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[00:00:00.880 --> 00:00:05.680] Hey, Entrepreneurs, it's Steph here with a special invite just for you.
[00:00:05.680 --> 00:00:10.800] Do you want to experience what it's like to be part of our Entrepreneursa League community of founders?
[00:00:10.800 --> 00:00:12.400] Now is your chance.
[00:00:12.400 --> 00:00:21.360] You can join me this month at one of our upcoming Entrepreneursa League info sessions where I'm going to share with you all you're going to get access to when you join the community.
[00:00:21.360 --> 00:00:27.040] Plus, I'll be giving away some big bonuses that you will only be able to get access to when you attend live.
[00:00:27.040 --> 00:00:35.600] Head over to refer.entreprenista.com forward slash info session to join us at one of our virtual info sessions this month.
[00:00:35.600 --> 00:00:40.640] That's refer.entrepranista.com forward slash info session.
[00:00:40.640 --> 00:00:44.560] Or head over to the show notes right now and tap the link to join us.
[00:00:44.560 --> 00:00:49.200] I can't wait to meet you there and learn more about you and your business.
[00:00:49.840 --> 00:01:01.440] Every email that goes out of my email with a pitch to tell someone about the brand, they may not answer, they may not, you know, opt in for product, and we may not gift them, but I've built one more touch point of brand awareness.
[00:01:01.440 --> 00:01:04.880] They maybe read that email or scanned that email and discovered our brand.
[00:01:04.880 --> 00:01:09.600] You have to be what 99% of the world is not, which is consistent.
[00:01:16.640 --> 00:01:27.680] Divya Gugnani is the CEO and co-founder of Wander Beauty, a brand renowned for its clean, multitasking beauty essentials designed for the modern woman on the go.
[00:01:27.680 --> 00:01:39.120] With a background in investment banking and venture capital, Divya transitioned into entrepreneurship, launching multiple successful businesses, including her latest startup, Five Sense.
[00:01:39.120 --> 00:01:47.920] Divya is creating a sensory experience and fragrance that emphasizes clean ingredients and unique mood encapsulating scents.
[00:01:47.920 --> 00:01:56.640] Her commitment to clean beauty and innovative consumer-focused products continues to drive her success in the competitive beauty industry.
[00:01:56.640 --> 00:02:04.280] And her leadership has earned her numerous accolades and awards, underscoring her impact as a visionary in the beauty market.
[00:02:04.600 --> 00:02:09.960] Get ready to hear Divya's story and her biggest business secrets.
[00:02:10.920 --> 00:02:18.680] Coming up, Divya shares her unexpected journey from introverted child to a seasoned entrepreneur.
[00:02:18.680 --> 00:02:23.400] She reflects on the importance of timing and business success and exits.
[00:02:23.720 --> 00:02:30.120] You'll hear about her transition from tech to beauty, highlighting the importance of learning from experts.
[00:02:30.120 --> 00:02:35.640] Divyares with us how her passion for fragrance led to the creation of Five Sense.
[00:02:35.640 --> 00:02:39.320] She talks about her commitment to investing in women founders.
[00:02:39.320 --> 00:02:44.040] And finally, Divya reveals her biggest business secrets.
[00:02:44.360 --> 00:02:47.880] This is the Entrepreneur Podcast, presented by Social Fly.
[00:02:47.880 --> 00:02:58.600] It's the best business meeting you'll ever have with must-hear real-life looks at how leading women in business are getting it done and what it takes to build and grow a successful company.
[00:02:58.600 --> 00:03:04.600] It's beyond the Graham with no filters, no limits, and plenty of surprises.
[00:03:07.480 --> 00:03:12.600] Divya, I am so glad we finally made this recording happen.
[00:03:12.840 --> 00:03:22.200] It has been, I feel like, at least two years in the making since trying to record this update episode since you were on the Entrepreneursa podcast back.
[00:03:22.200 --> 00:03:24.280] Now it had to have been Molly's four and a half.
[00:03:24.280 --> 00:03:25.800] It had to have been close to five years ago.
[00:03:25.800 --> 00:03:31.880] It was like right when we, right after we first launched the podcast when you were on, but I was in the hospital and you recorded with Courtney.
[00:03:31.880 --> 00:03:33.560] It's like years in the making.
[00:03:33.560 --> 00:03:35.160] We're going to make it worthwhile.
[00:03:35.160 --> 00:03:36.920] Yes, absolutely.
[00:03:36.920 --> 00:03:40.360] And you all are in for such a treat with Divya today.
[00:03:40.360 --> 00:03:46.720] She is just a wealth of knowledge when it comes to growing and scaling a business.
[00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:54.160] And I have so many questions for you, Divya, because you are just somehow doing it all.
[00:03:54.480 --> 00:03:58.880] You have a family, you're managing multiple businesses, investing in businesses.
[00:03:58.880 --> 00:04:01.440] You have an incredible life and social life as well.
[00:04:01.440 --> 00:04:03.840] So we're going to get into how you're able to make it all happen.
[00:04:03.840 --> 00:04:08.480] But before we get into all those fun details, what were you like as a child, Divya?
[00:04:08.480 --> 00:04:12.400] Did you always know that you wanted to have your own business one day?
[00:04:12.400 --> 00:04:13.680] Absolutely not.
[00:04:13.680 --> 00:04:18.080] In fact, I would say that there wasn't a chance in hell that I would be an entrepreneur.
[00:04:18.080 --> 00:04:34.160] I think that when I look back at my childhood, I see a shy, awkward, introverted child who loved to read, who used to hide in the kitchen while my parents used to throw fancy big parties and have their friends over and entertain.
[00:04:34.160 --> 00:04:36.960] And I wanted nothing to do with socializing with anybody.
[00:04:36.960 --> 00:04:38.000] I would sit in the kitchen.
[00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:45.680] I have all the cuts and burns and, you know, nicks in my fingers to prove that I spent all the time in the kitchen when they were having all these parties.
[00:04:45.680 --> 00:04:56.560] And then I, you know, was definitely a very diligent student all through school and really focused on doing well and achieving and working hard.
[00:04:56.560 --> 00:05:03.520] And then I kind of went into my career post-college in a very like random way.
[00:05:03.520 --> 00:05:10.320] I originally thought that, okay, I'll study government economics, which is what I studied at Cornell, and I'll take the LSAT, I'll become a lawyer.
[00:05:10.320 --> 00:05:14.000] Like that seems like a great, like solid, stable career for me.
[00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:18.240] You get your, you know, W-2 paycheck and everything is like wonderful.
[00:05:18.240 --> 00:05:22.880] And what happened is that I started, you know, it all starts with a boy.
[00:05:22.880 --> 00:05:28.320] I started dating someone in college who did, took an investment banking job after college.
[00:05:28.320 --> 00:05:37.800] And then I was like, oh, this looks so fancy and so fun, like black cars and sushi takeout at work and like meeting with clients and flying in private jets.
[00:05:37.800 --> 00:05:39.400] I was like, this sounds kind of fun.
[00:05:39.400 --> 00:05:40.200] I think I could do this.
[00:05:40.200 --> 00:05:41.320] I'm good at math.
[00:05:41.320 --> 00:05:46.440] And I literally did an internship in investment banking.
[00:05:46.440 --> 00:05:53.720] And once I did that internship, I was bitten by the bug of finance and was like, oh, I'm just going to like go and start my career in finance.
[00:05:53.720 --> 00:05:58.760] And even when I had that career in finance, I had zero intention of being an entrepreneur.
[00:05:58.760 --> 00:06:05.560] I really was just focused on my work, investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs, slept under a desk, loved every day of it.
[00:06:05.560 --> 00:06:06.920] I actually enjoyed that job.
[00:06:06.920 --> 00:06:13.400] I know a lot of people find it very rigorous and exhausting and they don't like it, but I loved every day of it.
[00:06:13.400 --> 00:06:16.040] And I really became an entrepreneur by accident.
[00:06:16.040 --> 00:06:22.920] So I was, again, dating someone who didn't know what he wanted to do with his life, had a huge passion for cars.
[00:06:22.920 --> 00:06:27.000] I would get up every morning, leave, and go to my venture capital job.
[00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:30.120] And he'd be sitting on the couch kind of debating life.
[00:06:30.120 --> 00:06:34.440] And then I would come home and he'd be still sitting on the couch debating life.
[00:06:34.440 --> 00:06:36.680] And so we needed to find something for him to do.
[00:06:36.680 --> 00:06:40.200] And I started a business by accident, literally just to help him.
[00:06:40.200 --> 00:06:43.080] And it grew to a multi-million dollar business, which I sold.
[00:06:43.080 --> 00:06:44.680] And then after that, you know, I've started.
[00:06:45.080 --> 00:06:46.200] What business was that?
[00:06:46.200 --> 00:06:49.160] That was in the auto parts space many, many years ago.
[00:06:49.160 --> 00:07:02.840] And so everyone should have an early entrepreneurial success to completely delude them and make them realize that everything goes like this and sales go like this and everything is super easy because every business after that was never as easy as the first one.
[00:07:02.840 --> 00:07:13.720] So, you know, I went on to then start another company, another company, which I then sold to QVC and raised venture money for, and then to start, you know, Wander Beauty and then to start Five Cents.
[00:07:13.720 --> 00:07:20.320] So, I've had quite a journey across sectors, spaces, and stages as an entrepreneur.
[00:07:20.320 --> 00:07:31.840] How did you handle going from one venture to the next when it comes to like your emotions, like letting go of that baby and selling it to someone else?
[00:07:31.840 --> 00:07:37.200] And then having that mental space and capacity to be like, Okay, I'm ready to start the next thing.
[00:07:37.200 --> 00:07:43.040] It's so fascinating because you have to be wildly passionate about what you're doing when you're an entrepreneur.
[00:07:43.040 --> 00:07:48.240] Otherwise, you give up because it's exhausting, it's tiring, and you know this firsthand.
[00:07:48.240 --> 00:07:53.760] You know, you reach so many obstacles, so many challenges, and there's so many times where you just want to give up.
[00:07:53.760 --> 00:07:55.360] So, you have to love what you do.
[00:07:55.360 --> 00:07:57.440] And I loved every company I started.
[00:07:57.440 --> 00:07:59.920] I loved every product and service I created.
[00:07:59.920 --> 00:08:04.000] I had a tremendous amount of inner passion for it, which kept me going.
[00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:12.160] But one thing I learned very much the hard way is that timing is one of the most important factors in having a successful business and exit.
[00:08:12.160 --> 00:08:16.720] So, there was a very big study done about: is it the management team?
[00:08:16.800 --> 00:08:18.400] Is it the education of the management team?
[00:08:18.400 --> 00:08:19.920] Is the amount of capital they raise?
[00:08:19.920 --> 00:08:24.960] Like, what are these factors that make a company have a very successful large exit?
[00:08:24.960 --> 00:08:29.680] And one of the most important factors that was discovered during this study was timing.
[00:08:29.680 --> 00:08:43.120] It's knowing when you have taken this business to the level and the potential that you can, and that now you're at a stage and size where someone else needs to take the reins, and that your skill set potentially may be not be a match for that future growth.
[00:08:43.120 --> 00:08:48.080] And so, I think having that self-realization and self-awareness is something I learned over time.
[00:08:48.080 --> 00:08:51.280] Initially, with my first business, we got an offer and I was ecstatic.
[00:08:51.280 --> 00:08:53.200] I owned the majority of the company.
[00:08:53.200 --> 00:08:56.000] I was like, there's no way I'm not going to take this offer.
[00:08:56.000 --> 00:08:57.600] It made total sense.
[00:08:57.600 --> 00:08:59.360] You know, my second business never sold.
[00:08:59.440 --> 00:09:03.960] It was profitable and it scaled, you know, to millions of dollars of revenue.
[00:09:03.960 --> 00:09:06.280] But then my third business, same thing.
[00:09:06.280 --> 00:09:10.680] I had an offer from QBC and it was a life-changing exit for myself and my family.
[00:09:10.680 --> 00:09:13.000] And it made sense at the time.
[00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:16.680] And I just had a, I was pregnant with my son actually at that moment.
[00:09:16.680 --> 00:09:18.360] And I was like, yep, this is it.
[00:09:18.360 --> 00:09:34.200] Because when you look at the competitive factors in the industry and how much competition is coming up and how much capital the people had to market, it made sense logically to say, okay, now it's time to partner with a larger organization and take this to the next level.
[00:09:34.200 --> 00:09:38.520] What were some of your biggest learning lessons from that exit with QVC?
[00:09:38.520 --> 00:09:40.680] And what business was that that you sold to QVC?
[00:09:40.680 --> 00:09:41.800] That was Send the Trend.
[00:09:41.800 --> 00:09:46.600] So we built a proprietary algorithm for intelligent shopping recommendation technology.
[00:09:46.600 --> 00:09:54.200] We really could, in a very particular way, understand your shopping journey on our site and beyond.
[00:09:54.200 --> 00:09:59.000] We were collecting over 3 million data points of your behavior on our site.
[00:09:59.000 --> 00:10:07.320] And we could predict that if you bought, you know, a particular ring, that you would buy the next bracelet and that you would buy the next accessory or beauty item.
[00:10:07.320 --> 00:10:18.120] And so what was really fascinating about that business was having a point of difference and having really differentiated technology, which I think allowed us to stand out from the crowd in terms of acquisition.
[00:10:18.120 --> 00:10:30.440] But to your question about what made it so special and different and the motivation behind it, is that we had achieved a tremendous amount of success in a short period of time.
[00:10:30.440 --> 00:10:37.400] So we had raised venture money and we sold the company within 11 months and we had grown gangbusters.
[00:10:37.400 --> 00:10:45.760] And so just knowing that we had achieved that growth and we were in a hyper growth period, that made me feel like I was ready at that time.
[00:10:45.760 --> 00:10:50.080] That made sense for us to, you know, take the next step for an exit.
[00:10:44.680 --> 00:10:51.120] That was totally.
[00:10:52.960 --> 00:11:00.160] Up next, you'll discover how Divya's personal challenges inspired her to create Wander Beauty.
[00:11:08.320 --> 00:11:09.520] Hi, Entrepreneurs.
[00:11:09.520 --> 00:11:10.560] It's Steph here.
[00:11:10.560 --> 00:11:17.200] As a founder, I know firsthand that building a business can feel so lonely, but it doesn't have to.
[00:11:17.200 --> 00:11:21.920] And that's why we created our Entrepreneursa Founders Weekend Wealth and Wellness Retreat.
[00:11:21.920 --> 00:11:24.080] And I can't wait to meet you in person there.
[00:11:24.080 --> 00:11:38.240] So you're officially invited to join us from April 30th to May 3rd, 2026 at the stunning PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida for three transformative days of connection, collaboration, and real business growth.
[00:11:38.240 --> 00:11:40.400] This isn't just another business conference.
[00:11:40.400 --> 00:11:48.800] It is a curated retreat designed to help you build authentic, lasting relationships with women who truly understand your journey.
[00:11:48.800 --> 00:11:55.600] From business panels and workshops to wellness activations and so much more, this is the room that you need to be in.
[00:11:55.600 --> 00:12:07.040] So if you are ready to invest in yourself and your business and your vision and your next level of success, head over to entrepreneurs.com forward slash foundersweekend to reserve your ticket today.
[00:12:07.040 --> 00:12:15.360] That's entrepreneur.com forward slash foundersweekend or head over to the show notes right now and tap the invitation to reserve your ticket.
[00:12:15.360 --> 00:12:16.720] I'll see you there.
[00:12:26.560 --> 00:12:30.000] Okay, so how did Wander Beauty begin?
[00:12:30.760 --> 00:12:34.120] So that was a fascinating idea and journey.
[00:12:34.120 --> 00:12:39.960] When I was at QBC, I really got exposed to the beauty industry in a completely different way than I had ever been before.
[00:12:39.960 --> 00:12:45.560] So I grew up in college, you know, my sorority doing makeup for people, being obsessed with makeup and skincare.
[00:12:45.560 --> 00:13:06.200] And, you know, my mom had always forbidden me from using Neutrogena face wash, and everything that I put on my face was like turmeric and pineapple and, you know, yogurt and milk masks and you know, all the Indian Ayurvedic stuff that Indian moms, you know, pride themselves in concocting in their kitchens.
[00:13:06.200 --> 00:13:08.440] And I loved beauty.
[00:13:08.440 --> 00:13:12.040] I was always wildly passionate about it and interested in it.
[00:13:12.040 --> 00:13:24.520] And when I sold Send the Trend to QBC, I had the opportunity to get very closely involved in their beauty business, which was a very sizable business, hundreds of millions of dollars, which scaled over a billion.
[00:13:24.840 --> 00:13:30.760] And during that time, I worked with a lot of different beauty founders and scaling and building their brands.
[00:13:30.760 --> 00:13:49.960] And I was just fascinated with differentiated three factors: differentiated product, people having a POD, a point of difference in their product, a very unique founder story, and then the ability to connect with the community to create a business that scaled and grew.
[00:13:49.960 --> 00:13:53.560] And so I said to myself, I'm a time-starved mom on the go.
[00:13:53.880 --> 00:13:58.440] I, at that point, had two children within two years.
[00:13:58.440 --> 00:14:04.760] I was exhausted, tired, and my genetic dark circles had reached next level heights.
[00:14:04.760 --> 00:14:09.160] And I said to myself that I'm not the only one in these shoes.
[00:14:09.160 --> 00:14:12.920] And I'm putting under-eye concealer on on the subway on the way to work.
[00:14:12.920 --> 00:14:20.560] And I'm doing my skincare at the gym at Soul Cycle in an effort to lose that post-baby weight, which was a nine-year process.
[00:14:21.120 --> 00:14:24.560] And then I just said to myself, I'm like, there's a huge opportunity here.
[00:14:24.560 --> 00:14:36.160] My co-founder, Lindsay, and I connected over it, and we decided to launch Wander Beauty, effortless essentials, things you reach for every day across makeup and skincare, wherever you wander.
[00:14:36.160 --> 00:14:37.840] And we really catered to that woman.
[00:14:37.840 --> 00:14:39.440] We knew what her point of difference was.
[00:14:39.440 --> 00:14:41.360] She's time-starved, she's on the go.
[00:14:41.360 --> 00:14:53.200] She wants clean beauty that's fuss free, foolproof, do-it-yourself skincare and makeup that she can do in an Uber, in a car, at her desk at work, wherever she may wander.
[00:14:53.520 --> 00:15:01.760] Talk to me about the process of going from building a tech company and selling a tech company to now creating this beauty brand, a product-based business.
[00:15:01.760 --> 00:15:06.480] What were some of your biggest learning lessons now going into this new industry?
[00:15:06.480 --> 00:15:08.160] It was learn it all.
[00:15:08.160 --> 00:15:13.680] I mean, that's the biggest lesson: when you don't know something, surround yourself with experts that do.
[00:15:13.680 --> 00:15:14.880] Build a community.
[00:15:14.880 --> 00:15:26.720] What I love about Entrepreneurs is that it is that wonderful community, and there is that connectivity among people who are in many different breadths and depths of life across PR, product development, legal.
[00:15:26.720 --> 00:15:33.360] It takes a little bit of everything to get it all right to launch a business from the ground up and to really see the white space.
[00:15:33.360 --> 00:15:37.600] Entrepreneurs see things others don't see, they do things others don't do.
[00:15:37.600 --> 00:15:42.720] They have to be ready to take risks, but at the same time, they have to really learn everything.
[00:15:42.720 --> 00:15:46.720] Learning beauty, learning regulations, learning ingredients.
[00:15:46.720 --> 00:15:49.040] It was a tremendous learning process.
[00:15:49.040 --> 00:15:57.200] So I studied and learned and became a student of the beauty industry and surrounded myself with mentors and experts.
[00:15:57.200 --> 00:16:01.960] And I always say this: like, never underestimate the power of peer mentorship.
[00:16:02.200 --> 00:16:09.560] So many people are chasing mentors who are way further along from them and they want five minutes of their time to pick their brain or learn something new.
[00:16:09.560 --> 00:16:13.320] And my reality is that you can learn so much from your peers.
[00:16:13.320 --> 00:16:22.120] And that's why I love groups like Entrepreneur Nista because you're surrounded by people who are in your stage and size of your business, you know, across a wide range.
[00:16:22.120 --> 00:16:25.560] And you have that opportunity to learn from them while they're going through things.
[00:16:25.560 --> 00:16:27.160] You're going through the same things.
[00:16:27.160 --> 00:16:28.120] You can help each other.
[00:16:28.120 --> 00:16:28.680] Absolutely.
[00:16:28.680 --> 00:16:29.800] Yes, absolutely.
[00:16:29.800 --> 00:16:30.120] I know.
[00:16:30.120 --> 00:16:45.240] It's like talk to the people that are doing it now so you can brainstorm and problem solve together because the issues and problems that might have existed a few years ago with different tech tools or operations might be different from what everyone's doing right now.
[00:16:45.240 --> 00:16:46.200] Yes.
[00:16:46.200 --> 00:16:48.200] So I love that advice.
[00:16:48.200 --> 00:16:52.920] Talk to me about your business partner, Lindsay, and your relationship as co-founders.
[00:16:52.920 --> 00:16:56.200] And do you divide and conquer in the business and has that evolved?
[00:16:56.200 --> 00:16:56.920] Absolutely.
[00:16:56.920 --> 00:16:59.640] I think outstanding brands are built by outstanding people.
[00:16:59.640 --> 00:17:01.640] It's something I always say.
[00:17:01.640 --> 00:17:08.120] The difference between having an A plus outcome and a B plus outcome is the people who actually work on the business.
[00:17:08.120 --> 00:17:15.240] If you look at any wildly successful company, it's not necessarily about the product or the service or the timing or the funding.
[00:17:15.240 --> 00:17:21.400] The people make a massive difference to the outcome and the results driven by the brand or the business.
[00:17:21.400 --> 00:17:23.080] And so Lindsay and I met at a party.
[00:17:23.080 --> 00:17:24.680] We had very complimentary skills.
[00:17:24.680 --> 00:17:31.080] And I truly believe that as a CEO and as a founder, it's imperative that you are self-aware.
[00:17:31.080 --> 00:17:41.720] The first thing you need to do before you start any business is to take a piece of paper and write down what you're good at and what your skills are, whether it's finance, operations, product development.
[00:17:41.720 --> 00:17:43.960] And, you know, maybe those are my strengths.
[00:17:43.960 --> 00:17:56.960] And then I look at Lindsay and I say, here's someone with a vision, with creativity, who has, you know, the ability to do photography and video and has a lens into storytelling in a visual format that I don't have.
[00:17:56.960 --> 00:18:06.960] And so bringing people into your business early that can catapult the results and catapult the outcome and make the pie bigger is very important for entrepreneurs.
[00:18:06.960 --> 00:18:15.680] And so I love the idea of, you know, having co-founders and having the ability to go through what is a very difficult journey.
[00:18:15.680 --> 00:18:17.360] And entrepreneurship is a journey.
[00:18:17.360 --> 00:18:18.480] It's not a destination.
[00:18:18.480 --> 00:18:28.960] There's so many, there's an evolution that happens day to day with where you're drinking water out of a fire hose and having someone to drink with is always helpful.
[00:18:29.280 --> 00:18:30.640] Oh, absolutely.
[00:18:30.640 --> 00:18:38.160] And so related to that, I love that advice about writing down everyone's strengths and really figuring out how can we divide and conquer?
[00:18:38.160 --> 00:18:39.680] What are opposite skill sets?
[00:18:39.680 --> 00:18:49.200] And that's why Courtney and I have had such a successful business partnership over we're almost 12 plus years in business together now, running multiple companies as business partners.
[00:18:49.200 --> 00:18:54.000] And, you know, we got, I would say, very lucky that we happened to have opposite skill sets.
[00:18:54.000 --> 00:19:02.880] It wasn't planned when we initially set out to partner together because we were very young, naive, early 20s business owners who were just got started and figured it out.
[00:19:02.880 --> 00:19:11.360] And we got very lucky and then worked with a business coach very early on and were able to really like divide out our responsibilities and figure those things out.
[00:19:11.360 --> 00:19:13.120] So definitely agree.
[00:19:14.080 --> 00:19:19.040] It's super important also to have bright lines around ownership of what you do in the business.
[00:19:19.040 --> 00:19:23.520] So, I actually coached co-CEOs once, and I'm not a huge fan of co-CEOs.
[00:19:23.520 --> 00:19:25.600] I actually think divide and conquer is better.
[00:19:25.600 --> 00:19:35.320] Having CEO one area or, you know, someone else, like ultimately, there needs to be a clear path for decisions and who owns those decisions.
[00:19:29.840 --> 00:19:36.200] Yes, absolutely.
[00:19:36.760 --> 00:19:40.120] Yes, we worked with our business coach to really help us through that.
[00:19:40.120 --> 00:19:55.880] And another plug for working with business coaches, because it's sometimes it's so hard to see when you're in it and when you're in that day to day, but when you can have that outside perspective, as well as people who have like been there and done it and can help coach and advise, it's definitely extremely helpful.
[00:19:55.880 --> 00:19:56.840] All right, Divya.
[00:19:56.840 --> 00:20:03.640] So, now over the past year and a half, you've now launched another new brand, Five Cents.
[00:20:03.640 --> 00:20:16.680] And I was so excited just like watching the evolution of the products being built and how you marketed the products through the pre-launch and then the launch and just all you've accomplished over the past year.
[00:20:16.680 --> 00:20:24.600] But take me back to deciding I'm ready to launch a new brand while I'm still running Wonder Beauty and investing in founders.
[00:20:24.600 --> 00:20:26.680] And we'll get to investing in founders in just a bit.
[00:20:26.680 --> 00:20:31.640] But what made you decide to take that leap to then start another big business?
[00:20:31.640 --> 00:20:33.320] It all comes back to passion.
[00:20:33.320 --> 00:20:37.400] Like, I am passionate and I saw a white space.
[00:20:37.400 --> 00:20:42.120] So I've always been really intrigued by fragrance.
[00:20:42.120 --> 00:20:52.360] Growing up Indian in a very small, you know, town, predominantly, you know, homogeneous environment, I was teased a lot.
[00:20:52.360 --> 00:21:02.440] And I felt like a lot of people said to me, like, oh, you smell, like, oh, you smell because you're Indian or you smell because you make curry in your house and your clothes smell.
[00:21:02.440 --> 00:21:07.000] And I was very conscious of my smell at a very early age.
[00:21:07.000 --> 00:21:21.600] And I remember my first job buying deodorant at CVS and literally putting said deodorant all over my legs, all over my arms, all over my stomach, and being like, I just want to smell good so that everyone doesn't tease me and I don't feel bad.
[00:21:21.600 --> 00:21:26.800] And so that evolved into my father traveling constantly for work.
[00:21:26.800 --> 00:21:31.520] And at that time, there were no direct flights from New York to Asia where he had to travel for work.
[00:21:31.520 --> 00:21:40.960] And he would stop in Charles de Graal Airport in Paris and he would stop in London Heathrow Airport in London and he would pick up duty-free perfumes for my mom.
[00:21:40.960 --> 00:21:44.800] And for me, he'd pick up these little mini designer perfume bottles.
[00:21:44.800 --> 00:21:51.760] And this just opened me up into the world of fragrance and fragrance as a form of self-expression.
[00:21:51.760 --> 00:21:55.200] So for me, my smell was something I was so conscious of.
[00:21:55.200 --> 00:21:59.120] And I became obsessed with perfume and fragrance.
[00:21:59.120 --> 00:22:08.800] And, you know, when I had my first job at Goldman Sachs, I wore issemiyaki every day to work, very like subtle, soft, you know, unassuming.
[00:22:08.800 --> 00:22:12.640] And when I had a D, I was jampo Gautier at night all the way.
[00:22:12.640 --> 00:22:24.160] And so fragrance was part of my identity, but it also encapsulated my mood and it channeled the energy that I was feeling or like the persona that I wanted to be in the moment.
[00:22:24.160 --> 00:22:28.640] And there was no brand that was kind of speaking to the community in that way.
[00:22:28.640 --> 00:22:43.440] I saw a tremendous white space for people like myself who have autoimmune disease, who need to shop clean, who are mothers of two children, and really make very conscious decisions around ingredients and things that they put on their skin and their body.
[00:22:43.440 --> 00:22:44.960] Your skin is your largest organ.
[00:22:44.960 --> 00:22:52.800] The average woman is ingesting five pounds of hormone-disrupting toxic chemicals into her system via her skin.
[00:22:52.800 --> 00:23:01.240] And so, there are very limited selections on clean fragrance brands that have storytelling, longevity, projection, sillage.
[00:23:01.240 --> 00:23:03.240] I was like, there's a huge white space here.
[00:22:59.840 --> 00:23:07.160] So, I created Five Cents to be a sensory experience and brand fragrance.
[00:23:07.240 --> 00:23:15.080] And it literally is that from the outer packaging, which is this beautiful soft touch curtain, to the wood, to the opaque bottle, to the notes.
[00:23:15.080 --> 00:23:19.240] Like, it is a totally different experience and fragrance.
[00:23:19.240 --> 00:23:22.760] And the brand is all about your mood bottled.
[00:23:22.760 --> 00:23:34.520] And so, each fragrance channels a mood from catch feelings, which is literally like a love potion in a bottle, to life of the party, which is confidence in a bottle, to In2 Deep.
[00:23:34.840 --> 00:23:46.760] And I really feel like every fragrance that we have created truly encapsulates a mood and it really empowers you to express yourself through fragrance.
[00:23:46.760 --> 00:23:53.480] And this was something that was missing, and it was missing for a generation of people who shop clean and eco-conscious.
[00:23:53.480 --> 00:23:55.480] And so, we partnered with Sephora.
[00:23:55.480 --> 00:23:58.360] We were very lucky to build a partnership with them early on.
[00:23:58.360 --> 00:24:00.280] We launched the brand about a year ago.
[00:24:00.280 --> 00:24:05.720] It's only been a year and I think two months, not even two months because it's you know, March.
[00:24:05.720 --> 00:24:07.320] And it's just taken off.
[00:24:07.320 --> 00:24:33.880] And it was, it was doing the homework and the research to do the focus groups, to do the surveys, to talk to customers, to understand the need and wants of the market, and to create a product that was truly differentiated and had high juice concentration, incredible longevity, things that people wanted in fragrance that they were not getting from clean fragrance, and do it at an accessible price point where it wasn't intimidating.
[00:24:34.200 --> 00:24:39.000] How long were you thinking about the idea to launch this business before you decide?
[00:24:39.000 --> 00:24:42.120] Okay, you had it on your mind for a while.
[00:24:42.120 --> 00:24:51.600] For me to launch my fifth company with two children and now a third on the way, I mean, you really have to have a certain type of brain damage to want to keep doing this.
[00:24:52.800 --> 00:24:54.800] I say we're all a little insane.
[00:24:54.960 --> 00:24:57.360] It's called, I say, entrepreneurs to addiction.
[00:24:57.360 --> 00:24:58.880] We just, you can't help it.
[00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:02.960] It's like you just want to solve these problems and fix these things for ourselves.
[00:25:02.960 --> 00:25:05.840] So have to build a business around it.
[00:25:05.840 --> 00:25:07.360] I saw the opportunity.
[00:25:07.360 --> 00:25:08.960] I knew I wanted to do it.
[00:25:08.960 --> 00:25:11.760] I worked with a French perfumer for many years.
[00:25:11.760 --> 00:25:18.720] I was not going to do it unless I could truly differentiate and create something unique that was non-existent in the market.
[00:25:18.720 --> 00:25:27.760] And when I shared the concept and the juice with Sephora that gets pitched thousands of brands, fragrance is one of the fastest growing segments of beauty.
[00:25:27.760 --> 00:25:30.240] Huge area of opportunity, huge area of growth.
[00:25:30.240 --> 00:25:31.360] They saw the vision.
[00:25:31.360 --> 00:25:34.240] I did not even have final packaging and they agreed to launch my brand.
[00:25:34.240 --> 00:25:40.640] And it was just this connection over there's a huge opportunity here and we wanted to strike it together.
[00:25:40.640 --> 00:25:41.680] No, I love it.
[00:25:41.680 --> 00:25:42.080] Okay.
[00:25:42.080 --> 00:25:55.280] I want to understand how you made the decision that you could actually have these big businesses running simultaneously because so many founders, all of us, right?
[00:25:55.280 --> 00:25:58.800] We all, we launch our businesses, but then we have 10 other ideas.
[00:25:58.800 --> 00:26:02.640] And sometimes we can get distracted to be like, oh, wait, I have this other business.
[00:26:02.800 --> 00:26:03.360] We want to launch this.
[00:26:03.360 --> 00:26:03.920] We want to start this.
[00:26:03.920 --> 00:26:08.080] We just want to try it because we want to solve problems and we want to create businesses.
[00:26:08.080 --> 00:26:12.240] But then our core business, we can lose sight of it if we're not staying focused.
[00:26:12.240 --> 00:26:19.440] So, how do you stay focused or delegate, or really figure out how to manage everything?
[00:26:19.760 --> 00:26:22.200] Because so many of us have all these ideas.
[00:26:22.200 --> 00:26:25.120] Like you would want to do all these things, but it can be really hard.
[00:26:25.120 --> 00:26:26.960] I'm eight years in at Wander.
[00:26:26.960 --> 00:26:31.800] We're a mature business with a seasoned, strong, incredible team.
[00:26:29.680 --> 00:26:35.800] There's no way I could have taken this step if I did not have that.
[00:26:36.120 --> 00:26:38.520] I have a day job, which is Wander Beauty.
[00:26:38.520 --> 00:26:41.720] I spend my time and energy running that company on a day-to-day basis.
[00:26:41.720 --> 00:26:43.400] My meetings during the day are for Wander.
[00:26:43.400 --> 00:26:45.480] My business that I'm running is Wander.
[00:26:45.480 --> 00:26:52.040] And so my focus has continued to stay there as I build and scale and grow that business globally.
[00:26:52.040 --> 00:26:54.040] I had a huge passion for fragrance.
[00:26:54.040 --> 00:27:04.920] I created this product and I'm very proud of the audio perfumes that I created with incredible juice concentration and incredible longevity and great visual identity.
[00:27:04.920 --> 00:27:09.320] And there's just like something that is like your mood bottled.
[00:27:09.320 --> 00:27:12.680] But I brought a team together to really execute my vision.
[00:27:12.680 --> 00:27:24.440] I created that product and I really brought together the most seasoned talent that I knew from my network to take that vision and execute it and turn it into a reality and also to run the day-to-day for the business.
[00:27:24.440 --> 00:27:27.160] And I also funded that business entirely myself.
[00:27:27.160 --> 00:27:29.560] So those are choices that I made.
[00:27:29.560 --> 00:27:33.000] And so on the day-to-day involvement, the team is really running the business.
[00:27:33.000 --> 00:27:36.280] And that is truly how I believe it can be done.
[00:27:36.280 --> 00:27:39.000] I don't think you can do two things and do them well.
[00:27:39.000 --> 00:27:41.400] I think you can do one thing and do it well.
[00:27:41.400 --> 00:27:47.240] And so I think that having focus as an entrepreneur is tremendously important.
[00:27:47.240 --> 00:27:59.320] And like you said, team is absolutely everything because you can have all of these amazing ideas and bring something to life, but if you don't have a team to execute on that vision, the business is not going to go very far.
[00:27:59.320 --> 00:28:07.240] So how have you been able to cultivate these incredible teams that you've put together for many businesses now over the years?
[00:28:07.240 --> 00:28:11.240] Any advice you can share about how to build these awesome teams that you've done?
[00:28:11.480 --> 00:28:12.840] So many lessons, staff.
[00:28:12.840 --> 00:28:17.040] And I really believe people are the magic ingredient of building an outstanding brand or business.
[00:28:17.040 --> 00:28:23.840] And so there's the early stage of the business in which you really focus on attitude and aptitude.
[00:28:23.840 --> 00:28:28.880] You want someone with a good attitude and you want them with strong raw intelligence, which is I called aptitude.
[00:28:28.880 --> 00:28:33.920] Because in the early days of any company, in the early days of Five Cents, everyone's wearing five hats.
[00:28:33.920 --> 00:28:41.680] So the customer service person is processing orders at the warehouse, who's also like troubleshooting TikTok orders, who's also doing marketing ops.
[00:28:41.680 --> 00:28:45.440] Like every human being is stretched in different ways.
[00:28:45.440 --> 00:29:01.520] And so having very positive, good energy, and I believe in energy and vibes tremendously and strong intelligence, they can figure out anything and they can troubleshoot in the early days because the early stage of a business is all troubleshooting and problem solving every single day.
[00:29:01.520 --> 00:29:03.920] So attitude and aptitude in the early stages.
[00:29:03.920 --> 00:29:09.600] In a business like Wander, we have a totally different team and a totally different set of skills.
[00:29:09.600 --> 00:29:28.240] So as you start scaling and growing, when you have that initial product market fit and you start putting money, whether it's venture capital money, private equity money, you start scaling to global level, you really need to have operational excellence in place and systems in place that allow for that to happen seamlessly.
[00:29:28.240 --> 00:29:40.400] And so hiring talent that is seasoned, that has domain expertise, that has pattern recognition, has seen these problems before, has done this before, really lets you do everything better, faster, cheaper.
[00:29:40.400 --> 00:29:52.880] And so the talent that you bring on in the later stage of a business, yes, they have to have a great attitude, just like I said in the early stage, but instead of wearing 20 hats, they have to wear two and they have to wear them really well.
[00:29:52.880 --> 00:30:13.800] And so, and they have to have experience in that domain and bring something to the pie that and a skill set that you do not have as an entrepreneur and as a ceo so the hiring is totally different but i will tell you the universal thread of hiring across both companies two really important factors for entrepreneurs number one always be networking and meeting people.
[00:30:13.800 --> 00:30:17.720] You never know if you're going to need to hire that person in six months, a year, or two years.
[00:30:17.720 --> 00:30:25.560] I'm constantly networking, meeting people, and I may not have a job for them today, but I may have a job for them in 18 months or eight months.
[00:30:25.560 --> 00:30:32.920] And so building that network is very important because then when you're ready to hire, you have a pool of candidates ready to go.
[00:30:32.920 --> 00:30:34.600] And I do all of my hiring myself.
[00:30:34.600 --> 00:30:35.720] I don't use headhunters.
[00:30:35.720 --> 00:30:38.760] That's just how I've always operated all my companies.
[00:30:38.760 --> 00:30:42.040] And I really invest in people and invest in getting to know them.
[00:30:42.040 --> 00:30:44.360] The other thing is the New York to Tokyo test.
[00:30:44.360 --> 00:30:46.920] I learned this at Goldman Sachs when I was an analyst.
[00:30:46.920 --> 00:30:54.600] They said one of the interview questions for the interviewers was, would you sit on a plane with this person from New York to Tokyo?
[00:30:54.600 --> 00:31:09.080] And if I don't want to sit on the plane with that person from New York to Tokyo, then I don't want to hire them in my organization because you inevitably end up spending a tremendous amount of time with the people that you work with in an early stage or mid-stage business.
[00:31:09.080 --> 00:31:15.640] And so having those valuable relationships, having that connectivity and that chemistry is super important.
[00:31:15.640 --> 00:31:16.520] Absolutely.
[00:31:16.520 --> 00:31:24.280] Are there certain questions that you always ask during an interview to really gauge if you think someone is going to be a great fit for the organization?
[00:31:24.280 --> 00:31:24.920] I do.
[00:31:24.920 --> 00:31:28.120] I mean, one of the questions I ask always is, why should I hire you?
[00:31:28.440 --> 00:31:32.840] And a lot of people get stumped up on that and just like don't know how to answer it.
[00:31:32.840 --> 00:31:37.960] And one person recently, in an interview I was doing for Wander Beauty, answered it so well.
[00:31:37.960 --> 00:31:41.080] And she's like, I am a skincare and makeup enthusiast.
[00:31:41.080 --> 00:31:42.840] This is what I am passionate about.
[00:31:42.840 --> 00:31:44.040] These are my skills.
[00:31:44.040 --> 00:31:46.880] And this is why my skills fit the job position that you have.
[00:31:47.200 --> 00:31:56.160] And by the way, this is why your organization and your commitment to giving back and your commitment to clean aligns with my personal values, which makes this the right cultural fit for me.
[00:31:56.160 --> 00:32:12.720] And I was just wowed by the answer because she had thought through, you know, the industry, the segment, the passion, the skills, the lineup of the skills, and also the cultural fit, which are all very important factors to being successful in an organization.
[00:32:12.720 --> 00:32:18.800] So, yes, I asked lots of interesting questions, but that's one that I think is super important.
[00:32:18.800 --> 00:32:20.560] I love that one.
[00:32:21.840 --> 00:32:32.160] Coming up, Divya shares how she was able to build a dedicated team for five cents while maintaining her focus on continuing to grow and scale Wandsor Beauty.
[00:32:36.960 --> 00:32:43.360] Founders are always asking us: what has been the secret to our success building multiple seven-figure businesses?
[00:32:43.360 --> 00:32:44.800] Do you want to know how?
[00:32:44.800 --> 00:32:46.480] It's our community.
[00:32:46.480 --> 00:32:54.080] We created the Entrepreneursa League for founders like you because the most successful entrepreneurs do not navigate business alone.
[00:32:54.080 --> 00:32:59.920] We navigate the challenges and opportunities with the support of people we know, love, and trust.
[00:32:59.920 --> 00:33:03.760] The relationships you build in business will be the key to your success.
[00:33:03.760 --> 00:33:05.920] Trust me, it's how we've done it.
[00:33:05.920 --> 00:33:11.520] And I'm giving you access to everything we've used to grow and scale our businesses over the past decade.
[00:33:11.520 --> 00:33:15.920] Plus, you're going to meet your new best friends in business right inside the community.
[00:33:15.920 --> 00:33:38.360] Our members have access to everything we've used to grow our businesses over the past 10 plus years, from in-person events to virtual events, business education, funding resources, office hours with myself and other top founders in your industry, press opportunities, and access to our community platform where you can instantly get all of your business questions answered.
[00:33:38.360 --> 00:33:45.080] You can join us in the community over at refer.entrepranista.com forward slash join us.
[00:33:45.080 --> 00:33:50.840] That's refer.entrepranista.com forward slash join us to join the community.
[00:33:50.840 --> 00:33:54.200] Or head to the show notes right now and tap the link to join.
[00:33:54.200 --> 00:33:56.200] I cannot wait to meet you.
[00:33:57.160 --> 00:34:01.000] I want to talk about your marketing strategy for the launch of Five Sense.
[00:34:01.000 --> 00:34:03.000] I followed along with everything.
[00:34:03.000 --> 00:34:08.760] I then bought the Life of the Party travel spray, and I have to tell everyone it smells so good.
[00:34:08.760 --> 00:34:12.440] So if you have not yet tried Five Sense, definitely check it out.
[00:34:12.440 --> 00:34:16.120] Go to Sephora, or we'll definitely link out to everything in the show notes too.
[00:34:16.120 --> 00:34:23.160] But I just loved watching your like pre-launch of the brand and going into the launch on social.
[00:34:23.160 --> 00:34:25.400] Everything just felt so beautiful and seamless.
[00:34:25.400 --> 00:34:39.000] And one of the questions that I actually get a lot of times at my office hours in Entrepreneurista League is asking questions about, you know, how do I build that marketing strategy to either launch a new product or launch a new brand?
[00:34:39.000 --> 00:34:48.520] I would love for you to walk everyone through just the process of what you did for Five Cents, what worked well, what didn't work well, and maybe what you would do differently based on what you learned.
[00:34:48.520 --> 00:34:55.480] So I think one of the most important things that you need to do when you're building a product or service-based business is telling a story.
[00:34:55.480 --> 00:34:57.480] So many people omit that.
[00:34:57.480 --> 00:35:10.680] They're often, especially in the beauty industry and my experience at Wanderers, that so many people come out with a skincare product and they're hyper-focused on the data and they're like clinically proven to reduce wrinkles or hyperpigmentation by this percent or that percent.
[00:35:10.680 --> 00:35:17.360] And they that might convert a prospective buyer to buy and to become a customer.
[00:35:17.680 --> 00:35:27.200] However, in the fragrance industry, in particular, and just in general, I do believe emotional connectivity is what connects people to buy.
[00:35:27.200 --> 00:35:31.680] People buy from brands that connect with their values.
[00:35:31.680 --> 00:35:35.840] And so, I think the storytelling of the brand was critical for me.
[00:35:35.840 --> 00:35:38.800] This brand is your mood bottled.
[00:35:38.800 --> 00:35:43.760] This is the ultimate form of self-expression through fragrance.
[00:35:43.760 --> 00:35:54.800] And so, telling that story through emotion, through video, through creative content, through diverse creators, like we didn't say we were diverse, we showed we were diverse.
[00:35:54.800 --> 00:36:02.320] We had creators from all walks of life, all stages and sizes of ethnicities, and that diversity really came through.
[00:36:02.320 --> 00:36:04.080] And also, we're a purpose-driven brand.
[00:36:04.080 --> 00:36:12.720] And so, we really said, Hey, listen, this is more than just a fragrance, and this is, you know, this is a mood, and you're channeling into your end, you know, owning your energy.
[00:36:12.720 --> 00:36:15.920] And it was about, you know, mood swings are welcome.
[00:36:15.920 --> 00:36:17.600] Like, not every day is a good day.
[00:36:17.600 --> 00:36:20.960] And so, we had a mental health platform that was really important to me.
[00:36:20.960 --> 00:36:26.240] My cousin had committed suicide, which is why I actually named the fragrance Life of the Party after her.
[00:36:26.240 --> 00:36:28.640] And she was, you know, bipolar and off her medication.
[00:36:28.640 --> 00:36:34.240] And it was a very tragic event for everyone in our family and larger community to go through.
[00:36:34.240 --> 00:36:45.840] And partnering with Bring Change to Mind and having that platform of education and having conversations about mental health in high school, I think, is a preventative measure that has an impact on society.
[00:36:45.840 --> 00:36:49.760] And so, when I think about our brand, it's not just a fragrance.
[00:36:49.760 --> 00:36:52.160] You know, it's so much more than a fragrance.
[00:36:52.160 --> 00:36:56.800] And telling the story of who we are as a brand, this is your mood bottled.
[00:36:56.800 --> 00:37:00.000] These are the emotions that are going to connect you with these fragrances.
[00:37:00.840 --> 00:37:09.240] But also, here's a brand that really believes in being for the people and has a mental health platform and for the planet and has an oceanic society platform.
[00:37:09.240 --> 00:37:14.760] And so, having that clear messaging and telling that story, I think, was a key differentiating factor.
[00:37:14.760 --> 00:37:22.200] If you see 99% of brands in the fragrance space that are particularly clean, their story is: we are clean.
[00:37:22.200 --> 00:37:24.360] To me, that is not a story.
[00:37:24.360 --> 00:37:35.160] Having clean ingredients to me is table stakes, and having non-hormone-disrupting chemicals and you're not using hormone-disrupting chemicals in your formulations is table stakes.
[00:37:35.160 --> 00:37:37.480] That to me is not a story of a brand.
[00:37:37.480 --> 00:37:43.400] And so, we took things way further than what people were doing in clean and eco-friendly fragrance.
[00:37:43.720 --> 00:37:48.600] What were some of the tactics that you used once you had this brand messaging and story in place?
[00:37:48.600 --> 00:37:53.480] And now you're starting from zero with no audience, no customers, no community.
[00:37:53.480 --> 00:37:55.480] How did you create it and build it?
[00:37:55.800 --> 00:37:58.440] We reached out to people and built community.
[00:37:58.440 --> 00:38:02.600] That's really the best way to organically launch a brand.
[00:38:02.600 --> 00:38:09.240] We started from zero, zero people on our email list, zero Instagram followers, zero TikTok followers, and we told our story.
[00:38:09.240 --> 00:38:21.240] And we did it through compelling video content, through connecting with lots of different creators that were either fragrance creators or creators across very different and diverse segments of life.
[00:38:21.560 --> 00:38:29.560] We worked with anyone and everyone who was telling a unique story with an engaged audience, and that was a differentiating factor for us.
[00:38:29.560 --> 00:38:31.480] And we built from ground up.
[00:38:31.480 --> 00:38:33.600] And we just had our DTC business.
[00:38:33.600 --> 00:38:44.360] Then we partnered with Sephora strategically to build an omni-channel relationship, to have one touch point where people could physically smell us, which I think is important in the fragrance industry.
[00:38:44.360 --> 00:38:47.680] And I also believe that omnichannel is the way to go.
[00:38:47.920 --> 00:38:56.960] It's very expensive to launch a brand just DTC unless you have a very significant marketing budget to put behind it and compete with other brands in the space.
[00:38:56.960 --> 00:39:03.440] So I think that was a strategic move to partner with Sephora, which is a place for brand discovery.
[00:39:03.440 --> 00:39:09.520] People often go into Sephora stores and on Sephora's website to discover new and interesting brands.
[00:39:09.520 --> 00:39:19.600] And having just that narrow touch point of like, we are DTC, we are Sephora, here's our story, telling it organically through content.
[00:39:19.600 --> 00:39:20.720] It's a flywheel.
[00:39:20.720 --> 00:39:22.400] We told our story.
[00:39:22.400 --> 00:39:24.160] We reached out to influencers.
[00:39:24.160 --> 00:39:25.600] We reached out to editors.
[00:39:25.600 --> 00:39:28.480] We got tons of amazing press placements.
[00:39:28.480 --> 00:39:30.800] We were pitching people constantly.
[00:39:30.800 --> 00:39:38.880] You know, my team was constantly pitching new and diverse creators and editors and people in the community to talk about us and write about us.
[00:39:38.880 --> 00:39:41.840] And we built everything from the ground up.
[00:39:41.840 --> 00:39:48.320] And, you know, we launched Into Deep earlier last month and we sold out four times in a row at Sephora.
[00:39:48.320 --> 00:40:02.560] And so having that ability to tell that story and it really wasn't, it wasn't at all driven by money and putting money behind spend and tons of ads and you know paid creators.
[00:40:02.560 --> 00:40:04.960] It was very much organic and grassroots.
[00:40:04.960 --> 00:40:12.160] And you see Jaclyn Hill going out, she has 8.8 million followers saying, I bought this at Sephora and I loved it so much.
[00:40:12.160 --> 00:40:17.520] I went upgraded from a travel size to a full size and linking us and selling us out at Sephora.
[00:40:17.520 --> 00:40:18.160] And that was organic.
[00:40:19.280 --> 00:40:21.040] Yeah, 100% organic.
[00:40:21.040 --> 00:40:26.800] And multiple features came back and said that, oh, by the way, you guys sold this out and now they have the travel size.
[00:40:26.800 --> 00:40:28.240] And then we sold out of that again.
[00:40:28.240 --> 00:40:34.760] And Kathleen Lights, who has 2 million followers, organically talking about us on TikTok about how she loved one of her favorite vanillas.
[00:40:29.840 --> 00:40:36.760] And Manny Muo, who just featured us today.
[00:40:37.080 --> 00:40:47.240] And so, like, we've built this ecosystem of mega creators who are incredibly influential and have engaged communities who are organically talking about us entirely.
[00:40:47.240 --> 00:40:50.040] So, did you initially reach out to them and gift and send products?
[00:40:50.040 --> 00:40:53.000] They found out about you first, or they were just organically found you in Sephora?
[00:40:54.440 --> 00:41:01.400] So, we reached out to a lot of micros and built a momentum that was a groundswell of micros.
[00:41:01.400 --> 00:41:08.600] I do believe that the macros discovered us through the micros and they went out and bought the product.
[00:41:08.600 --> 00:41:12.840] Like Kathleen Lights did a video about Life at the Party, she had bought the product.
[00:41:12.840 --> 00:41:15.320] Like, Jaclyn Hill talked about In Too Deep.
[00:41:15.320 --> 00:41:19.480] She said, I went to Sephora and bought the travel size and then upgraded to the full size.
[00:41:19.480 --> 00:41:30.680] Like, there are a lot of creators in this ecosystem who are really genuine and authentic and are always on the hunt to discover new and fabulous brands and products for their audiences.
[00:41:30.680 --> 00:41:33.640] And that's why they connect with them in such a unique and special way.
[00:41:33.640 --> 00:41:36.840] And so, you know, that's really what happened for us.
[00:41:36.840 --> 00:41:41.000] But we did do a lot of gifting and a lot of pitching across many levels.
[00:41:41.000 --> 00:41:42.760] And sometimes we fell on deaf ears.
[00:41:42.760 --> 00:41:49.080] But I say to myself that every email that goes out of my email with a pitch to tell someone about the brand, they may not answer.
[00:41:49.080 --> 00:41:51.320] They may not, you know, opt in for product.
[00:41:51.320 --> 00:41:55.320] They may not gift them, but I've built one more touch point of brand awareness.
[00:41:55.320 --> 00:41:58.760] They maybe read that email or scanned that email and discovered our brand.
[00:41:58.760 --> 00:42:02.840] You have to be what 99% of the world is not, which is consistent.
[00:42:03.720 --> 00:42:05.400] Who do you have on your marketing team?
[00:42:05.400 --> 00:42:16.640] I think it'd be interesting for everyone to hear, like in a startup business, you've self-funded this business, you've accomplished so much over the past year with, I know it's a small team, but who are the roles that you have?
[00:42:14.840 --> 00:42:19.760] And you're doing a lot of pitching and PR and marketing.
[00:42:19.920 --> 00:42:22.080] What is everyone focused on?
[00:42:22.400 --> 00:42:30.400] So, we definitely have two people who are organically looking for creators that they find engaging that might be a good fit for our brand.
[00:42:30.400 --> 00:42:33.680] So, there's constantly this search going on.
[00:42:33.680 --> 00:42:35.760] Like, are these creators based in the U.S.?
[00:42:35.840 --> 00:42:37.440] Do they have a certain number of followers?
[00:42:37.440 --> 00:42:40.000] Like, do they have a certain level of engagement?
[00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:42.480] And they're kind of putting together lists of people to pitch.
[00:42:42.480 --> 00:42:45.920] All those people are getting pitched, and then it's a completely automated process.
[00:42:45.920 --> 00:42:54.880] They're going into a Google form, and then another person on the team is looking at inventory and their fragrance preferences and matching them up with the right products to gift.
[00:42:54.880 --> 00:42:58.080] Then that's seamlessly entered into the warehouse and goes out to them.
[00:42:58.080 --> 00:43:00.240] Then there's a follow-up loop of your tracking.
[00:43:00.240 --> 00:43:03.200] We always send a tracking email to people so they know the package is coming.
[00:43:03.200 --> 00:43:07.040] It's another touch point to build with the potential customer.
[00:43:07.040 --> 00:43:09.200] Then following up, did you like it?
[00:43:09.200 --> 00:43:10.560] Can you leave us a review?
[00:43:10.560 --> 00:43:14.640] Like, having a full marketing loop is very important.
[00:43:14.640 --> 00:43:22.320] Some people get so hyper-focused on the brand awareness top of funnel piece that all they do is the spray and pray outreach.
[00:43:22.320 --> 00:43:23.920] That's not what works.
[00:43:23.920 --> 00:43:35.840] It's actually more effective to have a 360 approach to pitching, nurturing, building, and harvesting long-term relationships and loyalty.
[00:43:35.840 --> 00:43:36.560] Absolutely.
[00:43:36.560 --> 00:43:37.520] Completely agree.
[00:43:37.520 --> 00:43:42.160] So it's like, you know, we have different people on the team who are owning different pieces of the process.
[00:43:42.160 --> 00:43:47.120] You know, we personally reach out to editors and we look at publications that are written in fragrance.
[00:43:47.120 --> 00:43:48.400] We do that all outreach.
[00:43:48.400 --> 00:43:53.840] Then it comes in again through a Google form where they opt in for scents, and we have a team that kind of processes a lot of it.
[00:43:53.840 --> 00:43:59.520] So, a lot of it is operations-based, and we make that really seamless for the person who's involved.
[00:43:59.520 --> 00:44:11.240] I'll give you a great tip for any business owner: like, if you're pitching PR and you're pitching editors, like you want stories written about you, like keep all the information in that one email so the editor doesn't have to waste their time coming back to you.
[00:44:11.400 --> 00:44:17.400] When I send a pitch, I said, This is a new fragrance, this is the price point, this is the design, here's a link with images.
[00:44:17.400 --> 00:44:22.120] If you need it for your publication, you know, here's the retail outlet that it's available at.
[00:44:22.120 --> 00:44:25.160] Here's where it's available on my website with the link.
[00:44:25.160 --> 00:44:34.520] Put all of the relevant information together in a cohesive pitch that makes it seamless for the editor to then write about you.
[00:44:34.520 --> 00:44:47.400] Do you find that any specific channel is performing best for you right now, or do you just see it's really you just basically have to be on all platforms using email marketing, and people just have to be seeing you everywhere?
[00:44:47.400 --> 00:44:50.520] And then ultimately, they will eventually make that purchase.
[00:44:50.520 --> 00:44:57.800] You know, they taught us this in business school that you need seven touch points to get someone to convert to sell, and I to convert to buy.
[00:44:57.800 --> 00:45:00.840] And I truly believe that is true.
[00:45:00.840 --> 00:45:07.400] Like, you do need seven touch points to get people to convert to buy, and so you must build all touch points.
[00:45:07.400 --> 00:45:12.200] I would say we've had a tremendous amount of success in growing our community quickly on TikTok.
[00:45:12.200 --> 00:45:20.840] It's been like watching paint dry on Instagram, trying to get followers because it's such a hard platform to build a community and to build a following for a brand.
[00:45:20.840 --> 00:45:22.680] And I think it's just getting harder.
[00:45:22.680 --> 00:45:29.800] But TikTok has been a more, I would say, democratized platform where we're seeing more traction quicker.
[00:45:29.800 --> 00:45:36.440] We're also selling through TikTok Shop, which has been a unique and interesting platform for people to connect with our brand.
[00:45:36.760 --> 00:45:38.360] No, I'm glad you brought that up.
[00:45:38.360 --> 00:45:41.720] So, yes, TikTok Shop is all the talk right now.
[00:45:41.960 --> 00:45:49.280] Brands that are cracking the code on there are, you don't have to have those eight touch points if you can crack the code on TikTok shop.
[00:45:44.840 --> 00:45:50.320] True.
[00:45:50.560 --> 00:45:58.000] Zivy, I would love to hear about your commitment to investing and investing in women founders.
[00:45:58.000 --> 00:46:01.680] I know you've invested in so many different brands over the years.
[00:46:01.680 --> 00:46:08.720] Talk to me about your experience starting out as an investor and what you look for right now in terms of new opportunities.
[00:46:09.040 --> 00:46:13.520] So I have been investing in brands for over 24 years.
[00:46:13.520 --> 00:46:15.920] That is a very long time.
[00:46:15.920 --> 00:46:23.600] I started out in a professional investment career as a venture capitalist and then a private equity professional and then back to venture capital.
[00:46:23.600 --> 00:46:29.680] And I've had a tremendous amount of experience backing entrepreneurs in many different stages, sizes, and sectors.
[00:46:29.680 --> 00:46:31.280] And I do believe there's a common theme.
[00:46:31.280 --> 00:46:36.160] So with my family office, with Concept2Co, we really focus on early stage businesses.
[00:46:36.160 --> 00:46:39.680] Anything from pre-seed to series A is our sweet spot.
[00:46:39.680 --> 00:46:44.560] Sometimes we go a little later into a series B, but that's really kind of where we play.
[00:46:44.560 --> 00:46:48.960] So we have a very defined focus of when we want to get into a business.
[00:46:48.960 --> 00:46:55.680] We typically want to be the first money in, and we want to see that, you know, massive return when they exit.
[00:46:55.680 --> 00:46:58.720] And we're willing to wait that time to kind of wait it out.
[00:46:58.720 --> 00:47:04.480] And in an early stage business, it's really about three things: people, idea, opportunity.
[00:47:04.480 --> 00:47:13.840] So you're betting on the founder or the founding team, the idea that it's a large market opportunity that is growing, and you see potential in that market.
[00:47:13.840 --> 00:47:18.080] And for us and consumer, there's so many different pockets of consumer that are growing well.
[00:47:18.080 --> 00:47:19.600] And then, what is the opportunity?
[00:47:19.600 --> 00:47:21.760] It's like, what is the POD of this brand?
[00:47:21.760 --> 00:47:27.520] Why is this founder uniquely positioned to start this business and be successful?
[00:47:27.520 --> 00:47:34.040] And so, early stage bets really are very heavily on the people factor, but the idea and the opportunity weigh in.
[00:47:34.280 --> 00:47:39.640] When I'm making a Series A or, you know, sometimes we veer into Series B investment.
[00:47:39.640 --> 00:47:42.600] At that point, there's product market fit in the organization.
[00:47:42.600 --> 00:47:44.360] The product or the service is working.
[00:47:44.360 --> 00:47:46.440] There's some early traction data.
[00:47:46.440 --> 00:47:52.280] You see how you can put money behind that product market fit to scale the business.
[00:47:52.280 --> 00:47:54.280] And you really want to focus on people.
[00:47:54.280 --> 00:47:56.600] Again, not just the founders at this point.
[00:47:56.600 --> 00:48:04.280] At this point, they do have some senior leadership, and you're looking at a bench of talent that's going to support that CEO or that founder.
[00:48:04.280 --> 00:48:13.880] So, people, you're going to look at product and the service, and what are the metrics at this stage and size of the business that show product market fit.
[00:48:13.880 --> 00:48:22.120] And the third piece is distribution: how am I going to put money behind this business and see how they will grow distribution exponentially?
[00:48:22.120 --> 00:48:24.600] So, do they have the right channels planned?
[00:48:24.600 --> 00:48:27.400] What channels are going to go into?
[00:48:27.400 --> 00:48:29.080] And what reach is it retail?
[00:48:29.080 --> 00:48:30.680] Is it omni-channel as a DTC?
[00:48:30.680 --> 00:48:32.120] Where are they going to hit the gas?
[00:48:32.120 --> 00:48:42.760] Where they've seen some early-level traction and unit economics and data that shows me it's working, that I can put money behind it, and that could scale exponentially, and I can see a return for my money.
[00:48:42.760 --> 00:48:50.600] So, I think early stage people, idea, opportunity, later stage, people, product distribution.
[00:48:50.600 --> 00:48:58.360] And specific industries you're focused on for those that are listening and currently raising capital and should know whether to reach out to you or not?
[00:48:58.680 --> 00:49:06.280] So, consumer, pretty broadly, I was, you know, one of the first early investors in a lot of different consumer technologies.
[00:49:06.280 --> 00:49:13.080] I was an early investor in Pinterest, I was an early investor in Shopify, I was an early investor in Dollar Shave Club, which sold for a billion dollars to Unilever.
[00:49:13.080 --> 00:49:15.600] And so, and I have a lot of consumer investments.
[00:49:14.840 --> 00:49:21.680] So, I have seven brands that I'm an investor of in at Sephora, four at Ulta, three at Target.
[00:49:22.000 --> 00:49:31.680] I continue to really be bullish on consumer, but I really need to see a strong point of difference because there are so many brands launching consistently in the consumer space.
[00:49:31.680 --> 00:49:32.960] Oh, absolutely.
[00:49:32.960 --> 00:49:34.640] Last question for you, Divya.
[00:49:34.640 --> 00:49:41.760] And then we'll have to get on an Instagram or LinkedIn Live soon to continue the conversation because I know you have to, you have to get back to your busy day.
[00:49:41.760 --> 00:49:44.640] But what does being an entrepreneur mean to you?
[00:49:45.280 --> 00:49:48.880] It means investing in and building community.
[00:49:48.880 --> 00:50:04.400] I think that it's investing in and building relationships and supporting each other and helping each other and remembering and realizing that someone else's success is a testament to your hard work and you should be excited for other people.
[00:50:04.400 --> 00:50:16.480] And so, I have always been an entrepreneur who has championed success for others and opened doors for others, opened retail relationships, access to capital, you know, ability to raise money.
[00:50:16.480 --> 00:50:25.520] I think that sense of community, having a very strong community around you during this very difficult journey is critical.
[00:50:25.760 --> 00:50:26.880] So, I'm here for it.
[00:50:27.200 --> 00:50:38.560] Yes, and we are so grateful that you have been such a champion of the Entrepreneursly community and want to share with everyone that Divya hosts office hours for Entrepreneursly community.
[00:50:38.560 --> 00:50:42.240] So, if for some reason you're not part of the Entrepreneursi community yet, definitely join us.
[00:50:42.240 --> 00:50:47.440] You can come chat with Divya in the community platform and at some of our events as well.
[00:50:47.440 --> 00:50:50.320] Divya, where can everyone find you and follow you?
[00:50:50.320 --> 00:50:56.560] And for those that might be interested in trying Five Cents or Wander Beauty for the first time, where should they head to do so?
[00:50:56.560 --> 00:50:57.120] Sure.
[00:50:57.120 --> 00:51:03.400] So, I'm on Instagram at D G U G N A N I at D Gugnani.
[00:50:59.600 --> 00:51:06.040] And I'm on TikTok where I really share a lot of.
[00:51:06.680 --> 00:51:09.560] entrepreneur and investor tips and tricks.
[00:51:09.560 --> 00:51:13.160] That's more of my business channel on TikTok at D Gugnani.
[00:51:13.160 --> 00:51:15.400] So D G U G N A N I.
[00:51:15.400 --> 00:51:19.240] Wander Beauty is on both platforms at Wander underscore Beauty.
[00:51:19.240 --> 00:51:22.360] So W A N D E R underscore beauty.
[00:51:22.360 --> 00:51:33.800] Five Cents is on both platforms as well at Five S E N S Co, Five Cents Co on Instagram and also on TikTok.
[00:51:33.800 --> 00:51:40.520] And there are links in the bio for both of those companies to get to their site, wanderbeauty.com and fivecents.co.
[00:51:40.520 --> 00:51:43.080] And we'll be linking out to everything in the show notes below.
[00:51:43.080 --> 00:51:48.200] So go tap the show notes right now and you can go over and follow Divya and all of the brands over there too.
[00:51:48.200 --> 00:51:56.120] Divya, thank you again so much for spending the afternoon with me and always sharing such a brilliant advice and all of your learning lessons.
[00:51:56.120 --> 00:51:57.240] So thank you again.
[00:51:57.240 --> 00:52:01.800] I'm Stephanie and this is the best business meeting I've ever had.
[00:52:01.800 --> 00:52:11.240] Hi entrepreneurs, it's Steph here and I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired and with some actionable tips that you can apply to your own business.
[00:52:11.240 --> 00:52:18.600] The way we've grown our community and resources is by sharing content like this for years and asking for help along the way.
[00:52:18.600 --> 00:52:24.120] So here's where we need your help so we can continue to make as much impact as possible together.
[00:52:24.120 --> 00:52:33.880] If you can leave us a five-star review and extra credit if you share this episode on Instagram, LinkedIn, or DM it to a founder friend who would benefit from hearing it.
[00:52:33.880 --> 00:52:41.240] Not only would it mean the world to us, but you sharing this episode is going to help someone who just may need to hear what we share today.
[00:52:41.240 --> 00:52:44.200] And you know, I love nothing more than giveaways and prizes.
[00:52:44.200 --> 00:52:50.960] So every month I'll be giving away a one-on-one session with me to someone who has shared the episode and left a review.
[00:52:50.960 --> 00:52:53.840] So send me a personal DM over on Instagram.
[00:52:53.840 --> 00:52:58.720] I'm at Steph Jillcarton once you've done it, so you can be entered to win.
[00:52:58.720 --> 00:53:04.400] Wishing you a productive week ahead and stay tuned for another impactful episode next week.

Prompt 2: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 3: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 4: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Full Transcript

[00:00:00.880 --> 00:00:05.680] Hey, Entrepreneurs, it's Steph here with a special invite just for you.
[00:00:05.680 --> 00:00:10.800] Do you want to experience what it's like to be part of our Entrepreneursa League community of founders?
[00:00:10.800 --> 00:00:12.400] Now is your chance.
[00:00:12.400 --> 00:00:21.360] You can join me this month at one of our upcoming Entrepreneursa League info sessions where I'm going to share with you all you're going to get access to when you join the community.
[00:00:21.360 --> 00:00:27.040] Plus, I'll be giving away some big bonuses that you will only be able to get access to when you attend live.
[00:00:27.040 --> 00:00:35.600] Head over to refer.entreprenista.com forward slash info session to join us at one of our virtual info sessions this month.
[00:00:35.600 --> 00:00:40.640] That's refer.entrepranista.com forward slash info session.
[00:00:40.640 --> 00:00:44.560] Or head over to the show notes right now and tap the link to join us.
[00:00:44.560 --> 00:00:49.200] I can't wait to meet you there and learn more about you and your business.
[00:00:49.840 --> 00:01:01.440] Every email that goes out of my email with a pitch to tell someone about the brand, they may not answer, they may not, you know, opt in for product, and we may not gift them, but I've built one more touch point of brand awareness.
[00:01:01.440 --> 00:01:04.880] They maybe read that email or scanned that email and discovered our brand.
[00:01:04.880 --> 00:01:09.600] You have to be what 99% of the world is not, which is consistent.
[00:01:16.640 --> 00:01:27.680] Divya Gugnani is the CEO and co-founder of Wander Beauty, a brand renowned for its clean, multitasking beauty essentials designed for the modern woman on the go.
[00:01:27.680 --> 00:01:39.120] With a background in investment banking and venture capital, Divya transitioned into entrepreneurship, launching multiple successful businesses, including her latest startup, Five Sense.
[00:01:39.120 --> 00:01:47.920] Divya is creating a sensory experience and fragrance that emphasizes clean ingredients and unique mood encapsulating scents.
[00:01:47.920 --> 00:01:56.640] Her commitment to clean beauty and innovative consumer-focused products continues to drive her success in the competitive beauty industry.
[00:01:56.640 --> 00:02:04.280] And her leadership has earned her numerous accolades and awards, underscoring her impact as a visionary in the beauty market.
[00:02:04.600 --> 00:02:09.960] Get ready to hear Divya's story and her biggest business secrets.
[00:02:10.920 --> 00:02:18.680] Coming up, Divya shares her unexpected journey from introverted child to a seasoned entrepreneur.
[00:02:18.680 --> 00:02:23.400] She reflects on the importance of timing and business success and exits.
[00:02:23.720 --> 00:02:30.120] You'll hear about her transition from tech to beauty, highlighting the importance of learning from experts.
[00:02:30.120 --> 00:02:35.640] Divyares with us how her passion for fragrance led to the creation of Five Sense.
[00:02:35.640 --> 00:02:39.320] She talks about her commitment to investing in women founders.
[00:02:39.320 --> 00:02:44.040] And finally, Divya reveals her biggest business secrets.
[00:02:44.360 --> 00:02:47.880] This is the Entrepreneur Podcast, presented by Social Fly.
[00:02:47.880 --> 00:02:58.600] It's the best business meeting you'll ever have with must-hear real-life looks at how leading women in business are getting it done and what it takes to build and grow a successful company.
[00:02:58.600 --> 00:03:04.600] It's beyond the Graham with no filters, no limits, and plenty of surprises.
[00:03:07.480 --> 00:03:12.600] Divya, I am so glad we finally made this recording happen.
[00:03:12.840 --> 00:03:22.200] It has been, I feel like, at least two years in the making since trying to record this update episode since you were on the Entrepreneursa podcast back.
[00:03:22.200 --> 00:03:24.280] Now it had to have been Molly's four and a half.
[00:03:24.280 --> 00:03:25.800] It had to have been close to five years ago.
[00:03:25.800 --> 00:03:31.880] It was like right when we, right after we first launched the podcast when you were on, but I was in the hospital and you recorded with Courtney.
[00:03:31.880 --> 00:03:33.560] It's like years in the making.
[00:03:33.560 --> 00:03:35.160] We're going to make it worthwhile.
[00:03:35.160 --> 00:03:36.920] Yes, absolutely.
[00:03:36.920 --> 00:03:40.360] And you all are in for such a treat with Divya today.
[00:03:40.360 --> 00:03:46.720] She is just a wealth of knowledge when it comes to growing and scaling a business.
[00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:54.160] And I have so many questions for you, Divya, because you are just somehow doing it all.
[00:03:54.480 --> 00:03:58.880] You have a family, you're managing multiple businesses, investing in businesses.
[00:03:58.880 --> 00:04:01.440] You have an incredible life and social life as well.
[00:04:01.440 --> 00:04:03.840] So we're going to get into how you're able to make it all happen.
[00:04:03.840 --> 00:04:08.480] But before we get into all those fun details, what were you like as a child, Divya?
[00:04:08.480 --> 00:04:12.400] Did you always know that you wanted to have your own business one day?
[00:04:12.400 --> 00:04:13.680] Absolutely not.
[00:04:13.680 --> 00:04:18.080] In fact, I would say that there wasn't a chance in hell that I would be an entrepreneur.
[00:04:18.080 --> 00:04:34.160] I think that when I look back at my childhood, I see a shy, awkward, introverted child who loved to read, who used to hide in the kitchen while my parents used to throw fancy big parties and have their friends over and entertain.
[00:04:34.160 --> 00:04:36.960] And I wanted nothing to do with socializing with anybody.
[00:04:36.960 --> 00:04:38.000] I would sit in the kitchen.
[00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:45.680] I have all the cuts and burns and, you know, nicks in my fingers to prove that I spent all the time in the kitchen when they were having all these parties.
[00:04:45.680 --> 00:04:56.560] And then I, you know, was definitely a very diligent student all through school and really focused on doing well and achieving and working hard.
[00:04:56.560 --> 00:05:03.520] And then I kind of went into my career post-college in a very like random way.
[00:05:03.520 --> 00:05:10.320] I originally thought that, okay, I'll study government economics, which is what I studied at Cornell, and I'll take the LSAT, I'll become a lawyer.
[00:05:10.320 --> 00:05:14.000] Like that seems like a great, like solid, stable career for me.
[00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:18.240] You get your, you know, W-2 paycheck and everything is like wonderful.
[00:05:18.240 --> 00:05:22.880] And what happened is that I started, you know, it all starts with a boy.
[00:05:22.880 --> 00:05:28.320] I started dating someone in college who did, took an investment banking job after college.
[00:05:28.320 --> 00:05:37.800] And then I was like, oh, this looks so fancy and so fun, like black cars and sushi takeout at work and like meeting with clients and flying in private jets.
[00:05:37.800 --> 00:05:39.400] I was like, this sounds kind of fun.
[00:05:39.400 --> 00:05:40.200] I think I could do this.
[00:05:40.200 --> 00:05:41.320] I'm good at math.
[00:05:41.320 --> 00:05:46.440] And I literally did an internship in investment banking.
[00:05:46.440 --> 00:05:53.720] And once I did that internship, I was bitten by the bug of finance and was like, oh, I'm just going to like go and start my career in finance.
[00:05:53.720 --> 00:05:58.760] And even when I had that career in finance, I had zero intention of being an entrepreneur.
[00:05:58.760 --> 00:06:05.560] I really was just focused on my work, investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs, slept under a desk, loved every day of it.
[00:06:05.560 --> 00:06:06.920] I actually enjoyed that job.
[00:06:06.920 --> 00:06:13.400] I know a lot of people find it very rigorous and exhausting and they don't like it, but I loved every day of it.
[00:06:13.400 --> 00:06:16.040] And I really became an entrepreneur by accident.
[00:06:16.040 --> 00:06:22.920] So I was, again, dating someone who didn't know what he wanted to do with his life, had a huge passion for cars.
[00:06:22.920 --> 00:06:27.000] I would get up every morning, leave, and go to my venture capital job.
[00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:30.120] And he'd be sitting on the couch kind of debating life.
[00:06:30.120 --> 00:06:34.440] And then I would come home and he'd be still sitting on the couch debating life.
[00:06:34.440 --> 00:06:36.680] And so we needed to find something for him to do.
[00:06:36.680 --> 00:06:40.200] And I started a business by accident, literally just to help him.
[00:06:40.200 --> 00:06:43.080] And it grew to a multi-million dollar business, which I sold.
[00:06:43.080 --> 00:06:44.680] And then after that, you know, I've started.
[00:06:45.080 --> 00:06:46.200] What business was that?
[00:06:46.200 --> 00:06:49.160] That was in the auto parts space many, many years ago.
[00:06:49.160 --> 00:07:02.840] And so everyone should have an early entrepreneurial success to completely delude them and make them realize that everything goes like this and sales go like this and everything is super easy because every business after that was never as easy as the first one.
[00:07:02.840 --> 00:07:13.720] So, you know, I went on to then start another company, another company, which I then sold to QVC and raised venture money for, and then to start, you know, Wander Beauty and then to start Five Cents.
[00:07:13.720 --> 00:07:20.320] So, I've had quite a journey across sectors, spaces, and stages as an entrepreneur.
[00:07:20.320 --> 00:07:31.840] How did you handle going from one venture to the next when it comes to like your emotions, like letting go of that baby and selling it to someone else?
[00:07:31.840 --> 00:07:37.200] And then having that mental space and capacity to be like, Okay, I'm ready to start the next thing.
[00:07:37.200 --> 00:07:43.040] It's so fascinating because you have to be wildly passionate about what you're doing when you're an entrepreneur.
[00:07:43.040 --> 00:07:48.240] Otherwise, you give up because it's exhausting, it's tiring, and you know this firsthand.
[00:07:48.240 --> 00:07:53.760] You know, you reach so many obstacles, so many challenges, and there's so many times where you just want to give up.
[00:07:53.760 --> 00:07:55.360] So, you have to love what you do.
[00:07:55.360 --> 00:07:57.440] And I loved every company I started.
[00:07:57.440 --> 00:07:59.920] I loved every product and service I created.
[00:07:59.920 --> 00:08:04.000] I had a tremendous amount of inner passion for it, which kept me going.
[00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:12.160] But one thing I learned very much the hard way is that timing is one of the most important factors in having a successful business and exit.
[00:08:12.160 --> 00:08:16.720] So, there was a very big study done about: is it the management team?
[00:08:16.800 --> 00:08:18.400] Is it the education of the management team?
[00:08:18.400 --> 00:08:19.920] Is the amount of capital they raise?
[00:08:19.920 --> 00:08:24.960] Like, what are these factors that make a company have a very successful large exit?
[00:08:24.960 --> 00:08:29.680] And one of the most important factors that was discovered during this study was timing.
[00:08:29.680 --> 00:08:43.120] It's knowing when you have taken this business to the level and the potential that you can, and that now you're at a stage and size where someone else needs to take the reins, and that your skill set potentially may be not be a match for that future growth.
[00:08:43.120 --> 00:08:48.080] And so, I think having that self-realization and self-awareness is something I learned over time.
[00:08:48.080 --> 00:08:51.280] Initially, with my first business, we got an offer and I was ecstatic.
[00:08:51.280 --> 00:08:53.200] I owned the majority of the company.
[00:08:53.200 --> 00:08:56.000] I was like, there's no way I'm not going to take this offer.
[00:08:56.000 --> 00:08:57.600] It made total sense.
[00:08:57.600 --> 00:08:59.360] You know, my second business never sold.
[00:08:59.440 --> 00:09:03.960] It was profitable and it scaled, you know, to millions of dollars of revenue.
[00:09:03.960 --> 00:09:06.280] But then my third business, same thing.
[00:09:06.280 --> 00:09:10.680] I had an offer from QBC and it was a life-changing exit for myself and my family.
[00:09:10.680 --> 00:09:13.000] And it made sense at the time.
[00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:16.680] And I just had a, I was pregnant with my son actually at that moment.
[00:09:16.680 --> 00:09:18.360] And I was like, yep, this is it.
[00:09:18.360 --> 00:09:34.200] Because when you look at the competitive factors in the industry and how much competition is coming up and how much capital the people had to market, it made sense logically to say, okay, now it's time to partner with a larger organization and take this to the next level.
[00:09:34.200 --> 00:09:38.520] What were some of your biggest learning lessons from that exit with QVC?
[00:09:38.520 --> 00:09:40.680] And what business was that that you sold to QVC?
[00:09:40.680 --> 00:09:41.800] That was Send the Trend.
[00:09:41.800 --> 00:09:46.600] So we built a proprietary algorithm for intelligent shopping recommendation technology.
[00:09:46.600 --> 00:09:54.200] We really could, in a very particular way, understand your shopping journey on our site and beyond.
[00:09:54.200 --> 00:09:59.000] We were collecting over 3 million data points of your behavior on our site.
[00:09:59.000 --> 00:10:07.320] And we could predict that if you bought, you know, a particular ring, that you would buy the next bracelet and that you would buy the next accessory or beauty item.
[00:10:07.320 --> 00:10:18.120] And so what was really fascinating about that business was having a point of difference and having really differentiated technology, which I think allowed us to stand out from the crowd in terms of acquisition.
[00:10:18.120 --> 00:10:30.440] But to your question about what made it so special and different and the motivation behind it, is that we had achieved a tremendous amount of success in a short period of time.
[00:10:30.440 --> 00:10:37.400] So we had raised venture money and we sold the company within 11 months and we had grown gangbusters.
[00:10:37.400 --> 00:10:45.760] And so just knowing that we had achieved that growth and we were in a hyper growth period, that made me feel like I was ready at that time.
[00:10:45.760 --> 00:10:50.080] That made sense for us to, you know, take the next step for an exit.
[00:10:44.680 --> 00:10:51.120] That was totally.
[00:10:52.960 --> 00:11:00.160] Up next, you'll discover how Divya's personal challenges inspired her to create Wander Beauty.
[00:11:08.320 --> 00:11:09.520] Hi, Entrepreneurs.
[00:11:09.520 --> 00:11:10.560] It's Steph here.
[00:11:10.560 --> 00:11:17.200] As a founder, I know firsthand that building a business can feel so lonely, but it doesn't have to.
[00:11:17.200 --> 00:11:21.920] And that's why we created our Entrepreneursa Founders Weekend Wealth and Wellness Retreat.
[00:11:21.920 --> 00:11:24.080] And I can't wait to meet you in person there.
[00:11:24.080 --> 00:11:38.240] So you're officially invited to join us from April 30th to May 3rd, 2026 at the stunning PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida for three transformative days of connection, collaboration, and real business growth.
[00:11:38.240 --> 00:11:40.400] This isn't just another business conference.
[00:11:40.400 --> 00:11:48.800] It is a curated retreat designed to help you build authentic, lasting relationships with women who truly understand your journey.
[00:11:48.800 --> 00:11:55.600] From business panels and workshops to wellness activations and so much more, this is the room that you need to be in.
[00:11:55.600 --> 00:12:07.040] So if you are ready to invest in yourself and your business and your vision and your next level of success, head over to entrepreneurs.com forward slash foundersweekend to reserve your ticket today.
[00:12:07.040 --> 00:12:15.360] That's entrepreneur.com forward slash foundersweekend or head over to the show notes right now and tap the invitation to reserve your ticket.
[00:12:15.360 --> 00:12:16.720] I'll see you there.
[00:12:26.560 --> 00:12:30.000] Okay, so how did Wander Beauty begin?
[00:12:30.760 --> 00:12:34.120] So that was a fascinating idea and journey.
[00:12:34.120 --> 00:12:39.960] When I was at QBC, I really got exposed to the beauty industry in a completely different way than I had ever been before.
[00:12:39.960 --> 00:12:45.560] So I grew up in college, you know, my sorority doing makeup for people, being obsessed with makeup and skincare.
[00:12:45.560 --> 00:13:06.200] And, you know, my mom had always forbidden me from using Neutrogena face wash, and everything that I put on my face was like turmeric and pineapple and, you know, yogurt and milk masks and you know, all the Indian Ayurvedic stuff that Indian moms, you know, pride themselves in concocting in their kitchens.
[00:13:06.200 --> 00:13:08.440] And I loved beauty.
[00:13:08.440 --> 00:13:12.040] I was always wildly passionate about it and interested in it.
[00:13:12.040 --> 00:13:24.520] And when I sold Send the Trend to QBC, I had the opportunity to get very closely involved in their beauty business, which was a very sizable business, hundreds of millions of dollars, which scaled over a billion.
[00:13:24.840 --> 00:13:30.760] And during that time, I worked with a lot of different beauty founders and scaling and building their brands.
[00:13:30.760 --> 00:13:49.960] And I was just fascinated with differentiated three factors: differentiated product, people having a POD, a point of difference in their product, a very unique founder story, and then the ability to connect with the community to create a business that scaled and grew.
[00:13:49.960 --> 00:13:53.560] And so I said to myself, I'm a time-starved mom on the go.
[00:13:53.880 --> 00:13:58.440] I, at that point, had two children within two years.
[00:13:58.440 --> 00:14:04.760] I was exhausted, tired, and my genetic dark circles had reached next level heights.
[00:14:04.760 --> 00:14:09.160] And I said to myself that I'm not the only one in these shoes.
[00:14:09.160 --> 00:14:12.920] And I'm putting under-eye concealer on on the subway on the way to work.
[00:14:12.920 --> 00:14:20.560] And I'm doing my skincare at the gym at Soul Cycle in an effort to lose that post-baby weight, which was a nine-year process.
[00:14:21.120 --> 00:14:24.560] And then I just said to myself, I'm like, there's a huge opportunity here.
[00:14:24.560 --> 00:14:36.160] My co-founder, Lindsay, and I connected over it, and we decided to launch Wander Beauty, effortless essentials, things you reach for every day across makeup and skincare, wherever you wander.
[00:14:36.160 --> 00:14:37.840] And we really catered to that woman.
[00:14:37.840 --> 00:14:39.440] We knew what her point of difference was.
[00:14:39.440 --> 00:14:41.360] She's time-starved, she's on the go.
[00:14:41.360 --> 00:14:53.200] She wants clean beauty that's fuss free, foolproof, do-it-yourself skincare and makeup that she can do in an Uber, in a car, at her desk at work, wherever she may wander.
[00:14:53.520 --> 00:15:01.760] Talk to me about the process of going from building a tech company and selling a tech company to now creating this beauty brand, a product-based business.
[00:15:01.760 --> 00:15:06.480] What were some of your biggest learning lessons now going into this new industry?
[00:15:06.480 --> 00:15:08.160] It was learn it all.
[00:15:08.160 --> 00:15:13.680] I mean, that's the biggest lesson: when you don't know something, surround yourself with experts that do.
[00:15:13.680 --> 00:15:14.880] Build a community.
[00:15:14.880 --> 00:15:26.720] What I love about Entrepreneurs is that it is that wonderful community, and there is that connectivity among people who are in many different breadths and depths of life across PR, product development, legal.
[00:15:26.720 --> 00:15:33.360] It takes a little bit of everything to get it all right to launch a business from the ground up and to really see the white space.
[00:15:33.360 --> 00:15:37.600] Entrepreneurs see things others don't see, they do things others don't do.
[00:15:37.600 --> 00:15:42.720] They have to be ready to take risks, but at the same time, they have to really learn everything.
[00:15:42.720 --> 00:15:46.720] Learning beauty, learning regulations, learning ingredients.
[00:15:46.720 --> 00:15:49.040] It was a tremendous learning process.
[00:15:49.040 --> 00:15:57.200] So I studied and learned and became a student of the beauty industry and surrounded myself with mentors and experts.
[00:15:57.200 --> 00:16:01.960] And I always say this: like, never underestimate the power of peer mentorship.
[00:16:02.200 --> 00:16:09.560] So many people are chasing mentors who are way further along from them and they want five minutes of their time to pick their brain or learn something new.
[00:16:09.560 --> 00:16:13.320] And my reality is that you can learn so much from your peers.
[00:16:13.320 --> 00:16:22.120] And that's why I love groups like Entrepreneur Nista because you're surrounded by people who are in your stage and size of your business, you know, across a wide range.
[00:16:22.120 --> 00:16:25.560] And you have that opportunity to learn from them while they're going through things.
[00:16:25.560 --> 00:16:27.160] You're going through the same things.
[00:16:27.160 --> 00:16:28.120] You can help each other.
[00:16:28.120 --> 00:16:28.680] Absolutely.
[00:16:28.680 --> 00:16:29.800] Yes, absolutely.
[00:16:29.800 --> 00:16:30.120] I know.
[00:16:30.120 --> 00:16:45.240] It's like talk to the people that are doing it now so you can brainstorm and problem solve together because the issues and problems that might have existed a few years ago with different tech tools or operations might be different from what everyone's doing right now.
[00:16:45.240 --> 00:16:46.200] Yes.
[00:16:46.200 --> 00:16:48.200] So I love that advice.
[00:16:48.200 --> 00:16:52.920] Talk to me about your business partner, Lindsay, and your relationship as co-founders.
[00:16:52.920 --> 00:16:56.200] And do you divide and conquer in the business and has that evolved?
[00:16:56.200 --> 00:16:56.920] Absolutely.
[00:16:56.920 --> 00:16:59.640] I think outstanding brands are built by outstanding people.
[00:16:59.640 --> 00:17:01.640] It's something I always say.
[00:17:01.640 --> 00:17:08.120] The difference between having an A plus outcome and a B plus outcome is the people who actually work on the business.
[00:17:08.120 --> 00:17:15.240] If you look at any wildly successful company, it's not necessarily about the product or the service or the timing or the funding.
[00:17:15.240 --> 00:17:21.400] The people make a massive difference to the outcome and the results driven by the brand or the business.
[00:17:21.400 --> 00:17:23.080] And so Lindsay and I met at a party.
[00:17:23.080 --> 00:17:24.680] We had very complimentary skills.
[00:17:24.680 --> 00:17:31.080] And I truly believe that as a CEO and as a founder, it's imperative that you are self-aware.
[00:17:31.080 --> 00:17:41.720] The first thing you need to do before you start any business is to take a piece of paper and write down what you're good at and what your skills are, whether it's finance, operations, product development.
[00:17:41.720 --> 00:17:43.960] And, you know, maybe those are my strengths.
[00:17:43.960 --> 00:17:56.960] And then I look at Lindsay and I say, here's someone with a vision, with creativity, who has, you know, the ability to do photography and video and has a lens into storytelling in a visual format that I don't have.
[00:17:56.960 --> 00:18:06.960] And so bringing people into your business early that can catapult the results and catapult the outcome and make the pie bigger is very important for entrepreneurs.
[00:18:06.960 --> 00:18:15.680] And so I love the idea of, you know, having co-founders and having the ability to go through what is a very difficult journey.
[00:18:15.680 --> 00:18:17.360] And entrepreneurship is a journey.
[00:18:17.360 --> 00:18:18.480] It's not a destination.
[00:18:18.480 --> 00:18:28.960] There's so many, there's an evolution that happens day to day with where you're drinking water out of a fire hose and having someone to drink with is always helpful.
[00:18:29.280 --> 00:18:30.640] Oh, absolutely.
[00:18:30.640 --> 00:18:38.160] And so related to that, I love that advice about writing down everyone's strengths and really figuring out how can we divide and conquer?
[00:18:38.160 --> 00:18:39.680] What are opposite skill sets?
[00:18:39.680 --> 00:18:49.200] And that's why Courtney and I have had such a successful business partnership over we're almost 12 plus years in business together now, running multiple companies as business partners.
[00:18:49.200 --> 00:18:54.000] And, you know, we got, I would say, very lucky that we happened to have opposite skill sets.
[00:18:54.000 --> 00:19:02.880] It wasn't planned when we initially set out to partner together because we were very young, naive, early 20s business owners who were just got started and figured it out.
[00:19:02.880 --> 00:19:11.360] And we got very lucky and then worked with a business coach very early on and were able to really like divide out our responsibilities and figure those things out.
[00:19:11.360 --> 00:19:13.120] So definitely agree.
[00:19:14.080 --> 00:19:19.040] It's super important also to have bright lines around ownership of what you do in the business.
[00:19:19.040 --> 00:19:23.520] So, I actually coached co-CEOs once, and I'm not a huge fan of co-CEOs.
[00:19:23.520 --> 00:19:25.600] I actually think divide and conquer is better.
[00:19:25.600 --> 00:19:35.320] Having CEO one area or, you know, someone else, like ultimately, there needs to be a clear path for decisions and who owns those decisions.
[00:19:29.840 --> 00:19:36.200] Yes, absolutely.
[00:19:36.760 --> 00:19:40.120] Yes, we worked with our business coach to really help us through that.
[00:19:40.120 --> 00:19:55.880] And another plug for working with business coaches, because it's sometimes it's so hard to see when you're in it and when you're in that day to day, but when you can have that outside perspective, as well as people who have like been there and done it and can help coach and advise, it's definitely extremely helpful.
[00:19:55.880 --> 00:19:56.840] All right, Divya.
[00:19:56.840 --> 00:20:03.640] So, now over the past year and a half, you've now launched another new brand, Five Cents.
[00:20:03.640 --> 00:20:16.680] And I was so excited just like watching the evolution of the products being built and how you marketed the products through the pre-launch and then the launch and just all you've accomplished over the past year.
[00:20:16.680 --> 00:20:24.600] But take me back to deciding I'm ready to launch a new brand while I'm still running Wonder Beauty and investing in founders.
[00:20:24.600 --> 00:20:26.680] And we'll get to investing in founders in just a bit.
[00:20:26.680 --> 00:20:31.640] But what made you decide to take that leap to then start another big business?
[00:20:31.640 --> 00:20:33.320] It all comes back to passion.
[00:20:33.320 --> 00:20:37.400] Like, I am passionate and I saw a white space.
[00:20:37.400 --> 00:20:42.120] So I've always been really intrigued by fragrance.
[00:20:42.120 --> 00:20:52.360] Growing up Indian in a very small, you know, town, predominantly, you know, homogeneous environment, I was teased a lot.
[00:20:52.360 --> 00:21:02.440] And I felt like a lot of people said to me, like, oh, you smell, like, oh, you smell because you're Indian or you smell because you make curry in your house and your clothes smell.
[00:21:02.440 --> 00:21:07.000] And I was very conscious of my smell at a very early age.
[00:21:07.000 --> 00:21:21.600] And I remember my first job buying deodorant at CVS and literally putting said deodorant all over my legs, all over my arms, all over my stomach, and being like, I just want to smell good so that everyone doesn't tease me and I don't feel bad.
[00:21:21.600 --> 00:21:26.800] And so that evolved into my father traveling constantly for work.
[00:21:26.800 --> 00:21:31.520] And at that time, there were no direct flights from New York to Asia where he had to travel for work.
[00:21:31.520 --> 00:21:40.960] And he would stop in Charles de Graal Airport in Paris and he would stop in London Heathrow Airport in London and he would pick up duty-free perfumes for my mom.
[00:21:40.960 --> 00:21:44.800] And for me, he'd pick up these little mini designer perfume bottles.
[00:21:44.800 --> 00:21:51.760] And this just opened me up into the world of fragrance and fragrance as a form of self-expression.
[00:21:51.760 --> 00:21:55.200] So for me, my smell was something I was so conscious of.
[00:21:55.200 --> 00:21:59.120] And I became obsessed with perfume and fragrance.
[00:21:59.120 --> 00:22:08.800] And, you know, when I had my first job at Goldman Sachs, I wore issemiyaki every day to work, very like subtle, soft, you know, unassuming.
[00:22:08.800 --> 00:22:12.640] And when I had a D, I was jampo Gautier at night all the way.
[00:22:12.640 --> 00:22:24.160] And so fragrance was part of my identity, but it also encapsulated my mood and it channeled the energy that I was feeling or like the persona that I wanted to be in the moment.
[00:22:24.160 --> 00:22:28.640] And there was no brand that was kind of speaking to the community in that way.
[00:22:28.640 --> 00:22:43.440] I saw a tremendous white space for people like myself who have autoimmune disease, who need to shop clean, who are mothers of two children, and really make very conscious decisions around ingredients and things that they put on their skin and their body.
[00:22:43.440 --> 00:22:44.960] Your skin is your largest organ.
[00:22:44.960 --> 00:22:52.800] The average woman is ingesting five pounds of hormone-disrupting toxic chemicals into her system via her skin.
[00:22:52.800 --> 00:23:01.240] And so, there are very limited selections on clean fragrance brands that have storytelling, longevity, projection, sillage.
[00:23:01.240 --> 00:23:03.240] I was like, there's a huge white space here.
[00:22:59.840 --> 00:23:07.160] So, I created Five Cents to be a sensory experience and brand fragrance.
[00:23:07.240 --> 00:23:15.080] And it literally is that from the outer packaging, which is this beautiful soft touch curtain, to the wood, to the opaque bottle, to the notes.
[00:23:15.080 --> 00:23:19.240] Like, it is a totally different experience and fragrance.
[00:23:19.240 --> 00:23:22.760] And the brand is all about your mood bottled.
[00:23:22.760 --> 00:23:34.520] And so, each fragrance channels a mood from catch feelings, which is literally like a love potion in a bottle, to life of the party, which is confidence in a bottle, to In2 Deep.
[00:23:34.840 --> 00:23:46.760] And I really feel like every fragrance that we have created truly encapsulates a mood and it really empowers you to express yourself through fragrance.
[00:23:46.760 --> 00:23:53.480] And this was something that was missing, and it was missing for a generation of people who shop clean and eco-conscious.
[00:23:53.480 --> 00:23:55.480] And so, we partnered with Sephora.
[00:23:55.480 --> 00:23:58.360] We were very lucky to build a partnership with them early on.
[00:23:58.360 --> 00:24:00.280] We launched the brand about a year ago.
[00:24:00.280 --> 00:24:05.720] It's only been a year and I think two months, not even two months because it's you know, March.
[00:24:05.720 --> 00:24:07.320] And it's just taken off.
[00:24:07.320 --> 00:24:33.880] And it was, it was doing the homework and the research to do the focus groups, to do the surveys, to talk to customers, to understand the need and wants of the market, and to create a product that was truly differentiated and had high juice concentration, incredible longevity, things that people wanted in fragrance that they were not getting from clean fragrance, and do it at an accessible price point where it wasn't intimidating.
[00:24:34.200 --> 00:24:39.000] How long were you thinking about the idea to launch this business before you decide?
[00:24:39.000 --> 00:24:42.120] Okay, you had it on your mind for a while.
[00:24:42.120 --> 00:24:51.600] For me to launch my fifth company with two children and now a third on the way, I mean, you really have to have a certain type of brain damage to want to keep doing this.
[00:24:52.800 --> 00:24:54.800] I say we're all a little insane.
[00:24:54.960 --> 00:24:57.360] It's called, I say, entrepreneurs to addiction.
[00:24:57.360 --> 00:24:58.880] We just, you can't help it.
[00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:02.960] It's like you just want to solve these problems and fix these things for ourselves.
[00:25:02.960 --> 00:25:05.840] So have to build a business around it.
[00:25:05.840 --> 00:25:07.360] I saw the opportunity.
[00:25:07.360 --> 00:25:08.960] I knew I wanted to do it.
[00:25:08.960 --> 00:25:11.760] I worked with a French perfumer for many years.
[00:25:11.760 --> 00:25:18.720] I was not going to do it unless I could truly differentiate and create something unique that was non-existent in the market.
[00:25:18.720 --> 00:25:27.760] And when I shared the concept and the juice with Sephora that gets pitched thousands of brands, fragrance is one of the fastest growing segments of beauty.
[00:25:27.760 --> 00:25:30.240] Huge area of opportunity, huge area of growth.
[00:25:30.240 --> 00:25:31.360] They saw the vision.
[00:25:31.360 --> 00:25:34.240] I did not even have final packaging and they agreed to launch my brand.
[00:25:34.240 --> 00:25:40.640] And it was just this connection over there's a huge opportunity here and we wanted to strike it together.
[00:25:40.640 --> 00:25:41.680] No, I love it.
[00:25:41.680 --> 00:25:42.080] Okay.
[00:25:42.080 --> 00:25:55.280] I want to understand how you made the decision that you could actually have these big businesses running simultaneously because so many founders, all of us, right?
[00:25:55.280 --> 00:25:58.800] We all, we launch our businesses, but then we have 10 other ideas.
[00:25:58.800 --> 00:26:02.640] And sometimes we can get distracted to be like, oh, wait, I have this other business.
[00:26:02.800 --> 00:26:03.360] We want to launch this.
[00:26:03.360 --> 00:26:03.920] We want to start this.
[00:26:03.920 --> 00:26:08.080] We just want to try it because we want to solve problems and we want to create businesses.
[00:26:08.080 --> 00:26:12.240] But then our core business, we can lose sight of it if we're not staying focused.
[00:26:12.240 --> 00:26:19.440] So, how do you stay focused or delegate, or really figure out how to manage everything?
[00:26:19.760 --> 00:26:22.200] Because so many of us have all these ideas.
[00:26:22.200 --> 00:26:25.120] Like you would want to do all these things, but it can be really hard.
[00:26:25.120 --> 00:26:26.960] I'm eight years in at Wander.
[00:26:26.960 --> 00:26:31.800] We're a mature business with a seasoned, strong, incredible team.
[00:26:29.680 --> 00:26:35.800] There's no way I could have taken this step if I did not have that.
[00:26:36.120 --> 00:26:38.520] I have a day job, which is Wander Beauty.
[00:26:38.520 --> 00:26:41.720] I spend my time and energy running that company on a day-to-day basis.
[00:26:41.720 --> 00:26:43.400] My meetings during the day are for Wander.
[00:26:43.400 --> 00:26:45.480] My business that I'm running is Wander.
[00:26:45.480 --> 00:26:52.040] And so my focus has continued to stay there as I build and scale and grow that business globally.
[00:26:52.040 --> 00:26:54.040] I had a huge passion for fragrance.
[00:26:54.040 --> 00:27:04.920] I created this product and I'm very proud of the audio perfumes that I created with incredible juice concentration and incredible longevity and great visual identity.
[00:27:04.920 --> 00:27:09.320] And there's just like something that is like your mood bottled.
[00:27:09.320 --> 00:27:12.680] But I brought a team together to really execute my vision.
[00:27:12.680 --> 00:27:24.440] I created that product and I really brought together the most seasoned talent that I knew from my network to take that vision and execute it and turn it into a reality and also to run the day-to-day for the business.
[00:27:24.440 --> 00:27:27.160] And I also funded that business entirely myself.
[00:27:27.160 --> 00:27:29.560] So those are choices that I made.
[00:27:29.560 --> 00:27:33.000] And so on the day-to-day involvement, the team is really running the business.
[00:27:33.000 --> 00:27:36.280] And that is truly how I believe it can be done.
[00:27:36.280 --> 00:27:39.000] I don't think you can do two things and do them well.
[00:27:39.000 --> 00:27:41.400] I think you can do one thing and do it well.
[00:27:41.400 --> 00:27:47.240] And so I think that having focus as an entrepreneur is tremendously important.
[00:27:47.240 --> 00:27:59.320] And like you said, team is absolutely everything because you can have all of these amazing ideas and bring something to life, but if you don't have a team to execute on that vision, the business is not going to go very far.
[00:27:59.320 --> 00:28:07.240] So how have you been able to cultivate these incredible teams that you've put together for many businesses now over the years?
[00:28:07.240 --> 00:28:11.240] Any advice you can share about how to build these awesome teams that you've done?
[00:28:11.480 --> 00:28:12.840] So many lessons, staff.
[00:28:12.840 --> 00:28:17.040] And I really believe people are the magic ingredient of building an outstanding brand or business.
[00:28:17.040 --> 00:28:23.840] And so there's the early stage of the business in which you really focus on attitude and aptitude.
[00:28:23.840 --> 00:28:28.880] You want someone with a good attitude and you want them with strong raw intelligence, which is I called aptitude.
[00:28:28.880 --> 00:28:33.920] Because in the early days of any company, in the early days of Five Cents, everyone's wearing five hats.
[00:28:33.920 --> 00:28:41.680] So the customer service person is processing orders at the warehouse, who's also like troubleshooting TikTok orders, who's also doing marketing ops.
[00:28:41.680 --> 00:28:45.440] Like every human being is stretched in different ways.
[00:28:45.440 --> 00:29:01.520] And so having very positive, good energy, and I believe in energy and vibes tremendously and strong intelligence, they can figure out anything and they can troubleshoot in the early days because the early stage of a business is all troubleshooting and problem solving every single day.
[00:29:01.520 --> 00:29:03.920] So attitude and aptitude in the early stages.
[00:29:03.920 --> 00:29:09.600] In a business like Wander, we have a totally different team and a totally different set of skills.
[00:29:09.600 --> 00:29:28.240] So as you start scaling and growing, when you have that initial product market fit and you start putting money, whether it's venture capital money, private equity money, you start scaling to global level, you really need to have operational excellence in place and systems in place that allow for that to happen seamlessly.
[00:29:28.240 --> 00:29:40.400] And so hiring talent that is seasoned, that has domain expertise, that has pattern recognition, has seen these problems before, has done this before, really lets you do everything better, faster, cheaper.
[00:29:40.400 --> 00:29:52.880] And so the talent that you bring on in the later stage of a business, yes, they have to have a great attitude, just like I said in the early stage, but instead of wearing 20 hats, they have to wear two and they have to wear them really well.
[00:29:52.880 --> 00:30:13.800] And so, and they have to have experience in that domain and bring something to the pie that and a skill set that you do not have as an entrepreneur and as a ceo so the hiring is totally different but i will tell you the universal thread of hiring across both companies two really important factors for entrepreneurs number one always be networking and meeting people.
[00:30:13.800 --> 00:30:17.720] You never know if you're going to need to hire that person in six months, a year, or two years.
[00:30:17.720 --> 00:30:25.560] I'm constantly networking, meeting people, and I may not have a job for them today, but I may have a job for them in 18 months or eight months.
[00:30:25.560 --> 00:30:32.920] And so building that network is very important because then when you're ready to hire, you have a pool of candidates ready to go.
[00:30:32.920 --> 00:30:34.600] And I do all of my hiring myself.
[00:30:34.600 --> 00:30:35.720] I don't use headhunters.
[00:30:35.720 --> 00:30:38.760] That's just how I've always operated all my companies.
[00:30:38.760 --> 00:30:42.040] And I really invest in people and invest in getting to know them.
[00:30:42.040 --> 00:30:44.360] The other thing is the New York to Tokyo test.
[00:30:44.360 --> 00:30:46.920] I learned this at Goldman Sachs when I was an analyst.
[00:30:46.920 --> 00:30:54.600] They said one of the interview questions for the interviewers was, would you sit on a plane with this person from New York to Tokyo?
[00:30:54.600 --> 00:31:09.080] And if I don't want to sit on the plane with that person from New York to Tokyo, then I don't want to hire them in my organization because you inevitably end up spending a tremendous amount of time with the people that you work with in an early stage or mid-stage business.
[00:31:09.080 --> 00:31:15.640] And so having those valuable relationships, having that connectivity and that chemistry is super important.
[00:31:15.640 --> 00:31:16.520] Absolutely.
[00:31:16.520 --> 00:31:24.280] Are there certain questions that you always ask during an interview to really gauge if you think someone is going to be a great fit for the organization?
[00:31:24.280 --> 00:31:24.920] I do.
[00:31:24.920 --> 00:31:28.120] I mean, one of the questions I ask always is, why should I hire you?
[00:31:28.440 --> 00:31:32.840] And a lot of people get stumped up on that and just like don't know how to answer it.
[00:31:32.840 --> 00:31:37.960] And one person recently, in an interview I was doing for Wander Beauty, answered it so well.
[00:31:37.960 --> 00:31:41.080] And she's like, I am a skincare and makeup enthusiast.
[00:31:41.080 --> 00:31:42.840] This is what I am passionate about.
[00:31:42.840 --> 00:31:44.040] These are my skills.
[00:31:44.040 --> 00:31:46.880] And this is why my skills fit the job position that you have.
[00:31:47.200 --> 00:31:56.160] And by the way, this is why your organization and your commitment to giving back and your commitment to clean aligns with my personal values, which makes this the right cultural fit for me.
[00:31:56.160 --> 00:32:12.720] And I was just wowed by the answer because she had thought through, you know, the industry, the segment, the passion, the skills, the lineup of the skills, and also the cultural fit, which are all very important factors to being successful in an organization.
[00:32:12.720 --> 00:32:18.800] So, yes, I asked lots of interesting questions, but that's one that I think is super important.
[00:32:18.800 --> 00:32:20.560] I love that one.
[00:32:21.840 --> 00:32:32.160] Coming up, Divya shares how she was able to build a dedicated team for five cents while maintaining her focus on continuing to grow and scale Wandsor Beauty.
[00:32:36.960 --> 00:32:43.360] Founders are always asking us: what has been the secret to our success building multiple seven-figure businesses?
[00:32:43.360 --> 00:32:44.800] Do you want to know how?
[00:32:44.800 --> 00:32:46.480] It's our community.
[00:32:46.480 --> 00:32:54.080] We created the Entrepreneursa League for founders like you because the most successful entrepreneurs do not navigate business alone.
[00:32:54.080 --> 00:32:59.920] We navigate the challenges and opportunities with the support of people we know, love, and trust.
[00:32:59.920 --> 00:33:03.760] The relationships you build in business will be the key to your success.
[00:33:03.760 --> 00:33:05.920] Trust me, it's how we've done it.
[00:33:05.920 --> 00:33:11.520] And I'm giving you access to everything we've used to grow and scale our businesses over the past decade.
[00:33:11.520 --> 00:33:15.920] Plus, you're going to meet your new best friends in business right inside the community.
[00:33:15.920 --> 00:33:38.360] Our members have access to everything we've used to grow our businesses over the past 10 plus years, from in-person events to virtual events, business education, funding resources, office hours with myself and other top founders in your industry, press opportunities, and access to our community platform where you can instantly get all of your business questions answered.
[00:33:38.360 --> 00:33:45.080] You can join us in the community over at refer.entrepranista.com forward slash join us.
[00:33:45.080 --> 00:33:50.840] That's refer.entrepranista.com forward slash join us to join the community.
[00:33:50.840 --> 00:33:54.200] Or head to the show notes right now and tap the link to join.
[00:33:54.200 --> 00:33:56.200] I cannot wait to meet you.
[00:33:57.160 --> 00:34:01.000] I want to talk about your marketing strategy for the launch of Five Sense.
[00:34:01.000 --> 00:34:03.000] I followed along with everything.
[00:34:03.000 --> 00:34:08.760] I then bought the Life of the Party travel spray, and I have to tell everyone it smells so good.
[00:34:08.760 --> 00:34:12.440] So if you have not yet tried Five Sense, definitely check it out.
[00:34:12.440 --> 00:34:16.120] Go to Sephora, or we'll definitely link out to everything in the show notes too.
[00:34:16.120 --> 00:34:23.160] But I just loved watching your like pre-launch of the brand and going into the launch on social.
[00:34:23.160 --> 00:34:25.400] Everything just felt so beautiful and seamless.
[00:34:25.400 --> 00:34:39.000] And one of the questions that I actually get a lot of times at my office hours in Entrepreneurista League is asking questions about, you know, how do I build that marketing strategy to either launch a new product or launch a new brand?
[00:34:39.000 --> 00:34:48.520] I would love for you to walk everyone through just the process of what you did for Five Cents, what worked well, what didn't work well, and maybe what you would do differently based on what you learned.
[00:34:48.520 --> 00:34:55.480] So I think one of the most important things that you need to do when you're building a product or service-based business is telling a story.
[00:34:55.480 --> 00:34:57.480] So many people omit that.
[00:34:57.480 --> 00:35:10.680] They're often, especially in the beauty industry and my experience at Wanderers, that so many people come out with a skincare product and they're hyper-focused on the data and they're like clinically proven to reduce wrinkles or hyperpigmentation by this percent or that percent.
[00:35:10.680 --> 00:35:17.360] And they that might convert a prospective buyer to buy and to become a customer.
[00:35:17.680 --> 00:35:27.200] However, in the fragrance industry, in particular, and just in general, I do believe emotional connectivity is what connects people to buy.
[00:35:27.200 --> 00:35:31.680] People buy from brands that connect with their values.
[00:35:31.680 --> 00:35:35.840] And so, I think the storytelling of the brand was critical for me.
[00:35:35.840 --> 00:35:38.800] This brand is your mood bottled.
[00:35:38.800 --> 00:35:43.760] This is the ultimate form of self-expression through fragrance.
[00:35:43.760 --> 00:35:54.800] And so, telling that story through emotion, through video, through creative content, through diverse creators, like we didn't say we were diverse, we showed we were diverse.
[00:35:54.800 --> 00:36:02.320] We had creators from all walks of life, all stages and sizes of ethnicities, and that diversity really came through.
[00:36:02.320 --> 00:36:04.080] And also, we're a purpose-driven brand.
[00:36:04.080 --> 00:36:12.720] And so, we really said, Hey, listen, this is more than just a fragrance, and this is, you know, this is a mood, and you're channeling into your end, you know, owning your energy.
[00:36:12.720 --> 00:36:15.920] And it was about, you know, mood swings are welcome.
[00:36:15.920 --> 00:36:17.600] Like, not every day is a good day.
[00:36:17.600 --> 00:36:20.960] And so, we had a mental health platform that was really important to me.
[00:36:20.960 --> 00:36:26.240] My cousin had committed suicide, which is why I actually named the fragrance Life of the Party after her.
[00:36:26.240 --> 00:36:28.640] And she was, you know, bipolar and off her medication.
[00:36:28.640 --> 00:36:34.240] And it was a very tragic event for everyone in our family and larger community to go through.
[00:36:34.240 --> 00:36:45.840] And partnering with Bring Change to Mind and having that platform of education and having conversations about mental health in high school, I think, is a preventative measure that has an impact on society.
[00:36:45.840 --> 00:36:49.760] And so, when I think about our brand, it's not just a fragrance.
[00:36:49.760 --> 00:36:52.160] You know, it's so much more than a fragrance.
[00:36:52.160 --> 00:36:56.800] And telling the story of who we are as a brand, this is your mood bottled.
[00:36:56.800 --> 00:37:00.000] These are the emotions that are going to connect you with these fragrances.
[00:37:00.840 --> 00:37:09.240] But also, here's a brand that really believes in being for the people and has a mental health platform and for the planet and has an oceanic society platform.
[00:37:09.240 --> 00:37:14.760] And so, having that clear messaging and telling that story, I think, was a key differentiating factor.
[00:37:14.760 --> 00:37:22.200] If you see 99% of brands in the fragrance space that are particularly clean, their story is: we are clean.
[00:37:22.200 --> 00:37:24.360] To me, that is not a story.
[00:37:24.360 --> 00:37:35.160] Having clean ingredients to me is table stakes, and having non-hormone-disrupting chemicals and you're not using hormone-disrupting chemicals in your formulations is table stakes.
[00:37:35.160 --> 00:37:37.480] That to me is not a story of a brand.
[00:37:37.480 --> 00:37:43.400] And so, we took things way further than what people were doing in clean and eco-friendly fragrance.
[00:37:43.720 --> 00:37:48.600] What were some of the tactics that you used once you had this brand messaging and story in place?
[00:37:48.600 --> 00:37:53.480] And now you're starting from zero with no audience, no customers, no community.
[00:37:53.480 --> 00:37:55.480] How did you create it and build it?
[00:37:55.800 --> 00:37:58.440] We reached out to people and built community.
[00:37:58.440 --> 00:38:02.600] That's really the best way to organically launch a brand.
[00:38:02.600 --> 00:38:09.240] We started from zero, zero people on our email list, zero Instagram followers, zero TikTok followers, and we told our story.
[00:38:09.240 --> 00:38:21.240] And we did it through compelling video content, through connecting with lots of different creators that were either fragrance creators or creators across very different and diverse segments of life.
[00:38:21.560 --> 00:38:29.560] We worked with anyone and everyone who was telling a unique story with an engaged audience, and that was a differentiating factor for us.
[00:38:29.560 --> 00:38:31.480] And we built from ground up.
[00:38:31.480 --> 00:38:33.600] And we just had our DTC business.
[00:38:33.600 --> 00:38:44.360] Then we partnered with Sephora strategically to build an omni-channel relationship, to have one touch point where people could physically smell us, which I think is important in the fragrance industry.
[00:38:44.360 --> 00:38:47.680] And I also believe that omnichannel is the way to go.
[00:38:47.920 --> 00:38:56.960] It's very expensive to launch a brand just DTC unless you have a very significant marketing budget to put behind it and compete with other brands in the space.
[00:38:56.960 --> 00:39:03.440] So I think that was a strategic move to partner with Sephora, which is a place for brand discovery.
[00:39:03.440 --> 00:39:09.520] People often go into Sephora stores and on Sephora's website to discover new and interesting brands.
[00:39:09.520 --> 00:39:19.600] And having just that narrow touch point of like, we are DTC, we are Sephora, here's our story, telling it organically through content.
[00:39:19.600 --> 00:39:20.720] It's a flywheel.
[00:39:20.720 --> 00:39:22.400] We told our story.
[00:39:22.400 --> 00:39:24.160] We reached out to influencers.
[00:39:24.160 --> 00:39:25.600] We reached out to editors.
[00:39:25.600 --> 00:39:28.480] We got tons of amazing press placements.
[00:39:28.480 --> 00:39:30.800] We were pitching people constantly.
[00:39:30.800 --> 00:39:38.880] You know, my team was constantly pitching new and diverse creators and editors and people in the community to talk about us and write about us.
[00:39:38.880 --> 00:39:41.840] And we built everything from the ground up.
[00:39:41.840 --> 00:39:48.320] And, you know, we launched Into Deep earlier last month and we sold out four times in a row at Sephora.
[00:39:48.320 --> 00:40:02.560] And so having that ability to tell that story and it really wasn't, it wasn't at all driven by money and putting money behind spend and tons of ads and you know paid creators.
[00:40:02.560 --> 00:40:04.960] It was very much organic and grassroots.
[00:40:04.960 --> 00:40:12.160] And you see Jaclyn Hill going out, she has 8.8 million followers saying, I bought this at Sephora and I loved it so much.
[00:40:12.160 --> 00:40:17.520] I went upgraded from a travel size to a full size and linking us and selling us out at Sephora.
[00:40:17.520 --> 00:40:18.160] And that was organic.
[00:40:19.280 --> 00:40:21.040] Yeah, 100% organic.
[00:40:21.040 --> 00:40:26.800] And multiple features came back and said that, oh, by the way, you guys sold this out and now they have the travel size.
[00:40:26.800 --> 00:40:28.240] And then we sold out of that again.
[00:40:28.240 --> 00:40:34.760] And Kathleen Lights, who has 2 million followers, organically talking about us on TikTok about how she loved one of her favorite vanillas.
[00:40:29.840 --> 00:40:36.760] And Manny Muo, who just featured us today.
[00:40:37.080 --> 00:40:47.240] And so, like, we've built this ecosystem of mega creators who are incredibly influential and have engaged communities who are organically talking about us entirely.
[00:40:47.240 --> 00:40:50.040] So, did you initially reach out to them and gift and send products?
[00:40:50.040 --> 00:40:53.000] They found out about you first, or they were just organically found you in Sephora?
[00:40:54.440 --> 00:41:01.400] So, we reached out to a lot of micros and built a momentum that was a groundswell of micros.
[00:41:01.400 --> 00:41:08.600] I do believe that the macros discovered us through the micros and they went out and bought the product.
[00:41:08.600 --> 00:41:12.840] Like Kathleen Lights did a video about Life at the Party, she had bought the product.
[00:41:12.840 --> 00:41:15.320] Like, Jaclyn Hill talked about In Too Deep.
[00:41:15.320 --> 00:41:19.480] She said, I went to Sephora and bought the travel size and then upgraded to the full size.
[00:41:19.480 --> 00:41:30.680] Like, there are a lot of creators in this ecosystem who are really genuine and authentic and are always on the hunt to discover new and fabulous brands and products for their audiences.
[00:41:30.680 --> 00:41:33.640] And that's why they connect with them in such a unique and special way.
[00:41:33.640 --> 00:41:36.840] And so, you know, that's really what happened for us.
[00:41:36.840 --> 00:41:41.000] But we did do a lot of gifting and a lot of pitching across many levels.
[00:41:41.000 --> 00:41:42.760] And sometimes we fell on deaf ears.
[00:41:42.760 --> 00:41:49.080] But I say to myself that every email that goes out of my email with a pitch to tell someone about the brand, they may not answer.
[00:41:49.080 --> 00:41:51.320] They may not, you know, opt in for product.
[00:41:51.320 --> 00:41:55.320] They may not gift them, but I've built one more touch point of brand awareness.
[00:41:55.320 --> 00:41:58.760] They maybe read that email or scanned that email and discovered our brand.
[00:41:58.760 --> 00:42:02.840] You have to be what 99% of the world is not, which is consistent.
[00:42:03.720 --> 00:42:05.400] Who do you have on your marketing team?
[00:42:05.400 --> 00:42:16.640] I think it'd be interesting for everyone to hear, like in a startup business, you've self-funded this business, you've accomplished so much over the past year with, I know it's a small team, but who are the roles that you have?
[00:42:14.840 --> 00:42:19.760] And you're doing a lot of pitching and PR and marketing.
[00:42:19.920 --> 00:42:22.080] What is everyone focused on?
[00:42:22.400 --> 00:42:30.400] So, we definitely have two people who are organically looking for creators that they find engaging that might be a good fit for our brand.
[00:42:30.400 --> 00:42:33.680] So, there's constantly this search going on.
[00:42:33.680 --> 00:42:35.760] Like, are these creators based in the U.S.?
[00:42:35.840 --> 00:42:37.440] Do they have a certain number of followers?
[00:42:37.440 --> 00:42:40.000] Like, do they have a certain level of engagement?
[00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:42.480] And they're kind of putting together lists of people to pitch.
[00:42:42.480 --> 00:42:45.920] All those people are getting pitched, and then it's a completely automated process.
[00:42:45.920 --> 00:42:54.880] They're going into a Google form, and then another person on the team is looking at inventory and their fragrance preferences and matching them up with the right products to gift.
[00:42:54.880 --> 00:42:58.080] Then that's seamlessly entered into the warehouse and goes out to them.
[00:42:58.080 --> 00:43:00.240] Then there's a follow-up loop of your tracking.
[00:43:00.240 --> 00:43:03.200] We always send a tracking email to people so they know the package is coming.
[00:43:03.200 --> 00:43:07.040] It's another touch point to build with the potential customer.
[00:43:07.040 --> 00:43:09.200] Then following up, did you like it?
[00:43:09.200 --> 00:43:10.560] Can you leave us a review?
[00:43:10.560 --> 00:43:14.640] Like, having a full marketing loop is very important.
[00:43:14.640 --> 00:43:22.320] Some people get so hyper-focused on the brand awareness top of funnel piece that all they do is the spray and pray outreach.
[00:43:22.320 --> 00:43:23.920] That's not what works.
[00:43:23.920 --> 00:43:35.840] It's actually more effective to have a 360 approach to pitching, nurturing, building, and harvesting long-term relationships and loyalty.
[00:43:35.840 --> 00:43:36.560] Absolutely.
[00:43:36.560 --> 00:43:37.520] Completely agree.
[00:43:37.520 --> 00:43:42.160] So it's like, you know, we have different people on the team who are owning different pieces of the process.
[00:43:42.160 --> 00:43:47.120] You know, we personally reach out to editors and we look at publications that are written in fragrance.
[00:43:47.120 --> 00:43:48.400] We do that all outreach.
[00:43:48.400 --> 00:43:53.840] Then it comes in again through a Google form where they opt in for scents, and we have a team that kind of processes a lot of it.
[00:43:53.840 --> 00:43:59.520] So, a lot of it is operations-based, and we make that really seamless for the person who's involved.
[00:43:59.520 --> 00:44:11.240] I'll give you a great tip for any business owner: like, if you're pitching PR and you're pitching editors, like you want stories written about you, like keep all the information in that one email so the editor doesn't have to waste their time coming back to you.
[00:44:11.400 --> 00:44:17.400] When I send a pitch, I said, This is a new fragrance, this is the price point, this is the design, here's a link with images.
[00:44:17.400 --> 00:44:22.120] If you need it for your publication, you know, here's the retail outlet that it's available at.
[00:44:22.120 --> 00:44:25.160] Here's where it's available on my website with the link.
[00:44:25.160 --> 00:44:34.520] Put all of the relevant information together in a cohesive pitch that makes it seamless for the editor to then write about you.
[00:44:34.520 --> 00:44:47.400] Do you find that any specific channel is performing best for you right now, or do you just see it's really you just basically have to be on all platforms using email marketing, and people just have to be seeing you everywhere?
[00:44:47.400 --> 00:44:50.520] And then ultimately, they will eventually make that purchase.
[00:44:50.520 --> 00:44:57.800] You know, they taught us this in business school that you need seven touch points to get someone to convert to sell, and I to convert to buy.
[00:44:57.800 --> 00:45:00.840] And I truly believe that is true.
[00:45:00.840 --> 00:45:07.400] Like, you do need seven touch points to get people to convert to buy, and so you must build all touch points.
[00:45:07.400 --> 00:45:12.200] I would say we've had a tremendous amount of success in growing our community quickly on TikTok.
[00:45:12.200 --> 00:45:20.840] It's been like watching paint dry on Instagram, trying to get followers because it's such a hard platform to build a community and to build a following for a brand.
[00:45:20.840 --> 00:45:22.680] And I think it's just getting harder.
[00:45:22.680 --> 00:45:29.800] But TikTok has been a more, I would say, democratized platform where we're seeing more traction quicker.
[00:45:29.800 --> 00:45:36.440] We're also selling through TikTok Shop, which has been a unique and interesting platform for people to connect with our brand.
[00:45:36.760 --> 00:45:38.360] No, I'm glad you brought that up.
[00:45:38.360 --> 00:45:41.720] So, yes, TikTok Shop is all the talk right now.
[00:45:41.960 --> 00:45:49.280] Brands that are cracking the code on there are, you don't have to have those eight touch points if you can crack the code on TikTok shop.
[00:45:44.840 --> 00:45:50.320] True.
[00:45:50.560 --> 00:45:58.000] Zivy, I would love to hear about your commitment to investing and investing in women founders.
[00:45:58.000 --> 00:46:01.680] I know you've invested in so many different brands over the years.
[00:46:01.680 --> 00:46:08.720] Talk to me about your experience starting out as an investor and what you look for right now in terms of new opportunities.
[00:46:09.040 --> 00:46:13.520] So I have been investing in brands for over 24 years.
[00:46:13.520 --> 00:46:15.920] That is a very long time.
[00:46:15.920 --> 00:46:23.600] I started out in a professional investment career as a venture capitalist and then a private equity professional and then back to venture capital.
[00:46:23.600 --> 00:46:29.680] And I've had a tremendous amount of experience backing entrepreneurs in many different stages, sizes, and sectors.
[00:46:29.680 --> 00:46:31.280] And I do believe there's a common theme.
[00:46:31.280 --> 00:46:36.160] So with my family office, with Concept2Co, we really focus on early stage businesses.
[00:46:36.160 --> 00:46:39.680] Anything from pre-seed to series A is our sweet spot.
[00:46:39.680 --> 00:46:44.560] Sometimes we go a little later into a series B, but that's really kind of where we play.
[00:46:44.560 --> 00:46:48.960] So we have a very defined focus of when we want to get into a business.
[00:46:48.960 --> 00:46:55.680] We typically want to be the first money in, and we want to see that, you know, massive return when they exit.
[00:46:55.680 --> 00:46:58.720] And we're willing to wait that time to kind of wait it out.
[00:46:58.720 --> 00:47:04.480] And in an early stage business, it's really about three things: people, idea, opportunity.
[00:47:04.480 --> 00:47:13.840] So you're betting on the founder or the founding team, the idea that it's a large market opportunity that is growing, and you see potential in that market.
[00:47:13.840 --> 00:47:18.080] And for us and consumer, there's so many different pockets of consumer that are growing well.
[00:47:18.080 --> 00:47:19.600] And then, what is the opportunity?
[00:47:19.600 --> 00:47:21.760] It's like, what is the POD of this brand?
[00:47:21.760 --> 00:47:27.520] Why is this founder uniquely positioned to start this business and be successful?
[00:47:27.520 --> 00:47:34.040] And so, early stage bets really are very heavily on the people factor, but the idea and the opportunity weigh in.
[00:47:34.280 --> 00:47:39.640] When I'm making a Series A or, you know, sometimes we veer into Series B investment.
[00:47:39.640 --> 00:47:42.600] At that point, there's product market fit in the organization.
[00:47:42.600 --> 00:47:44.360] The product or the service is working.
[00:47:44.360 --> 00:47:46.440] There's some early traction data.
[00:47:46.440 --> 00:47:52.280] You see how you can put money behind that product market fit to scale the business.
[00:47:52.280 --> 00:47:54.280] And you really want to focus on people.
[00:47:54.280 --> 00:47:56.600] Again, not just the founders at this point.
[00:47:56.600 --> 00:48:04.280] At this point, they do have some senior leadership, and you're looking at a bench of talent that's going to support that CEO or that founder.
[00:48:04.280 --> 00:48:13.880] So, people, you're going to look at product and the service, and what are the metrics at this stage and size of the business that show product market fit.
[00:48:13.880 --> 00:48:22.120] And the third piece is distribution: how am I going to put money behind this business and see how they will grow distribution exponentially?
[00:48:22.120 --> 00:48:24.600] So, do they have the right channels planned?
[00:48:24.600 --> 00:48:27.400] What channels are going to go into?
[00:48:27.400 --> 00:48:29.080] And what reach is it retail?
[00:48:29.080 --> 00:48:30.680] Is it omni-channel as a DTC?
[00:48:30.680 --> 00:48:32.120] Where are they going to hit the gas?
[00:48:32.120 --> 00:48:42.760] Where they've seen some early-level traction and unit economics and data that shows me it's working, that I can put money behind it, and that could scale exponentially, and I can see a return for my money.
[00:48:42.760 --> 00:48:50.600] So, I think early stage people, idea, opportunity, later stage, people, product distribution.
[00:48:50.600 --> 00:48:58.360] And specific industries you're focused on for those that are listening and currently raising capital and should know whether to reach out to you or not?
[00:48:58.680 --> 00:49:06.280] So, consumer, pretty broadly, I was, you know, one of the first early investors in a lot of different consumer technologies.
[00:49:06.280 --> 00:49:13.080] I was an early investor in Pinterest, I was an early investor in Shopify, I was an early investor in Dollar Shave Club, which sold for a billion dollars to Unilever.
[00:49:13.080 --> 00:49:15.600] And so, and I have a lot of consumer investments.
[00:49:14.840 --> 00:49:21.680] So, I have seven brands that I'm an investor of in at Sephora, four at Ulta, three at Target.
[00:49:22.000 --> 00:49:31.680] I continue to really be bullish on consumer, but I really need to see a strong point of difference because there are so many brands launching consistently in the consumer space.
[00:49:31.680 --> 00:49:32.960] Oh, absolutely.
[00:49:32.960 --> 00:49:34.640] Last question for you, Divya.
[00:49:34.640 --> 00:49:41.760] And then we'll have to get on an Instagram or LinkedIn Live soon to continue the conversation because I know you have to, you have to get back to your busy day.
[00:49:41.760 --> 00:49:44.640] But what does being an entrepreneur mean to you?
[00:49:45.280 --> 00:49:48.880] It means investing in and building community.
[00:49:48.880 --> 00:50:04.400] I think that it's investing in and building relationships and supporting each other and helping each other and remembering and realizing that someone else's success is a testament to your hard work and you should be excited for other people.
[00:50:04.400 --> 00:50:16.480] And so, I have always been an entrepreneur who has championed success for others and opened doors for others, opened retail relationships, access to capital, you know, ability to raise money.
[00:50:16.480 --> 00:50:25.520] I think that sense of community, having a very strong community around you during this very difficult journey is critical.
[00:50:25.760 --> 00:50:26.880] So, I'm here for it.
[00:50:27.200 --> 00:50:38.560] Yes, and we are so grateful that you have been such a champion of the Entrepreneursly community and want to share with everyone that Divya hosts office hours for Entrepreneursly community.
[00:50:38.560 --> 00:50:42.240] So, if for some reason you're not part of the Entrepreneursi community yet, definitely join us.
[00:50:42.240 --> 00:50:47.440] You can come chat with Divya in the community platform and at some of our events as well.
[00:50:47.440 --> 00:50:50.320] Divya, where can everyone find you and follow you?
[00:50:50.320 --> 00:50:56.560] And for those that might be interested in trying Five Cents or Wander Beauty for the first time, where should they head to do so?
[00:50:56.560 --> 00:50:57.120] Sure.
[00:50:57.120 --> 00:51:03.400] So, I'm on Instagram at D G U G N A N I at D Gugnani.
[00:50:59.600 --> 00:51:06.040] And I'm on TikTok where I really share a lot of.
[00:51:06.680 --> 00:51:09.560] entrepreneur and investor tips and tricks.
[00:51:09.560 --> 00:51:13.160] That's more of my business channel on TikTok at D Gugnani.
[00:51:13.160 --> 00:51:15.400] So D G U G N A N I.
[00:51:15.400 --> 00:51:19.240] Wander Beauty is on both platforms at Wander underscore Beauty.
[00:51:19.240 --> 00:51:22.360] So W A N D E R underscore beauty.
[00:51:22.360 --> 00:51:33.800] Five Cents is on both platforms as well at Five S E N S Co, Five Cents Co on Instagram and also on TikTok.
[00:51:33.800 --> 00:51:40.520] And there are links in the bio for both of those companies to get to their site, wanderbeauty.com and fivecents.co.
[00:51:40.520 --> 00:51:43.080] And we'll be linking out to everything in the show notes below.
[00:51:43.080 --> 00:51:48.200] So go tap the show notes right now and you can go over and follow Divya and all of the brands over there too.
[00:51:48.200 --> 00:51:56.120] Divya, thank you again so much for spending the afternoon with me and always sharing such a brilliant advice and all of your learning lessons.
[00:51:56.120 --> 00:51:57.240] So thank you again.
[00:51:57.240 --> 00:52:01.800] I'm Stephanie and this is the best business meeting I've ever had.
[00:52:01.800 --> 00:52:11.240] Hi entrepreneurs, it's Steph here and I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired and with some actionable tips that you can apply to your own business.
[00:52:11.240 --> 00:52:18.600] The way we've grown our community and resources is by sharing content like this for years and asking for help along the way.
[00:52:18.600 --> 00:52:24.120] So here's where we need your help so we can continue to make as much impact as possible together.
[00:52:24.120 --> 00:52:33.880] If you can leave us a five-star review and extra credit if you share this episode on Instagram, LinkedIn, or DM it to a founder friend who would benefit from hearing it.
[00:52:33.880 --> 00:52:41.240] Not only would it mean the world to us, but you sharing this episode is going to help someone who just may need to hear what we share today.
[00:52:41.240 --> 00:52:44.200] And you know, I love nothing more than giveaways and prizes.
[00:52:44.200 --> 00:52:50.960] So every month I'll be giving away a one-on-one session with me to someone who has shared the episode and left a review.
[00:52:50.960 --> 00:52:53.840] So send me a personal DM over on Instagram.
[00:52:53.840 --> 00:52:58.720] I'm at Steph Jillcarton once you've done it, so you can be entered to win.
[00:52:58.720 --> 00:53:04.400] Wishing you a productive week ahead and stay tuned for another impactful episode next week.