the bossbabe podcast - 115. 3 Things You Should Know Before Leaving Your Corporate Job to Start Your Biz with Founder of Mab & Stoke, Christina Mace-Turner

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

We’re joined by Christina Mace-Turner, Founder of Mab & Stoke, an herbal supplement company that combines centuries-old herbal medicine with cutting-edge technology to create the Mab Tab: a daily ��super tab’ that takes the guesswork out of wellness to help you feel your most amazing self with a prophylactic formula. Christina is an expert at all things marketing, strategy, and brand building. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Christina led Business Affairs and Content Strategy at Apple when it was first launching the iPhone and app store. Knowing that she always wanted to be her own boss someday, Christina took the leap to lead a startup called Flipboard, to gain the experience she needed for her own business.  She finally made the pivot from tech to beauty and wellness by co-founding the non-toxic beauty brand, True Botanicals, prior to launching Mab & Stoke. Tune in as we lift the lid on the major differences between corporate and startup environments, and everything you need to know before leaving your corporate job to start your own business.  Christina’s journey is absolutely inspiring. Having always taken the alternate route in her professional life, she believes chasing her dreams and being intentional about every move has been her number one secret to success. Join us on her journey from career woman to entrepreneur, and learn how you can find your professional purpose by being dynamic and determined.  Links: Sign up for our free 10-day Instagram Challenge: bossbabe.com/instachallenge Get two free months of Skillshare premium membership and receive access to unlimited to over 1000+ classes: www.skillshare.com/bossbabe  Follow: @bossbabe.inc Danielle Canty, @daniellecanty Christina Mace-Turner, @mabmaker  Mab and Stoke, @mabandstoke

As a brand, it's an opportunity to say, okay, how can we maybe change those things to serve everybody that we want to serve now? Recognizing your mistakes and admitting that you've made those mistakes, I think is really okay and important to do. I never mind being wrong. And sometimes that people find that a little disturbing but I don't care. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to bounce it all. I'm Danielle Canty, President and Co-Founder of Boss Babe and your host for this episode. Now today I am interviewing Christina Mace-Turner, founder of

Mab & Stoke and if you're not familiar with Mab & Stoke, it's actually a herbal wellness company that combines century-old herbal medicine with cutting-edge technology to create an amazing MabTab, which is essentially a super tab to equip people with a prophylactic formula to wellness. Now Christina has a really interesting story because she wasn't always an entrepreneur, which I know a lot of you listening will identify with, because she actually began her career at a major corporate role. She led business affairs and content strategy at the very beginning of Apple. Well, not the very beginning, but before it actually launched the iPhone and the App Store. So after working at Apple for three years in a huge company,

she decided she wanted to get a taste of a startup world. And in this interview, Christina really lifts the lid on the stark difference between the two. And I actually think it's a conversation that has not had an awful lot because when you go from being a corporate to a startup, even if your role is named exactly the same, the job is actually very, very different. And so we really talk about the difference around this and actually why she was intentional about making this career move. Because what she wanted to do was instead of leaving Apple and starting up her own business straight away, she decided to get experience at a startup at the ground level

before doing so, so that she could actually apply what she had learned to her new business and fast track that learning experience, which I just think is so smart to do. And anyone who is thinking about starting their business, if you can have capacity and you do have time and you're not really sure what to do, joining a startup first is a really, really good idea. So I know you're going to love this interview as much as I do. And I really want you to make sure you stay right to the very end because Christina gives some really actionable takeaways on how to get started if you're looking to launch your own business. And as always, I would love for you to take a screenshot of your favorite takeaways and tag us on Insta stories at myself, Danielle Canty and tag also at bossbabe.inc.

A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself, confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome to the podcast, Christina. It's such an honor to have you on here and I'm really excited to be sharing your journey with everyone today. Well, thank you so much. I'm excited to be joining you. So as you know, Bosswave, we have so many ambitious women following us and often their ambition takes them in all kinds of directions. We have women listening who are climbing the career

ladder. We have women who are running successful businesses. And we also have women who are really in the position of discovering where they want to go and what they want to do. And that's why I'm really excited to open up conversation with you today, because you've kind of gone from the two extremes. Your history is that you worked at Apple, a huge corporate company. I know you were leading the business affairs content strategy there. And now you've actually just launched in January 2020, your new business, Mab & Stokes. So I'd love for us to really dive into that journey and get all the details that no one talks about and really just lift the lid on that. So thank you again for

coming on. Let's start maybe with your journey at Apple. Sure. What can I tell you about Apple? I guess I should say that I ended up there in a very unusual way. And I think one of the takeaways that I would share with other people is that there is a path that people tell you to take a way to do things. And then there is this other path, hoping things work out, or you're following the things that you're passionate about. And I have just consistently always chosen the other path. And so that can be a little bit scary at times. But just to be honest, that's more my nature. And so for some people, that's not comfortable. But for me, the way that worked

was I knew that Apple was looking to start a business affairs function because I had been freelancing. I had taken some time off after having my kids and I was freelancing at an advertising agency that did their commercials and basically just trying to make money. And the head of business affairs at this agency said, Hey, Apple really wants to start this function at the company. Could you talk to them? And I thought, sure, why wouldn't I want to talk to them? But that's ridiculous. But because I knew that if I had sent my resume in at that point, no one would have ever spoken to me there. But I had this odd little way in. And so I met them and nine interviews later, had pitched them an idea for what the function could be for their company, which had very

different needs, of course, because nobody had ever done the things that Apple was doing at the time. They had just launched the iPhone. They were really getting heavily into the content business. We're just about to launch the App Store. Anyway, I just sort of went for it. And so that was the beginning of my time at Apple was creating a function that I really didn't know very much about. I didn't have background, deep background in what I was doing necessarily. But I was working more from instinct and problem solving for what they needed. And that's how it all began. I love that as well. You just openly said I was really working from instinct because I think that's one thing. And when you look at studies of people applying for

jobs, and particularly women, I think it's like something men will see a job description if they can do 30% of it they'll apply for the job whereas a woman won't apply and like feels that she can complete at least 80% of that job description and I think just like you saying there very openly yes you got in there but then it was more an instinct and learning as you're going okay right this is what I'm going to do next. I think that's just really powerful for every woman to hear and go off that we have to have all the answers sometimes. And sometimes we just need to lean into that intuition because intuition is powerful. Yes, it's so true. And I don't mean to say that I wasn't deeply embarrassed about not knowing what

I was doing a lot of the time. So I would often walk across campus and find strangers and ask them questions. I have this very distinct memory of asking this one sort of nerdy guy who I ran into, can you just explain to me what is bandwidth? Like, I didn't even realize it was an expression that people didn't have bandwidth. Could you explain to me how this lack of bandwidth is impacting the company? It was that silly, but true. There are just times that we don't know things. And I think in a corporate environment, there's a real expectation that people are going to fake it until they make it. And they're going to, that they come in with what is some people deem

professionalism, right? This idea that everybody should know every single thing associated with their job. But the truth is that is not how it works at all. That most people don't know a lot of the time and they're figuring it out. And it's the figuring it out that you're really being paid to do. The other stuff, if it was that easy to do, it would just be sort of fungible roles, right?

It wouldn't really matter who you hired. And so it's different. That is so, so true. true. It really is a being paid to figure it out. So I felt like that is the perfect, I know you'll set up your own business now, but I really feel like that is the perfect like stepping stone for anybody. If you feel in your role, figuring things out, then you can do business because that's what it's about as well. Yeah, it really is. So you're at Apple. And how long did you stay there before you started getting that itchy feet and kind of, okay, what else is out there? And where do I want to go? Well, I used to say that Apple was a little bit like dog years, because it's a very intense place. And a lot of stuff happened while I was

there. But I would say after we launched the App Store, and I started to focus a lot of my role on working with developers, and in particular, working with traditional industries, the media industry, you know, magazines, newspapers, and trying to help them transform their experiences into online experiences, specifically on our platform, not just porting an offline experience, but really making something special and leveraging the technology in a way that created something that was better for consumers, better for the business. That became a real passion for me. And I got to know more and more people in the startup world. And what I thought was so cool about them was it was such a range, right? It could be a big corporation or someone just working in their garage. And what really separated the value of their work or the real differentiator was great ideas that could actually be implemented. And I just loved that. It was such a level playing field. You could have a great idea, but could you implement it? Yeah. And so that was just really appealing to me.

And I knew that I wanted to get into the startup world, but I also knew what a different environment that is from a corporate one where you're at Apple and everybody picks up the phone when you call. Everyone wants to work with you. You have a lot of salary security and things like that. But I don't know, I started to feel the itch around that about three and a half years and I left. I went to a startup called Flipboard. And if you don't know Flipboard, they aggregate news feeds. And it was one of the first real news readers where you could read

everything going on from social streams to the New York Times, all in one place. And so that was really cool to me. And at the time, it was a very big deal. Now you sort of see it everywhere, don't realize what a big deal it was, but it was. And so when I went there, then you leave to go and work at this startup. Or had you thought that point is I want to leave and get some startup experience because I want to have my own startup one day? Or was it like, okay, no, 100% I knew I wanted to run my own company. But I also knew from working with enough entrepreneurs in my role at Apple that you couldn't just sort of force it. You really had to come into it, understand the problems you were trying to solve, and then find a path to solving them. And so I just knew that it was so different that I really

needed that experience. And it was great, but it was total madness. I actually never thought that I could work harder than I worked at Apple, but I did. And I kind of have since. Maybe I've become a little addicted to that, but I love what I do. So it's not a problem. So let's talk about that. The difference between corporate and a working in a startup, because I also think this is also a big conversation which does not get had.

I've always worked in startups or had my own startup I've never worked in a big corporate company and neither has Natalie and it has been really interesting for us when we've employed people from corporate companies and I mean we've learned a lot and they've learned a lot because things are so different so what was some of the stark contrast that you saw between those two roles right at that very beginning? Yeah, I guess the first thing is actually Apple is kind of a unique company because while it is a very hierarchical organization, right? If somebody is above you on the ladder, they can abuse you to no end, right? And that was something that happened there all the time,

which I didn't really enjoy, despite what a great company it is. The interpersonal relationships and that type of pressured environment can be very negative. But in a startup, it's so different. In fact, I remember Mike McHugh, who was the CEO and founder of Flipboard, said to me when I joined them, and I was like, what's my title going to be? That was my first question. What's my title? I'm going to be something big, right? He was actually, I don't want anybody

to have titles, because everybody on this team needs you will walk the trash out just as much as you're going to go and do big deals for us and help grow the company. And I sort of took that in at first on an intellectual level, but it took me emotionally a long time to really absorb that and then see it play out in the midst of a startup. Because in a startup, you're just so under-resourced that you are just entirely dependent on your colleagues to perform. And every single role is just as important as the other roles. They're different, but they're just as important because you're so undersourced and because it's so mission driven and there's so much at stake and there's so little margin for error. Whereas in a large corporate environment,

people make mistakes all the time. They'll make a half a million dollar mistake one day and throw it away and think nothing of it. But that's not the case for a startup. And so because of that, the structure tends to be very flat. And everybody has a say, which is something you really have to get used to. And I love now I can't imagine working in an environment where there isn't a voice for everybody that I'm working with. But definitely in a corporate environment, that's not the case. And honestly, I think that's been the reason for so much failure to adapt in like the media industry and other areas like that. They're just very hierarchical.

Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know, I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place. So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business you know get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting

organized and making things as smooth as possible I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students so if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe yeah it's been really interesting actually i've said when we've had people come from big corporate companies natty and i have never been fussed about titles and when we first started we never gave any thought to what do you want to call yourself if you want to know what you want to call yourself and it was real eye-opener for us then like when people came from bigger companies those came from startups the same as us they didn't

really give two hoots what they were called they sure they had that but those who came from bigger companies well what is my title and hang on my title means this and we were like huh it took us a minute to understand and i think you're so right in startups in ours now sometimes people think oh yeah we got how many all these employees and there's nine of us and we have a really flattened you know we've been asked a lot like well who's your executive team who's on there and my executive team we all muck in right we have such a flat structure and we've been very conscious about keeping it that way because sometimes like you say if you start building these management layers too early it actually really does stifle your ability to pivot and change and hear what's actually happening and you said though in a

startup you can't afford to make those costly errors you have to listen and you have to move quickly versus being able to say oh yeah we just made that mistake it cost half a million it's fine that would start up under yes it's a big deal so i really love that we're having this conversation because i also think this is a game when people are applying for roles and if they're coming from that corporate industry i think it's nice it's a conversation not really had the difference because there really is a stark difference between the startup and the corporate company and whether you're owning it or being part of it it's there so I really appreciate you sharing that so let's just go back to your flipboard for three and a half years loving it working super hard actually I was at Apple for three and a half years and then I was at Flipboard for two years two years which was a lot of flying

back and forth from California to New York but I I learned a ton. And then after that, I consulted for a while, I knew I wanted to start my own company. And I was also feeling a little burnt out. And so that's when I started to get recruited for various things. And one of the things that I was recruited for was this non toxic hair company. For me, you have to understand my head was 100% in the technology world at that point. So just the thought of trying to explain to my former colleagues that I would be working in a space that had to do with hair care just made every hair on my arm stand up. It just sounded so not interesting. So anyways, but that said, I was flattered to be recruited for this thing. And so I started just casually looking into the space of non-toxic

personal care and what was going on there and where I thought the opportunities was, I thought at least I would help out this business owner in thinking about his business. And what I found was really surprising to me, I realized that in fact, we buy most of our personal care products based on some sort of assessment of value associated with price. And so that was kind of interesting. And then at the same time, I had a neighbor who then became my business partner who was had a non toxic skincare company in a little strip mall in the town where I was living. And she gave me this base oil, the company is called true botanicals. And she gave me this base oil to try and said, try it. It's so much better than what you've been using, which was this very expensive.

Now I can't stand the way it smells cream called creme de la mer. Nobody could believe I would buy it, but I did. And anyway, she was right. It worked so much better. So that was really interesting because I thought, oh, I've always thought of myself as a relatively intelligent person. And yet I've fallen into this sort of space of assumptions about personal care and how this industry works and what's good for me and what's not. And then I thought, well, how is it that nobody knows about this stuff? I realized that we make all these assumptions about personal care and that there are all these wonderful brands that made efficacious, non-toxic products all over the place, but none of them ever scaled. They never really got above $4 million in sales. And at the time, I think that was in large part because they didn't really use technology in the way that other companies I saw

around me were really growing. So they didn't have a quiz. They didn't have naming conventions and other signals that you consider in UX design and human interface design really integrated into this offline experience. So I saw a lot of potential to take things that I had learned from digital products and to pull in this category of non-toxic skincare products. And because I love them so much, and I knew they were better for people's health, I just went for it. And I purchased the company, which had been in business for about a year. And we renamed it and redid all the products and stuff and rebuilt the website and had this amazing experience of learning as I was doing a lot of the time I think back, I didn't really know again, what I was doing. But the thing that is cool when you work in the

digital space is that there's a lot of flexibility and the ability on a daily basis, take in new information and act on it relatively quickly. And when you make your own products that you sell to people, you can change them. So if the world supply of tuberose is suddenly diminished and you can't get it, you can use another ingredient that's equally as efficacious, but you're not stuck like people are in third party retail models where they have to always produce exactly the same product because it's sitting on the shelves for years. So it was a very interesting experience. And we grew really fast. We're very fortunate. I love that. I think it's just really good reflection as well of being able to say that flexibility that you do have in those early days when you're creating your own product and selling on your site, but also being able to look at a business and go, actually, these are some things that we can improve upon. And I guess that's also another amazing thing about your journey, right? So we're going from Apple working into a startup to buying into a business and developing that business and improving that business. So I feel like you've got a wealth of experience.

I've done a lot of different things. It's true. And it was a good step for me because my business partner had really done a lot of the early legwork and we had great products already to work with because the product development phase, the R&D phase is extremely important because no matter what you build, if your product isn't great, it's just not going to work. Maybe, but it's not the kind of business I would ever want to run anyway. You want to be able to start by your product, right? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. So what was the next steps?

Okay. So after that really started to grow. And then I was there for about two and a half years. And I left totally burned out and thinking I would not work again for at least a year because I don't know, I'm not one of those people who has the capacity to work in moderation. And I wish that I was sometimes. However, I don't think that I would have necessarily done the things I've done. And I've enjoyed what I've had the opportunity to do. But I just needed some space to think about what I wanted to do next or not think about it. And so basically, I started a personal journey of just trying to heal my body, like my back was hurting me, my sleep was terrible. I looked over at my side table, and I had been running a non-toxic skincare company. And at the same time, my countertop was covered in pharmaceuticals trying to hold me all together,

if I'm totally honest. And so I decided to study to become a community herbalist and to learn more about plant medicine. This sounds kind of out of left field, except for the fact that my mother made tinctures when I was a kid, and I've always been into plants, and not necessarily growing them, but using them for healing and wellness, and preventive care. And I just been raised that way. And when I hurt my back, that was one of the main ways that I actually healed my back was by juicing ginger and turmeric and celery every day over a period of months. And I got rid of all this inflammation. And it's just

become part of my lifestyle to use plants to feel better. So I wanted to figure out though, what was this whole world? What were the organizing principles of plant medicine? It's been practiced around the world for thousands of years. I don't know if you know this, but 80% of the world relies on herbal medicine as their primary healthcare. So that's a lot of people. But in this country, we don't know very much about it because of the way things are regulated and the way MDs are educated in this country. There is a failure to educate around this very helpful area. There are more and more functional medicine doctors and integrated medicine doctors, which is wonderful. They're not that many.

So anyway, I set out to educate myself. I had so much fun. And basically within four weeks of really committing myself to a solid regimen of taking plants every day in the proper amounts, the right plants for my body and my needs. I felt amazing. I was sleeping through the night. My energy was so much better. I had such a great feeling inside of me all the time. And it was someone turned the volume up on my physical self and my mental self. Emotionally, I felt really good too, because my body felt so good. And so anyway, I really wanted to share that with the people that I love, my husband, my friends. And so I started making teas for them, I would mix up all these different plants and making custom tinctures for them and basically playing doctor without just trying to give them the things that I thought would make them feel better because everybody around me was complaining about how they feel all the time. And so what I found was that

people get really excited for about a week to have this novel thing, and then they would just fall off and stop taking it. And so I thought, okay, that is really unfortunate. What do I need to do to make it better? And I started to think about the problem more as a design problem. The whole space of herbal supplements has always been like a have to do instead of a want to do space. And so as I thought about it, I was like,. And so I got into looking into Japanese tea ceremonies. And the little sweets that they serve in those tea ceremonies are called higashi. They're basically very fancy sugar cubes. So I ordered some higashi molds. And I started taking plants, powdered plant extracts and molding them in the higashi molds. And I gave them first to my husband and then to some friends. And really quickly, two things happened. People started to get results and they took them every day. And I didn't have enough time to make enough of these little,

what we now call Mab tabs to keep everybody in Mab tabs every day. It was a very time consuming activity, but I realized that if you could give it to them in a form that they enjoyed, that tapped into all of their senses, it smelled good, it tasted good, that sounded good coming out of the wrapper and all those things that attract us to an experience, then you have something really special. And so that's where I came up with the idea for Mab and Stoke. It was just how do I take 10 different products and just combine them into one thing you only have to do once a day that even my mother would take. And I figured that out, honestly. And that's why I mentioned R&D before over the course of really, it took about nine months to almost a

year to get the product right. It was actually incredibly challenging to make it scale, but we figured it out. So that's how Mav and Stoke came about. And that's what we're up to, trying to help people feel great. I love this because I think this journey is the journey that so many women either go on or they want to go on. And I just think hearing firsthand from you and how... Because Natalie and I always openly talk about it. She was the born entrepreneur that was not me i kind of fell more into entrepreneurship but i actually want to talk about your story is that you were intentional about your entrepreneurship so you're okay you've got that corporate experience and i love that you told how yes you want to tell startup you didn't jump straight into that i'm not saying everyone has

to do this way but i like how you sought out a startup and went and learned a little bit more on the ground and understood what that would look like and then I love how that story evolved to they say working with some alongside somebody else to actually going okay I would like my own company let me rather than just making a rash decision going this is what I'm going to do allowing yourself that time to explore and play and learn and listen to feedback until you're like okay now I have that business because I feel like what a lot of people end up doing is really trying to force themselves with a lack of patience down the road yes by all means do that but sometimes it's kind of just taking that step back and putting that intention out there saying okay I want my own

business and I'm going to have my eyes open to all opportunities around what might be the right thing. And I'm going to be patient in allowing that to really kind of with research and with going down and looking at things. But I'm also going to allow that to come to me and play with some of those ideas that I'm finding, exploring until I find out what's right. Because the entrepreneurial journey is definitely not easy as I'm sure. No, it's hard. Next, we talk about, yeah, raising.

And you said that you thought you could never work harder than you did when you were at Apple. Let me ask you now, Christina, do you work harder now in your own business than you did when you were at Apple? Oh my god, of course. Yeah. But it's a very different sort of feeling because when you're working for a big corporation, you're part of a machine. That gets back to the title thing. Why do people place such importance on titles and big machines? Because there's so little importance placed on the individual when you're in the big machine, because you're serving something else, something other than yourself, right?

Even if you're a designer at Apple, you're working in a very tiny little box, because that brand was designed a long time ago and you can incrementally innovate on it. But if you change it drastically, it no longer feels like the brand. Okay. So I hope you enjoyed this episode so far. Please stay tuned as we share a bit of info about who sponsored this episode. This episode is brought to you by Skillshare. Now, if you've been following us at Boss Babe for a little while, then you know we are all about self-education. There's something just so rewarding about teaching yourself a new skill or deepening your existing passion. And since most of us have been indoors for a little while, it is literally the perfect time

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need to head to Skillshare.com forward slash Boss Babe. Okay. So Skillshare.com forward slash Boss Babe. And that's going to allow you to get two free months of unlimited access to thousands of classes. And we're back. Let's jump back into today's episode. And so when you create your own brand, what I've done now, yes, it's so much work, but it's incredibly gratifying. And the other thing is, I will add that I just love is I love running a startup by myself. I really love not having a business partner because I can make decisions that I would otherwise have to spend a lot of energy convincing somebody else to do. That is not to say that having business partners is a bad thing.

But for me, I know about myself that part of the skill set that I bring to the table is my ability to make decisions and to take risks. And so right now, I've been thinking a lot about all the business models that I have seen in the brands that I admire, the direct to consumer brands, right? Because that's the space that I'm in. And I think actually, I think we really missed something. I think we've missed an opportunity. All these give back brands, and we're a give back brand. We plant a tree for every purchase somebody makes because the environment is so important to us, our packaging is sustainable, but that's not really enough. And so here we are in this moment where you would have to be living in a cave somewhere to not recognize the kind of cultural and economic crisis that is happening in this country. And as a brand,

as a company, how are we going to respond? And to me, that's an opportunity. It's an opportunity to say, okay, things have been done one way before. And now, how can we maybe change those things to serve everybody that we want to serve now, we have failed to do that to date and recognizing your mistakes and admitting that you've made those mistakes, I think is really okay. And important to do. I never mind being wrong. And sometimes that people find that a little disturbing, but I don't care. That's just the truth, but I'm still going to go for wrong. And sometimes that people find that a little disturbing, but I don't care. That's just the truth, but I'm still going to go for it. And so I've been thinking a lot about economic inclusion, and we're actually going to launch something in a week, which really speaks to that. And it's a very different model. And it really focuses on the power of community,

and what we really mean by community today, particularly with digital brands. So it should be interesting. I love that. I think it's really, really powerful. And just being able to see those gaps and see those reflections and learn from mistakes and learn from past things is just really, really important in life and in business. And I think that's the way we all learn and grow. And that is so, so crucial. And thank you so much for sharing that piece as well. So I want to make sure we always like to make sure these are super actionable so yeah I'm gonna put you on the spot a little bit okay if someone was listening to this and they're okay I'm in my nine to five I want to have my own

business what are some action steps that you feel have been really helped you move the needle and move forward that you would advise people do okay? Okay, a couple of things, because I do get asked this question often. And so by people who want to be entrepreneurs, but they've never actually had that experience. And so one of the things that I tell people is think about the brands that you love. First of all, identify what are those brands? What is their mission? Why do they exist? Simon Sinek's book about why, why is really important. It's not just a nice to have thing. If to sustain a brand or to sustain a business, as you know, it just requires incredible dedication. And so you want to make sure you direct your passion and your energy towards something

that really matters to you. The next thing that I often say is, what is the problem? Okay, this is why you exist. What's the problem you want to solve? And is anybody else solving it? And in addition, not only is anybody else solving it, but are there any really big enabling platform companies like a Facebook or an Apple or whatever, that could do that business if they wanted to. Because if there is, think of something else, because they have more money than you more resources, more time. And I've seen a lot of people get crushed by the horrible wave of seeing their idea implemented by a much, much larger company before they ever have a chance

to bring it to market. So I think that's a worthwhile thing to spend a lot of time thinking about. It doesn't mean don't do it. It just means do with your eyes open and have a plan. Then have your plan be that you're going to try and sell to one of those companies. That's actually what you're building towards and design that way. And so those two things are very important. I think the other thing is, frankly, I just could never have run a startup having gone directly from Apple. I really needed that experience of seeing firsthand working in a startup and seeing how another CEO who was very seasoned ran that startup and making my own judgments about what was good and what was bad. But just understanding the mechanics, it's complex. Okay, the last point,

which I could go on on this topic, by the way, for hours, but I would say is think about money. Do you need capital to implement your idea? Are you an engineer and you can just build that idea all on your own? Or even for that matter, a designer who knows enough front end design that you could do an MVP that you could show people and raise money on that. You really need to think about how money gets raised. And it's really, really hard. Do not underestimate how hard it is to raise money. You might have been a big hot shot at your corporate job,

but when you go to raise money, it is humble pie to prepare yourself. That doesn't mean don't do it. It means do it, but be really strategic about it. And I really benefited from this myself. Get as much advice as possible from the people around you who know something about fundraising. And if you don't know those people, reach out to them, reach out to people you know, who run startups who have raised and even if you have to reach out to them cold,

on LinkedIn, let them know you're not looking for a job, but you just want some advice. And most people I think will give it to you if they can. When you're running a job, but you just want some advice. And most people I think will give it to you if they can. When you're running a startup, you don't have a lot of free time. But I often try my hardest to give people some space to share what I know. This is a great opportunity doing this with you, right? Now, whoever is listening, if they were thinking about starting a startup, this is what I would tell you. But there is a way to raise money. It's very specific. And there are specific things investors are looking for. Until someone told me that and explained it to me, I really had no idea. Despite having run business affairs at Apple, there was just no connection. Totally different experience.

No, I really hear that. And so true. I did a interview with Olivia and she was raising and we were just chatting around exactly what that looks like. And so true. I did a interview with Olivia and she was raising and we were just chatting around exactly what that looks like. And in our membership, we're actually going to do a success kit on that because I feel like it's wonderful questions that are not really answered. And we've had this conversation throughout this interview, actually, of being able to say, I don't know, is sometimes really difficult in those spaces because they want to be seen. Oh, yeah, you know how to run a business or you expected all the ins and outs so when that isn't the case you kind of feel like where do i go to who do i ask like how

do i understand this information so we've actually the few women about we have these success kits they're like videos and we release one a month and we're gonna put one in there because it definitely has been highlighted to us that this is a conversation that's just not really being had in the open unless you know people it is hard to find out. I was Googling stuff and I'm like, it's really hard to find. You have to know and ask questions. It's humiliating for everybody, right? You're going into a room and it's the ultimately judgy situation where when you're an early stage startup, like you're trying to raise a seed round because that's the first thing you're going to do. Maybe you'll look for angel investors if you know some, but you're an early stage startup, like you're trying to raise a seed round, because that's the first thing you're going to do.

Maybe you'll look for angel investors if you know some, but you're going to try and raise early money. You're totally being judged on who you are. And you're right that actually that is the one place where you cannot ever signal that you don't know what you're doing. It's like anywhere else in life. It's fine. Well, maybe not if you're operating on somebody,

but otherwise, we'd like our surgeons to be good. We like our surgeons to be very confident. Please don't let me know if you're not. So but it's true. So you go into that room, you need to puff yourself up like a peacock. There are a lot of gender dynamics that play out as well. There are some women investors, in my experience, some of them are amazing. And some of them are not because they're human beings. And they're just like everybody else. They're investors who are going to give you money if they think they can make money with you. And so you have to go in that room to prove that out. And there is a way to do it. And I think that's great that you're going to help your listeners with that because it is really tricky. And there's a lot of rejection involved. And for those who go through it, I will say the first time I went out to raise money for the

first round of True Botanicals, I met with over 150 different investors. Wow. Thanks for sharing that number. That is a good number for people to know. It was brutal. It was absolutely brutal. Now, when I raised our A round and we had experienced all this great growth, it was easy. We were oversubscribed or whatever. But in the beginning, before you've proven out something, it can be really difficult. It's not a measure of the value of your idea. It's a lot of chemistry with investors and your ability to articulate what they need to hear to get the story you tell. Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much, Christina, about having this conversation and just being an open book because this is what this podcast is about is lifting the lid and sharing the behind the scenes. And it's just

so important for us to have these conversations and allow women to see actually you know if you want to start a business do it but also educate yourself before doing that and get those experiences that are going to help you on your way because it's not required it's not requirement but it certainly helps like you should make it easier yeah yeah thank you so so much and so thank you for our listeners to share with us their favorite takeaways from this episode and so i would love you if you listeners to share with us their favorite takeaways from this episode and so i would love you if you have enjoyed it share with us your favorite bits tag myself at danielle county tag at boss babe.inc and also christina would you like to share your handles

on where people oh sure my handle is at mab maker on instagram and where can they find more about mab and stoke? Because I also know people have been listening. I also need these herbal goodness. Absolutely. I didn't even say we make custom Mab tabs, which is my favorite way to get your Mab tab, but come to Mab and Stoke.com and we'll tell you all about our products on the site. But thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. It was really fun to talk with you. Thank you so much, Christina. All right.

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