Transcripts
1. Introduction: The best part of my job is hearing how I've touched
women's lives and knowing that one
successful woman will change her community. [MUSIC] I'm Rebecca Minkoff, designer, bestselling author and co-founder of The Female
Founder Collective. You might know me for
my bestselling bag, clothing, accessories, but what you might not
know is that I have a deep passion for
female founders. I made it my mission to impact as many women-owned
businesses as I can through my community, through other
founders helping each other, and through education. Today's class is going to
cover everything from how to really stand out in a sea
of millions of companies, growing your brand
sustainably and successfully, and how to expand
your network and make the most out of all
of your relationships. Along the way, I'm
going to be sharing hard-learned lessons
I've learned, as well as giving you
exercises to do on your own. You should take this class if you've just started a company, if you're on the
edge of giving up or you think that you are at that critical breaking point
where if you just push along a little bit further and get that magic ingredient, you might taste success. Persistence is going to get
you to where you want to go. It's coming back when
you've been knocked down. I want you to be
the most stubborn, most tenacious person
you've ever met. I hope you leave this
class creatively inspired, having a new view and a way
to approach your brand, your company, your path, with just a different viewpoint and a shifting perspective. I am so glad you're here. Let's dive in. [MUSIC]
2. A New Way to Work: [MUSIC] Welcome to my class. I am so excited to
be with you today. It was really important
for me to always pass on any hard-won
knowledge that I've learned. I want to share with you
the tools that I've used to become successful so
that you can be successful. When I started out
in my 5th floor walk-up on the lower east side, everything was exciting to me. Every challenge
was exhilarating. My life consisted of daily packed back-to-back of going to the garments that are
buying leather for my bags, sourcing zippers,
shipping things out to some degree because it was before e-commerce even existed. There was a little bit of
simplicity when I started out. Then you grow, and you think that simplicity
will stay the same. But this is what happens, and it happens very fast. You need new systems. You have to interface
with stores, you have to collect on invoices, and it begins to rapidly expand, and you say, I didn't
know, I had to know that. Hopefully through this course
now that you've joined me, you'll learn some of the things that you're going
to know you need to know before you reach
that roadblock. What I want you to do in this class is taking
a bird's-eye view, slowing down, extending your time horizon
for goals and success. Not to say that something
can't happen sooner, and that's incredible
if it does. But becoming more realistic, less instant gratification
about how we're going to get you
from where you are today to where you want to be, and truly enjoying every
step along the way. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking,
this is annoying. Of course, I have an end goal. Of course, I have
this unicorn status, sell my company for a billion $. But this is what I've found, and it sounds a little cheesy. It is really not
about the end goal, it is about the journey. When I set out recently to write my book and to publish it and become a
best-selling author. Of course, I had
all these things in my head about it's
going to be this, it's going to be that
then I'm going to be here and publish and whatever. Guess what, six months before my publish date I said, Rebecca, slow down, enjoy the journey you're about to go
on because it's going to transform you. You're going to learn
things you never knew. Then, when I got to the end, it didn't just feel
like I blinked, and it was over because I so changed how I looked at
going through each step. This class is not
for women only. This class is not for those who aspire to be designers
or who are designers. This is for anyone who's
creative that started a business and wants to help navigate and ensure long-lasting success. During this class, we're not
going to get into the sales, the spreadsheets, the
forecasting and projections. We're going to step
back and take a look at the big picture things you
need to be successful. The first subject we're going to cover is about setting goals. We're going to discuss
some techniques on how to actually keep and
achieve those goals. The next is about defining your brand distinction
and customer so that you can ultimately market exactly to the person
that you have in mind. The next topic we're
going to discuss is having a unified
brand aesthetic, something that traverses
all the places you show up from your website
to your social media, to how you personally
show up in real life. Next, growing your
team and your network. This isn't something
that you check off a list is an ever-expanding, almost concentric
circle of growth, of connection of
people that are in your world that
are going to help you almost like an ecosystem. Finally, scaling your business. For some, that means
growth in sales. For some, that means growth
personally and more freedom to do everything else you desire. How is this going to go? You're going to learn
from me, my lessons, my experiences, more
importantly, my failures. But also you'll be
able to download an extensive class workbook from class resources or use an old-fashioned pen and paper and come along for the ride. I want to give you actionable
steps you can take, a workbook that you can
always go back and refer to, to refresh, to reset, to revive yourself
after a hard knock, and it's something
that's important to me that we can all have
a vision board, but unless we
actually take action, it will never ever happen. Go ahead and download the class workbook now,
and let's get started.
3. Setting Your Goals: [MUSIC] Our first lesson
is all about goal setting. But before we dive into
what your goal is, I want you to re-evaluate and re-examine what does
success truly mean to you? I meet so many people and
I'm guilty of this too. I want to be rich, I
want to be famous, I want to have a lot of
followers on Instagram, but that isn't a product
you're going to exchange daily with other people
for your survival. Why are you doing this? What gets you out
of bed every day? What is the product
you actually want to exchange with someone else
that brings you life, that brings you joy? How do we take a deeper
look at our lives and say, my business is not going to be the end goal of
everything for me, but what I want out
of my whole life, what does success look like? Is it more time? Is it the ability to
work a nine to five and actually see your children or take your pets for a walk? Is it a sleeping more? Let's look at all those
things across the spectrum because if you can check
off more of those boxes, you'll be a lot happier
and a lot more fulfilled. You won't be on the hamster
wheel that so many people, including myself have
been stuck on that make us think we're doing it for the money or we're
doing it for the fame. As we go into this lesson today, I want you to write down and
look at all the facets of your life that you want your career to be
able to provide for, so that every day
while you're working, you're achieving goals
on multiple fronts. For instance, I'm a
designer for a living, but every day I also
get to ensure that other female founded companies
are achieving success. That's a way of aligning
my mission to my brand. Every day I can get up and
look in the mirror and know that I'm checking
off many of those boxes. Most people living in New York, I was on a treadmill and it was a treadmill I never felt
I could get off of. It was go the most success, the most money, as many
people as I could meet, as much recognition
as possible and when the pandemic hit it really put everything
into perspective. As a mom, I thought I was, really involved
with my children. When I was suddenly at
home with them 24/ 7, I actually said, Oh my gosh, I have missed most
of their lives. It began to be a
shift of perspective. How do I reorient my work-life to also
be something that is able to provide and give me personal fulfillment
in my personal life. While those shifts were scary, and COVID was the hardest time for us as accompany
and still is, my personal satisfaction, my personal life is thriving. The first thing with goal
setting is you need to lay out your ideal scenario. I want you to get
really granular. What time do you
want to wake up? What time do you want
to get into the office? What is the life
that you want to have that makes what you do a definite important
and key component of your life but that
isn't just your life? How do you make the work
that you do in the passions you have all dovetail? Because that is truly
what it's going to make this journey worth it, especially during
the hard times. In this scenario, I'm
going to be talking about me specifically as a designer. First, I start off with my goal. Again, fame and
money are not goals. What I really want to do when
I'm looking for a goal is, what is my end product, what is the achievement? That's women globally wearing my products. That's handbags,
shoes, everything, sunglasses, whatever
it is that I have. Making them feel confident, powerful, and fearless. That is the goal that
I have as a designer. It also now informs the
products that I have. But this crystalize
will help me be so clear when I go about
my daily battle plans, when I go about my long-term
goals, my short-term goals. But this would be
the biggest goal that everything dovetails into. Now I want to move into the daily and monthly and
actionable steps that can take your goal and
make sure that everything you're doing
is aligned to that. I think for me I developed this quadrant system as
a way to stay focused, to stay on task, and
to make sure that with each area I approached
it like this. First, I start with
daily/urgent. What is this? This is a thing that you
have to do every day that are part and parcel of
whatever it is you do. That's what you
would attack most. If all else fails, you hit these things, you check these
things off your list. Then I have nice to have. What is a nice to have? Nice to haves, if I've done
everything in my daily and I have all this
extra time on my hands or something canceled that I suddenly got two hours of time. These are the nice to haves, the things that will still
help you in your business. But it's the lunch with a potential client that maybe won't be something that isn't developed for
a year from now. It's all the things
that our future that are just things
to do when you have crossed off everything
else that is on fire or your daily list. The next thing I have pending. What is pending? Pending
is all the things that you have to follow up
with, that's in process. You're waiting to hear
back from a client, you're waiting to hear
back about a proposal. I like to keep a long list of everything pending that
I'm working on because it forces me to go back
to things either I'm mid or when I need to
hear back from someone. Then I have my 3-6 months goals. Not just goals, but it's to-dos. If I want to have a business six months from now,
what's really important? Is it a new website? Is it revising my graphics? Maybe it's things I've been
saving money for that I know in three months time is going to be
incredibly important. I do this for my podcast. Just to break it down for
you and give you an example. On the daily I might be
recording a podcast, on the nice to have
for my podcast, I might have a list of guests that I'm going
to reach out to that are so well-known and never
check their DMs or answer emails that spending time on that might be fruitless, but it's a nice thing to
have if I have extra time. Pending, where are my
recorded episodes at? Where are the show notes at? Who do I need to talk
to about getting ads so that I can keep
recording my podcasts. Then what's my 3-6 month
goal with my podcasts? Do I want to have an
increase in traffic? Do I want to get more ads? What are the steps I
have to do to do that? Some of these are very granular, like your daily activities and then some of
them are bigger, but it lets you
focus your attention on all of these
things at a glance. When to revisit your
larger, bigger goal. What I usually do is I take my daily activities and
I put them in here, and I make myself a to-do list. Then sometimes that to do
list grows and then you find yourself not checking
anything off and then you're wondering
what you did that day. Then you're like, why
did I have that call? Why did I take this meeting that was such a waste of time? Every time I feel
like I'm getting back on this hamster wheel
of all the things I think I have to do, I go, what's my goal again? Does this achieve it? Does this achieve it? Does this achieve it?
Does this achieve it? What you're going to
find is you're going to start saying no to
a lot of stuff. All the things I was so busy
doing before COVID didn't necessarily contribute
to the growth and goals I had for my business. When all that went
away and I only put back everything we
needed to be successful, that's when you could see
what worked and what didn't. Go back to your goal as
often as you need to reset, clear out the junk, as I say, unsubscribe from all those things
that you think, if I just do this, maybe it'll help me. I revisit my to-do
list about every week, and I love crossing things off, so I really like
to keep it analog. It's so satisfying. Then I'll revisit my goals about every three months just to
make sure that I'm staying on track and as I plan the next fashion week or the
next big launch for us, which is usually about
every three months. That everything
I'm doing is still consistent with where the goal
is and where I'm heading. These are just some of the
to-do lists that I have segmented by different
areas of my life. Rebecca Minkowski, personal,
female founder collective. I clearly have way
more to fill in. But next I'll take podcast because I'm going
to do another book and I just start writing down everything that's
daily and urgent, making sure that it cross-references with
where this is headed. Then always go back to your pending because it's
all the stuff that you're in the middle of doing
that you never want to forget about and make sure
you're following up on. Now you've seen me do this for just one aspect of what I do. I want to see you do this. I want you to take it into account for any
aspect of your life. It could be a personal
goal with fitness, it could be a
professional goal with your company and I can't wait to see what
you come up with. One last piece of
parting advice before we transition into the
next lesson is this. For me, it's always
been a numbers game, even when I first
started out and I was handing out postcards
in Union Square telling people to go to a local consignment store
to buy my products. I began to look at
things as a ratio. I said, 500 postcards
equals one sale. That means if I want
two sales it's 1,000. I was a nerd and I kept graphs, but I guarantee you
whether it's people you've reached out
to, investors, customers, you'll
begin to see a ratio, so don't get
disheartened if you're met with challenges
on your goal. It's going to happen. But the more that you can outflow what you
do to an audience, to what you need, to the people you're talking to, the greater your chances of
an ingoing in inbound a sale, a reply will be. Get your nerd graph up, start keeping it and
you'll begin to track these ratios and you will
begin to see a shift. Next step, we'll talk about defining your brand distinction. [MUSIC]
4. Defining Your Distinction: [MUSIC] What I want to talk to you about
today is your brand plan. What are your brand values and what is your
brand distinction? Let's get clear on
what brand values are. What do you stand
for as a brand? For me as a woman
talking to other women, I want my values to
be that my customer feels fearless,
confident, optimistic. I want to make sure
that we're not just supporting the
way a woman looks, but if she has a company or
she is an executive that she actually feels supported
with things for my podcast, tips from my book. If she's a founder
she can go to my collective, and get resources, and help from other founders. That's brand values. As you begin to
think about that, again, go back to
your personal goals. Do you have other goals? Maybe it's climate-related,
maybe it's sustainability, maybe it's giving back
in some other way, but if I were going
to launch any brand today it's definitely one of
the first steps I'd take. About seven years ago when
I just peeked outside of my industry and realized
all things are not equal, and we're still making
80 cents on a dollar to male-founded companies
or as employees. What I'm I going to
do to change that? For me I decided, "Well, if I'm going to address a woman to make her feel confident, optimistic, and fearless, what do I do to support
her behind the scenes, to make our company
more successful, to give her access and
resources and education, to make her a better provider; someone who can impact
your community more?" My two missions
dovetailed really easily. It was very clear and
concise that we could tell this story again across
multiple platforms, whether it was the book, the podcast, and through the
Female Founder Collective. Your vision might not be as crystal clear and I
think you're exercising. Your takeaway from this
is going to be, well, how do I make these
two things intersect? Let's just say you
are a business, you've already started, you
already have a product, you're already out there
in the marketplace. Ask yourself, what
matters to me? What impact beyond your
business do you want to have? What gives you
that satisfaction? Is it rock climbing? Is it paragliding? Whatever it is, is
it volunteering? How do you take anything
that brings you that type of satisfaction and build it cohesively into part of
your business strategy? You've seen many companies
successfully do this, whether it's Patagonia and
their recycled wear program. To Bombas, to even Toms which is one of the first companies that aligned mission with brand. Whatever your goal is, the other things outside of the products that
make you happy, that make you feel fulfilled, that enhance your
greater life and dovetail that into
your company mission, that'll be the beginning
of how you really look at your brand and its values. Let's just say pencils. You are the extraordinary
pencil creator and you sell tons of
pencils and your goal is satisfy customers who are happy and loving
drawing with your pencils. Well, is there a greater goal? Is it children's education? Is it providing writing
instruments for people in low-income
communities? How does that everyday
feed back into this? Your product and your
success metric isn't just going to be we did a
million dollar in pencil sales. It's going to be not only did we do a million dollar
in pencil sales, but we also were
able to give back 100,000 pencils into
low-income communities. You can begin to extend your reach over the cash in
your bank account and into the change you're making
into areas that you deem will actually help round out
what you view as success. Now, let's talk about
brand distinction. I want you to become crystal clear on what your brand
looks and feels like, but not only that, who your customer is? I want you to know how
she styles her hair, what her perfume is, her shampoo, the
music she listens to. You have to almost
bring your customer to life because that's exactly who you're
going to talk to, and are her brand
values at the end of the day going to
align with yours. For instance, I could come
out and say I have a $5,000 bag when in reality my customer is someone who
has her master's degree. She's a teacher, she's a nurse. She's a woman who just started her company. Can
she afford that? No, I certainly couldn't
when I started out, and so I have to also
know that the products I'm creating need to
fit into the archetype; who my fantasy person is but that has some basis in reality. I think where you can run
into trouble is when you say, well, if I build
it, they will come. Well, Who is they? Some people say, if
I just I'm general, and I appeal to so many people, and then generalize it, then I'll have
tons of customers. There have been so
many expert marketers that said it is more
valuable to have 10,000 dedicated loyal
customers than 100,000 one. Now we're going to hone in
on an exercise where I'm going to go through
a mythical brand, and a mythical customer, and how granular I would
get so you can get an example of how
focused you need to be. Let's take a fake brand. We're going to [NOISE]
call it the White tea co. I'm sorry if you
exist White tea co., I'm going to steal your name. You know you make
white T-shirts, so who's your girl? My imaginary customer
is going to be 25-30. That means you have to
be realistic with what? A 25-30-year-old can actually
pay for a white T-shirt. Well, what would that look like? How much could you pay for
a T-shirt when you were 25? Me, I'm going to go with $25. That was a stretch, at 25. What [NOISE] jeans
does she wear? Not just what jeans,
but what brands? You know your customer is going to hopefully pair this
shirt with Levi's, with Re/done, etc. Shoes. That's
incredibly important because usually if you're
wearing a plain white T-shirt, your shoes are
going to stand out. Is it Nike? Is it Reebok? Is it heels? If it's heels, is this a fancy white shirt? Is it the shirt to wear
when you're going out to the club or is the white shirt
to wear on the weekends? Where does she go
on the weekends? Does she go to Brunch?
What does she eat? Where does she go on vacation? You'll begin to create this customer that as you're starting a brand,
you're going to build. If you have a brand that
you already started, you have a lot of data. Whether you want to
believe the data or not, you actually can
find out a lot of these things and you can also supplement with
surveys for the rest. Guess what's going to happen? You might have a customer
that you've been talking incorrectly
to this whole time. There was a time period within my company where
we thought we had one customer and we had an
entirely different customer. I was elated to hear that my customer most of them
have master's degrees, I never would have thought that. How do you begin to put
in those things that keep her reaching for what you
really stand for as a brand? Here's some of the things you're going think with if you're just starting a brand: age, income, education, where she consumes her data, music she likes, drinks, restaurants
she frequence. Now again, if she's
making $35,000 a year, you better be real
that she's not going to a very
expensive restaurant. All of these things
actually need to be real, it can't be fantastical. Where she vacations? What she does on the weekends? You could keep adding to this list and
making sure that as you write it and fill in the blanks with
who this woman is; hair products, etc, that everything matches up. If you already have a brand, you're going to fill in all
of this with what you know. Ask a bunch of questions to your existing demo to
fill in the blanks, and you will again see that you have this customer
that's sitting there, that's waiting there,
that's buying you, that you want to make
as loyal as possible. Let's just say you're
coming up with this mythical customer and
you don't know the answer. Do some exploring, get
some focus groups. You can easily get an impromptu informal
focus group by going to the local mall or asking your friends and their friends
what they like and do. Once you have this
to make sure that your brand values tie into this. For instance, let's
just say I bait a 25-year-old who makes
$35,000 a year, who likes to vacation
in tropical locations, and her favorite drink
is a matcha latte; I'm going to be very
stereotypical here, what are her brand values? Well, does she care
about sustainability? Does she care about climate? What is she most
likely to feel is important as what
informs her purchase. Again, you might have
to go asking questions, you might have to go do
surveys to figure this out. Luckily, social
media can tell you a lot about what people
care about today. You can go deep into people's accounts
to see what they're passionate about and does
that align with yours? As we close this out I want you to take a
big piece of paper. I want you to write this out. If you have an existing
customer base, I want you to actually go and get this information
and see if it matches up with
everything you've been doing, saying,
talking about. What I did was pretty simple. I went onto Pinterest and I created the world
of Rebecca Minkoff. What does she look like? Where do she travel? What does she eat? What does my store look like? What other stores
does she shop in? Who are the other
brands that she buys? I created this entire thing
out of the data that I had, and added the things that I
wanted her to aspire to be. From there you're going to have a very crystal clear image
of who your customer is, and then you'll be able
to start talking to her. [MUSIC] How you talk to her is what's coming
up next and how to create a unified brand [MUSIC].
5. Creating a Unified Brand: [MUSIC] We've talked about your brand values
and we've talked about your brand's distinction. Now it's time to get into
the look and feel of what does it look like when
you bring this brand to life? For my brand, it's all about this Bohemian rock
and roll aesthetic. Everything is looked
at through that lens. Does it have statuses?
Does it has zippers? What does the woman look like? She always has a little bit of an edge that changes
how we photograph, what filters we use, what lighting, and it's not
just what they look like, it's what you sound
like and it's how you show up and
where you show up. For instance, we
launched on TikTok. I was dancing because that's what everyone
else was doing, but that's not actually valuable for my customers
or for my brand. What is valuable? Is it style tips? Is it how to wear
things together? Is it what to match with what? That is far more
valuable for my customer than just showing up somewhere
just for the sake of it. We'll get deeper into this
as we start this lesson. Let's talk about how you go about finding your
distinct lens. Now that you have your values, now that you have your
brand distinction, I would encourage you to
build a mood board about what that person or what your
product might look like. What is the lighting that
you're going to use? Are there certain angles? Is there a tone of voice, whether it's happy, sad, cheeky, what does that look
and feel when you close your eyes and you say, I want to be known
for these things? You want to know that when your customer walks
up and a sea, let's just say bags in
a department store. Why are they going
to go for you? What sets you apart?
Here's a good example. We did a brand deep
dive many years ago, and what we decided was our
brand colors were going to be black and white
with a touch of blush, 10 percent to be exact. How does that play itself? For the most part, my
website is black and white. The touches of blush
come in when it's skin color on the model or other pops of pink
that you're going to see very carefully woven in. But it also comes down to
the idea of my perfume. It's always been about
masculine and feminine, which is black and white
and so you're going to have a masculine scent and then we just launched the feminine sent. The packaging was
black and white, but this time because
we were leaning more in the feminine direction and we
over-indexed on the blush. Then this might be
different for you if your brand is not
necessarily about color, but it could again be about the photography lighting style. How does that play into how that showcases and shows
up on the website? Or if you have a very
harsh aesthetic, does it really
makes sense for you to be a comedian in your copy, the answer is probably no. I think when it
comes to deciding which levers you're
going to go with, you're going to have to be very selective and be a great editor, which I am not one. It's very hard and that's what outside people are
very handy for. Just to give you a sense, there is a lot to me as a human and as the brand that I
might want to turn on. But when you close your eyes and think of Rebecca Minkoff, do you want to see her
kid's dirty diaper? Probably not. Again,
back to TikTok. Do you want to see me doing
weird dances? Probably not. Those are things about my
personal life which might be great for my intimate
close friends and family, but not necessarily
the things that evoke the Bohemian rock
and roll lifestyle. Again, you don't have
to show everything. You also don't have
to be the face if that doesn't make
sense for your brand. Sometimes I myself experience a brand that I just want to
see their products and I see their founder on a boat or at a concert and I'm
like, you know what? I don't care, it
doesn't fit into the story they're
telling as a company. It's really hard to
talk about visuals, so why don't we look at some? The first example I'm going
to give you is of course me. Let's go to my website. We talked about the black and white and the ratios of that. You're going to
notice a consistent black and white with touches of blush that comes in in the skin color and a lot of
the lighter colored bags. Sometimes it comes
in as graphics. This plays into the
types of models we use, the makeup we have on them, the poses they have, the age range of the models. We have video. If you look at the lighting, it has a definite harshness to it in terms of being
more rock and roll. Everything is built-in and backended into what we
know about our customer, what she likes, who she
aspires to be like, and all the other
things we spoke about. Now if you take this and
you go to my Instagram, and you'll notice that
whether it's images of me, images of models, or images of product, we keep the lighting very
similar, very consistent. You know what to expect, we know what works, and we keep giving it
to you over and over. That's just two examples
of how your website and your social media can
talk to each other. But how your social media
can be an extension and almost an expansion of your greater brand values
and brand proposition. You're the founder
of a brand and you're probably asking yourself, do I need to be
front and center? The answer isn't always
going to be yes. For me and my brand, I've always been in
front of the consumer. I was with her when social media didn't even exist,
and so for us, it was a very natural
extension that as I was the same age and
sex as my customer, and I was going on very
similar journeys to her, whether it was your
first marriage, babies, etc., that I was
going to be talking to her. You might say, and I'll show
you in the next example, a brand where the
founder doesn't matter and the founder shouldn't
be front and center. You have to ask yourself, do you like being in
front of the camera? Do you think you're good at it? Does your customer want a
genuine connection from you, or they just there to buy a great product that you
can stand behind proudly? Let's take a brand, Our Place. They make one of my favorite
pans of all time and their branding and
brand values and messaging are
extraordinarily consistent. If you go on their site or in this case on
their Instagram, they have much more variety. They're showing a lot more
of user-generated content, but they've united it
with color and filter, and they also have
great things that they do whether
it's helping feed hungry people and talking about Americans and
becoming citizens, and how food is really
uniter of many cultures. They've been able to
take something that was very important to them, maybe personally to the
brand and the founder, and integrated into the
lifestyle of what food does, how it brings
communities together, and what the ultimate pan that you should have
on your table looks like. Now if we go to their website, I'm going to bet it is
also just as consistent. The way they light everything, the way they showcase product, the way they talk
about their brand. Everything on here matches back perfectly to
their Instagram. Their Instagram takes it, as I said, as an
extension of this. There's more depth that
they can share again with their user-generated content
and their community. But it's all still
existing in one world. The steps that I would recommend you to figure this out if you're just incubating the idea of a brand or you're
just getting started, is look at your competitors. You don't want to do what
they're already doing. Look at what you like, what you're drawn naturally to. You have now this
mythical customer or your existing customer. When you put all that data on any number of
visual platforms, you're going to get back a really good picture
of what she likes. You can also beta test this. I have a friend that throws
up images, sees what works. If it doesn't work, they
try something else. The customer will begin
to vote and you'll begin to see what's working
and what's not working. Then once you've locked and loaded on what that looks like, as much as you want
to be creative, it's always great to
stay within those lanes. I'll give you a great example. We used to showcase
tons and tons of founders on our Female
Founder Collective Instagram. But every single
woman would take a very different head shot
from a very different angle, and it was really hard to
make these consistent. We decided to have
everyone either do a photo in black
and white or we put a filter that
was consistent with our brand messaging and
filter across every image. Right away the feed
was unified and it played into our color
story and our graphics. It's a very easy and
simple thing to do, but it makes a world
of difference. What I'd recommend to you
is go out and experiment to make sure that
by the time you hone in on it,
you're ready to go. Go ahead and download
the class workbook. Next step, we're
going to talk about expanding your network
and your team. [MUSIC]
6. Expanding Your Network: [MUSIC] You might
be a superwoman, you might be a solo entrepreneur
but that doesn't mean you can work alone in a silo
100 percent of the time. As you scale, as you
begin to work with outside contractors
or freelancers, you're going to have to know
how to work with people, how to expand your network, and how to make the most out of all of your
relationships. Being a founder can
be incredibly lonely. The last thing you want to
do is at the water cooler, vomit to your employee
or your contractor or you're a freelancer about how you don't know how you're
going to make payroll. You need to find a circle of people that have
been through this, have survived or have failed. I would also say that
as much as you want to talk to your best friend about what you're going through, if they're not a
founder and have no familiarity with
your business, you are going to
get all bad advice. Keep a couple of people
in your back pocket and develop those
relationships whether it be joining women's group, joining the Female Founder
Collective or other arenas where you can reach
out and talk to people that have
had the experience and can speak intelligently
to the answers you need. I'll never forget when I had
the opportunity to be on a very short-lived TV show
with a fellow female founder, and hearing her talk with her Harvard MBA made me realize I have so
much more to learn. Immediately, I
began pestering her with questions about all
the things that I've always been too embarrassed
to ask as someone who was the founder of
her own company. I began to learn so much
from her and I turned to her during the worst parts of my businesses cycles and also
the best and she's always been someone that
I could share with and it began to be symbiotic. I was able to help her when
she needed it as well. It's okay to be vulnerable. There's been so
much marketing in our society that it
always has to be the, "I'm the best contest." But when you find those
two people that you can confide in and learn from, those are going to be your
most valuable assets, especially when the
going gets tough. If you're not living in a
major city and you feel like you're not sure
where to turn to, COVID has given us lots
of virtual communities. I'm sure you can seek out, buy the Better Business Bureau
or your local community, other founders walking
into their stores, if you have to and just
striking up a conversation. There is no harm that
can come from it. If at the end of
the day, all you get is something
from that store, then that's all you get. But I think reaching
out and branching outside of your zone of expertise is always
going to be valuable because the things I've
learned about shipping, about logistics, about finance, about
restructuring deals, all things I never
would have even known had I not reached outside and beyond
my comfort zone. Let's talk about mentorship. It is a highly used
word in our society and I think it sets up people
to fail miserably. Everyone wants to go
to the busiest person, the CEO of Fortune
500 company and say, ''Can I ask you
for some advice?'' One of the lessons I
talk about in my book is ask for what you need. Don't ask for help. I want you to get laser specific on the exact issue you're facing so that if you do
get to meet with the CEO of that
Fortune 500 company, they can give you a
really clear answer. Sometimes people come up to
me and meet me and they go, ''How did you get started?'' My answer is not going to help them in any way whatsoever. It's such a vastly
different landscape than it was when I got started. But if they ask me where
they can get a factory, who's a good supplier, how did they get in
front of an editor? Those are all questions that
I can answer that will be remarkably helpful for
someone just starting out. Let's talk about
another word most often feel like is dirty and
it's called networking. Here's what you
don't want to do. I'm at my friend's
birthday party and a gentleman comes up to me immediately opens
the conversation about his health supplement, forces a sample off on me and ask me to
try it in front of him and then asks for
immediate feedback. That is the wrong thing
to do and that would say that's what gives
networking it's dirty name. This is what you should do. If you're going to be
in any social scenario and assessing who
you're meeting, be interested in the
person genuinely. Ask what they do, ask what
they like about their work, then I would say build on that relationship
in a genuine way. What can you do for them? Then it's the easiest thing in the world to ask
them for something. Many people will say, ''Well, I just started out,
there's nothing that I could possibly give.'' But if you're here
and you're watching, you've done something
and there is something you can do
for someone else. It might be hosting that
person's kid for an internship. It might be making
an introduction of someone they didn't know
they needed to know. I think if you reframe
your mindset of what you could do for them when you
need something in return, that process will be
much less cringy. Next time you think
about networking, think about it as
like-minded people connecting and
helping each other, each with a give and a get. You've asked for someone for some advice and
they've helped you, whether they were
a good friend or an associate or a colleague
or a perfect stranger, always send a thank you note. If someone does
something big for you, send something really
personal to them, send them flowers,
a bottle of wine, whatever it is but always
show your gratitude. It goes a long way. When hiring and building a team, I always like to take a
look in the mirror and say, '''What I'm I the worst at?'' I knew I was weak in finance, in production, in
graphic design, and I was also starting to spend so much time on sketching, designing my samples that I had little time for anything else. My first four hires were, you guessed it, production,
a fractional CFO, someone to help me
design everything, and someone to help with
all the graphics that come with designing a website
and sending out emails. That freed me enough
to be creative, to be PR, and to
oversee marketing, so rather than focus on someone who went to
the right school, who got the right MBA, who went to the
right kindergarten. For me after I had my hires
of my weakest points, the next people that I hired
were people who were like, "I don't know it but I'll
show you I can do it." Early on in your career, you're not going to have a
lot of money for salaries. When you find these
people that can get stuff done and almost be an execution
arm to what you're doing, are
extraordinarily valuable. Once you begin to grow and
you actually take on staff, then I like to go back and get specific with the
high-ranking generals, as I call it, that can actually take and grow
each area on their own. That's my methodology of
how to grow your team. I would say that for me, it's a look in the eye. It's a firm handshake. It's someone that
comes in and looks and acts and talks and
walks like the brand. For instance, if
you have a store, what should your
salespeople look like? Should they look like the brand? Of course, they should. You want the customer
to walk in and immediately see your
salesperson and know, "I love how they dress, I love how they put that look together, that makes sense." You might be a little confused if you walked
into what you thought was a Bohemian rock and roll to
someone that was wearing a very conservative outfit that looked like they
should be on Wall Street, then you have your brand values. We want all of our staff
at Rebecca Mankoff or at Female Founder
Collective to align and be excited about what you
stand for as a brand. Because if you can get more
people behind your mission, it only propels it more faster.
Let's talk about money. Almost every founder I have
come in contact with has this dream of getting
an investment from a VC and becoming the
billion dollar unicorn. But what many founders
don't realize and why some of their hopes and dreams
are completely squashed is, they were never meant
to get venture capital. Venture capital is there
to fuel high-growth, mostly technology-oriented
brands that can replicate a service and grow
almost like a hockey stick. Private equity exists in a
very similar capacity but to companies that can grow and be sold, not necessarily
technology-based. People have forgotten that
businesses first and foremost, what they call Mainstreet, are businesses that are just
supposed to exist on making a good profit and
having a good EBITDA. If you don't know
what that means, I highly advise you look it up. There's nothing
wrong with a small, profitable business that
provides for your lifestyle. When I say small, keep in mind, a small business in America
is under $20 million. If you have a $20
million business, you should be
jumping up and down. That is something to be
incredibly excited about. If you have $100,000 business, that is incredible too, but you might not need the capital you think
you need to grow. We need to get away
from all the sexing, glossy marketing
that we should all be billion dollar brands, that we should all
be on our yachts and just focus on again, go back to your goal. What do you want to
have in your life? If it is a small, profitable business that
provides for your lifestyle and feeds the families of the people that you
employ, that's great. You might not ever need to
raise capital and if you do, there's things like
friends and family. There's things
like crowdfunding. There's your local bank, which are excited and eager
to help small businesses. Then if you get into
the big leagues and you have something
that can have the hockey stick like
growth or you have a technology that
can be deployed, whether it's similar
to an Uber, an Airbnb, speak to private
equity but do not sell a majority of your
company for almost nothing to now have new bosses that
are going to tell you what to do and re-prioritize you
for their eventual resale. Many years ago, we sold
a piece of our company to private equity
and everything was built around the idea of explosive growth and a
resale value in seven years. What did we spend
our time doing? Preparing for board meetings
when we should've been focused on everything that
was right for our customer, for our design,
and for our brand. If they had had majority power, my company wouldn't be around because everything was
so mis-prioritized. Be very careful
when you enter into these relationships and be
sure they are the right fit. There are also some
ancillary benefits to some alternative
forms of financing. Let's take crowdfunding
for instance. There's a crowdfunding
platform that a company used, not because they
needed to raise money, but it was a way for them to get membership for a community
they were launching. They got two things.
They got marketing and exposure to a
community of people. They got members and
they raised money. Here's what I want you
to do for this exercise. I want you to make a list
of the people you know immediately that could help you with very specific advice. Then I want you to
make a list of people that you don't
know but you know, someone that knows them. I firmly believe in six
degrees of separation. Then I want you to
figure out what is the specific thing you
need from that person. Before you do that,
do your research. Have they set it on a podcast? Have they set it in a magazine
or TV interview so that you might already
get the answer to your question before
you reach out to them. Lastly, I want you to make
a list of the far reaches, the people that might
never email you back but you know
what? You got to try. Make sure that you've asked for exactly what you need,
don't ask for help. [MUSIC] Go ahead
and do that now. Next step we're
going to talk about growing and scaling your brand.
7. Growing and Scaling: [MUSIC] Now that we've covered a lot of the tools
that I use to succeed, let's look ahead to the future
to prepare you for what you're going to inevitably encounter when you
grow your brand. How do you know when
you're successful? Early on, our goals
were really simple. I had, and this is not
turning out to be true, but we had a lender of our say, "If you just hit five
million in sales, things will get
easier and you'll be profitable as accompany." All I did that very moment
was I went to the wall in my two room office and I painted a huge
thermostat and I said, "Guys, all we have to do is hit the five million and
life will be great." Guess what? I was really wrong. But what it did is it
oriented myself and my very tiny team
of three around the goal that we immediately
wanted to achieve. Once we hit that
goal and we quickly realized all was not easy. We were able to say, "All right, what is actually real? Let's get some other
perspective and advice here about what we want as accompany and how we
want to grow this." It became about getting more boutiques to
order our products. Again, this was before
e-commerce even was a word. Then it became about how
many customers can we touch. As we grew, we kept adding
and expanding to our goal. That's what I'd like
you to think about as we proceed into this lesson. As your company grows or as
society shifts and changes, you're going to have to
constantly go back to your original goal and see if it needs to be
augmented or change. I think a great example is the explosion of social media, and how rapidly it's
shifted companies. The companies that didn't adopt that into their strategies, you never hear about anymore. Or even during a recession
when we had to slash our prices by over 50
percent to stay alive, it clearly wasn't a
strategy of ours, but in doing that and in
pivoting at that time, we were able to grow 548 percent over the next three
years during a recession. You cannot always know when the roadblock or the
twister turn will come, revisiting your
goal, augmenting it, or pivoting some time, is a must for you to
stay in business. How do you know if you should
pivot or change course? Are they liking your product? Is it selling at what you need it to sell at
in order to make your goals financially and
to be stable as accompany? I have met so many
people who think they have the greatest product in
the world that no one needs. You really have to make
sure that before you start anything there is a customer
for what you are providing, and there is a desire
for what you are making. When you have that you
will find a customer, and then if you don't
see traction right away, you might have to pivot. There are so many
great examples of huge companies that
have had to pivot. Whether it was
Instagram or Airbnb, even how now car companies are pivoting to battery
powered cars. Pivoting is not always easy and the emotional toll that can take on you can sometimes
be really hard. Let's go back to the
idea I gave you in earlier lessons about ratios. Whenever I think I
have a product that's awesome and perfect and
everyone should have, I ask myself, how many
times did I talk about it? How many emails did
we send about it? How many times was it on
the front of our homepage? Did I talk about
it in a magazine? Did I do an extra shoot? If I've tried all that and
no one wants that bag, I've got to be resigned to
the fact that I gave it as much output as I
can, and guess what? They didn't want the **** bag. Sometimes you have to look in the mirror and realize
that what you're offering or selling
someone might not want. But I would be sure to
explore and exhaust every avenue to
make sure that it wasn't just that you were talking to the
wrong demographic, you were talking to your
customer at 8:00 PM when she's ready to talk
to you at 8:00 AM, all those things can be factors that actually
hurt your product. Then when you pivot, I wouldn't do anything
unless you've surveyed it. You can ask people almost anything because everyone wants to give you an opinion. Go to your ideal customer, meet her on the street, talk to her in social
media and ask her, what does she need
and want from you and how can you provide
that service? It might be completely
unexpected. We launched these
Janine Sweatshirts during the pandemic
because it was cold. But really what did it do? It served a woman on Zoom, and she was able to
collect them all. Then we started selling jewelry when we weren't
a jewelry company because she wanted
things that she could change out easily
from the waist up. We immediately identified
a need and pivoted to things that we
could service because she wasn't going
outside her house, and didn't need the
bag during that time. Then when things started
opening up again, we poured the coals on
our handbag business. Sometimes these pivots can
be short-term or long-term, and it's really
important to understand the difference and when
to pull that lever. Let's talk about
creative blocks. If you're a creator like me, having all this data always, thinking about your customer, reviewing the numbers
can suck the life out of you creatively
100 percent. A couple of things I
do to revive myself is I take away any and all
devices and I go for a walk. I see nature or I see the beautiful buildings
in New York City, and I'm able to clear my head. Or I'll go disconnect from work completely and do something
that inspires me. See a music show, go to a movie, catch a concert. I think anything I
can do to get out of the headspace of
business and numbers and ratios and goals and into the things that for me
breed my creative juices. I would make sure that that time you take
it's not selfish, it's not not working, it's what you need as a creative to refuel yourself
so you can come back to work and keep
being creative and keep showing up with the great ideas that are going
to transform your brand. This brings me to the
topic of burnout. So many creatives or
founders or anyone frankly, can be experiencing burnout. I talk about this in my book
that no scented candle in the world or any face masks or massage is actually going
to cure your burnout. I keep always going
back to the example, when I first started out, I was working nights, weekends. I had no money, I had no friends, all I did was work and I was excited and elated by my life. My work was what was giving
the energy to continue. The word burnout didn't
even occur to me. It's only when I began to work
with a toxic individual at the workplace or work
within a toxic environment, for me personally that I
began to experience burnout. I always talk about
self-reflection. What is happening? Is there a toxic
person you work with? Is it a toxic work
environment or culture? How do you begin to change that? While these changes won't
take place immediately, you identifying the source of this will be the thing that
makes you excited again. Let's talk about
creative blocks. We're going to take
the words if and then. This is our contingency plan. If I experience creative blocks. You just can't move, you don't know what
the next design is, you don't know how to
finish the paragraph of your book, whatever it is. First, I want you to
ask yourself what energizes or fuels you? Could be exercise,
could be taking a walk. Social media is not allowed, nor is this part
of the exercise, so you need to do things. You got to see a concert, go to museum, get a massage. Anything to disconnect
from what you're blocked on and take
your attention off it, go do something else, I guarantee you're going to
come back more refreshed, more excited, and probably
having that aha moment. That's creative blocks. Let's say you're burnt out. If you're burnt out, then
what I want you to do is self reflect. Who's around you? Take a deep look at
everyone you work with, is there someone
that works for you, that is helping you with your business or is in
some area of your life, literally sucking your
life energy out of you? If you find that person, eliminate them and bam, you might feel like you have the headspace to be
excited and creative, and want to go back
to an environment. I would also say if
you're burned out, if it's not about
self-reflection or a toxic person
in your workplace, what do you spending
your time doing, that isn't actually what
you should be doing. There have been many times where my role as
a founder and as a creative was spent preparing for a board meeting or
looking at spreadsheets, and that's when I felt
the most burnt out. How do I retroactively refit as a founder and get back into the areas that
I'm most creative? How do I reshape my
week so that the beginning of the week when
I have the most energy, I do everything creative, and the end of my week is that things that
are hardest for me to focus on are the tasks I
feel like I'm the worst at? You have a couple of
tools in your tool belt. If you have creative blocks, figure out what fuels you. If you're burnt out, who's in your toxic environment, where do you need to
re-prioritize and spend your time and how do you
build back for that? Go back to your goals and
put it there and make it part of your daily activity
to take steps to get there, you will change this habit and
the burn out will subside. Now it's your turn. Try this, you might even
want to add to your list. You might want to take a look at what all your fears are and the things that
will help you feel more brave and
taking those risks. I encourage you to
go beyond this and expand as much as you need in order for you to have a
really safe contingency plan if you run into any
of these troubles. There's always going
to be something that happens in your business
that you can't plan for. The best advice I can give you is sometimes success is purely based on being able to keep
going, getting backup, and putting one foot in
front of the other and facing the issue head-on
versus running from it, or crawling under a desk
or hiding in your bed. Get back up, face the problem head-on and be prepared
to be flexible, pivot and keep going. [MUSIC]
8. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] You made it through the
course, congratulations. We've talked about so much, whether it's your brand value, what you stand for, what your brand should
look and feel like, to contingency plans. My wish for you is that you keep going in the face of adversity, in the face of hardship. Just know that it's not about
it being the bumpy road, it is the road. If you can keep going and
keep your eye on the goal, and take it there step-by-step, I promise you, you will look back and be an awe of
what you accomplished. I'm excited to see everything
you're going to do. Share your exercises, post
them in the project gallery, send them to me on Instagram. I can't wait to see how you're utilizing everything I've
talked to you about today. Thank you again, and I hope to see your thriving
businesses everywhere. [MUSIC]
Rebecca Minkoff, Designer, Founder, Author
