right people on the bus, but also in the right seats. Before you even figure out which direction you're going.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  And the wrong person there for too long can really make a mess too.

• 1:13:33Speaker 02

  The wrong person for any amount of time. I think like it's the most expensive mistake that I've made. And the most, I mean, honestly, I find a lot of the, the business problems, like if it's something that money can solve, I'm actually like, I can be okay about it. But the things that have to do with people, those are always the ones that keep me up at night.

• 1:13:54Speaker 03

  This is a personal journey, not just a professional one.

• 1:13:57Emma Grede?

  Listen, ain't it just, you're dealing with real people.

• 1:13:59Speaker 02

  Still really learning how to want to be respected and not just liked. And I think that's something, and I, I think that's maybe not something from reading your book that you've learned.

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  I'd like to learn more.

• 1:14:15Emma Grede?

  Well, you know, again, I think that that's a journey. And I think that displeasing people is something that you get more and more comfortable about because you realize that it's not about you. If you think if you have enough experience and you change approach and you're in different situations, you have companies that do well, things that do less well, and yet there's a, you are the continuum. You are the thing that doesn't change. And yet the reaction from people is really, really different. You learn that actually, the energy that you're putting into making something palatable for somebody other than yourself is wasted energy.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  Well, and that you're doing it for the best of everybody, not just for that person.

• 1:14:51Emma Grede?

  Right? And that's what it comes down to. I think the bigger things get, the more responsibility that is on our laps. Right? And I take that responsibility so seriously. And so I'm always thinking about the greater good. I'm never, you know, limiting the situation to this one moment in time, this one sentence, this one set of hurt feelings, because I think consistency is the most important thing for a leader. And when you're consistently, whatever you are, consistent bitch or consistently kind or consistent, you know, it's like people come to rely on what it is that you give. And that's what people don't like. They don't enjoy surprises. But if you are open and you're giving people the road ahead and you're telling them what's coming, you know, that helps a lot, right?

• 1:15:35Emma Grede?

  And so I think better to be consistently who you are than trying to fit into some mold. Because we're all different and we all come at this from a totally different perspective. And we're all running different things that will end up in different places. So there is no one size fits all. My last question is, really just thinking about seeing the three of you today. I knew you had arrived because there was like so much cackling like outside.

• 1:16:00Emma Grede?

  Like literally like this. And I was like, they definitely must like each other. How important do you think the relationships between founders, between women, between competitors? Like, what has that, what does it mean? What do you need from it? What do you wish you saw more of?

• 1:16:18Speaker 02

  I think it's everything. I think Diana kind of alluded to this in the beginning, but the industry has changed a lot. And I really do think now it is more collaboration over competition. And I think this is the first generation we've really seen that. I mean, even as a longtime beauty executive, I remember going to dinner with a bunch of my friends who are beauty executives and they were all complaining about their founders. And I was like, oh, wait, I'm not one of you anymore. Other people are out there complaining about me.

• 1:16:48Speaker 02

  Wait a minute, like, maybe these are the people that I need, will have more likeness with or can understand more where I'm at. And so I think it's really, I try really hard to be, I try to be helpful to people who are low, you know, not getting earlier. And then also to like look to other people who are like the seniors when I'm like the sophomore, you know? So I think both ways.

• 1:17:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. First founder that took my call that I was like, this is happening. And you've been on this journey with me the whole time. And it's so, I mean, seeing you across the room, this one is, lights up the entire room. And you just see your face, whether it's at Store Manager Conference and you're like, oh, Danessa's here, I feel good, you know? And whether it's, whether it's Brand Summit, which you spoke, you spoke at the Impact Summit. It's just like, it's joy and it's a beautiful feeling. I only know it in the Sephora environment. But I think in general in beauty can kind of, it can seem like a gladiator ring. And, you know, everyone in a gladiator ring is like fighting to the death. But the truth is, is once you're in the ring, if you are in the arena, you're like, how do we all survive?

• 1:17:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:50Speaker 03

  You know, the tone changes. And you're like, wow, it is so hard to even get in here. How can we all help each other? And by the way, that noise, those, those people are in the stands.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:59Speaker 03

  So once you're in there, you see people totally differently and it is a privilege for your business to do well and to grow. And you just, I think, continue to have more and more empathy for everyone. Because once you're doing it, you're like, this is not easy.

• 1:18:12Emma Grede?

  Danessa, tell me, what do you still aspire to?

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  I aspire to help people see their possibility.

• 1:18:20Emma Grede?

  Diana, what do you still aspire to do or to become?

• 1:18:24Speaker 03

  I aspire to help people find their inner child.

• 1:18:30Emma Grede?

  I love that answer.

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  I will take a different tack. I aspire to be the best version of myself.

• 1:18:37Emma Grede?

  Amazing. Ladies, thank you so much. I have, this has been a joy and a privilege. And I could say it all day, but we've got businesses to run, so you know, let's do it. Love you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

• 1:18:54Emma Grede?

  If you're loving this podcast, be sure to click follow on your favorite listening platform. While you're there, give us a review and a five-star rating and share an episode you loved with a friend. We'll be so grateful. Aspire with Emma Grede is presented by Odyssey. I'm your host, Emma Grede. Our executive producers are Ashley McShan, Derek Brown, and me. Executive producers from Odyssey are Asha Saluja and Leah Reese Dennis. Producer KK Sublime. Stephen Key is our senior producer. Sound design and engineering by Bill Schultz. Angela Peluso is our booker. Original music by Charles Black. Video production by Phil Sweetech and Carla Stelgardo. Social media by Olivia Homan, Catherine Bale.

• 1:19:36Emma Grede?

  Special thanks to Brittany Smith, Sydney Ford, My Teams at the Lead Company, and WME. Josefina Francis, Hillary Schaff, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchinson Rose, Tim Meeke, Evan Cox, Kurt Courtney, Andrew Steele, Sean Cherry, and Lauren Viera. If you have questions for me, you can DM me at aspirewithemmagreed. Grede is spelled G-R-E-D-E. That's aspire, A-S-P-I-R-E, with Emma Grede. Or you can submit a question to me on my website, emmagreed.me.