Who, What, Wix Episode 6: From Beliefs to Business

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From Wix.com, this is who what Wix. Welcome, everybody, to who what wix? I'm your co host, Justin. I'm sitting next to.

It's Yael in the studio today.

On the episode, we're talking, talking about sort of a modern, modern concept. I think we brought this up in a podcast in 1970. If they existed, this might be. This might not really make sense. But today, you can take your lifestyle and you can turn that lifestyle into a business. You've seen it on Instagram, you've seen it on Facebook, you've seen it on blogs, and it's a trend that is growing and growing and growing.

Yeah, absolutely. Especially if you look at things like the fashion world. A lot of those people are making full, very successful careers out of their lifestyle brand. They don't need a product to sell or a service to provide. They're just showcasing their own unique style and concept and philosophy and made a business.

Our guest today, her name is Zoe Flammenbaum. She lives here in Tel Aviv, and she's doing exactly that. She believes in female empowerment. She believes in community. She believes in sunshine and smiles, and she'll tell you tons about that. But she's managed to take all of her personal ideas, these philosophies that sort of define her life, and she's turned it into a business in Tel Aviv. It's called School of Shine. And in just a second, we're gonna hear all about it.

But before we start off today's episode, we want to give you a little reminder of how you can make our day, which is to subscribe to our channels. So if you're listening to the podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher, click that little button that says subscribe. If you have another way of listening, go for it. But make sure to go to www.whoatwicks.com and subscribe to our newsletter so that we know you're getting every episode straight to your inbox. And last but not least, we really want to hear from you. I mean, we read this stuff, so go and write us a review. We'll take the time to read, and we love getting your feedback.

And now, what you've all been waiting for, obviously, the tip of the day.

When you start building a business, one really important thing you don't want to overlook is creating your logo. Your logo is the visual cornerstone of your brand. Think about brands like Target or Nike. The second I say their name, probably their logo is popping into your head. So when you start your passion project turning it into a business, don't skip over that important step. And also, not to worry, you don't need a designer just to make a logo. Head over to Wix.com, check, check out our blog and see how to create your own logo and free places online that can help you out.

So let's welcome to who. What Wicks? Zoe Flammenbaum. How are you, Zoe?

Hey, guys.

Hey.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Sure. So I'm Zoe. I'm originally from New Jersey. My background is in online marketing. So I definitely understand where you guys are coming from. But like many other people in Tel Aviv, I see opportunity everywhere and I'm really trying to start my own passion project and turn it into my life. So that's why I'm here today.

Perfect sounds right to me. You sound like the perfect who.

What?

Wicks. Guest.

No, that's right.

So to start things off, we're going to deliver to you a few rapid fire questions. For each question, you have five seconds to answer. Are you ready?

Oh, God.

No filter. No filter.

Your business earns its first million dollars. What do you buy?

An rv.

Hey, the last time you were truly

embarrassed yesterday when you were 10, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A waitress.

What is your workday? Vice?

20 minute naps.

That sounds like a great plan.

Okay.

And last but not least, your newspaper obituary includes only five words. What are they?

Spread positive energy all day.

Boom.

Yes.

Have you written your obituary before? You were a little bit too ready for that one. Cool. All right, so let's get into it. Tell us a little bit about School of Shine.

So School of Shine is a community for women and a wellness resource all about health and happiness. It's based on the signs of happiness. So everything, everything we do has practicality to it as well as some passion involved. And we do different events and workshops and social stuff. And we planned our first festival in Tel Aviv this past March. And we're basically just a community for women who is open and warm and positive and ready to change the world.

Sounds really exciting.

Cool.

What is your favorite recent School of Shine event and what made it a success offline?

My favorite School of Shine event is actually more of a community wide event, which was the eye contact experience we did last month. And basically from simply creating this Facebook event and inviting 50 friends, that next day that 50 turned into 100, which turned into 500, which turned into 5,000. And wait, why do you think it spread that fast? I mean, there's obviously something. It's simple. It's a simple, you know, thought eye contact, just share one moment of eye contact with a stranger. That's the only thing that was really written within the description. And so, you know, everyone kind of just invited their friends and there's obviously a need for it in our community because everyone as connected as we are, we are also so disconnected from, you know, the people walking next to us every day. So from that, you know, from that quick viral invitation that kind of spread around the community about, you know, 300 people showed up on the day and stayed for hours just to simply share a moment of eye contact with strangers.

Wow. So the event itself was, it was just sort of like a pop up event. Like you invited people to come and, and share a moment of eye contact.

Exactly.

Wow. You've also done some yoga events, correct?

Yeah, actually our first event ever was like a pop up yoga experience and we just got a yoga teacher, we laid out about 20 mats on the middle of Ben Gurion Boulevard and we just asked people to, or invited people to stop by for a moment of yoga. It was really awesome experience.

But at the same time you're also creating an online community. So you're sort of trading between the real world and the Internet world online with your website and your socials, what kind of interaction goes into those platforms?

Online is a very important tool to use. So you know, from the Facebook group, which is getting more active every day, to simply the Facebook page, Instagram, spreading that positive energy and basically just sharing the messages for the community that I want to build and I believe needs to exist and a society that needs to exist, especially in Tel Aviv. Facebook is a really huge factor in finding what to do. You can go on one day and go through the list of events. So that's probably one of the most important tools that I use to reach the community online, to take them offline.

Because there's so many events happening in a major city like this all the time. How do you catch people's eye on Facebook, specifically by creating a Facebook event that makes your work stand out.

I would say pretty pictures, powerful words and really just allowing for a sense of curiosity. So for every event that I do, we don't necessarily say exactly what is going to happen.

You don't give it all away.

Exactly. But we give a hint of what is going to happen and that pulls in people's curiosity. And no one ever knows exactly what they're getting into when they're coming to a school of shocking. But they always come, they always enjoy, and there's so much positive energy and feedback and good vibes that they always come back.

So let's go back to the beginning a little bit. What inspired you to start School of Shine and when did you start?

It started, I guess officially I launched my website on Wix and I guess what inspired me to start School of Shine. I had been in Tel Aviv for about three years and I was going through a very down period. I was in a pretty just soul destroying job. It wasn't what I wanted to be doing. And I realized that throughout my three years here, I had friends from here, here and here, but I never really had this one community that I could turn to. And from there I really focused in on women because, I mean, I know amazing women across the universe and the one unifying factor is that none of us think that we're good enough. And I really wanted to make an inner change within, you know, our conditioning, within our makeup to take control of our own lives and enlighten one another, empower one another, uplift one another instead of, you know, doing the opposite, which is what our society kind of tells us to do.

Definitely.

What do you think was the point where you said, okay, I have this passion, I recognize that the world needs this work. I'm going to be the one to bring it and make this into a business.

I always knew that I wanted to start my own thing and when I was kind of getting to the end of the soul destroying job, people kept asking me, well, what do you want to do? What do you want to do? The only thing that came up was like, I want to see spread sunshine and rainbows. And then I really just started thinking about how I can turn that into a business and how I wanted to and how I could create that as something and I just did it. I started off with an experiment with a pop up yoga and from there I got so much positive feedback and positive energy. I did the next experiment and the next one and now I'm here.

But how would you differentiate between the time where it was sort of your side project that you were excited about and when it turned into being a small business?

I think the moment that I really realized that time was valuable and that I wanted to spend my time doing what I wanted to be doing and figuring out how to make it sustainable for the life that I want to create for myself. There has to be a way to monetize it, to make it valuable to put it out there. As a business, you still have a

day job, you still have something else that's taking hold of a lot of your time and attention. So what are the top three things you do to help keep yourself organized and maintain the balance between your day job and your new business?

So post its are like a really big help. It's how I manage my time and what I've realized. From the beginning, it was pretty rough, but now that I'm kind of seasoned and doing a lot of things at once, I realize that just time management is one of the most important things. I set out my block schedule and I know that in order to avoid spreading myself too thin and working on everything at 50%, I need to really focus on one task at a time so that I could do it 100%. Another thing is definitely including in that time management, taking breaks. Because I realized, you know, when you're entrepreneur, when you have these ideas, you can just keep going and going and going and going. And then I think the third thing is I'm a writer. So also like, I'm quite a perfectionist and I used to edit everything about a bajillion times. But I realized that, you know, it doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be out there. You know, my website right now, like I look at it and I see hundreds of things that I can, that I can fix and do differently. But it's out there. It's there, it exists. SchoolOfShine.com is like in the world wide web and that's what's important. So that's what's keeping me going.

Cool. Now, you know, we're talking post its and I'm picturing this bulletin board of like a thousand pink post its. On those post its, are we Talking like from 4 to 4:30 I'll be doing this, or are you also setting weekly and then monthly goals for your business?

100%. Every day I set goals for my day weekly and monthly. So I think, you know, there's so many things that I want to be working towards that I have to work in some kind of direction. So yeah, actually every like Sunday I sit down, I set my weekly goals, and every month I sit down and I set my monthly goals. And it's. Yeah, it's all on the post its.

If you want the secret to school of shine, you gotta get those post itself. Start to finish. What does your day actually look like?

So start to finish. I would say I start off trying to wake up early and kind of taking the first hour of my day to myself to just breathe a bit and, you know, write down three things that I'm grateful for. Have my coffee kind of take a pause and take it slow to think about how I want my day.

Is that something you do every morning? Write down three things you're grateful for?

Yeah, not every morning, but, like, that's.

That's the goal.

That's the goal. And where did that come from? It's just part of the science of happiness. It's scientifically proven that if you write down three things that you're grateful for every day, it's rewiring your brain to think happier. It's just. It's science.

Did you get any backlash when you started trying to monetize?

I was spending more money on other women than I was on myself. And that's when. And that's when I knew I needed to figure out a way to make it work for everyone. Not just give my bank account away.

Absolutely. I mean, I think it might be counterintuitive, but I think a lot of times in a business like this, you start giving it away. You start with the free preview model, you know, but if you are giving away content that is valuable, people will pay to get it. And, you know, you gotta give yourself that credit that people. People value what you're doing.

Yeah.

What do you think are the three main things that have allowed your brand to be recognizable and has set you apart so that young women and men in Tel Aviv know who you are?

Good question. First of all, I think the name SOS is kind of a call to attention, and it's typically, you know, looked at as a negative thing, as a call for help. And what SOS School of Shine wants to do is take, you know, take what you originally thought and turn it into something positive. I think also collaborations with different organizations within Tel Aviv. We've done working with bars, working with charities, working with other small organizations, and continuing to do that. I do think that, you know, collaboration is key, and there's power in numbers.

Have you sought out those collaborators, or have they sought out you?

A little bit of both, actually. So after I did an event in October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which was called Bake and Booze for Boobies.

Wait, say that again.

Bake and Booze for Boobies.

Bake and booze for Boobies.

Yes.

That sounds awesome. I first heard bacon boobs.

Me too.

Which would also work. That also sounds delicious.

All right, so Wait, tell us about that event.

So I really wanted to create something in our community that allowed people to, you know, raise awareness and also raise money for. We raise money for a charity called One in Nine, which does breast cancer awareness. And so we also. We collected. We worked with different local bakeries around Tel Aviv who all donated baked goodies. We worked with a bar in the center of Tel Aviv who donated their space and also provided drink specials for us. And we asked for volunteers. So as soon as I put it out into the world, over 40 volunteers approached school of Shine and said, we want to help. We want to do something. And so it was just a lovely day. We sold the baked goodies. We had a donation station. People got sweets, people got drinks, people wore pink. And it was just a day to raise awareness about breast cancer. We ended up raising over 6,000 shekels for one in nine. Wow.

It actually sounds like both of your first two points. There was a lot of weight on the name. What is your process for brainstorming those names and how important do you think they are?

I think they're super important. So I knew a. As soon as you put boobies in the title of an event, like, you

caught my attention immediately.

You caught me with bacon. And then I found out it wasn't bacon.

Well, exactly. So either way, it works. But I do think. I think that there's such a power behind making things really relatable to your audience. I knew that I wanted it to be a cool, fun event that's doing good things. So I think the way that it's presented is just really important. And my actual process is I write down all the words that I think are super powerful to use, and that kind of I want associated with the event. And then I put a lot of things together in different ways and see what works the best.

I want to sort of zoom out. What do you do in terms of creating a cohesive brand on social media, and how do you think that integrates with your business?

I think that just one of the things that I believe in the most is authenticity. I create things as if I'm talking to my best friend, basically. So, you know, if I'm inspired by something, if I'm empowered by something, and I know that, you know, others would be too, like, that's what I want to create. And so I try to create this voice. I don't try to create this voice. I am this voice.

You are the voice? Yeah.

I am this voice who is really just trying to shift people's perspectives into looking at the bright side of things, I think the visuals are also really important. I think they need to be very attractive to the eye. I do everything DIY and free. So there's lots of different websites online which I use free images for. And basically most of my searches consist of happiness, smile, women, celebration, nature, that kind of stuff. I'm always in the lookout for, really pictures that elicits some kind of emotion as well. So if I look at a picture of a beach and I want to be there and I feel this longing or a sense of calm, then I know to use that on a quote that also, you know, talks about a sense of calm. So it's really piecing together this puzzle of trying to. To connect words with visuals and trying to elicit emotion while doing it and trying to make people feel something when they're looking at the screen. I think that's the most important, important part.

You're creating content and you're trying to send it into the world with your website. You're trying to bring people to you. So what role do you think your website serves in giving School of Shine a voice?

The first draft of the website was literally my brain online, which was crazy. But I scaled back. I did a couple focus groups, I scaled back, and now it's like this bright little corner of the web. It's also a writing community. It's really a tool that allows School of Shine to be worldwide and really from across the world. We've received messages from women who are touched by what we're trying to do and the messages that we send out.

Your job, it sounds like, is to inspire other people. What inspires you to stay motivated and keep bringing this positive energy into the world?

I'm inspired by everything. Most vague answer, really. I think, think that it's mostly just the feedback that I've gotten from what has been done thus far and doing so in a very practical and passionate way.

If I wanted to start being. I do, actually. I would like to start being happier today, if you don't mind. I would like to start being happier right this second. Can you give me three things that I can start doing today to bring myself up?

Sure. So one of them is what you're doing right now, which is smiling. And the ideal smile lasts for 17 seconds. And actually, if you retrain your, like, it's right now, like, if you keep it, you're rewiring your brain to think happier because that's automatically just sending, like, positive vibes into my day. Another thing is writing down three things that you're grateful for getting really detailed into it, too. So not just saying, oh, I'm grateful for my and saying I'm grateful for my mom because she taught me how to cook and gave me, you know, my energy and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the third thing that you can do to make you happier is some kind of release. So whether it's writing something down, doodling, dancing, singing in the shower, anything where you're kind of taking this negative energy or stress or anxiety that's built up within you and releasing it out into this world, even having a conversation with a friend, it allows you to just kind of get it out of your physical body, out into the world and feel lighter in general.

Cool. Zo, thank you so much for coming in today. I know I'm a lot happier. Yael is a lot happier.

Still smiling.

Everyone in the studio is, like, glowing right now. We just. We want to wish you all the best luck with School of Shine. Guys at home, you can find School of shine@schoolofshine.com on Instagram, on Facebook, everywhere that School of Shine is. You should be. You don't just get to listen to the podcast. It's time to play along. The name of the game is who What? Two truths and a lie. We've got three facts for you, but one of them is false. You guys ready to play?

Fact number one, 25% of workers would take less pay to have more fun at work. Fact number two, the small business sector in America occupies an estimated 20 to 34 billion with a B square feet. That's the space of 416,000 football fields. And fact number three, over 22 million small businesses in the US consist of only one person running the whole show.

Think you know which one was a lie? Email us@whowhatwix.com with your answer for a chance to join this podcast to give your own tip of the day. That about wraps it up. Thank you guys so much for listening and we'll see you next time on who. What wix.