The Breakfast Club - Black Tech Green Money: Bea Dixon of The Honey Pot Co.

Episode Date: June 14, 2025

The Black Effect Presents... Black Tech Green Money! Bea Dixon of The Honey Pot Co. on Major Retail, Practicing Unromantic Business, and Getting Past the Support Phase Ep. 204 Beatrice Dixon is the co-founder, CEO, and Chief Innovation Officer of The Honey Pot Co., a game-changing feminine wellness brand that started with a dream—literally. From launching with a $21,000 loan to building a multimillion-dollar business stocked in major retailers like Target and Walmart, Beatrice has navigated the challenges of fundraising as a Black woman, scaled her company without losing its soul, and remained unapologetic about her vision for success. Follow Will Lucas on Instagram: @willlucas Follow Black Tech Green Money: @blacktechgreenmoney, @btgmpodcast Learn more at AfroTech.comLearn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BreakfastClubPower1051FMSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. I'm Will Lucas and this is Black Tech Green Money. Beatrice Dixon is the co-founder, CEO and chief innovation officer of the Honey Pot Co., a game-changing feminine wellness brand that started with a dream, literally. From launching with a $21,000 loan to building a multi-million dollar business stocked in major retailers, B has navigated the challenges of fundraising as a black woman, she scaled the company without losing its soul and remained unapologetic about her vision for success. So I'm very interested in your take on this because I've lived by this idea of not being

romantic about business and I read that you also practice unromantic relationships with business. And you know, you say, you like, don't look at your business as your baby. so practice unromantic relationships with business. You say, don't look at your business as your baby. I've read what you said. So many of us start because we're so passionate about the idea. So how do you admonish us to think about that? I think that, you know,

cause every now and again, somebody asks me, do I have kids? I don't have kids. And they'll be like, well, your business is your kid. I'm like, I mean, yeah, kind of, you know, but at the same time, our businesses are not our kids. Our businesses are businesses. They're here to make us money. They're here to provide goods and services to human beings that we serve. I think that it's really important to give respect to what a business is, but I also

understand that it takes a lot of you. It takes a lot of your soul, a lot of your energy, a lot of your, you know, especially when you're really trying to do the thing, you know, you give it all you have. So naturally it feels personal, right? Because, you know, a lot of the shit is personal, you know. You have to sacrifice a lot when you're really, really, really in business. Like when things are really at scale and you're growing and moving and shaking and raising money and, you know, in a lot of retailers or, you know, you've got a huge brand online or whatever, it requires a lot of you.

So it's like, on one hand, I understand that for the people that do it every day, it's not just business. There is a personal element to it. And on the other hand, we have to understand what the purpose of business is. Especially this is something in the black community, because we are held to a standard that frankly,

is not able to be, it's a standard that's not reality. You understand what I'm saying? It's not based in reality, It's based a lot in emotion. We don't necessarily always see ourselves as just business people. We see ourselves as black business people, when in fact we're just business people like everybody else is.

You understand what I'm saying? 100%. And so even though the world wants to put us in that box, we have to do a better job of unconditioning ourselves to stay in that box. You know, because we're just trying to run our shit like everybody else is. Right. And so that's another part of it that's really hard. Because, you know, we grow up, we scale, we raise money, we do all the things.

Well, what happens when you raise money and do all the things? You have to have some kind of strategic partnership. You have to have a way for your shareholders to be able to become whole on their investment, as well as yourself. Yeah. You don't get rich.

I'm not saying that some companies don't, but typically you can be, let me rephrase this. You're not getting wealthy off of being a business owner. You might become rich. Okay, okay. And when I'm talking about rich, you may have money in the bank. You know, you might be able to stack a couple million, right?

But having the ability to stock 20 plus in your bank account, which is F you money, right? Where it can just sit there, you never have to think about it and you can just earn off of interest. You can just live off of that forever and ever. You understand what I'm saying? Having the ability to do that means that some sort

of an event is happening, right? Some sort of a strategic event. Is it that you've been acquired by a private equity fund? Is it that you've been acquired by a conglomerate? Is it that you took your company to IPO, you know, and you were able to let it sit long enough and actually be able to make money off of that, right? These are the things that we have to do in business.

Our skin color and what's between our legs shouldn't matter. But this is another way that I think business is romanticized and emotionalized. I don't even know that that's a reason or a word. But you understand what I'm saying? We have to stop. I shouldn't say we have to do, this is just my opinion. I think that we need to do a better job of respecting what it takes to make this shit happen, because it takes a lot. If you're lucky enough, which most companies, whether you're white, purple,

brown, green, most companies will never ever experience what that is to go through some sort of event of an event like that because it just Doesn't happen every day But we shouldn't be penalized Because we do you understand like we shouldn't be in a position where investors are afraid to invest in us or Strategics are afraid to acquire us because of what the community is going to say. I think that that's another way that business has been romanticized because

once you do it, then you're penalized for doing it. And that's not really cool because you're just doing what you have to do in order to run your business and in order to, you know, go through the motions of what it means to take in venture capital or private equity money. The day you do that, that's the day that you've just signed the dotted line to say that you're either selling your company or you're IPO-ing it. Right? Yeah. I think I'm going to throw away all the questions I have prepared

and just let the spirit move me on this one. No problem. This was this. OK. OK. So I think listening to at least the beginning of your talk, your statement there, that so many of us get into whatever business we start because we're

so passionate about it. And I wonder your take on, do we even have to be passionate about, or can we also be opportunistic also? Like our counterparts might be. They just see an opportunity and go because I see an opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think I'm sorry. I didn't know. Go ahead. I just want you done with your question. No, I didn't really have a question, but I wanted to have this conversation. Yeah, I absolutely think that there's businesses that are what they are, you know, because of opportunity.

Look at Jeff Bezos. The richest man in the world, right? There may be somebody wealthier, but like, you know, he's high up, right? He got to where he is because he saw an opportunity, right? Do you see enough of us doing that? Or, because I believe, at least from my perspective, that we are more taught, like, what do you care about? What are the things that move you?

And then go start a business off that. Yeah, I actually agree with you, right? We are brought up to care about things. We are brought up to feel responsible for what we put into the world to, you know, we're more, we're, I don't want to say more, We're a communal community, right? Those types of things are important to us. So I'm not gonna say what anybody should or shouldn't do. I'm kind of both and I can only speak for myself, right? I'm very much passionate about what I do. I think that this is part of the reason why I was put on this planet is to do what I do. I am very lucky to have found my passion.

I'm very lucky to have found what my purpose is on this planet for me to be alive. I feel that way. And, you know, I am a conscious capitalist, right? I do believe in wealth. I do believe, you know, I do believe in what it can do for you. I believe in how it can change your life. I believe in how it can change others' lives. And I deeply believe in business and what the capacity of running a business, how that can make you wealthy and how if you do that right and with the right responsibility

and the right care and the right love, you can do all those things, be wickedly successful or wildly successful rather rather and still care. Right. So you, you, you can, you, because you have to, if you want to be successful in business, you have to be opportunistic. You have to be able to see the shit that most people don't see. You have to be able to, to be able to be like, huh, you know, you have to be able to

see a white space. You have to see 20 steps ahead. You have to know the direction that something is going. Right. So you have to be, I believe that you have to be both. Right. I believe it. I believe that. And I'm not projecting that onto anybody else, but as it relates to me, I believe that being able to be opportunistic and also being able to be relatable and also being able to be responsible and loving and caring, because I make products that people use on their bodies, that people use on their vaginas, right? That's not something that I think is to be taken lightly. So that has to be done with a lot of care,

love, responsibility. That has to, because we're not just making things for people to use. There has to be beautiful energy infused into these products. So it's actually helping to heal their lives. And that's a very esoteric view of business, but that's how I see it, you know, um, which,

which makes the way we run our business very special and beautiful and hard. Um, you know, but, but yeah, to answer your question, I think you need to be both. Have we dangerously over no pun intended romanticized raising money? I think we have. How so? Because it was too easy to raise it over the past, call it, for when all the humans, starting with George Floyd,

even though this has been happening for thousands of years, the brutality and killing of black men, right? The world saw it, everybody wanted to do something. Nobody was doing anything else because COVID had happened, so we were all sitting at home. Everybody only had the ability to pay attention. Well, what happened from that, DE, diversity, equity, and inclusion happened. Companies were sprouting up whole departments around it. Right? You know, venture capitalists and investors, all types of investors were putting together funds for BIPOC humans, not just for Black people,

just humans, you know, diverse humans all the way around, whether that meant, just humans, diverse humans all the way around, whether that meant think of all the different cultures and ethnicities, LGBTQ plus community, veterans, women. I think money was just falling from the sky. Everybody could just go out and raise it, even if you just started your business. That's not really the time to raise money because you don't even really know what you have yet. Right? I think that raising money, I don't think that we shouldn't have access to money that's out there. I'll speak now for our race as Black people. I think that access should just be, should just, access should be access. It shouldn't have to, there shouldn't have to be funds that are focused on only Black

and Brown humans. It doesn't matter because it needs to be, right? Because this is the world we live in, you know, but you know, I am very much a believer and know how hard it is to raise money. And how hard it should be to raise money. Because you you literally have you literally are asking people whether it's angel investors, who that's typically money that they've made in their life, that they're taking out of their bank account to invest in your business. Those are typically the first ones that invest. Then there's venture capital, which in my mind, you shouldn't be going,

I don't personally believe that it's time to get venture capital money until you've actually proven that you have something Because venture capital money typically comes with rules and I'm not saying that you know seed capital and all those things aren't important because they are but I just I Personally think that When it comes to bringing capital into the business, you should know what you have. You should know where it's going. You should know how you're going to invest it, how you're going to grow your team,

all those different types of things. I think for a few years, money was just falling out of the sky and people didn't necessarily have the education. I can say that because at one point, we didn't have the education. Yeah. My brother, Sy, I remember I used to say to him, bro, we need to raise some money. And he would like be, we don't need to raise no money yet.

What are we raising it for? We like, we're selling on our own a website into some, into some small natural stores. We don't need no money. When Target came, that's when he was like, okay, now we need some money. Right? Because now we have, we have somewhere to hang our hat. Like we that when, when, when, when a mass market retailer comes, that's when you have the ability to really scale your business because they've got thousands of doors, right? So, you know, I'll mainly speak for CPG, which is consumer packaged goods. You know, I don't believe that people should raise money

in CPG until they've at least figured out how to make a million dollars on their own, right? I just, you know, maybe I'm old school for believing that, but I think that it's important for you to understand the logistics, the operations. What do you actually need the money for? Where is it going? If you figured out how to make a million, you can figure out how to make 10. You understand what I'm saying? And so, you know, I do think that it was over romanticized,

but it was also a beautiful thing because so many people, you know, the gap was able to kind of be filled a bit. But the problem is, is that a lot of those brands that were getting all that money, where are they today? Yeah, yeah. Because it kind of sets you up for failure if you don't know how you're gonna execute those funds and actually grow the thing.

You understand what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. So if you, getting money is just a very small fraction of it. And having an investor that wants to be more to you than just money is also equally important. They need to be invested in helping you build your leadership team, which helps you build out the rest of your team. They need to be invested in helping you understand how you're going to operationally run your

business. and helping you understand how you're gonna operationally run your business, right? They need to be invested in regulatory and helping you understand what that roadmap is and how you're gonna grow it. Because even if you just make a face wash at this point, the way that the FDA is moving, everything is heavily regulated. You understand what I'm saying?

And so if you don't have the tools and the resources to understand how to do these things, it makes it very hard for you to make money. You know? Yeah. What is the difference between what you did or what you see as a, as a better roadmap versus people who make a potion, do it in their kitchen, sell it out of their kitchen, sell it out of their trunk, quote unquote, proverbial trunk, and they don't get past that. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again.

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Listen to Made for This Mountain on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that

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Just... Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts? I think because we were that, right? We started in our kitchen selling it out of our trunk. Honestly, some of it is luck. Some of it is the know-how, you know. Like I was lucky enough to be, I worked in Whole Foods as a salesperson in Whole Body, so I knew how to talk to a customer, right?

My brother was my, you know, is my co founder. He, he was an accountant, so he knew how to deal with money. He knew how to talk to high work, high net worth individuals. Right. Linda had worked in marketing. She's one of our other original co-founders, not necessarily with the business anymore. But, you know, she knew how to build. At that time, we considered her to be our CMO, right? But we were young, so we were just, you know, we were just creating titles. That's another thing you do when you're young, right? As a business owner.

That's another thing you do when you're young, right? As a business owner. But I think we, as a collective, had the know-how within our respective fields because it's what we did every day. And then after I worked at Whole Foods, I went on to be a broker. So I knew how to talk to a buyer. Oh, okay. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I think, you know, I think some of it's luck. I think some of it's having the know-how of how to like, at least be able, whether it's going into a small retailer or a big one, knowing how to talk to them, knowing what they're looking for.

I think, you know, it requires a lot of grit. I think having access and having something really it goes down to mostly is having a product that has the ability to really catch fire and really go, you know, like it's having a product that people need, I think, on an everyday basis. I think that that's also something to it. And again, I can only speak to this in CPG. It's what I know. You know what I mean? But I think it's a combination of a lot of things. And some people have really dope products that people do use every day, but it's just so hard because there's so many products out in the world.

It's just so hard to get off the ground. Some people have all that stuff and they may still never be able to get it to where we have it. It's not because what I have is better than what they have. I think also it's also about what's in order for you in your life, you know? And some of those things can't, you know, aren't predetermined.

You know, some things you just, it just kind of is what it is. So that doesn't make it a bad thing or a good thing. It's just the thing. Some people will continue to do the same thing for the next 10 years. And maybe they don't get past a few hundred thousand. Maybe they can crack a million, but it's hard for them to get past that. And that's not a bad thing. Cause that means you still have something. You understand what I'm saying? Yeah, I think that's the question that I asked about,

like our relationship with raising money is like, if you look pre COVID and George Floyd and almost as we're post COVID and George Floyd now, because we romanticized what TechCrunch was talking about, this company raised, uh oh, my camera. I might have switched cameras, but I'm going to get this question out first because they're recording. The concept of raising money was glamorized.

When you saw these companies raise a million dollars, you know, $500,000, then we start to think that that's the goal and profit isn't the goal. And I'd love to hear you speak to that. Right. Right. Profit is the goal all the way, every day. You know, it used to be, it used to be that profit, you know, you think of like the Dollar Shave Clubs of the world, you know, how they were able, they had the ability to scale their business,

I don't know, to like 150 million or something like that. And then they were able to sell to, I think they sold to Unilever or somebody like that for like a billion dollars. I don't know that they were necessarily profitable, right? But they came up at a time, right? Where profitability was not necessarily what the strategists were looking for. What they were excited about when it came to Dollar Shave Club is the fact that they

had over a million subscribers. And that was a time when direct-to-consumer was really hot. Zoomer was really hot, right? Subscriptions were also a hot thing at that time. Now we're at a time where, we all saw what happened when we worked, right? That shit was wild, right? And those guys are gonna be fine. They're gonna just go out and do a million other things and be wickedly successful.

But now, I think that it's really important to strategics that companies do have, at least if you're not profitable, you have a lot, like you've got the, what's the word I'm looking for? You at least have profitability in your view. You may not be profitable yet, but you have to be able to tell the story. How are you going to get over there? Right? You know, you have to be making a decent margin. And these are things that you want anyway. Even if the world was still the same

back when Dollar Shave Club was able to go out and sell their company for billions of dollars. Just because we see that in my mind, it's better of you to be a responsible business person and make sure that you have a company that's making a great margin, that's able to put money in the bank. Because money in the bank gives you access to lines of credit. It makes you sexy to be able to go out into the world when it is time to raise money, to be able to raise that money. It makes it so that your investors know that because you've already built the, you've

already kind of put yourself in a position where you've built your business to be profitable. You've built your business to be lean, effective, to be able to drive revenue, to be able to print money. Right? Yeah. When you build a business from that point of view, that's going to make it so whatever you decide in the future, especially if you've brought in private equity or venture capital money, knowing that you're going to have to have

some sort of an event, that makes it so that you've built the muscle to be able to go out to market, to be able to potentially sell to a strategic, or to be able to go out and IPO. Because IPOing is really hard. Right. You know, I know, I mean, I've got several friends that have IPO, you know, some of them are have have penny stocks right now. You understand what I'm saying? That's not a terrible thing. It is what it is. But it's a very hard market to be in because everybody is in your business at that point. All it takes is one viral moment that can make the stock plummet.

Amongst many other things, all the regulations, all the things you have to uphold on a monthly, daily basis, it's wild. I think building the muscle to be profitable, to be lean, to make sure you're covering a high margin, to understand your business inside and out is really important. You know, building that muscle from the beginning is really important because that's where that's where we are at this point. I think the strategics of the world learned that profitability is actually really important because that tells them that you have a business. What is missing? When you see these conversations around, and you don't have to say the name, but I'll say

the name Target, and you see all these things happening, what's missing from that conversation that you wish all these things happening, what's missing from that conversation that you wish we understood? Because we're all looking at the targets and you're like, y'all need to understand this. But what should we understand? I think the thing that's important to understand, I'm not gonna speak from a Target point of view because I'm not, you know, my brand isn't Target.

We sell there. I think what's important to understand in a time like this is what it takes to get the opportunity to be in a Target. What it takes to get on shelf at Target, what it takes even bigger than that, because getting on the shelf is actually, it's not easy, but it's easy. What's hard is staying there. And what's really hard is when your business is not,

when your velocities aren't growing and turning, when you're not meeting your dollars per store per week, right? When your sales are down, you know, when your sales are down, and then when, you know, and then when, how do I give this example without alienating anything? When you as a brand, not just Honey Pot, just in general, when your numbers may be down due to what's happening. Yeah. Right. But they're actually seeing that their numbers aren't so down. It makes it look like your numbers are down because of another reason.

Yeah. When in fact your numbers are probably down because of what's actually happening. Right. Right. I got it. Right. I got it. It makes it hard for brands to be able to survive in a space like that. They don't take into account the landscape. You have to take into account the whole landscape of things.

What it takes to get on show. Like a lot of people are talking about right now how they're seeing a lot of the brands marked down. People are saying, you know, they're seeing a lot of the black brands marked down. Right? Well, right now is the time right before they're about to launch all their new stuff on the shelf. So quite naturally, typically the things that are going to be discontinued off the shelf are happening right now So what do they do they mark it down? They try to sell through it Until right before they're gonna they're gonna set the shelf

For the rest for the new things that are gonna come on shelf because you have to make space On shelf for the new stuff, right? But the average person doesn't know that. To them, they think, oh, they just made an announcement about DE&I. Now they're mucking down all these brands and throwing all these brands out. That's not the case. These brands were going to be marked down

whether they continued their DE&I practices or not, because you have to make room on the shelf, because some of these brands probably have new innovation coming. Or some of them maybe weren't meeting their requirements, right? There's a multitude of reasons why a brand has to discontinue things or why they have to come off shelf. Why? Because it's really hard to be in mass market retail.

It's very, very, very, very, very hard. Right. There's a real art to it. There's a real intellectual side to it. There's it's heavily operational. It's heavily logistical. You know, it's heavy with trade spend. You know, not understanding trade spend can literally murder your business. You could have, you could have a million dollars worth of purchase orders and only get paid back one hundred thousand because it may have been late. It may not have showed up. It may have not showed up on time. It may not have been stickered the right way.

It may like there's so many things that can happen that can cause for them to just charge you, charge you, charge you. You understand what I'm saying? The charge backs. Right. And so, you know, so trying not to, trying not to, even though they just made the announcement that they made, trying not to make everything so literal, because some of these things are just things that just, like we were talking about earlier, these are just things that just not like we were talking about earlier These are just things that just naturally happen in business

Right. It's not it's not that they had a plan to let some of these companies go They are literally making space on the shelf for new products that are about to be launching because April May. Yeah It's the time right and so You know, so it's, so I mean, some of what I mentioned is something I think that needs to be taken into account. I think the biggest thing that needs to be taken into account is to not make brands pay

for something that a retailer chooses. But I also understand that like, companies don't necessarily always listen until their bottom line is affected. And so I also understand the point of these things. So I also wanna preface what I'm saying with, you also have to make your own decision about what you want to do. Some of the things that I'm saying is, you also have to make your own decision about what you want to do. Some of the things that I'm saying is just my own opinion, but I'm not trying to tell people

what they should do. You have to choose where you want to shop, where you want to spend your money, who you want to spend your money with. I just think that it's important to understand the plight of a business owner who is essentially renting real estate from Target, from Walmart, from these retailers in order for us to run our business. It's not, if you tried to just pull your products out of a Target, that literally would be deaf to your brand by a million cuts, right?

Because you wouldn't survive. You don't just pull your products out. They charge you to pull those products out. Wow. And then what are you going to do? Some people say, well, you can just sell your products online. Well, when you sell products online, that's only one store. You have to pay for it. You have to pay your 3PL fees. You have to pay for shipping. One, unless you have a product that is an expensive product, it's very hard to make money direct to consumer.

It's a misnomer to say, people, it's a misconception. People think that you make so much money by selling direct to consumer. But if you make a product that's under $20, I'm sorry to tell you, that's just not the case. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from

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Through raw conversations, real stories, and actionable guidance, you can learn to face the mountain that is in front of you. You will never be able to change or grow through the thing that you refuse to identify. The thing that you refuse to say, hey, this is my mountain, this is the struggle, this is the thing that's in front of me. You can't make that mountain move without actually diving into it. May is Mental Health Awareness Month,

a time to conquer the things that once felt impossible and step boldly into the best version of yourself to awaken the unstoppable strength that's inside of us all. So tune into the podcast, focus on your emotional wellbeing and climb your personal mountain. Because it's impossible for you to be the most authentic you. It's impossible for you to love you fully if all you're doing is living to please people. Your mountain is that.

Listen to Made for This Mountain on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld

of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of

Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait, head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover,

to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that are being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right

now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, so I guess my question then is, you know, I've heard, and I don't know, maybe you know, I've heard, and I don't know, maybe you know more about this, like they're taking away the section of those products, like the black section, you know, and then putting it in with other, like there will just not be a section. But maybe the question is-

And we want that, we want that. We don't wanna be in a black section. Yeah, that's my question. That's my question. We want to be, we want to be, if you make, if, listen, if you make body wash and body lotion, where is your product best sold? In the body wash, the body lotion section. If you make hair care products, right, where is your hair care best sold? If you make shampoos and conditioners,

it's best sold in the place that you go and buy shampoo and conditioner. I make vaginal wellness products. Why would my products work in an area of the store that's allocated for humans of color? That's weird. That's not weird to you? Yeah, I guess you take it to the level of like,

why is there an organic section of the grocery stores? Like this is just the yeah But brother they all the all the retailers stop doing that I don't know where you live, but I remember back and this is only because I come from retail I remember back in the day Kroger used to sell used to have an organic section. Yeah, right Well, they found that people didn't want to just go to the organic section. People wanted to buy their organic potato chips in the potato chip aisle. They want to get their organic cereal, their kashi or whatever, in the cereal aisle. I want to buy

my organic milk in the milk section. I don't want to have to go over here and then go over there. It's a better shopping experience when you can walk a store and navigate a store and navigate it the way that you would typically navigate and experience the way that you would when you can just buy your things where you traditionally go to buy them. Otherwise, you're trying to get

a human consumer to practice a different way of shopping, which makes it harder for them to do. Do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah. All this makes total sense. Yeah. In the few minutes I have left, I want to ask about your leadership style, how that's evolved over time from, let's say a small company, you talked about in your kitchen, preferably to now 70 plus people,

like how has B had to change? That's a good question. I think that my leadership style is constantly changing. In the beginning, you kind of have to be everything. When you're scaling, you're typically bringing in people who have more expertise, so then your leadership style has to redevelop a bit because you're bringing in leadership

so you need to give them the ability to lead. You have to be able to step back and not be, you have to be trust, you have to trust them, right? And you also have to have the ability to be open to them making mistakes because that's how we all learn. So, you know, but it's hard when you go from doing everything to bringing somebody in,

especially bringing somebody in that's probably replacing you a bit, right? Because, you know, in the beginning it was me inside, but then over time, you know, I'll speak for myself, my investors felt like we needed a president, which they weren't wrong, we did. I've never ran a multimillion dollar business before, this is my first time.

You understand what I'm saying? So like my understanding of running a company has limitations. So they were like, hey, we really feel like we need to bring in a president because, and the president, the person that they brought in, Allison Savaya, who's incredible, she's She's worked at multi-billion dollar businesses. She's going to know what needs to be done, how to build this team, how to strategically grow it, how do we put in services and tools in order to be able to grow our teams and give them the resources that,

she's just gonna have a different level of experience than I have. And so I have to have the ability to respect that there's only so much that I know. And if I want this business to go where I know it can, I have to let her lead. I have to step back, right? Yeah.

You know, and I have to still know what, know and respect what I do, because nobody can do what I do, right? For as it relates to this business, you know? Um, and I, and I have to realize that there's things that I don't have the ability to do. And so the art of being a good leader is understanding what you don't know how to do so that you can get the right people into the job so that you can trust them and give them the ability to grow. You know, but also understand what it is you know how to do and you know how to do best so that you can do that shit all the way. You know? So I think, you know, if I had to give a name,

I'm probably very much a transformative leader. You know, I really respect the leaders on my team. I really respect their opinion. I really respect their, you know, their backgrounds. I respect what they bring to this business. Honestly, I welcome it because in order for this to be what I know it can be, Honeypot is a conglomerate brand within itself, even before we sell to a conglomerate at some point. You understand what I'm saying? Which would be the

final home of honeypot. But in order for us to get there, we have to be able to ebb and flow. We have to die to our egos. We have to know why we're here and who we're serving, and keep that human at the forefront of why we do everything that we do. Because that's what's most important. That human with the vagina is the most important to us. Then also, our team is very important. It's also the most important, right?

Like we work really hard to make really beautiful, efficacious, beautiful skincare, vaginal care, menstrual care, personal care, vaginal care, menstrual care, personal care. But we have to treat each other well in the process. If we're working in a toxic work environment, the output of that is going to be toxic. And so also how we treat each other within the company is very important.

How we respect each other, how we talk to each other, how we build our we respect each other, how we talk to each other, how we build our businesses with each other, you know, it's so it's a culmination of a lot of things, you know, you know, but I, but it definitely changes all the time. And for some people change can be really hard. For me, change is not hard. I actually welcome change. I'm a very, very, very hyper present person. But I know the evolution doesn't happen without change.

The evolution doesn't happen without change. And I want Honeypot to be here for the next however many hundreds of years. And in order to do that, I think that you have to be able to flow. To be respectfully at time, I'll give one last question for you. And I think about, I have this conversation with friends a lot and this idea of building a business on support. And I'm, and I feel like we have to at some point get past support. I buy this because I support it. Like,

but even before this whole target thing, I was like, like you don't go to target cause you support target. You go to target cause they have what you need. But so many of our businesses are like, I need your support to keep the lights on. And I'm like, we gotta move past that. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that and how we get past just support.

Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I think that, um, look, I think I have a few thoughts about that. I think that, um, I think for the brand that is literally Target is about to be their very first retailer, their very first mass market retailer, right? And they're about to be their very first retailer, their very first mass market retailer, right? And they're about to go on shelf. And maybe they're a decent sized brand on their own, right? Like they figured out how to make some real money

and they've gotten into Target and they're looking to grow their business. That company needs support. Your first few years in retail, first of all, you may not have tons of money. Even if you're making money, it's hard to, it's marketing and all those things costs and absorbent in amounts of money, right?

So you may not have all the tools and resources that's going to take you to the next level. As far as being able to support your product on shelf. Most companies, you're just trying to figure out how to do that. If you're only in a 100 doors, it doesn't make sense to pay Target or any other retailer $25,000 for their in-store marketing programs because you're only in a hundred doors, it doesn't make sense to pay Target or any other retailer $25,000 for their in-store marketing programs because you're only in a hundred doors. You pay that amount of money when you're in at least 1,100 doors or more, right? And so when it comes to support,

that brand needs support because they're testing right now, potentially, so that next year they can go back to Target and say, hey, you tested me in a hundred doors, now I want to be in 200 doors or 500 doors. But in order for them to get that 500 doors, what has to happen? Those hundred doors have to produce. So that brand needs support because they don't have the resources to go out and do big, huge marketing campaigns and do all the shit that, you know, that a big brand has the ability to do. Wouldn't even make sense for them to do because they're only in a hundred doors. So, in the beginning, they really need the support of their customer that's been following them, that's been supporting them the whole time, that's been buying their products online or buying it out of their trunk or whatever the circumstance or situation is.

Now, I agree with you that you have to get to a point where it's not just like you're just living off of support. You have to get to the point to where you're living off of velocity. Yeah, I like that. I like that. Where you are scaling and growing, right? You started in 100 doors, now you're out in the 500 doors. Finally you got into 1,000. Now you're not in the 500 doors finally you got into a thousand now

You're gonna go talk to my then you're gonna go talk to Kroger then you understand Yeah, now you want to go talk to CBS, but in the beginning you need some support Right because because you've got to get you got to get off the ground You got you have to move past the support phase, but that is one of that is phase one. Yeah, yeah. Of getting into mass market. And I don't and I think that and that is one of the things to your earlier question.

Of things that we have to realize as consumers that buy products off of shelves, because you're right. Target is target. They're're right. Target is Target. They're a machine. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like they they they are. They are kind of the the the mother retailer and then the sisters and brothers are on the shelves.

Right. We need to in order for Target to be what it is. and then the sisters and brothers are on the shelves. We need to, in order for Target to be what it is, it cannot survive without brands. Brands cannot survive without human beings consuming our products. It just doesn't work that way. We all need each other. And so, I agree with you. All of, we need, we all need each other, right?

And so, you know, I agree with you. The goal needs to be getting out of the support phase, but every single business has to go through the support phase before they get to the next one. Black Tech Green Money is a production of Blavity Afro Tech on the Black Effect Podcast Network and Night Heart Media. It is produced by Morgan DeBarn and me, Lil Lucas, with additional production support by Kate McDonald, Sarah Ergans and Jada McGee. Special thank you to Micah Davis and Love Beach. Learn more about my guests and other tech disruptors and innovators at AfroTech.com.

The video version of this episode will drop to Black Tech Green Money on YouTube so tap in. Enjoy your Black Tech Green Money? Share this with somebody. Go get your money. Peace and love. The Made for This Mountain podcast exists to empower listeners to rise above their inner struggles and face the mountain in front of them. So during Mental Health Awareness Month, tune into the podcast, focus on your emotional well-being, and then climb that mountain. You will never be able to change or grow through the thing that you refuse to identify, the thing that you refuse to say, hey, this is my mountain. This is the struggle.

Listen to Made for This Mountain on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John, who's not the father? Well Sam luckily it's your not the father week on the OK storytime podcast so we'll find out soon. This author writes that my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son even though it was promised to us he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up

they could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep find out how it ends by listening to the OK storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait, head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation.

I'm also the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Yes. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast.