 And thank you for returning to Adventures in Commercialization. This week, I have the pleasure to be with these lovely ladies. I have introduced them as members of my company, onboarded them to just meet and greet. But when I really dive down deep into what they're doing, it has inspired me to want to bring them on this show because they've done an amazing job to promote their business. They've pivoted to the maximum, and we're going to learn all about it today. So welcome, Mickey, and welcome, Sarah, to our show. Thank you. So ladies, tell me a little bit about yourselves. Tell me how we got here, how we met. Let's dive deep. All right, so we'll start at the beginning. Sarah and I were trying to decide if we were going to disclose how long ago this was. But almost 20 years ago, we met in our very first day of college freshman year, and we've been friends really ever since. And we became business partners about a year, officially about a year ago. A year ago, and you guys done so much in such a unique way. Wow. Then a roller coaster, yes. So I know we're on think tech Hawaii. And I learned a little bit about what Sarah has been up to. And Sarah is really excited to be here today because she actually began as a cheese connoisseur in Hawaii, which is great because I grew up in the Netherlands where cheese is like a bang, like the Gouda. So yeah, tell us. I'll say, we call ourselves Cheese Mongers, the official title. OK. But yeah, that's a nice ring to it, too. But you know, early 20s, living in Maui and working at a wine and cheese shop, it's interesting to think about what I didn't realize skills I would learn there in the business and from our female owner that now I use in every day 50 post life, much, much later. So cheese connoisseur or what was the word you use? Oh, cheese monger, cheese monger. All right, I love that. So what were you doing in Hawaii? So you said Maui and Maui, yeah, and Kihei. So it's a retail shop, woman owned, small business. So a lot of self promotion. It was early days, Facebook. So trying to use that as a marketing tool. And we had newsletters. And so I did a lot of dealing with vendors, with purchasing of the product. We had shipments going to different islands, people shipping product back to the mainland and just kind of learning business. I had never worked in a small business. And so it was just a whole different field than working for a corporation. I'm a lot more hustle. Hawaii is a perfect environment to understand that procurement understanding. Because like you said, you're on an island. You have to understand the locality and where you're at, what their local resources are, but also procure things, get them there, shipping, facilitation of that like liaison type style of management. But that can just go into so many different sectors. And that's what I would really like to tell people today is that all of the things that you've done in the past, they can definitely push you towards your future. Working at McDonald's or service industry can help you become your own business owner. And little did you know. Or cheese shops in Hawaii. And now we're doing a talk show for Hawaii success. But you ladies are the art of pivoting. I mean, I heard you're a maximum gifter. And meeting people in your past. I have girlfriends that I met 15 years ago at Girl Scout Camp that we are still friends to today. And we do art projects together over Zoom. So it's really great to understand that pick up the pieces of your past a little bit. Like take those breadcrumbs that you've laid down and keep them for your future. Keep them in your back pocket because they could totally create a successful business. So tell me a little bit, Mickey, about what you're doing now. Yeah, so I'll give you the short version of how we went from cheese monger. And I spent about 12 years working in London and moved back here and produced a storybook. And as I produced this book, started to sell it. Starting my first solo business there. Sarah got involved and helped me with packaging. And then we started to add some spices to the books and people liked those. And then we found ourselves with a gift box around the book. And then in the meantime, because of COVID, Sarah ended up losing her job at Vulcan where she was doing procurement. So again, to your point, Zoe, about going from a cheese shop, like how do you go from procuring cheese to procuring airplane parts for a billionaire. Sarah transferred those skills and then was helping me with storybooks. And then suddenly she realized, this is a chance to kind of do what I love and just be more artistic and with food. And so then we ended up doing gift boxes. And then Sarah just was with me all these gift boxes and realized, actually, this is the business. And then what was Pixie Spice became Pixie Post. We launched a new website, as we said, about a year ago. And we took all of that early customer success and then built it into what has now become a repeatable business based on just what people are gonna buy. So it's been a really interesting experience. So you're both in Washington now? Yes. Okay. How do you market yourselves? Like we talked about Facebook before a little bit. The biggest thing about the show and the reoccurring instance is like people who lost their jobs to COVID. I'm one of them, Sarah, you're one of them. We are people who had to pivot hard and pivot fast. But it's a blessing in disguise a little bit here. So take your passion project and turn it into your livelihood. So how do you guys decide that it is going to be from, you know, just a passion project to your daily product? Yeah, and that's like one of the decisions that COVID kind of took away for a lot of people. It's like, here we are, I've got a new thing. Do I go and try to find a new career or do I use this little bit of time in this new environment to see where my passion and dreams could take me? And so for marketing, really Zoe, we've tried different paid marketing tests and we found that the most successful marketing for us has been word of mouth referrals. So we're really lucky to have a strong network here in Seattle, which has then brought us business all across the country because people will send gifts that will mention like, oh, I bought this wonderful specialty gift box for my grandma from Mother's Day, but also I'm in a team of 15. And I want to tell them that they did a great job this quarter. And so I want to do a specialty gift for them. And that's just kind of how it's grown and grown. And, you know, we met a few months ago and I learned about Wilchana, where assistants help busy parents deal with all the things. And that was another example where we got to pivot is that we had a conversation and you said, you know, actually, we might not be interested in buying all the products, but we might be interested in the wrapping and the packaging and bows and wax seals and things that make the recipients feel like this is a really special thing that's coming in the mail to them. So now we have a wrapping service. On the totally other side, we've started to do housewarming presents for Airbnb hosts. So instead of doing all the packaging, we do the sourcing and then we can help them buy in full and have that all set up for all their guests for the summer. So we're going from gift box to only gifts or only box. Oh, dang girls, you guys were just doing it all. I love it. I love this art of pivot. It's so important. Something that you could take from a passion project to a career, but also understand that it's not just a linear view. It does have a lot of avenues that are willing to make money here in the future. So pivoting is so important and being open to the ideas of something new is very important. You wanna, we talked in the past episode about a little bit of should you just go with the flow of these past like milestones that you've hit and you know what's gonna happen. Do you wanna be too innovative? And they're like, no, well, you have to hit the milestones but you also wanna be something new and like exciting for everybody. But you ladies have just been the art of pivot. Literally like, oh, this girl's talking to me about wrapping presents. Well, we do that. So why wouldn't we get paid for that? Let's try it and it's great. So I absolutely love it. So what kind of milestones are you looking at in the future? Where are you at now? And what things are you trying to hit this year? Oh, that's a good question. Sarah jump in here to you. I'd love to be able to hire a person to help us with all of the process stuff. It's like Sarah and I will spend hours coming up with ideas and keep up great packaging, doing staging, coming up with ideas for our social posts. But man, the hard thing about a small business is the taxes, the accounting, like making sure that we are doing the right level of analysis about the profitability of our different product lines. That kind of stuff is hard. Nobody wants to be an accountant. Okay. Just leave that to another job. I also have a problem. But so you ladies are working together but out of your homes, correct? Yes. Yeah. So you have like an attic full of wrapping paper right now. Okay. Yeah, my whole second floor has been converted to PixiePose. So if we can look at the PixiePose website a little bit in the background here, we will see what you guys have done, which is absolutely phenomenal. You two are just a success story here. All of that wax seal, Zoe. Can you scroll back? I know. So a little bit of background story is Johanna. We have not yet had Johanna on the show, which I'm looking forward to in the future. However, Mickey was one of the first members that we had at Johanna, which is a startup app to create more wellness and opportunity into the modern family home. And to give them more time to focus on their passion project, and to give them a little bit more time back in their day. So Mickey was doing this PixiePose. We asked, we have one member on the show or on our membership that does gifting. He literally sends 60 gifts a year. I'm pretty sure that's probably the only business you've gotten from us. But he literally sends like 60 gifts a year and he's like, I order them from Macy's Nordstrom, but I don't want them to look like they came from Macy's or Nordstrom. I want them to look like they came from me. And there's not really a concierge service that does that. There's not really somebody who takes it from A to B and makes it look like it came from me. So we switched that up and Mickey and Sarah have pivoted their company to create a customized seal, a handwritten letter. Absolutely, like, there's no touch points that you need to participate to make sure that everybody in your anniversaries, birthday gifts, all of these distant relatives that you wished you paid more attention to, these ladies are doing it. These ladies are making sure that your family feels like you've actually remembered all those things. I just literally had to write down my grandpa's birthday because I didn't even know when that was born. Now, if you give it to your assistant, PixiePose will take care of you. Okay, they will give it. And you guys are also sourcing very locally. That's your main idea. I mean, of course, if you have a co-worker that's moving to Florida, you ladies will locally source in Florida to make sure it feels good. It feels right. It feels comfortable. It feels to the theme. So tell me a little bit more about your sourcing of your product. Is there what you want to share? You know, it's one of the fun parts of I think of the job is just vendor relations. It's something I did a lot in aviation and it's something I still really enjoy. And especially working with the small businesses, we try to source a lot of Pacific Northwest products as we're in Washington and Seattle, so in Washington, Oregon, Idaho. But as you said, Zoe, we do source out throughout the nation the recipient is out of date. We love doing customization for our clients. And so for sourcing, you know, our values are small business, women-owned, minority-owned, handmade product, which there's a lot of, especially in the last couple of years because of COVID, a lot of businesses have popped up. And a lot of people are now making products. And it's been really fun to try and make those connections. So anytime I'm out somewhere, I'm always keeping an eye out for new product, snapping photos and sending emails, seeing if people are willing to do, you know, wholesale orders for us. Sometimes the business is way too small and they say they just can't make that much product. And then a lot of times they can't make enough for the orders we have. And so that's been a limitation to our value system, but it's still something that we want to stick with because we believe in it strongly. Right? All those Washingtonians with those blackberries in the backyard, so if you're up in your businesses or I don't know, Hawaii, you got blueberries out there, raspberries, we'll take them, okay? Absolutely. I would love to do a Hawaii box, Sarah. I know, I've been plotting one in my mind. I haven't executed it yet. I know, we're in the right place for the right time. Watching anybody out there, email me Sarah at pixiepose.com. PixiePose, you've been a product. We're in little jars of something, we'll take it. We'll put it in our life. Absolutely. And Zoe, I think one of the things that's really important about what Sarah said is that as a small business, we understand what these small businesses are struggling with in terms of distribution and reach. So we'd love to be able to help a great product get more users and buyers from across the country. So that's one of the things that really motivates us and makes it worse, sometimes the extra hassle. Or we have to sometimes ask our customers for some patience because the really great product that we want is literally being hand-poured in someone's kitchen and they're hand-pouring 300 candles for us, but they might not be able to do that in two days. No. And overall, our customers really responded to that well. And the gamble that Sarah and I are taking is that that extra work of sticking to the small business support theme is also allowing our customers to stick with us too because they know that we're consistent and we stand for something and we help them shop their values too. That's great. We all have to start somewhere and we all have to promote each other. So if you guys had a couple of, let's say, hurdles that you faced or, let's say, advice for other entrepreneurs, let's say women in specific because you ladies are doing it and doing it well. So if you had some little advice for women entrepreneurs specifically, what would you say? Sarah, do you want to start? Sure. I guess for me, just starting this business, it has been really, really important and really impactful for us to rely and for me to rely on connections that I already have, rely on my network, on my community. As a woman, I was in the sorority that Tom Mickey and I met and so relying on those female connections, that sisterhood and then using skills that I've learned in the past that I didn't know could translate to the future. So don't underestimate your abilities and don't be afraid to push yourself forward. Correct, I totally feel that. I literally just went to lunch in Seattle with my coworkers for the first time we went IRL in real life. Oh wow, how nice is that? And this is the first time I've worked with all women. It's crazy. Like I used to work in the startup seasoning or feeling and that's all like middle-aged white men, right? Let's just say it, but I actually was working with all women and I got to meet all women in Leschi with a little bit of sunshine, wild, astronomical thing to think about. But when we met each other, some of the people have come from corporate Taco Bell and know about nutrition. Some people came from the medical field. Some people came from, I am a corporate event management, but anywhere you came from aviation procurement, which is really crazy because my parents are aviation mechanics. I don't know. They're Spanish and Southwest and American. People who came like from that. So if you think about the skills that you have, like take it and use it. Don't just think it was a job that you could use, but just like think about how those skills are utilized in the future. Use them because they are real. They're hard skill. They are hard skills and you could create an entire business from it. So you ladies are doing great work. Your pivoting skills are phenomenal, like phenomenal. And you're doing great things and they met each other in the sisterhood. So your network around, that was another episode that we had was talking about network, networking. It's so important. Take those people who have hard skills from your past, from your future and just utilize them and just think about how they can pivot. Just pivot them. Just take them and move on. Absolutely. And it can sometimes feel like you don't wanna sell your friends, right? You don't wanna just feel like the only thing you're doing is be like, hey, I've noticed you haven't ordered anything. So Sarah and I have been really careful about balance and trying not to oversell. But when we've talked to our friends about it, they've been like, no, you need to remind us because I literally forgot. So I think that's as women, particularly, it's easy to just be a little bit less. I mean, you could use the word assertive or aggressive because we think it's going to be perceived in a certain way, but we check in and get feedback and find out if you've gone too far one way or the other. And what we more consistently hear is we wanna hear more from you. Tell us more instead of leave us alone, which I think is a good sign. Well, you guys are doing so well. And honestly, actually one of the criteria I have for dating a man is he has to be a good gift giver. So. Good one. That's a good one. You have to. If you have a friend that's a good gift giver, just make a business about it, you know? You ladies have done so well and I'm so excited to see where you go in your future. You're doing things, you're promoting local businesses, which is something that just needs to happen. But where was the place where you said this is gonna be my full-time jam? Like where did you just say like drop the day to day and become my full-time jam? When did that happen? I think for me, I don't know that I can fully pinpoint a timeframe, but I guess maybe if we put it last the holiday season because our business is very seasonal and the holiday season rush is so exhilarating. And I was just having so much fun and it's just really great to be giving gifts for a living. Somebody else is paying for them. I get to put them together and then mail them out and I'm bringing joy to all these people across the United States. And it was just so much fun. I had just a great time and I thought this has to continue. Oh, so your passion project, your fun, spending other people's money, it just turned into your real-life business and then make you happy. And she's like, she's such a great gift-giver. Let's make this money. Yeah, and my role is more but we have to charge people for it. So I mean, that's another piece of advice is that it's easy to get swept up in a good product but you've got to keep an eye on margin because if you don't, you don't have a business. So your financial advisor is Mickey and you're just the type to be like, okay, we get it. Now, because I would want to try and give everything away for free just because I think it's so fun to put files on people's faces, but yeah, Mickey's there to say, we're a business. I love it, because you have to have a practical person and an emotional person, like motion-giving and the person who's like, okay, there's money behind this, let's go. So she's the one who's like, okay, we're gonna add this to Facebook and it's gonna be worth this amount of money and you're gonna just love it, okay? So I love that. You two are a success story and you have many more milestones to hit but do you have something that you're reaching for this year? We've built up a pretty good repeat client base from a few sort of agencies and businesses that want to celebrate customer success or that want to do onboarding. And that for us is a really good balance to the seasonality of holidays on our consumer gifting side. So like Sarah said, the holidays are great because we sell a lot and it's very busy but then January comes and it's like, where did everybody go? So for us this year, getting more even revenue across the year and trying to add in these other bumps. For example, creating our own seasonality a little bit and promoting Airbnb host boxes or host kits at the beginning of the summer season and like just trying to get some more of that to level out, I think is a big goal for us and it's important as we move to the next stage. And the Airbnb thing, we didn't even discuss that in our little pre-talk here but phenomenal pivot for you too. Oh yeah, and it's been a really cool one actually because it came from an idea that one of our clients had for an employee gift box that was all about movies. And then we were talking to some other of our friends and family who have Airbnb's and realized that this movie box, which we started to sell and is sold really well on our website, we could turn it into a popcorn corner for Airbnb. So Sarah got like set up this beautiful little popcorn for, yeah, that's it. And so there's like a little popper, like this really awesome salt from San Juan salts and like a little sign in a tray. And then for the Airbnb hosts, the cleaners just have to replenish the popcorn and they've got that there for them. And then we also have some like customized toffee that has a picture of the house that they're staying on it. So it's really fun. And I think there's a lot of mileage in that too. I think you're right. Wine vineyards and you guys with your face on the like wine bottles now. And like all the time I'm thinking of my parents, actually they're the biggest homebodies you could find. They are literally have like, they work for the airline. So when they're at home, they just wanna watch movies. So they have a home theater, like they could just have or just you two are the art of pivot. Like literally you'll send it in whatever direction that wants to be specialized. You're the ultimate gifters, but the ultimate pivoters. So really fantastic. I think you ladies are doing a phenomenal job. And I'd love to bring you back on in the near future. So we can just see where you're at then. But if you had one last piece of advice for entrepreneurs in general, what would you have? I would say don't be so hard on yourself. It's always gonna be slower and more expensive and you're never gonna be able to do it all as fast as you want, but you can't make progress. So just believe in yourself and give yourself a bit of a break. And I think mine would be kind of in the regards of pivoting is don't limit yourself. Don't have boundaries, be open to new directions and just see where that goes. And you just never know where it might take you. Well, I'll take Sarah's and put it back on Mickey's cause here we have a beautiful mother. Both of these two are beautiful mothers, young ladies in success that are here pivoting their life, met each other as friends, turned into their reality, passion to project, okay? And then at the same time, Mickey was one of my members coming in and it's okay to ask for a little bit of help sometimes but came in saying that she needed a little bit of help with the home front of I'm working on my business. I'm a working mom pivoting to just try to make my sisterhood project work and I'm here to help her in the background. And at that same time, I was like, hey, can we make you more money by just taking like your big idea into like a little bit of sectionalized idea and turn into just rapping. And again, it's very, let's say seasonal because I know you guys aren't making that much money on the day to day, but there is that one guy who just wants to buy Macy's products for his members with a personalized little standpoint. And that's probably where you're getting all your money from but there is just a pivot that just says we do this but we will do this. Yeah. Take this to another level. Well, if one person is gonna buy it, there's a market there. So let's promote it and hopefully get a thousand people to buy it. Well, today I just opened LA chapters and you guys are on our member lists. So we're going, we're going to the distance. We're gonna be the new Ubers of assistance over here YouTube gift wrapping gurus. So I absolutely love the fact that we got to connect more. I hope to watch your progress going here in the future. These two are the art of pivot and the art of exploration and just find somebody who's in your past and take your past to your passion and take your passion to your passion project and make it a career. Love it Zoe. Thank you so much. You make us feel good about ourselves. We really appreciate your support. Always from cheese to aviation, from Hawaii to Seattle, let's do it. So thank you so much for coming on the show. We look forward to seeing what you ladies are gonna do in the future. Thank you Zoe. Can I just say www.pixie-post.com? Yes, go send them your birthdays, anniversaries, any seasonal without even seasons. If you send them the dates, they're gonna send them a gift. So we're gonna make this happen. If you wanna learn more about how to make money, join us every other week for the adventures in commercialization. And we're gonna learn more about entrepreneurship. But thank you so much for your advice. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.