 This is Startup to Storefront. NFO, nipple freak out. If you know, you know. In response, Cake's body has created the world's first grippy not sticky nipple covers. They grip by your body's natural heat and have no annoying sticky adhesives. It's a real problem all women deal with, so when they began sharing the products on TikTok, videos started to take off. They sold out of their entire inventory after one viral video, and then it happened again, again, and again. The founders have tapped into something much larger than just silicone nipple covers. Today we talk with Olivia, Taylor, and Casey, the owners of Cake's body. We discuss how Cake's body is more of a movement than a company, how they've built a community of hype girls, and how TikTok drives 90% of their sales. Without further ado, meet Cake's body. All right, welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to the founding team of Cake's. Thanks for coming. Thank you. For people who don't know. What do you guys do? What's the company? We sell nipple covers. So we are gonna give a little background because I'm guessing that you wouldn't be a consumer of our product, even though you're very familiar with Cake's. My wife does love your product, but that is true. I love them too. I'm so glad. So we were just sick of the pads inside of our sports bras, and I'm sure you know from doing your wife's laundry or anybody who's done a sister or a wife or a girlfriend's laundry, the pads are always falling out, and then you just cannot put them back when they're never smooth and they were just a mess. So we designed the first seamless, reusable, washable insert design specifically for workout and swim. Wait, I need to give more background for men as well who might be listening. So the alternative, if you don't have these pads is NFO nipple freak out. So I used to go to the gym with coworkers in my workout tops and I'd throw the pads out, and it was super embarrassing working out with nipple freak out with my boss right next to me on the treadmill. So just context of like, this is a very simple but annoying problem for women. And, but at some point, so there's a ton of problems out there that you guys are intelligent enough to solve. And so why this one? Like why, just walk me through the step of like, I'm annoyed by this, the boss story hits, it resonates. Moving to how do we solve it? Moving to getting family on board. Let's go through some prototypes. It's one of those simple ideas that starts out as a joke in a sense. Like it was just like, you end up in so many embarrassing situations like at the grocery store after your workout and you're in the freezer aisle and you're like racing home, or it was just almost so comical that we would just, it was when we were very active on Snapchat, like 10 years ago, we would just send funny Snapchats to each other and we talked for years about designing a solution to this problem. And I also think it was simple enough for us to bite off. Like we had a lot of other business ideas over the years and we're like, okay, this is a simple and inexpensive enough product for us to take a leap and order 500 units and see if we can sell them. And how did you do that? So what was the first step in like either, I don't know, I'm a man, so I don't have any idea of like, what quality am I looking for? What's the fabric? What's the material? Yeah, so the first step was finding a manufacturing partner to work with and then we looked at what was out there on the market and identified how we could make it better. And I think what's so cool about our story is we didn't completely, like we were innovating, but we weren't coming up with something that had never been done at all before. We were just thinking about how can we work with someone who's making something similar and we can really partner with them and change the design to be, we made it larger so that it was more seamless. We made the shape a little bit more natural to the woman's natural shape. And then I think the part that is great for working out and swim is we took off the adhesives on the standard nipple cover and that's perfect because you don't want to be irritated when you're working out. And that's how it started. And we actually, I don't know if I've ever told you this story, but we tried to launch this business in our early twenties under a very literal name. Our old brand name was Nipple Armor. And we were about to launch. It's a pretty good name. It was a very literal name. There's only so many places you can go with a brand name Nipple Armor. Okay. But we loved it. And today it's called Cakes Body. What are the cakes? Well, so we were about to launch this Nipple Armor brand in our early twenties. What year was this, by the way? This was, oh God, probably like eight years ago, so maybe... All right, 15, 14, 15. 15, 16, okay, okay. But yeah, at the 11th hour when we were about to launch this business, we received a cease and desist from a large sportswear brand. Oh. You could imagine. Another armor one, yeah. Make Tom Brady. Got it. And then... And it really set us back. We were at like a completely different spot in our lives and we didn't necessarily have the same commitment or confidence that we have now. And it set us back for quite a while and it ended up being an amazing thing because when we finally got back to it, we developed this brand cake spotty that is completely different than... It's the same product but a completely different brand and we're finding it's really resonating with our customers and it's opened up our world to develop innovative alternatives to the traditional bra while giving back to women's health causes, which is a lot more broad and it's a lot more meaningful to us and our customers than our initial business of nipple armor. So what does cakes body mean? What does cakes, what's the cakes mean? Where did you get it from? Yeah. Well, we couldn't comp pancakes. No. We started and stopped. That was such a big part of our process. I'm sure you saw that too. And so at one point, the idea was Casey was gonna start a cakes business. We loved the name cake. Like actual. At an actual cake business. It wasn't cakes, good at baking. Yeah, Casey baked one cake and she's like, I actually hate baking cakes so this isn't gonna work out. We love the ring to it. We started calling it cakes kind of because it looks like a little cake. A little cake and then... You're delivering happiness. We're delivering happiness and we love the juxtaposition of a product that's designed for workout that's called cakes because it kind of represents the balance that we see in our brand and in our lives of we like to work out, we like to eat cake, we like to... Drink wine. Drink wine. I like it. And so, okay. So when do you actually launch cakes? Like what year was it that you went into doing the side hustle? We just launched at the end of January of this year, 2022. Okay. So we've been out at less than a year. Let's talk about that magic moment. So at some point, you guys go on social media. The social media of the day is TikTok and Instagram. We launched at the end of January of this year and we had no plan when we launched. We had no plan and we had no money. We had no plan and we had no money. We just spent all our money on 500 units and we were like, how are we gonna sell these but we can't be stuck with them in our garage for the rest of our lives. So here we go. So step one was we did a kind of a friends and family launch on social media and Instagram and really just Instagram. And we needed content but we also didn't have money to have a big content shoe and develop ads and all of this stuff. So we developed our Hype Girl program which we still have today and Olivia has been doing an amazing job. The OG Hype Girl, Olivia in the building. She is the OG Hype Girl and now is managing and growing the program. And that was really a program about getting our customers to develop content for us and it has evolved into so much more and they've turned into our affiliates and Olivia will talk more about it but it's been, that was kind of our initial strategy and then its main purpose now is to develop community but I would say like when the business really took off was in like April when Taylor's TikTok career and TikTok just exploded and currently that's where 90% of our sales are coming from. 90% of sales coming from TikTok. Before I get into TikTok, because once I start I won't stop. I wanna say one amazing thing that happened right when we launched which just putting it out there to friends and family on Instagram and Facebook which we don't do anything on anymore was an incredible moment just for our own confidence of like we're doing it. Once you tell someone you're doing it it's like okay I have to follow through I'm gonna figure this out and taking that leap was kind of I feel like a pivotal moment of just. How long were you stuck before you decided to do it? I mean since our nipple armor days in 2016 we kinda had this idea this would be a great solution we were wearing the product and using it in our lives and we found it was really helpful for us and would tell our friends about it and give them samples to try and we never would take the leap and so that was super pivotal for us and there's this one author I love her name is Nicole Khalil and she talks about just taking any action is the most powerful step in building confidence that you can take because you know it leads you to something amazing and gets you unstuck and so when we put that out friends of friends started hearing about the brand and we got our first email from our customer which was super exciting because we're like holy shit. Someone you didn't know. We don't know her in case you was like do you know her? Do you know her? Oh my God, wait this is a legit customer it's not like a mom's friend. And so she said the subject line was this product changed my life and she was a breast cancer survivor and she had gone through seven reconstruction surgeries had so many complications with scarred skin and very sensitive skin because of just so much the body goes through and because of the gentleness of our product being medical grade silicone and the size and shape provided a lot of coverage and surface area she actually it was something that didn't exist and was not our intention at all in our product and her story really opened our eyes to a holy crap we can really help a lot of people with this product and other products and solutions that don't exist for women specifically in that community. So that was like an aha moment we at that point still had no idea how we're gonna grow it and get the word out. What did you learn in that moment though? And so not to remove the emotion from it but from a product perspective like you had you're basically uncovering that you've solved the problem you didn't plan for and in that it's interesting, right? So then it makes you think different about the problem you're solving. Yeah. What did you learn about how big or how many different problems the case of solving? It illuminated a lot for us one that everybody is so different and what it goes through is so different and what the current industry is solving for is one size fits all. And so that was one thing. The other thing just like from a marketing branding perspective is like how you position and market something is just as important if not more important than the product itself because for us, for example, our product isn't so different from what's on the market but the fact that we're marketing it to work out and swim or to breast cancer patients. That is very unique. What was that? Even moms too. Yeah, breastfeeding moms. I have hacky sack boobs just saying like it's something that happens after you breastfeed it's wild like your boobs become really deflated and saggy and it's like, okay, thanks for telling me. I didn't know. So there's like a lot of women whether you're going through mastectomies, menopause, breastfeeding. It's like all these unique changes we go through as women that we're, it's wild. Like we're just not having luck with the solutions. Okay, we're gonna keep this business for a second. So, cause my mind's firing. No, no, it's totally fine. You wanna hear more about my hacky sack or what? No, I'm just curious. So from when you guys realize you were solving different problems, some of the ones you're mentioning, is anyone doing this? Is anyone solving, does anyone actually understand the problem? Or are you guys the only people that are sort of, I don't wanna say stumbling, but you're sort of discovering the problem, all the problems you're solving and there's nobody else understanding it, touching it. The people who are solving it are making bras. And the other interesting thing that happened is being post COVID era, women don't necessarily wanna wear traditional bras. So I think this is illuminating our eyes when we look at quote unquote competitors in the traditional lingerie space. People are innovating on the bra, but maybe not alternatives to the bra or compliments to the bra that could really help solve these problems. There's this theory. I was explaining this to the team the other day. It's like the whole concept of the product as a job theory. And so this thing, it's a terrible example, but this is the example they give. It's basically, this consulting firm gets hired to go to McDonald's and see why people order the milkshake. And it turns out like it's the same person that orders the milkshake every day. And it's the human that goes to work at, basically they start at 8 a.m. and they don't wanna be hungry until lunch. And the only thing that does the job of keeping them full from 8 to noon-ish is this milkshake. It's cheap, it's convenient, it's on their way to work. It just so happens that they stop at McDonald's. And so the concept is, it's not that they want the milkshake. The buyer doesn't care what they're putting in their body. It could be a banana, it could be a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It's the milkshake, it's the form it's in, it's that they can drink and odd the way to work. And then it's over by the time they start their day and then they're full. And so it's this concept of like, your product is serving a job, right? People aren't buying the nipple cover, they're buying the job, right? And I think when you think about your business in that way, it illuminates so much. And it also makes for an incredible investor story. So one of the things I do on this podcast while I hear people talk is, I'm like building their investor story. And so your investor story could start with something like COVID redefined how women think about breast care, let's call it, just breast care. And what you're doing is solving that job in so many different ways. And the time is now, right? It seems like the time is like immediately right now. That's such a great point. And it's such a departure from traditional marketing or brand positioning where it's all about me and my brand and what I can do for you. And it's the focus in that example you're giving is on the customer, what's their problem and what are they solving for? And that's why to bring it back to TikTok. Let's go. That is why you will do well on TikTok if you can position it that way versus just do an ad for your brand. So let's do it. So you, let's talk about your TikTok. I can't get any more. Buckle up everybody. My name is Heather and buckle up. I did, I need to preface this with I should be going to therapy to just offload some of these thoughts because like I need to get them out. So I really appreciate this opportunity. Welcome to therapy. TikTok changed our lives in business. What's the video? The video you posted, talk to people about it and then what it meant for your business in real terms. And I want it to be real. So people understand that in today's environment social media can literally change. In your case, your life from a side hustle to a full-time job, to a full-time business, to employees and to so many different things. And so what did you do? What was the TikTok? So we launched our business in January in March. A friend who is very successful on TikTok told me exactly what to do and I was at it for about a month and I'll share exactly what that formula is. And I was at it for a month and I told my husband the night before our first video went viral. I said, you know what? I'm over TikTok. Even if we go viral, there is no possible way this is going to translate to sales. It's a horrible shopping experience intentionally by TikTok. And it's not gonna happen. It's not for me. There's a reason brands aren't doing this. And that night, our first video went viral. We completely sold out and that was in May and we have sold out consecutively every month until it's our first month fully in stock. We're on track to do a million dollars in our first year in sales and 90% of our sales are from TikTok. 90% of your sales from TikTok. $900,000. I should also say 100% of those sales are organic. We don't promote any of our content. It's all organic. I have a lot more to say but I'm gonna pause. And what did your friend tell you about what to post on TikTok? The number one pivotal move we made was a creator account, not a business account, and use it just like you would as a creator. That was huge because people wanna follow people. They don't wanna follow brands. If you think about, I mean, I can't even count on one hand the number of brands I follow. I don't care what they're doing. If you think about, would you rather follow State Farm or would you rather follow Jake from State Farm? And I even think Jake could probably show more aspects of his. Shout out to Jake. Yeah, shout out to Jake in State Farm. That's super smart but they could probably even do a better job showing real Jake. Like I'd actually like to know what real Jake is doing. Not like a filtered social media manager's perception of Jake. Like I wanna know what Jake does on the weekends. So that was huge. Like A, from a content perspective, it gives you a lot more to talk about. I'm a mom, I like yoga, I like a lot of different things and I happen to run a business called cakes which can help people in my similar boat. And that was huge from a content perspective but then also from an algorithm standpoint. It's all about the algorithm. And so being able to have access to the sounds, the trends that any other creator is that businesses aren't able to access was huge. Then the other piece was creating, I mean it's such a fast paced platform. It's, if you are not catching someone's attention in the first two seconds or, and if you're not keeping their attention, they're scrolling past you, they don't care what you have to say. So creating some form of tension and hook at the beginning was huge and one of the first ones that did really well for us was it was at the same time that the Victoria's Secret documentary came out and people were just so sick of men designing things for women based on their idea of what a woman should look like. And so the hook was name one thing, a man designed for a woman that sucks. And then I talked about the pads in your sports bra. To be honest, like people are trolling us saying that maybe a man didn't invent the pads, whatever, it doesn't matter. That hook has gone viral and we've kind of like replicated that formula multiple times since then. And then I like Lexi just did one and it's crazy. Yeah, and it's one of the first ones I did. So Cakes is one of my clients and one of the first videos I did was revolving around that topic and that took off. And so then we continued to go down that route and it just hit every single time. And so I guess the question I have for you then is what's a common misconception that people have about that platform that you think needs to be like cleared up? Well, I have some beef with the Wall Street Journal article. What is it? What's the Wall Street Journal article? Well, I think we talked about the Wall Street Journal article. It's some leaked documents from, I really do, I think it's a great article. It's probably the best article that's come out about TikTok versus Instagram ever. It's about leaked documents from Meta about how Instagram is so far behind TikTok and they're scrambling to do anything to save their platform. But one of the biggest misconceptions and one of the things they touched on was the idea that TikTok is the new TV in that it can get you so much reach, which is somewhat true, but their point was, but TV doesn't translate to sales. It's more about brand awareness. And that's- Because they're tuning in. Yeah, you have a dedicated viewer. Yeah, you're right. But that's a big misconception is, the misconception is that TikTok can't drive sales. And at 1,000% can in our experience as a small brand with a team of four people, we've proved that wrong in the fact that the targeting is so niche. It's like better than any targeting you could ever pay for or predict or with any media that exists on the planet, it's unbelievable to reach and just how specific you can get with the algorithm delivering it to exactly who wants to see it. So can you give people a sense of the video that you made and then how many views it got and then how many sales, like you said, you sold out. So what did that just give, give like the linear timeline of it all? We basically have it down to for every 1 million views we make about $50,000 in revenue. So I can't remember that video probably got like a million views. So we made $50,000. Every view is worth something, right? So I'm just thinking about this from like a monetization. Say what's so interesting. And I think I can say this as Taylor and Lexi and Olivia are in charge of TikTok. And I think I can say this, but what's been so interesting for me more on like the operational side to watch is the fact that a Wall Street Journal article, there are holes in it and there are things that you really wouldn't know unless you are building a brand through TikTok. So I think the value of Gen Z that something Taylor talks a lot about is like the value of Gen Z or someone, they don't have to be Gen Z, but someone who actually is a consumer of the platform maybe has sold a brand on the platform. Like it is so valuable. And I think that's something that differentiates and you know this like brands that are winning and nimble and able to grow and evolve and some of these, I think that's something that the bigger brands aren't necessarily doing and leaning into. So that's just been, I think it'll be an interesting shift to watch, especially when you compare like some of these smaller newer nimble brands with the big established, but human. It goes back to what you're saying. So you'd rather watch Jake from State Farm than State Farm. And so if you're a big brand, this puts you in a really uncomfortable position because it means your whole marketing team that has dedicated themselves to nice photos, some nice photography, very little video. Now all of a sudden has to get very uncomfortable. And so what do they do, right? And I think we're seeing it in the sense of they'll partner with EA, they'll partner with like people who have massive followings, follow the artists, follow the creator because no one's interested in following the business. And I think the question is like, where does this end? Or where does it, what's the deduction? The deduction is everyone is their own personal brand and what you're buying is them in some form or their team, right? I think if brands were smart, they would find someone really good internally who they can hang their hat on and it's not them representing the brand, it's them. And the brand is a big part of their life. You could also do that through an influencer strategy if they're really connected to your brand in some way and it's not just like- But people see through too. I think that's like totally not it anymore. It's so, people are so over it. Yeah, and I think what's so, just going back to your point about people are over that and they see through the influencer model, I think just especially like your listeners, a lot of them maybe are starting businesses or maybe more farther along than we are. But like just trusting your gut and like for us, it wouldn't have been authentic for us. First of all, we didn't have the budget in the beginning but also it wouldn't have been authentic to us or our brand to work with these big influencers who are getting a bunch of stuff for free and going on all these lavish trips. So that was the origination of the Hype Girl program and something that I love that seems maybe obvious but I don't think it is is like every platform has its own value and its own need. And yes, TikTok is for reach and selling products and Instagram is where Olivia has built this Hype Girl community and that's where we engage with our customers. That's where we really build our brand. Well, Taylor and I will like send voice memos to customers sometimes. We'll get on a call if someone writes a DM saying something didn't work for them. We'll call them and figure out why and it's just really like it'll be interesting to see that evolve too. Cause I think everyone had like this one track mind of, okay, do this big influencer program and then repurpose stuff from TikTok on Instagram and it's actually been cool to take the pressure off of selling stuff on Instagram in a sense and like focus on building the community there. I wanted to ask you guys so you touch on something where it's like at some point you had no budget. Now you have roughly a million dollars. It sounds like for this year and obviously you're paying yourselves, I would hope. And so what now? Now you have plenty of options and plenty of resources and so, and this is a challenging time for any company. You know, how do you navigate these channels? We just need to take a breather. It's been interesting because in the span of less than a year, we've scaled it from something that we really didn't think anything was gonna happen with it. We were running it out of Casey's garage and now we have a legitimate operation where we have fulfillment. We have legal people and financial people helping us make sure this is going to grow. And so at this point, we're at the point where we're taking this from a product to a brand where we're living into our mission and our vision of becoming a brand that reinvents the traditional bra. So we're going full force from a product standpoint on solutions that are disrupting how people wear bras or if they're even wearing bras at all. So that's a huge piece of it. From a marketing standpoint, we are taking your advice. Diego's the first one who we called him. We're like, shit, we went viral, what do we do now? And so his advice was super smart and double down on what's working and don't get super distracted by doing what's next. So from a marketing standpoint, it's doubling down on TikTok because that is working in our Hype Girl program and growing that. That's where we're at right now. Let's talk about the Hype Girl program. What is it? Our Hype Girl program is basically our customers who become like our best friends, like our bestie girls that we could talk to all the time. It kind of started, Kasey touched on this earlier that we started with the Hype Girl program wanting it to be like our ads. Like we wanted to push out ads of these real women talking about our product and why they like it and then hope people buy them. And that was our goal. I was sending out emails, I was sending out DMs to random people saying like, can you try our product? And if you like it, can you send me a 30 second video of why you like it? And most of the time people weren't really responding. But then I found out that I was just going out there and being proactive and posting on our stories and sending out DMs, like I said, and people were just starting to do it on their own. They were trying out the product, seeing that it was life changing. If it was a mother or a young girl like me and they were just going on their stories or telling friends word of mouth saying, this is what cakes is and this is how it's different from your standard nipple cover that you have and your drawer that has lint all over it. You need to try it. And people were so resonating with that because they were just going on their stories and we started with our Hype Girl program and we said, okay, come join our little club and you can get commission and your followers could get a discount code and free shipping and people just started talking about it. I think the beautiful thing about it is that there's a lot of stay at home moms and a lot of women who maybe have exited the workforce and what we've found, especially we have a community of over 200 people that are considered our Hype Girls and what we've found, we've done, we call them Hype Girl happy hours. It's basically a focus group where we all drink wine together and talk about what's next for us. I would love to join them. Okay, you are a Hype Girl, you're a number one Hype guy and it's incredible, Lexi joined our last one. I just couldn't believe anyone joined, especially, just think about how much effort I'm with you on this. It takes, especially a virtual happy hour. I was like, of course we'll do it in person when we can, everyone's kind of all spread out so we're like, let's just try this. But actually registering and showing up at eight o'clock on a Monday night to a virtual happy hour, that's a big ask. And the fact that people were there and engaged and excited, I was like. No one knew each other. No one knew each other. We went around the room like it was like college. It's like a 30 people, yeah. It was like 30 people. And then the thing was, is that we were like, what do you guys want to talk about? And everyone was like, oh shit, we didn't think anyone was gonna come. What means the most to you? Like what do you guys want to talk about first? And everyone was like, let's talk about what's next for you guys. And that's the biggest thing. We give our hip girls commission the money I don't think really means that much to them. The number one thing these women want to provide is their brains, their expertise, their input as a consumer. They're the experts. It's community. It's putting your mind to a really great use where you're helping this small brand grow. And it's really cool. And I think it's a testament to the fact that Olivia spent so much time. That is our whole purpose of Instagram. It's personal messages. It's super personal. Just going off of that, I think that's one thing that you guys have done such a good job with that I really wanted to touch on because when we first started, it was like for me, social media is not just posting a video. Like yes, TikTok, you can upload a video and that can do very well, but it's not just that. I talked to Olivia beforehand and I was like, you have to outreach. You have to message people. You have to comment. You're building a community and you've done such a great job with that where it has built such a loyal community on Instagram that I think some people often miss out on because they think, oh, I could just upload a photo or a video and it's done, but it's not just that anymore. That's how I approach Instagram. Yeah, the loyalty is just to quickly touch on a few stories that just blew my mind of how much that can pay off is we had before we were shipping to Canada, we had one of our hype girls who actually now is an employee of ours. She runs customer service. She took the initiative to set up a fulfillment center out of her house in Canada and she would drive across the border. She would place like a bulk order for anyone in Canada who wanted to order. If border patrol is listening. Yeah, this actually is weak. She would drive across the border, go back and ship them out to anyone who had ordered from Canada. They literally would ask her at the border, what is in your trunk? And she'd be like, Nipple covers and they'd be like, okay, go ahead. So just, and then we've had people do like trademark searches for us and it's just, it's, yeah, I think it's just been really interesting to see that community aspect. We built that trust with them, like TikTok for the sales and then they come to our Instagram to find out more and we've just like built this huge trust with them. And something actually I'd be curious to talk with you about just from an investor perspective is we're working to, Olivia is growing the hyper girl program and figuring out what is next. How do we scale this and how do we make this really valuable to us and to our brand? And we're working on developing a platform that allows for these women to connect and grow and multiply and just have all of these opportunities to be really, I mean, my analysis of this is like, you can do one of two things. You can treat it as a business or you can treat it as a movement. And what I am feeling you guys are doing is it's actually more of a movement. And what I mean by that is this. So if you go down the business route and you talk to people like investors, probably like me, they're gonna tell you something really linear. They're gonna say, cool, like we talked about earlier. What's your next product? What are you releasing? What's your next skew? And then you're gonna have like, I already see the deck. It's probably like gym wear. And then it's like gym wear, bras, maybe you go to underwear at some point. And so as an investor, I'm like, oh cool, they're thinking big, right? So it checks like they're thinking bigger box. And then I see that the addressable market's in there. That's a really boring word. But like it covers the box of the deck. There's a lot of nipples. A lot of nipples. A lot of nipples. And more being created every day. How amazing. And so it's very linear in that way. And what that would mean is you'd have to raise a bunch of capital and then just what I would call like increase the things that are probably kind of boring to you. Like increase fulfillment, increase distribution. The design is obviously super fun, but that's probably it. Or there's the other way of looking at it where it's like a movement. And so this is more of like you're building a foundation. This foundation has legs. This foundation puts on walks. This foundation does five Ks, right? Maybe there's a fitness component to your foundation. In that you do the same thing. You create products that feed the foundation, but you're not feeding a P and L. I'm just saying like what I pick up on in this is like you've sort of struck a chord emotional and you have this loyalty that's unheard of, I would say. And treating it like a business I would think is almost insulting that loyalty. Which is a weird thing to say. I would like it's not something. And so I would say. Interesting take. And I would say a movement is so much bigger than that. Well, that means a lot coming from you. Yeah, thank you. You're a hype guy. I am a hype guy. But I also believe it. Like it's no bullshit. Thank you. I actually believe it. There's no wrong path. I should also say that. Choose either one and be successful in your own right. And that's OK. I just think one is going to be more fun for you three. Yeah, and more meaningful and also like something that I'm really passionate about. I think that you just touched on it. And I love that. I mean, I don't know that I would say the movement versus business, but I think that's such a good way to put it and something that I'm really passionate about, especially I think a little bit more as a woman in business, but anyone in business is like being able to sell that vision and the bigger picture of what you're doing, especially as two women with a nipple cover company at the moment, like we have had to sell the vision of where we're going to get people to take us seriously. And I could tell you like accountless stories of meetings that have completely done a 180 once we've explained the bigger vision. And I mean, just to give one example, we had a meeting with someone who owns a very established skincare brand, a man in his, an older man, and he, he was 40, no, I'm just kidding. And he, before we even had the meeting, my dad, it was a contact of my dad's and he was prefacing the meeting with, oh, I'm not going to want to invest in them, blah, blah, blah, keep in mind, we were never asking for him to invest in us. That wasn't even on the table. We just wanted to pick his brain and we got to the meeting, we explained the business, we explained the bigger picture, and by the end of the meeting, he was asking how he could invest in us. And we were talking with someone else who was like, wow, the door was shut before it was even open and he even gave you a chance. So I think just not that I'm in a spot that I like to like give advice by any means, but like, I think just to your point, like having that vision and sharing that with people, especially as a new brand where it's like, yeah, we actually only do have one product out now, but this is where we're going is just so valuable. You can also fund it yourself. That's the other thing, right? You don't need to raise capital. Yeah, like we're hearing all these stories of, I mean, I think Allbirds just came out with these insane losses because all of these crazy venture-backed companies have been losing money hand over fist trying to get customers on Facebook and Instagram. See, I'm trying to bring it back to TikTok. No, I'm just kidding. But it's crazy because it's like, for us, Nike is a huge inspiration and he was able to just basically scale it with his own earnings and we've taken out one loan so far because we've been in a tough inventory position a couple of times. And only tough because we were growing at the point where we couldn't, we would have to buy more inventory before we even received the previous shipment. These companies are just running themselves into the ground trying to acquire customers because they have the money. And to your point, which was my favorite line out of any podcast you've done is creativity will win over big budgets. And when you have big budgets, you have a luxury to not have to get that creative and ultimately you will lose. It's not a luxury, unfortunately. Yeah, you're right. It's not a luxury. It's a blind spot. You're right. Yeah, and that's why I love recessions in general because it's like. Hot take. No, it's like. It moves up once. No, what I love about it is, it's like there's like water in a fish tank and you can't see anything and then you remove the water and it's like there's all the rocks. That's where you failed. All your errors are just, you're staring at them. And a recession does that. It forces them to see like, oh, it's not working in their business that they've been so good at like raising capital. And so because they have more capital, they think they're okay, but some of them are like default dead. One of the things we're struggling with right now because things have been evolving so quickly is how much time we go super focused on our existing product that is working and is selling and is allowing us to fund our business. How do we balance that with the ambitions to grow and do all these big things in terms of product platform community? How do you do it now? Well, I'm asking you. Well, our strategy so far was literally just do what Diego tells you to do. And that was double down on what's working, which is just sell as many of these freaking nipple covers as you can on TikTok, which was working. And it's getting us to a point where we actually have money in the bank to be able to figure out. I wanna reframe the discussion. So I don't want you to call it selling the nipple cover. I want you to advertise it and really think about it as like you're just like at some point when you started the company, you didn't understand the problems you were solving and this one product can solve. What you may have thought was just one problem. Turns out to be 50. And so I would go more on like the, what other problems can this solve? And the more problems you find that this can solve, the more you will sell it. And I would create TikTok and your social media strategy around the problems that you're solving. At some point you'll say, okay, we have probably identified, and this could be like an Excel sheet, 60, 75 problems this solves and we're done now. Like I don't see any other possible solution. And I wouldn't go too crazy with it. I wouldn't go like, men will use it. Like I, and maybe that's like a, you know, an outlier, but I would just go like, these are the things that it solves. Once you know that, hit all those stories independently and let that impact your social media strategy and then go solve another problem. Because this informs you of other problems and then go solve those and do the same thing and just copy and paste, but just make sure you're like ironclad on the problems you're solving and speak to the problems you're solving. And I think like as simple as this product is, I think that's why people get so fired up is they feel heard. They're like, you're solving this problem that I knew I had. I just didn't know like there wasn't a solution. The thing I try to do in business is really pay attention. It's actually hard to do. And so what I mean by that literally is like, really actually listen to what the world is telling you. Like really actually listen. And what I mean by that is not, oh, they love our product, cool. It's like, why? And then if you have two nodes, like one from Nashville and one from Alaska and they're saying the same thing, like really try to understand what they're trying to tell you. And sometimes what they're telling you isn't nice, which is even more important. It's like, oh, they want us to change something. What do they want us to change? And that's a problem that you want to solve. It's great advice. And the trolls will definitely tell you what, anyone on TikTok will tell you what your product isn't doing perfectly. And that's a blessing for us. And it's almost, it's like a bubbler. It's like people when it's hilarious because there's, I'll just give you an example. We have this one video out now that's doing really well. And we're talking about this, it's the largest cover on the market. It's designed for triple D and up breasts. Those women are getting fired up because it doesn't also provide lift and support. A few, a few trolls. There's about 20% of the comments are women saying this product doesn't solve my problem. Okay, that is great information. And in the background, we're like busy little bees trying to create our lift and support solution. And there's also an amazing thing that's happening because TikTok can be so back and forth if you let it and that will allow you to do better on TikTok. That is one thing we've invested a lot in. We just hired someone to completely manage our comments and engagement on TikTok. So that has allowed, we've seen a huge spike in our engagement, our reach, since we hired that person. Let her commenting back saying we're actively working on it now. Thank you so much. The value in someone, A, feeling heard, B, changing that interaction to be a positive one. It oftentimes is resulting in someone commenting back, saying thank you so much. I'm going to like this video. So the algorithm brings me back to you when you come out with this. So it's a beautiful way to change the dynamic. That's a perfect scenario of like, listen, like listen to what they're saying. Yeah. People just want to be heard. Honestly too, you could even, let's take this a step further. So even if you solve the problems, you identify them in the sales or what they are, like you can make it a conference. I mean, you could make this, like it could be a super straight, you could have a social media channel. You could have these types of conversations happening all the time. And so I don't look at your company like a product, like a lulu lemon. I look at it more of like, really a movement. Like I really say that, and I'm serious in saying that, it's not like meant to be a compliment. It's really like, you have a platform that you're solving a problem and that problem can be spoken about and should be. Well, we joked we both came from big brands and they would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on these focus groups. Or millions, millions of dollars on, I worked for a large liquor company, one of the largest liquor companies in the world. They would spend millions of dollars on research and as many of the big brands would do. And we joke we're like, we get more valuable information from our hype girl happy hours where we gather 20 women together and we're not paying them. The value to them is being able to have their voices heard. So when we think about the growth of our community and the next phase of what our community is looking like, it's these really smart people want to put their brains to work and want to help us. And so it's like, we don't actually have to like get too creative with how we're incentivizing them. They just want to help. Well, I think that goes back to your question which is like, what should we be spending our time on? And I think my answer to you is listening. And it's really that simple. Because once you start to, I think the problem with the human being is that you get really tied into doing shit. Like you're like, oh, I got a marketing meeting every Monday at nine. And then we talked to Lexie at 10. And then that will ruin you. Like people, they're obsessed with this notion of having a full calendar. And like I couldn't live more opposite than that. My thing is like the one, the only thing that matters in the market is listening. And then once you find a problem, you spend all your time executing on that. If your calendar's full then, cool. If it's not, you're not doing enough listening to the market, to your consumers. And I almost like because our product is solving a need that we had and we, I mean, we wear them almost every day. We don't wear bras. And many of our customers don't wear bras after getting cakes. They just are wearing their body suits or their workout tops. And it almost scares me to launch a product that's not like I desperately need this or someone desperately needs this. Like, obviously it can be done but that's just how I view our product development. So I'll go back to like my bow tie company, right? So we had this bow tie company and at one point the only thing I was thinking about was, let me go on Facebook. Facebook was new at the time. Let me go on Facebook and start at like, literally I could advertise and target eight, like 24 to 44 year old men in the DC area with this income, with this political view that I knew was gonna go to like a summer wedding in the Hamptons basically. That's how crazy Facebook was, the targeting at that time. Now that's highly illegal, but at that time it was insane. And so all of my brain energy was spent on that. And instead of being like, what problem does this bow tie consumer have? Turns out it's not just the bow tie, it's the suit, right? And so we could have easily started like the rented tux which we almost, like we thought about doing that. That company blew up. That was probably a blessing. But do you see what I'm saying? We got busy, busy chasing Facebook bullshit thinking that we're really smart. What's my cost per, what's my customer acquisition cost? If I'm spending this on Facebook, I have arbitrage, all these like dumb words. We got, because we failed to start like understanding the problem. We started, we got successful and we're like, oh, we forgot about the problem. And everything you're saying is you, the value of putting the customer first at the core of everything that you're doing. And like, I think going back to TikTok, that's what a successful TikTok strategy is and just like really anything and like even we're going to be in Vogue in February or January. And even just like our first edit of like the copy was like, this is our product, this is what we do. And we were like, okay, who is actually reading this? And we rewrote the whole copy to be like, okay, this is your day in the life and this is where this helps you get through your day a little bit more comfortably. So I think just like that lens of how can I, it's so hard to do, I think especially for the big brands, but I think like the closer you are to it, like how can I continue to like just be solving my customer's problems and making their life easier without feeling the need to say everything about my brand and talk about myself? We won't be able to sell anything if we're not solving a really big problem. It's really that simple. It's really that simple. I think people tend, they just have to spend so much money and time. So some people do that, you can do that, right? So like Kim Kardashian can do that. She can make anything and she, because she's, let's call it earned or achieved a level, but she can do that. Smaller players with no budget think they can play by the same rules. Nothing could be more, right? Not true. Like it's like, so the little guy, the little person has to solve a problem. They have to really get good at that. And the good news for us is there are a lot of problems with, like, it's just so fascinating to me when I have never taught, we talk to people about bras and boobs all day long and I have never talked to, not one person who said, oh, I love this bra or I love this bra company. And there are super established bra companies out there and not, literally not one person has said that. And especially in terms of women with larger chest, looking for, we're calling it our working name is the unicorn solution because there's nothing that provides support, is comfortable and doesn't look like your grandma's bra. So that's, I think right now, our biggest, there are a million problems, but it's like, yeah, that's, I think, something that a lot of women struggle with every day, getting dressed every day. Can we talk about how the conversation we started before the podcast, but I had to like take it down or just like wait. But about kind of the idea that we're getting a lot of feedback from quote unquote, very successful people telling us we need to diversify our revenue. You need to get on Facebook and Instagram ads and all of these other platforms that we know for a fact, big brands in our space are losing money on or breaking even at best. And it's just pissing me off and I just wanted to get it off my chest. So thank you. It's tough. I mean, look, I think people will always try to fall like the revert to the media on advice. And I think they're looking out for your best interests but what got you here wasn't their advice. That's kind of the hard part. That's the hard part about businesses. At some point you realize like, even myself giving you advice right now, like it's really not my place. I don't really understand your business the way you guys do, right? And so I can just give you quick thoughts and articulate things that to me would make sense if I were in your position from this conversation. But yeah, I think most of the advice people get today are from people trying to be hired, right? So if I give you, if I give you the advice of like, oh, you should do Facebook ads. You're gonna be like, do you know someone? Oh, funny, funny thing you asked. I'm doing it for four other companies. You see what I'm saying? And so I think sometimes the advice people are getting or it could just be like it worked for them at one time. Like the bow tie thing for me in 2010, that was bananas. Like it was so unbelievable, but that game has changed. It would be like me telling you to put more photos on Instagram. You would say that worked once and it doesn't anymore. Just like this video thing, right? The video thing works now and we hope it stays because it's working but we don't really know how long this will stay. It could adjust, yeah. Yeah, it's the Wild Wild West out there and it is a challenge to weed through with the advice to make sure it feels true to you and what you know to be true and kind of like kind of have to take a leap a little bit at some point. Totally. But what we do know is TikTok is working and we're gonna keep doubling down on it and find other revenue speeds. It's the problem that you're solving is working. Yeah, yeah, you're right. The problem you're solving is what is working and that just so happens to be you're sharing that story on TikTok and then you're aligning yourself with people that help you do that well. That's Lexi, who's like an expert in that world where she really understands it and so all of these factors are tying in together and you're having success, right? Like the Hype Girl program without Olivia is probably not as good. And so this is the thing. Like it's like, but it started with the problem and then you're getting a team of killers essentially to make sure that it's reaching the message to the nth degree. It's not just like we put it out and we're done. And the other misconception about TikTok that I know Lexi asked about that before is like people think, oh, that's not the platform for me. Like I loved the interview with Brit Frank who's an author that you did and- Even I had that view not long ago. I did too, I said the same thing. Like three months ago. Yeah. I was like Lexi, we need to get on TikTok. Please. And there's something to be said for sharing in a way that feels authentic and easy and not like a big headache every time you have to pick up your phone. Like you shouldn't, if you don't feel comfortable talking to the camera, that's probably not gonna be very sustainable for you. But there is a way to do it that feels authentic. Brit Frank is an amazing author, has so much value to share. Maybe it's like text on the screen over a beautiful video of her walking her dog or whatever it is. Like there's a way to do it. And I think saying TikTok's not for you is like saying you're not gonna do the internet in the nineties. Like you gotta get on. Get up, get your fucking ass up. No, I'm just gonna get on TikTok. But it's kind of unbelievable to be sleeping on it at this point. The thing that I remember about this conversation was as we were going through like the data of Instagram and I started reading more research on like why TikTok, but basically I started understanding why Instagram is following TikTok. It became clear to me like you would never want second place, right? And so if the social media platform is unequivocally in second place and it's chasing one, we should be doing, we should be on the one it's chasing. Because what's happening is, and this is how I like that, I like that at like TikTok, whatever's working there is being stolen on Instagram. And so if it works at the source, then Instagram will repeat it within like a week or two weeks. And so I was like, I bet you we could get really good at being like, if this audio is trending on TikTok, how long, I wanna know how long will it take before it's trending on Instagram. Sure enough, it was like two weeks. And so there's a cycle there. Well, that's why. Which means we're like from the future, we're like buying time. It's amazing. We are. Yeah, we're time travelers. That's why one third of the video content on Instagram is made in Instagram. Two thirds of it is made in other platforms, mainly TikTok. And that's why, because your reach is gonna be exponential on TikTok lagging in Instagram. So why would you put the time to create Instagram first content when your bigger payoff is gonna be on TikTok? How did this impact your home life? Oh, go ahead. TikTok doesn't impact my home life? Are you asking how TikTok? No, like the business, the business. Oh. I was like, I think that that, I mean, the reality of being on TikTok all the time probably does impact Taylor's home life in some ways. But, honestly, I don't know that we knew what to expect. We're really blown away just by what's happened over the last year. I think we're both really fortunate to have, well, supportive partners who have helped us through this stage of, and this transition. And the fact that we're able to not only start paying ourselves now, but also like define the kind of life that we wanna live. I know, I think we were talking about it maybe before the podcast, but like, we don't wanna have busy calendars. We want to be able to spend time with our families and work a few hours a day. And, you know, we're so passionate about it. We'll connect on the weekends if we need to, whatever, but it's just completely changed. These nipple covers have completely changed our lives. And I think just, there's a lot of value in our past like corporate lives of having that stability and all of that. And I think like, this has just been so meaningful beyond just the business side of it. Just the connections we've been making and doing something really exciting and cool. I think given both of us like a whole new sense of confidence professionally and even socially in some ways. So it's been just the best thing not to get like really deep now, but like the best thing I've ever done. It's been an amazing thing for our relationship too as sisters. Casey lives on the West Coast. I live in Connecticut. For now, for now. Yeah, it was, there's some growing pains for sure, but definitely a greater sense of purpose. I think when I was at my corporate job before, and it was great, but I knew there was something bigger out there. I just didn't have the confidence to take that leap for a long time. And it's just taking that action of very first post to our friends and family. I feel like this is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. And I know there are such exciting and big things ahead and working with amazing people that are like-minded and yeah, just doing cool things. Like we're with movers and shakers and just so much energy. Like I told you I need a downer because I'm like- That's awesome. I'm just like so fired up about everything we're doing, everything that's ahead, all the people we get to work with. Give people a sneak peek into your future besides the Vogue article, which is exciting. What else are you guys making? So one of our big goals is we want to become a household name. So we say instead of, you know, whether it's cakes or some other product that we're going to develop, that's going to become a household name. We want to sell our business in the next 10 years and- For how much, do you know? $100 million. Nice. And we're huge into manifesting and putting our goals out there. Even though Brit Frank told you not to? Yeah, because you know what, she... We kind of joke, we're like, it's not even manifesting. Like we set a goal and we like plan backwards. We're like planning for $100 million. So that's a different word though, right? There's like a different word for that. There probably is. I think it's maybe a cross. Maybe how she defines manifesting and how we do is different, but it's funny we're like putting our plan together for our eventual $100 million sale. And we're like, this doesn't even seem that hard. Like it's just the state of flow we feel like we're in now where not like, oh my God, we're like Steve Jobs, but the fact that every goal we've put for ourselves that seemed outlandish from the beginning, we've been able to do and it just feels like things are clicking. It's like a testament to the fact that we're doing what we're supposed to be doing. Thanks for coming on the podcast guys. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. If you made it this far, I bet you loved the episode. So you should join our YouTube channel membership for only $2.99 a month. This gets you access to one, the whole unabridged conversation. Two, you get the episodes on Monday, one day earlier. Three, you get two additional entries to our giveaways. Check out our Instagram to see what we've given away. And four, you get access to seasons one through three. That's over 100 episodes of wisdom and life-changing advice. What are you waiting for? Join.