Wellness Mama: How This Blogger Built An 8-Figure Brand

Hey, Podcast, I hope you're doing well. I know it's been a crazy year. It has been for me too. And thankfully in the US things are starting to normalize a little bit with everything that's been going on. And I know a lot of you are thinking about what the world is going to look like moving forward and where you should take your business. Should you start a business, should you keep the one that you've got? We've got some free resources that we've been updating over@capitalism.com start and this is where all our free stuff that will help you clarify what your best next moves are. It will show you our strategy for building seven figure brands and it will give you a bunch of free resources that'll help clarify the next steps forward for you. So if you're starting to kind of come out of hiding a little bit and you're wondering what's next and you haven't gone through this yet, go over to capitalism.com start and go through this. It will give you the clarity that you need in order to make the next best decisions for you and your business.

Welcome everybody. And Seth and Katie, welcome to capitalism.com thanks for hanging out with me.

Thanks for having us.

So I am a small investor in wellness. When you decided to kick things off, I wanted to be a part of it because you built this amazing audience and then launched this product brand to this audience. And my first question is, I would like to hear, you've been in kind of the blogging and kind of the influencer side for a long time. Why did you decide? Katie, I'd like for you to take this one. Why did you decide to partner your existing audience with a physical products brand? What was the rationale behind that?

Great question and something I actually resisted for a really long time. Certainly at business events. People for years had said, you guys should do physical products, you should do physical products.

I never wanted to do physical products just for the sake of doing physical products. I understood absolutely on the business side how wonderful they can be and how you can build a brand through that. But I had seen a lot of people just white label products that already existed and sell them to their audience. And while I have nothing against that, that wasn't what I wanted to do with our audience with Wellness Mama. From the very beginning, our goal had always been to help moms directly to make their lives easier, to solve their problems and help them not be as overwhelmed, help them live healthier lives. And so to me, any extension needed to fit those same Criteria. And I had been creating DIY products in our home for years that started when I got really sick and had to be really careful of what I came in contact with. And over the years, had really honed these recipes to not just be safe and natural, but be more effective than a lot of the conventional alternatives. And eventually, through just hearing so much positive feedback from the audience, we realized we had created products that truly we could help improve people's lives by creating and getting out to them. And that's when it became exciting and worth it for us to do that, because certainly, as you know, a lot of work goes into creating products, a whole lot. And for instance, our toothpaste went through almost a hundred rounds of formulation before we got it exactly how we want it. And so, to me, it had to be completely authentic. And I had to know for sure that these products were going to make people's lives better and solve a problem for them before I was willing to partner the businesses and to go through all the effort to release the products.

So you came into this experience not having developed a physical product before, and then one of the first products out of the gate has a hundred different variations or iterations until it was to your standards. So what was that process like for you, as somebody who has been successful in business and now you're doing 100 iterations of a product? What was that like for you?

It was really exciting and fun. I had been through all the early iterations in my own kitchen even, and then had had conversations with formulators and chemists. Just make sure that the ratios were correct and that they were safe products before I published them on the website. And there are still DIY versions of all of these on WellnessWoman.com that people can use. So I never wanted to take away from the people who do want to make these things still on their own, but realizing a lot of people weren't willing to go through the effort to order the 18 different ingredients to make their own toothpaste, but they were interested in using a toothpaste that was natural and it had the right minerals for their teeth. And so at that point, working when we. When we formulate or founded Wellness, working with chemists and manufacturers to even further hone in that recipe, make sure that the PH was perfect, to make sure that the mineral levels were perfect, that the taste wasn't too strong or too soft, and just all that goes into that. I have so much respect for companies now seeing the back end of this process, but it's been really fun. I've loved the learning experience of it.

Seth, would you tell me a little bit about the strategy behind launching this business to the audience and getting it to the point where it was self sustaining and not dependent upon the audience that was already there, but to be its own company. There's kind of a dance there of using the audience that's already built intrinsically without using that as this sponge that you're squeezing all of the energy out of, sort of. Would you walk me through how you prepped the audience for launch and how you manage that dance between still being cool in front of your audience but still wanting to smash it out of the gate?

Sure, yeah, totally. I mean, just to be transparent, I think we're still trying to find that balance and I think that's always a challenge when you're running multiple companies simultaneously and just trying to have that balance there. So you're not just doing promote, promote, promote as opposed to just creating content and things like that. So before launch. So we officially launched January 6th of this year of 2020 and so before that, so the end of last year, we started seeding our list, seeding our audience and just letting them know that something was coming, that we would use the hashtag for the company name Wellness and so just kind of would just let them know that there was something in the work, something was coming, and then ask questions, hey, what type of products would you like to see? And just getting feedback and things like that, that to get just feedback and make sure that we're kind of on the right path and everything there. And then when we launched, we sent out an initial email, hey, here it is, here's the thing, go check it out. And so we just had a whole process to go about doing that to let them know and encourage them to go check out the website and then check out the products. And we had reviews and we had people test them out and got independent reviews before we launched and everything. So kind of build up some of that, some of that quality score for it. So that's kind of the process that we followed the first part of the launch in the first quarter and everything. And then from there we've been running paid ads, social media wise and Google and all of that to try to help bring in new customers. Because as you're well aware, you can only squeeze so much juice out of the current audience that you have or your list. You got to go out and find new customers and a new audience to help expand that. Because other than people who are already familiar with Wellness Mama and have been following, following the website or listening to the podcast for years, if they're not familiar with it, then we want to get in front of as many new eyeballs as possible. And then we also created an affiliate program. So for other influencers or other people who have a platform where they can promote the product, the products and make some money there as well. So that's kind of it in a very quick nutshell.

So you started by seating the audience with some reviews and with some, some buyers from the audience. And then you did your formal launch to the audience by building up goodwill and buzz and getting them ready to buy. And after it was released, then you turned over to cold traffic and advertising in order to keep that going.

Correct.

So what about now? How are you using the audience? Or have you kind of separated them into their own companies? Where does the audience play a role now?

Yeah, that's a really good question. So yeah, they're completely separate companies and separate lists and everything. So we have the normal things on the wellness website. So like an email pop up and we experimented with different types as far as to get free content or a chance to win a year supply of toothpaste or shampoo or what have you to just get our organic email list there. And then we have our customer list as well. So whenever someone purchases, they go segmented out into a separate list within our email provider. And so on the wellness mama side, we still email once every couple weeks just about the products or if there's a sale going or something new, a new product is launched. So we'll mention that kind of in passing and sometimes we'll do like a dedicated email and we're also linking to products in our articles or in podcasts where it makes sense to where it's a good fit. But on the wellness side, we're also doing SMS marketing. So for those people who have opted in for that. So if there's a sale going or a new product or it's kind of just like a, hey, fall is coming up. So you know, you may want to try this shampoo instead of the other one or you know, something like that. And so just trying to be creative with our strategy there and then just normal email marketing and then tweaking like our ads and things as well. So they are segmented out, but there is a little bit of overlap also. And just realizing that the, the wellness model platform, I mean we've been running that since 2009 really. So you know, there's like 11 years of audience build up and everything. And so it's a slower process to grow a product company and something when it's as new as it is.

Yeah. I guess I should have, in retrospect, started with some context around the fact that, Katie, you are kind of responsible for putting a few businesses on the map as a result of talking about them. You're almost like the Oprah of.

Your market, where when you talk about something, it has literally built companies. So would you talk. And that's what attracted me as an investor. I know if you could do that for other companies, if it's under the Wellness Mama brand or a reflection of that, Well, I mean, that's Oprah launching her own magazine. So, Katie, would you talk a little bit about what has happened when you've talked about businesses in the past? And then I want to ask you a little bit about how you've maintained that connection with your audience.

Absolutely. And to build on what Seth said, I think the focus with Wellness Mama has always been education. And we have the community that's grown at Wellness Mama has now far surpassed what it originally was. And I'm so grateful for those members who are so well educated and so very much on board with the mission of creating healthier lives for our families. I think that is the bottom line is that is the reason I'm able to help launch businesses and help grow our own is that there's this incredible community of millions of moms who are helping advance that mission. And I've always said from the beginning, one of my core principles with Wellness Mama is that moms are the most powerful force on the planet. We're also often the busiest and most stressed. But I think if you can make moms lives easier, that has ripple effects immediately into the family and into society. And so I think also just is the nature of the fact that we have an incredible community. I don't want to take all the credit for that. But one of the biggest joys of this last over a decade of growing Wellness Mama has been getting to help other businesses that have worthwhile, incredible products that improve people's lives, help connect those businesses with the customers who need them. And this is something that we've both learned from over the last 10 years and gotten to now invest and advise companies as well. But we've been able to see this everything from personal care products companies before wellness to there's been mattress companies, cookware across the board. We've even partnered and done some of our own products on Amazon at this point. But just being able to, to me, it always goes back to the education. So I would probably actually be a relatively terrible salesperson. But I love explaining and educating. And one of my favorite things is to take a lot of research and data and complex topics and distill it down into simple, easy to understand action steps. Because my theory is moms don't have time to read PubMed, but they want to know what is the thing I can do that makes my life easier. So that's always been my favorite thing to do with Wellness Mama and now getting to do that through educating about other businesses or now with wellness, educating about the importance of personal care products and what we put on our body and how that transfers through our skin and enters our bloodstream. And so we've taken that idea from Wellness Mama, what we've done for over a decade there and are also incorporating that with wellness. The idea we're not just only trying to sell a product, we're also educating why, especially if you're pregnant or nursing, you want to be careful what goes into your bloodstream through being put on your skin or in your mouth or, you know, if your hair is dry and falling out. It might also be because you need to address something internally. But we're going to also put minerals and vitamins in the shampoo to help address that from the outside in. So we've educated them so well and it's been fun to watch because they, our audiences ask clarifying questions on ingredients and they're so well educated sometimes that we get tough questions to field and I love it.

So you mentioned a couple of times that you have this community of millions of moms. When you say community, does that mean people are following you on a specific platform or does that mean in a Facebook group, how are you actually communicating with that community?

It's relatively multifaceted. There certainly is a large audience on all the different social media platforms other than TikTok. I haven't gotten brave enough to dance on video yet, but other than that one, we have a pretty big audience on all the social platforms and then an email list where we stay regularly in contact with the community twice a week. And I regularly ask them to respond to those emails and give feedback or I'll ask questions and I ask them, just hit reply and let me know. And I actually read through all of those replies because it's really important to feel that touch point with the community and to know the audience. That's something that I think was really pivotal to growing the community in the first place was early on, I answered every single comment, email question and social post directly myself. And it's gotten to the point where I can't physically do that anymore, but I still try to keep the pulse as much as possible. And I think that's one of the things that has set us apart over the years, is in those early years, I actually knew the names of our first several hundred regular readers and I knew their kids names and I knew the health problems they were working through and I cared. And that has stayed. That's been a constant throughout the growth. Even though I don't necessarily know everyone's kids names anymore, I still deeply care about everyone in our audience and them being able to improve their family's lives. I think that comes across even in writing.

And just so for my own understanding, am I right that the community is around the podcast, the blog and email? Would be fair to say those are kind of the three primary channels.

Yeah, those are the. The primary ones, like I said, emails twice a week. That we have a really good touch point there. And the podcast is our fastest growing segment. It's not quite at the level of the blog yet, but it's growing pretty quickly. And that's been also a really fun journey to get to connect with so many amazing guests like you recently on the podcast and to grow the community there. People who would rather listen sometimes than read.

Just to add on to that as well real quick, I'd say that we also have a Facebook group that's a very carefully curated group that, and that's really an interactive community of moms where they go and ask each other questions and look for advice and share resources and things like that. And so that's also been really good as far as to help integrate them more together and not just like one to one, like where they're asking Katie a question and hoping for a response, whether that's via email or social media or blog comment or something like that, but where they can interact together.

And Seth, would you walk me through a little bit about the strategic side of building and engaging that audience? Obviously you're bringing up Facebook being a part of connecting people and engaging, but would you walk me through even going back several years when Wellness Mama was still scaling or was still growing or making a splash on the scene, what you did strategically in order to stand out in that audience and start to become, I hate that word, influencer, but start to become somebody who is recognized in the space?

Yeah. And I think Katie alluded to it already, but really caring more than anyone else because there was some. We were, you know, in a sense we were in the right place at the right time when natural health was really starting to take off and people started questioning the narrative or those traditional things when it came to their own health. And instead of just listening to what the doctor said, say, hey, does this actually work? Let me listen to my own body and things like that. And so actually caring more than all the other sites out there and all those other people who maybe they were just in it for the money or just in it for other reasons, fame, etc. But wellness started. It was a hobby that turned into a business. It was because it was a personal journey that Katie was on, trying to figure out her own health and for the health of our family and just to be as healthy as possible and be better people and all of that. And so it was a sounding board for herself as she was studying and reading and learning and just putting her own experiences there. And we were. When it started, we were dead broke, you know, living on 30,000 a year or something. And so just there was all the DIY recipes that she was creating because it was less expensive and also healthier, too, to an extent. So you have that aspect. And so when people would leave a comment or respond to an email or something, just taking that time and the initiative to actually reply and care, and I think that that's something that's very hard to replicate. People can look at strategies and things that you're doing, but that's the one thing that's very hard to imitate unless you actually give a damn more than anyone else and really. And just really care.

Well, I think it is so tempting to look at someone who has achieved a certain level of a following or fame or financial success or all three of those, and to reverse engineer how they got there. But in reality, it's very difficult to replicate or strategize the just giving to your audience of giving to that group of people. And that's hard to strategize and to manipulate, but it also seems to be the thing that works when you just care about people. People tend to be drawn to that. And that also gives you leverage in the form of attention for launching the next podcast or the next toothpaste. So, you know, selfishly, I still. There's still part of me that's like, what we did was this, this and this. But when it's just caring, nobody can copy you. And it seems to scale almost faster than when you're following a very rigid strategy. Would you agree with that, or am I missing a piece of.

Yeah, no, definitely. And I think there's the authenticity to it as well. And as an. As an example. So over the years, we promoted different products as an affiliate, and that was our primary revenue strategy for the first, I don't know, eight, seven, eight years of the website. But Katie's standards were so high that we would. She would review everything and make sure. And do all the research and the testing to make sure that no matter what the product was, whether that was a mattress or cookware or a food item or an ingredient or something, that no matter what it. That it would meet her quality standards. And if the company that wanted to work with us, either as an affiliate or a sponsor or something like that, if their products or services did not meet those standards of quality, then we wouldn't work with them, even though we can make a lot more money. And so because of that, financially, it might not be the best decision in the short term, for sure, but in the long term, it creates greater authority, transparency, and authenticity with the audience because people do business with those that they know like and trust. And building up that trust factor was extremely important. Just knowing that we're not going to compromise on those principles.

And we always held a pretty firm line, too, to that note, of not accepting free products. Not. And my thing was I wanted to be able to always be an unbiased reviewer, and I didn't. So people are wanting to get into this to be it, to use your word, influencer and get free stuff. That was never the goal and that was never something we actually allowed. I wanted to actually pay for the things myself and make sure that they had the value of what they cost before I would share them with the audience. I don't take lightly that time is our most valuable resource. So when someone reads a blog post or listen to a podcast, they are truly giving me the most valuable thing they have. And I don't ever want to take that for granted or take it lightly. So to me, it was absolutely important to me to do due diligence so that anything I wrote, I was certain to the most degree that I could be that it was the best information. Any product I would link to, I would make sure to the degree that I could be, that it was the best product option. And even things like offering several options for any particular product rather than just having one that we're getting paid to promote. I think things like that have helped the audience continue to feel like there's that relationship and that trust there. And like I said, there's many things we could have done that probably would have made a lot more money. But to us, it was more important to maintain the trust and authenticity with the audience. And also, he didn't delve into it as much as or take credit for it, but he had a background in SEO and web design. So early on, Wellness Mama was the testing ground for what he was doing with that. And obviously it worked pretty well, and we were able to get a lot of organic search traffic over the years. I think that also partially goes back to. He explained to me early on, you know, you want to be the answer to a question that someone's typing into Google. So I always tried to think when I was writing as a mom, if I was trying to solve this problem, what would I type into Google to find the answer to this problem and then answer that question for moms? Because there's dozens of sites out there answering those questions from a doctor's perspective or from another perspective. And my thing was always laser focused. I care about the moms, so I wanted to answer every question for the moms. I wanted to create products for the moms. The podcast, we cover a lot of topics, like with you covered business. But from a mom's perspective, how can this help families? And I think that also has really helped over the years because when people find the community, they maybe feel like they found a home a little bit. And that was all really important to me, that if they land on the site, they feel like, okay, these are my people. I found my place. I want them to always kind of feel that vibe when they get there.

When you have gone all in on the customer like that, you have that intrinsic trust that is the greatest asset to the business. And so when you say we could have made more money, I hear more money in the short term. But in the long term, building up the greatest asset is that trust that.

You have with your audience.

I'm curious how that impacted the launch of Wellness when you went to market. So most people, when they're starting a brand, come out of the gates and then are, like, kind of climbing for every review running, they're trying to break even on ad spend. But you have this loyal, trusting audience from the get go. How did that impact sales and how did it impact to the momentum of the business, if at all?

Even with Wellness, I was 100% excited to share these products because I believe in them. And we had spent so much time making sure they were as perfect as they absolutely could be. But I still absolutely wanted to maintain that. We kept that relationship with the audience. And Wellness Mama is so based on the education side and has never been pushy or salesy, so we kept that. And if everything that came from Wellness Mama, I focused really heavily on educating and talking about why the particular ingredients are in it, why we don't use the things that we don't use, and even sharing some of our company story. We're in the process of getting B Corp certified. We found it as a B Corp and then we're now getting the certification for that. We're going through the extra process of getting EWG verified and Leaping Bunny. I wanted to have that same level of transparency and authenticity with wellness that we had always had with Wellness Mama. And from there it actually became a pretty simple springboard to just continue educating and people became naturally interested in it from there. So like Seth said, we do mention wellness relatively often in Wellness Mama Communications, but it's not always just from a buy this perspective. It's an education perspective. So even if they don't need the product or buy the product right now, hopefully they still learn something or there's something that's made their lives better. But to your point, we absolutely did have an advantage there that we had people who are willing to write reviews and try the products and loyal readers that we could send early products to and get their feedback, make sure that we had our messaging dialed in and our products dialed in. That definitely did help in the beginning. It's also been really fun to learn the paid media world and these new areas we had never really experienced with just focusing on organic traffic and get to make sure that the value was still able to be communicated to someone who wasn't yet part of the audience. And that was a great learning experience because the Wellness mom audience I know how to talk to and they already are kind of familiar with the brand. And it was a very easy segue into that. And with cold traffic, it was really fun to get to learn how to be much more concise and to get across that benefit immediately so that someone in just scrolling through social media could understand how this could help make their life better.

Seth, you made a decision as a company to partner with investors like me to fund the operations. In the beginning part of the business, when you've got the built in audience and you have the business that's already cash flowing, what was the thought process behind going out to investors and outside capital at the beginning of a business? What made you decide to go that route?

So that was a really tough decision actually because we didn't need the money to launch the company. It was Very much a strategic decision based on the investment model that we've used over the years when we've decided to work with other companies as investors and advisors. So we've worked with an investment syndicate over the years with a mutual friend of ours, John Durant, who runs Wild Ventures. And so he was an early influencer kind of in the natural health and wellness space in the paleo community for a long time. So we've been longtime friends. And so he had partnered with a lot of different companies, acting as an advisor and bringing on other people as investors and advisors for them so that they could help move the needle. Because while all of these companies they had great products, great services, et cetera. But when you get like minded people to come on board who have an audience, they can really help push sales a lot quicker. And so we wanted to follow that same strategy, just realizing that even though we didn't need to take on any investment capital, we could self fund it ourselves and that would be fine to do. And then we own and control 100%, we can go faster and further with other people because they all brought a strategic advantage, whether that's someone who understands different markets, you know, like yourself or other people, maybe they have a big audience, they can help grow traffic, grow sales more. So everyone that we brought in, it was very strategic, just based on what they're bringing to the table, how they can help it grow. And also people that we liked, because we didn't just open it up and say, hey, anybody that wants to be involved, come on board. It was more of like an invite basis because people we liked and trusted and people that we want to work with for the long term. Because when you're taking on money, I mean, I feel indebted to those people because we accepted their hard earned cash and there's an expectation that the company's going to grow and they're going to get paid back. So it also kind of ties us into it more and for the longer term so that we're in it for the long haul and try to build it up and grow the best possible thing that we can.

What's interesting about that is from that perspective, you've almost got a built in advisory board who have paid you rather than the opposite. Of course you're going to pay them more back later. But this is a board that when, I mean, if you call me, I answer the phone, right? Because we're in this together. And what's beautiful about that is you've kind of combined people who have advisory experience or an expertise, some people with audiences and they're the funding behind all of that. And so you kind of get a three for.

In that approach. And I'm curious if that experience has gone as you expected it to.

Yeah, like Seth said, we've seen this now from a lot of different angles. And one of our first experiences actually our first investment ever was in Thrive Market in their pre seed round. They had been turned down by multiple large feces for their first round and they went to investors directly to influencers, to use that word again, people with platforms realizing that would be a way they could grow early on. And it's been an absolute joy to get to work with companies like this and see Thrive market and what they've built over the years. For me that was I saw there's a need for this in the market. A company like this could really help moms and can reduce prices. I can see the advantage of this. And they were getting turned down by traditional investors and we were able to help them grow in those early phases and now they've gotten so big and it continue to grow and do wonderful. But that was our entry to investing. And on one hand when you start off with a thrive market, any investment after that is you're going to judge it by that bar. But we've gotten to help some of these other companies over the year, I think 20 now total. And the beauty of it to your point is we've made friendships with so many of these other business owners. I'm a big believer that like I think you would agree that a well run business is a tremendous vehicle for change. And I tell this to the wellness trauma audience as well. You know, we should all be choosing sustainable eco friendly options and healthy options in our own homes. That's vitally important. But when a massive company decides to make those same choices at scale or even a mid sized company, it has a dramatic instant impact on the entire industry. So when people get upset that you know, like big companies are acquiring natural brands, I'm like no, as long as they're not changing those products. This is incredible. It's a tremendous change in the industry overnight. And we're seeing organic clean options be prioritized by massive industry. That's how we're going to get things to change. We need both. It's not a we need to make good decisions at home or just big companies. Do we need both? And so that's been the investment side has been a way that we've been able to see that happen across industry and to your point. It does. We've developed a network of incredible friends and advisors, and we all get to help each other grow businesses that are improving the industry and truly changing the landscape of this. The original reason I got into Wellness Mama was reading the statistic that for the first time in two centuries, the current generation of American children will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. And that was what I set out to change. And I have hope now when I see these amazing moms, these millions of moms making changes at home, and then I see these incredible companies just kicking ass and doing it at scale, that we actually are going to change that statistic.

You know, our mutual friend Mark Sisson got some flack for the company that acquired Primal Kitchen. It's Heinz. But we all look at that and say, well, Mark has influenced the company with the scale of Heinz so much that customers are now demanding healthier products more than they're demanding the unhealthy products. This is something to be celebrated. We have now changed the big industries. Like, we won. We did it.

We're winning times.

And General Mills now acknowledge organic is important and sourcing matters. This is great.

Exactly. So, Katie, when you went to launch and you've got all these other influencers that have invested or been a part of your journey, did they play a role in the launch process? Did they help at all in getting the word out and getting that initial liftoff that you needed to get the company off the ground?

Not, not directly in the beginning. They're actually, we're in that phase now because they're all friends and business partners in other areas as well. It was really important to me to get the messaging dialed down and to know our numbers and to be able to give them really solid conversion rates before they promote it. I wanted it to be an absolute win for everybody involved. It's an often overused quote in business that a rising tide floats all boats. But I feel like this is absolutely one of those situations where as wellness grows, it gets to benefit all of our friends. But I wanted to make sure when they started promoting that it was absolutely going to be a home run for them. So we use those first few months to test, even just with segments of the Wellness Mama list at first, to make sure that we had really dialed in all of our metrics before asking investors to promote, just so that it would be the biggest benefit for them when they did start promoting. And now it's really fun to get to work with them and see once we've got double digit conversion rates to be able to take it to them and share.

Fantastic. Well said, Seth. I was really impressed with something that the company did in the very early stages, which was before I even knew about the company. You had some team members lined up. You had. And I don't know how you structured that or how you pulled that off, but you had some people on the team that were already in charge of operations and they came from companies that you wanted to be like. So would you tell me a little bit about the backstory about bringing in exciting team members who could help grow the business even before the company had publicly launched?

Yeah. So last year, I guess when we realized we were going to start the company, we were in the process of working on the formulations and we were working with an agency for the branding and just getting all the messaging and some of that stuff set into place. And we also began looking for a director of operations, a coo, and we interviewed quite a few people. We worked with a headhunter to try to find someone. Realizing that while that is something that Katie and I could do, we didn't necessarily want another job considering all the other businesses that we're already involved with and running. And we also have six children and so that takes up a lot of time. So yeah, while we could do it, just because you can do something doesn't mean that you necessarily should. And realizing that it would be beneficial to have someone to handle the day to day operations for the company. So we ended up hiring Emily Goo, who was formerly at Native Deodorant. And so they had sold to Proctor and Gamble the year prior, I believe, or six, eight months before that. And so she was ready to move on to the next thing. She was the first hire at Native and so she wanted kind of do the next thing in her career and she has been amazing. She handles the day to day operations for the company. Already had a lot of contacts within manufacturing and supply chain and distribution and all of that. So that sped up the process immensely. So we brought her in to handle all the day to day and that was a very, very important hire for us.

And Seth, am I right that it's a virtual company, that she doesn't live in the same area as you? She's virtual.

Correct. That's kind of been a core business principle that we've had from the very beginning, both on the Wellness Mama side and all the businesses that we've started or been involved with over the years is that. But one of the core principles that we've had and Katie has really pushed for this Is being able to hire moms. So giving them freedom, like if they're staying at home with the kids and no longer like working in an office or a traditional career path in that sense where they can do something from home so they can have that career still but do something that matters both in business, in working, but also in raising their children. Because that's by far the most important career that someone can have. But so there's the ability to do both. So we really have always liked the idea of a distributed company where and in this modern age of everything is online. So we have that capability now. We don't all have to be in the same location, same office. So yeah, so everyone has been distributed. And while there has been at times we've had employees who are in the same location as us, it's never been a requirement at all.

But with the hiring of a number two or like somebody who's in charge of operations, Seth, that that's going to require a tremendous amount of trust that that person is going to take care of your baby. And as far as I know, that's not something that you had hired for in the past of somebody who was the primary person in charge of the business operations on a new venture. I mean that requires you to completely let go of so much of the operations which you hadn't done before. So Seth, tell me about that process of nominating this person who is going to run the business when you hadn't done that before.

Yeah, that was definitely a challenge at first. I think we interviewed maybe 20 people or more and we went back and forth on a lot of them and just process of elimination. Hey, we like these qualities about this person. We don't necessarily like those or these are ideal or that isn't. And it was just a process of elimination.

But did you know that you were going to go into it knowing that this person was going to run everything or did you learn to trust over time?

We went into the hiring process realizing that it was someone who was going to handle all the day to day operations. We were going to hand over all of that. And while we would be very much involved, I mean Katie and I are both in Slack every single day communicating with our team and answering questions and taking charge with, with leading the vision and things like that. But as far as the actual minute details of all the operations and everything, we went into it realizing that we needed to hire for that position specifically and that that would entail quite a bit of trust and starting a new venture. I think that it might Be a little bit easier as opposed to when you've been running something yourself for so long that it's. It has been, you know, the baby and that like that would be much harder to do for Wellness Mama. I think then just because it started as a hobby and just grew over the years and trying to give up that kind of control I think would be harder than if you're starting something entirely from scratch and going into with the expectation that this person is going to be running the day to day operations.

Katie, would you comment on this as well? Because you're the face of the brand. So what was this experience like for you?

Yeah. To build on what Seth said. I think all the lessons learned in the years of Wellness Mama really helped us have that comfort level with wellness and with hiring someone. And when I say that it's not because we did things the right way, I'll be the first to own that. It took me a lot of years of trying the wrong way of things with building a team and building a culture before we really got that dialed down. And the lessons we learned from that over the years were hire for Culture First. Like Seth alluded to, we inadvertently ended up hiring almost all moms because that's who ends up being the best culture fit. And we love that even in customer service or even in our director of operations for wellness.

That voice comes through and the culture comes through and that hopefully that feeling of deep caring comes through at every level. So we learned over time to hire for Culture First. That was something also, even with the new company, we were very, very careful to make sure that who we brought on was very aligned with the mission and that our values were aligned for the long term with obviously wanting to create a highly profitable company, but also like we already talked about, to change an industry and to improve the world. And she very much shared those concerns. She shares the environmental concerns and aspects personal care. She understands and cares about the person, the physical and health implications of the products we create. We work with. Even on our sourcing side from our even ingredient sourcing, we're working with family owned companies and women owned companies. So she's very aligned with our values in that. The other lesson I learned extremely hard way with Wellness Mama was to let employees be autonomous and let them be brilliant at what they do and get out of their way. And that lesson took me years. I went through a solid couple years of hiring people and not letting them do anything because I was being a control freak and thought I could do it better. And what I realized was While I could, in theory, probably balance all of those things to some degree, the best of anyone trying to do all of them at once, because I was the face of it and I had all those years of experience, I could not be the best at every single thing that needed to happen in the company. And I had to get my ego out of the way to realize I'm actually slowing down the company and slowing down the number of people we can help by trying to control every variable. So what are the things that I can do? What's the 80, 20 that I can do that most help us reach these moms and most help us improve life for these moms? And then what are the things that there's actually, if I let my ego get out of the way, things that other people can do better? Because when you frame it like that of how can we reach more people, how can we change more lives? If I'm the bottleneck, I'm actually literally keeping us from helping people. So when I was able to learn that shift, it was much easier to transition. And in doing so, we've built an incredible team with Wellness Mama. They all have their own kind of silo that they control, and they do have autonomy over it. And because we've built this mission and this culture, they care and are trying to move the mission forward as well. So I don't think they even feel like an employee necessarily working for us. They feel like part of a team working toward a common goal. And that culture shift was so important. So when we started building a team for wellness, even though it's still very small, we kept those same core ideas of building for culture first and letting our employees have ownership of the thing that they're trying to move forward so that they can have that alignment and care as well.

Well said. What I was realizing as you were saying that was the importance of finding that culture fit. I used to think was about knowing and understanding the other person. But something about the way that you phrased that knowing your values and what you wanted to do in the world, it actually requires you knowing yourself, your own business, and your own brand and mission more than it requires you knowing this other person. It requires you to be so committed to the change that you're trying to create rather than finding the, quote, right person. The right person is who is the best fit for what it is that you are trying to accomplish. And most entrepreneurs don't know that. Most entrepreneurs are pursuing the results rather than trying to create some change. And that makes it difficult for them to hire and for them to do things that are in alignment with the things that they want to do. Katie, when you were going through that two year process of adjusting, I'm curious if that came up for you of.

That developing a new sense of self awareness and company awareness that allowed you to manage all these moving parts. That's a personal development process as much as it is of learning to hire. So what came up for you during that process?

Absolutely. I think business and parenting are great teachers and they're great mirrors back to you, I think, as business owners. And I can't not ever mention the parenting side as well. I think there's a lot of correlations there. But in both cases, I think when there's a recurring issue, we actually have to assume it's probably a management problem and look at ourselves first. And that was certainly my lesson over those couple of years. Not to mention, the only person I actually can have any direct influence over and immediately affect is myself. So whenever there was something that there was a friction point or things weren't as efficient as possible, I had to learn. And it wasn't always a fun lesson, but like, what am I doing that actually could be perpetuating this problem? Or what can I either add or take away that can help us work through this? Assuming that I'm not going to try to control the other person. I've hired them because they're competent, they're aligned with our mission. What can I do that's going to improve this situation? And I think a lot of leadership is maintaining that culture and directing the culture, but also getting out of the way, like I mentioned, a little bit and making sure that everybody involved feels like part of the team. And it's been. I mentioned the parenting connection. I feel like that's the same thing with the family, especially as the kids start to get older. It's not that I'm trying to get the kids to do things in the house or they're helping me or they're doing me a favor by being part of the team. No, we're all a common team moving toward a common goal. We have a family mission statement as well. Just like in Wellness Mama and Wellness, we have a mission statement. We're all aligned on that. We're moving toward a goal. So these employees aren't helping me. They're not just helping me be the face of the brand. They are helping advance this mission that we all share that's going to make the world better. And I think that mindset shift, it does help take the ego out of the way it doesn't make it easy or overnight, especially if you're transitioning into that as a business owner. And candidly, I think I went through some struggles and occasionally still do a little bit with being the face of the brand, but having let go of control of different aspects of it to someone else who's better at managing that, but realizing I'm still the outward face of it. And I think that's another valuable leadership lesson, which is that you can outsource tasks and activities, but as a leader, you never outsource responsibility. So as the person directing this culture, in this team, if they mess up, it's still on me. I'm still going to take responsibility, I'm still going to own that, we're still going to fix it and move forward. But the blame stops and ends with me. And I'm still responsible for this culture and this mission. So I can't hand that off to them, but they can help with the mission and moving things forward. And that did like to your point, it was a tremendous amount and still is. As business owners, I think we're always in that journey of personal development and self awareness. And often when we start to see the same recurring problem, it's a good indication that maybe there's something inside that I need to be working on so that I can be a more effective guide in helping us advance this mission.

Again. Well said. Seth. I want to wrap by highlighting something that you said and, and capture part of your mindset of how this, of how you're planning to move forward. Because you said at the beginning of this conversation that Wellness Mama started as a hobby that became a business and it's grown to this thing where you're now impacting companies, you're impacting millions of moms, and now you have the physical product brand as an extension of this. And it's one thing to launch a small online brand, and it's another to build a real business and a real brand that creates sustainable change. And it's a different type of thinking to be building that kind of a business than a small little thing that you run on the side. And so, Seth, you have gone through this kind of whole transformation of you've got the hobby and you're an SEO to running a large audience, to building the infrastructure for something that could be an international.

Well recognized company that might get acquired by a large entity at some point. So tell me about how you make that pivot from this small thing that you're launching to a real business that has real legs and can scale.

Yeah, that's a great question. And I think we are learning more of that every day as far as the steps that we're going to take because especially in 2020, how everything is changing so rapidly and we don't know what level Jumanji is going to happen next.

You know. But you know, before launch we had the plan in place. Okay? We're going to launch to our audience first, then we're going to work on paid traffic, then we're going to have affiliates, then we're going to launch in thrive market, then we're going to launch on Amazon and we're going to grow the entire online marketing side and direct to consumer side and and grow that as much as we can and just organically and through paid traffic as possible. And then eventually look at retail. But we don't want to grow so fast that we just have to keep either taking on more cash because it gets so capital intensive or that infrastructurally we don't have it in place to do. Because growth that happens too quickly can destroy a company just as much as no sales or no growth.

So we have to be cognizant of that and have that proper balance. Because I would rather grow slower but have the infrastructure in place and set those foundational pieces there so that long term we're going to be able to grow bigger and better and faster. So as part of that we have a five year plan in place as far as making sure all those steps are in alignment and that we're growing at a steady, steady pace so that it's consistent and not just seeing spikes and dips and things like that.

Well, I want the two of you to know, I know you inspire millions of moms. You also inspire me. So I just love this story of the development of this company. And I think you guys have just done it right. And so you inspire not just moms, but entrepreneurs all over the world. And I just love that you maintain this commitment to the change that you want to create. I think you are a model example of what our jobs are as entrepreneurs. I'm honored to be a part of Wellnest. Thanks so much to the two of you for hanging out with me.

Thanks Ryan. It's been fun.

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