The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – From Garage Startup to Multimillion Dollar Brand: The Journey of Beautiful Disaster Clothing

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

From Garage Startup to Multimillion Dollar Brand: The Journey of Beautiful Disaster Clothing Bdrocks.com About the Guest(s): Christina DuVarney is the founder and CEO of Beautiful Disaster Clothing. With over 20 years of experience in the fashion industry, Christina has built her company from a garage startup to a multimillion-dollar brand. Growing up in a broken home with an alcoholic father, Christina learned resilience and self-reliance at a young age. She discovered the transformative power of fashion and realized that what you wear is a reflection of your inner strength and identity. Christina's journey showcases the power of resilience, determination, and creativity in overcoming adversity and building a successful business. Episode Summary: In this episode, host Chris Voss interviews Christina DuVarney, the founder and CEO of Beautiful Disaster Clothing. Christina shares her inspiring journey of building her company from a garage startup to a multimillion-dollar brand. Growing up with an alcoholic father, Christina faced adversity from a young age, but she learned resilience and self-reliance. She discovered the power of fashion as a form of self-expression and empowerment. Christina discusses the challenges she faced as an entrepreneur, including the rapid changes in the digital landscape and the need to adapt to new technologies and platforms. She also shares her plans for the future, including strategic partnerships and expanding the product line. This episode is a testament to the power of resilience, determination, and the belief that fashion can be a transformative force. Key Takeaways: Beautiful Disaster Clothing is a women empowerment brand that celebrates the beautifully broken and the perfectly imperfect. Christina DuVarney's journey from a challenging childhood to a successful entrepreneur underscores the profound impact of resilience, determination, and the belief in the power of fashion as a form of self-expression. Building a brand in the digital age comes with its own set of challenges, including the need to navigate social media platforms, algorithms, and the ever-changing digital landscape. Strategic partnerships and alliances are crucial for scaling a business and reaching a wider audience. The Beautiful Disaster tribe, consisting of hundreds of thousands of women, provides a supportive community where women can share their stories and find empowerment. Notable Quotes: "We like to celebrate the imperfections. We would not be who we are if we didn't fail." - Christina DuVarney "You don't have to abandon everything and just jump in and suffer. You can build your dream in the pockets of your life." - Christina DuVarney "A rising tide lifts all boats. It's important that we give back and lift each other up." - Christina DuVarney

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

The Voss Show. The Voss. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the show. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by. As always, we have the most amazing guests. This is their stories and their cathartic times, their life lessons they're going to share with you and tell you how you can avoid them or if you're suffering through the challenges of some of the things of life.

The greatest thing is finding people who've been through those challenges and they usually have a roadmap or a blueprint of how to get out of them, which is, I don't think what this show is about, how to not be Chris Voss, basically. I think that's how to not make the stupid, idiot mistakes I've been making. Anyway, guys, for 16 years, 2,000 episodes, we've been hearing the smartest people. We have another young lady on the show with us today to tell us about her journey and how she changed her life and made it for the better, as it were. Christina Duvarni is on the show with us today. She's the founder and CEO of Beautiful Disaster.

And we're going to get into what that is. Beautiful Disaster Clothing, in fact. She has an amazing, remarkable story of building her company from a garage startup to a multi-million dollar brand that's both inspiring and insightful and if you don't find it so after you listen to the show don't make me come out there and hurt you no i'm just kidding why why violence chris why is there to violence just go listen to the show again if you didn't get it her journey showcases the power of resilience determination and creativity with over 40 million dollars in sales, Christina brings invaluable entrepreneurial wisdom and first-hand experience.

Growing up as an only child in a broken home, she faced adversity from a young age. With an alcoholic father, she learned resilience and self-reliance early on, navigating turbulent waters with determination and grace. It was during her formative years that she first entered the car business, where she honed her business acumen and developed a keen eye for detail amid the chaos of her upbringing she discovered the transformative power of fashion she realized that what you wear isn't just about aesthetics it's a reflection of your inner strength and identity and considering the horrible fashion that i have i have neither of those items this empathy or epiphany excuse me igniter fashion

passion for fashion and set her on a path to create beautiful disaster clothing a brand that empowers individuals to embrace their unique identities and wear their strength proudly her journey from a tremendous childhood to a successful entrepreneur underscores the profound impact of resilience, determination, and the belief that fashion is a powerful form of self-expression, or in my case, no expression. Welcome to the show. How are you, Christina? Thank you so much, Chris, for having me. Wow, what an introduction. What an introduction.

Will you roll the sign? Yes, yes. I am fantastic. Honored to be a guest. Thank you for having me. Wow, what an introduction. What an introduction. Will you roll the sign? Yes, yes. I am fantastic. Honored to be a guest. Thank you for having me. We're honored to have you as well. Give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebages? Sure.

BDROCKS.com. B-D-R-O-C-K-S dot com on the World Wide Web and at Beautiful Disaster Clothing just about everywhere else. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview of what you guys do there at Beautiful Disaster Clothing. Sure.

Beautiful Disaster is a women empowerment brand, if you will, and we are on a mission to empower the beautifully broken, the perfectly imperfect. And by the way, guess what? That's all of us. I can join that crew maybe. Yes. Yes. Really. We're just trying to overturn the apple cart of perfection. It doesn't exist. And the world has gotten very, very noisy with this idea of perfection. And so we like to celebrate the imperfections, how we really kind of started in this world was sharing stories of other women, women that have been through things that would bring you to your knees and are still standing. So we started by celebrating our trials, our triumphs, our traumas, and talking about it. And we've amassed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of women who also have

pain and trauma and tragedy in their life. And we've been able to connect in a very human way that has nothing to do with perfection and pretending. Oh, that's awesome. So you've built a great following and all that good stuff. I was looking just here over your Instagram. Looks like we're both Metallica fans. Oh, I am a big Metallica fan. I've been to roughly, I think maybe 22-ish shows.

Wow. Yeah. All right, I got to catch up. Big Metallica fan. I wasn't a big Metallica fan, and they opened for Ozzy, and I got to see, what's his face? The bassist passed away before that horrible event. Oh, the bus crash. The bus tour. Yes, that, that horrible event. Oh, the bus, the bus crash.

The bus tour. Yes, yes, yes. But I got to see them and I was there to see Ozzy and I was like, ah, Metallica is just annoying with this fast, lot of rhythm thing. But I kind of started to fall in love with them. That's kind of what turned the thing is they opened for Ozzy. But yeah, we're all beautiful disasters, I think, you know, it's, it's our scars, it's our damage, it's our

getting run over by a few buses in life that give us our features, give us our depth, if you will. You got it. And that's the narrative that we should be talking about. That's what we should be celebrating. We would not be who we are if we didn't fail. And the entire premise for the Beautiful Disaster brand was built on failure. You know, anybody who comes on this show and makes it seem easy is a freaking liar because it is very, very hard. And you only get good at what you're doing by getting good at learning what not to do and that happens from failing over and over and over again do you have a star in the hollywood walk of fame i don't that was a test read the caption oh okay i'm just i'm just flipping through here looking for content as we talk keep dreaming keep it was actually a a social media experiment to see

how many people actually read a caption oh i'm doing i'm just looking for content to talk about as we do the show that's easy when i do in the background the show that way yeah that's me give us a story let's dig into your upbringing a little bit we We've kind of heard some of it. I know my mother was a daughter of an alcoholic father, and I know that has a severe impact on young women growing up and, of course, a very chaotic, very traumatic sort of experience. I don't know what yours was, but, you know, there's chaos there because the child can't figure out why mom and dad don't operate quite right and they're always not happy.

So tell us a little bit about your upbringing and what led you down this road. Sure. One of my most vivid memories, and my mom says that I was about four years old when this happened, which is amazing that I can even recall such a memory at four years old was I was all dressed up. I remember being in a floral dress and my little white patent leather shoes waiting by the door for my dad because he was coming to take me to Disneyland. And I was over the top excited. And I just couldn't wait for this day until I had to wait all day. And he never showed up.

Oh, no. And for me, my experience with an alcoholic drug addict father was the absence of his presence was repeated letdown. And for as long as I can remember, back to that four-year-old little girl a seed was planted a seed that I was not worthy of his love that I was unlovable that it must be me and as a woman I carried that through my entire life there's many, many experiences like that, that continued to water that seed of unworthiness and self-doubt and lack of self-love and lack of self-confidence. For me, it was abandonment in the scene of that absent alcoholic father. Wow. And that's, you know, father father abandonment mother abandonment it affects usually

father abandonment affects the daughters mother abandonment affects the sons and it's it's tough and and there's chaos there and as you grow up what what sort of roads do you go down what what leads you eventually to starting this company oh man we will fast forward to middle school. I grew up in a very affluent area, except for I was in the apartments that were like on the other side of that affluent area, a little place by the name of Calabasas, California. You may have heard of it. There's some famous people that are from Calabasas, California. Didn't Clint Eastwood, was he a mayor of that or is that Carmel? Maybe that was Carmel, I think.

I wouldn't know the answer to that, but I don't think it was Calabasas. Right now, the Kardashians are the mayors of Calabasas. Oh, jeez. I'd move for sure out of there. My mom worked really, really hard to put me in areas that were at least not terrible. I lived in the apartments on the other side of town. And I went to a middle school called AE Wright middle school, where this was the first time that I was ever exposed to affluence in my life. We grew up, you know, very, you know, we had, we had enough, we had what we needed, but that was about it. So in middle school, that was the first time that I was exposed to what you wear says something about you.

And it also says who you fit in with. So this was a time when everybody was wearing, you know, I'm going to date myself, L.A. gear and gas and Tommy Hilfiger and Nike. And if you were not wearing those things, you were not a cool kid. Yeah. And I remember one of the not cool kids. Yeah. Same. I remember asking myself Nike, right? What does that mean to me? This doesn't mean anything to me. LA gear doesn't mean anything to me. Tommy Hilfiger, what are these brands? And I don't know what it was or why I had an innate understanding of branding at such a young age because I did without knowing it. And I just decided that I wasn't going to wear the things that those people were wearing because it didn't mean anything to me. That's when I started going to thrift stores and finding

Metallica t-shirts and Ozzy Osbourne t-shirts and wearing something that actually spoke a little something about who I was or what I liked. And that was a big, bold move because you were labeled as you know a hessian that's what it was back then you were a hessian what is a hessian i guess a metal head or something oh was this the 90s for you it was the 90s oh see i came from the 80s so they they just called us satanists i grew up poor so the only so the i got two shirts a year and one pair of pants a year and then payless shoes the only what i started doing was when i go to concerts like van halen and ozzy osbourne and all the jews priests and stuff because i buy the shirt and then i'd have you know a whole whole library of shirts to wear

throughout the week and then i was in utah so they were all like, you worship Satan. And I'm like, yeah, sure. Okay. That makes you happy. Exactly. I remember that, you know, at that time, all of the t-shirts were four sizes too big for me. Cause I would go to the thrift store and I'd only be able to spend $4 and 25 cents on the one, you know, that I went through the rack. And of course it was going to be thrift store and I'd only be able to spend $4.25 on the one that I went through the rack. And of course it was going to be a 2XL. I was drowning in a 2XL. So I started cutting and customizing my own clothes. So I would crop them and I would roll the sleeves

and I would put a little sewing mark to hold the sleeve up. And maybe I would put some little slashes or holes to make it look more vintage. And the cool kids noticed. And I will never forget the first time that one of the most popular girls in school asked me if I would make her a T-shirt. And I said, why, yes, I will. You provide the T-shirt and give me 20 bucks. And that was the first sale I ever made in the clothing industry and something really happened

where I was like wow I can wear what I want to wear that describes who I am and how I feel and I can make it look cooler than it was originally and I can make money for doing this for other people and everything really started to change after that and I could make money for doing this for other people. And everything really started to change after that. And I got to be who I was. I didn't have to change who I was to fit in with other people. And it started, it led to transactions, which was really cool. So how did you scale that then to do what you're doing now? I knew that in order to really start a brand, you need money. So it wasn't until I graduated high school that I had my really big idea for how I was going to get rich at 18 years old so that I could start my own brand. And I came home and I told my mom, Mom, I know exactly what I'm going to do so I can make a

ton of money and start my own brand. What are you going to do, honey? I'm going to sell cars. So on my 18th birthday, I went down to the DMV and I got my vehicle salesperson's license and I started selling cars because I knew that that was a way to make a lot of money that I could control myself. All I had to do was be better than everybody else. And I would sell more cars. Right. Pretty simple. Yeah.

Keep in mind, again, this is the 90s. Yeah. So I got my first job at a Ford truck lot. New or used? New. New Ford trucks. This is probably 1996 or 7. And I was the only female.

Yeah, that's a tough business to be in at that time. It still is, actually. Yeah. But I think, I mean, it was really tough when I started. I was 18 years old. Oh, my God. And the only chick on the lot. Yeah. I know why you're laughing.

Yeah. I did a year in the new car business when I was young and those guys, you, you must've got so much sexual harassment. It probably wasn't funny. Oh my God. I mean, it was just,

it was just absolute torture. I mean, it's trying to steal my customers, yelling out profanities when I'm with a customer. Oh, wow. Oh, it was really, really bad. But I just didn't give up. I would not let them see me sweat. I turned that frustration into, I'm just going to kick all of your asses and earn my respect. It earned your respect from these guys. And I ended up doing that. So when I very first

started selling cars, it was the first year that the Ford expedition came out. And when the Ford expedition came out, there was a craze. Everybody wanted the Ford Expedition, and I was on a Ford new truck lot. I sold so many above-sticker-priced Ford Expeditions that I remember one of my first paychecks was like $8,500. And I came home and showed my mom, she was like what you you're making more than i've made in the three months and it worked and i started to make really good money and i started to make really bad decisions because i had really good money money for the first time yeah we all do that so i ended up at lake havasu city jailail. You know, that's a story for another time. That's a hell of a tour.

But something else magical happened for me in the car business. And you said you did a little bit of time in the car business, right? About a year, yeah. About a year. Okay. So you're probably going to know all about this. Part of being a vehicle salesperson is you have to sit down and watch a lot of Zig Ziglar, right? It introduced you to all these different motivational tapes and you got to watch the

videos and go through the course. And that was the first time that I was ever exposed to the idea of self-development. And Chris, I'm telling you, that is what changed everything for me. I never knew that I could learn how to believe in myself. I just thought that somebody else got to be in control of that and took it away from me year after year after year after year of my life. As I was growing up, I did not know that there's actually a way to believe in yourself. Oh, wow. So, yeah, I'll never forget one of the, you know, after the Zig Ziglar tapes and everything in the car business, one of the first books that I read was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. There you go.

Great book. That book changed my life. Yeah. And it changed everything. It changed the trajectory of my life the way that I could think and that's when I started to become more entrepreneurial actually start saving some money and then finally created my first clothing brand and so were you sick of the carb is you decided to create the clothing brand or did it just no i kept doing it you just kept doing it but what what was what was the thing that flipped the switch on where you

went hey i should go back and do what i really love the car the i'm assuming this the clothing brand you know i stayed in the car business for 20 years oh wow while i built you don't look that old well you did start at 18 though but thank you thank you the math isn't adding up here but yeah the math the math isn't math and you've aged well thank you not well or you haven't you haven't aged see if you say someone ages what means they age so that's not you're in a slippery slope here chris back out now it's's an oxymoron. You're on a slippery slope here, Chris. Back out now. No, it's just an oxymoron if you think about it. It just occurred to me. If you tell someone they aged well, you're like, but I aged? What?

That's an oxymoron. It cancels each other out. So go back to what you were saying. So for 20 years, I built this brand in the pockets of my life. It was not an option for me to stop working and go all in on the business because the business took every piece of disposable income that I had. And like I said, I started in a garage. So I thought that the brand name Hanky Panky was like so cute. So beautiful disaster wasn't always beautiful disaster. I started out Hanky Panky and I paid a friend to design a little logo.

And then I bought some shirts and blank shirts online, took them to a local screen printer, had them printed up. And I just started selling them at anywhere and everywhere that somebody would let me have a table. So little arts and craft shows or little festivals that were in the community. And I did that while I had a full-time job. So it took 20 years of building up to this before I was ever able to walk away and pay myself a salary. And I think it's really important for people to understand that you can build your dream in the pockets of your life. It's not one or the other.

You don't have to abandon everything you know and just jump in and suffer. I don't recommend that. There be come a time where you go okay I could pay myself now it's time yeah started started building the brand and putting out stuff at shows and then I got this letter in the mail from like the government and it turns out that you have to have something called a trademark. And somebody else had that trademark. Ah, you got a C and D. I got it. I got a C and D.

I wish I would have kept them. I would have had several on the wall back here. No, there's a lot of people in there. Some hanky panky. Oh, apparently it's a really famous like high-end underwear brand ah i wear i'm wearing hanky panky right now are you but i have beautiful disaster as my shorts okay i haven't ordered any shorts i don't have shorts on right now anyway it's not funny in my head at the time when did you decide that beautiful disaster was the right name did you what

motivated you to pick that one sure hanky panky you know had that juxtaposition of naughty and nice right when i got the c-synthesis for hanky panky and i was put on the spot and i had to think of something else i went with good girl bad, Bad Girl, and I shortened it to GGBG. Sound like a brand you've ever heard before? I think, wasn't it a song by the Bee Gees? Well, there's a brand called BCBG. Ah. So they sent me a nice little letter.

You did have a collection. And that's the whole point is I just kept doing it and I kept failing and I just kept trying again. And at this point with Good Girl, Bad Girl, I had gotten it on some celebrities and it was featured on some shows on VH1. So this one hurt because I had a lot of traction. And it was at that point that, again, I had to decide, am I giving up or am I changing the name again? I thought I should hire an attorney. Hired a trademark attorney, very, very, very expensive, great trademark attorney. And I wanted something that still had that good girl, bad girl vibe and beautiful disaster just came to me.

It's, it's something I've heard people say. It's something that's been in songs. And I thought to myself, there's no way that this name is going to be available. But I said, I really like this name if we can get it. And turns out we got it.

Wow. Yeah. It's funny how you're like, I've had that before. Some of our biggest problems have been naming our companies because I have everything else in place. I'm just like, we need a fucking name for this thing. And you're just like, you come up with a great name, and you're like, that's not going to be a great name.

Yeah, Beautiful Disaster is perfect. I like, that's not going to be available. That's a great name. Yeah, beautiful disaster is perfect. I mean, I've known a lot of girls. I used to own a modeling agency and dated a lot of models, and I think that was pretty much how they described themselves all the time. God bless them. But, you know, we're all broken human beings when it comes down to it. That's exactly right. You know, some of us are more beautiful than others, I should say.

I'm an ugly disaster. I think that's the clothing line I'm launching next week. You'll have to see if it's taken. Don't get a cease and desist. Who the hell would take that? No, I'm just kidding. You're probably right. There's probably somebody that has that.

Some guy looks like me. It sounds like you've been through some trials and tribulations with being an entrepreneur. It wasn't just an easy ride for you where you're just like, hey, we'll start a company and you're successful. What are some other challenges that you maybe had to overcome that were kind of pivotal where you were just like, geez, what am I doing here? Should I stick through this, et cetera, et cetera? Oh, man, it happens all the time. We were able to secure the beautiful disaster trademark in clothing. We ended up securing it in many, many other areas because if you want to sell hats, it's

a different trademark. If you want to sell water bottles, it's a different trademark. So we finally had this family of trademarks and we were solid. We're solid, right? And this is right about the time that something called Facebook started to emerge. And we were very, very early adopters on Facebook. And that changed the game for us. Really? Wow.

Oh, big time. You know, this was the beginning of the e-comm boom. Like I said, when we started, we were going to tattoo conventions and music festivals and county fairs. You weren't selling online when we started doing this. So when you talk about what other challenges have you come across, it's important to remember that we started pre-Facebook, pre-Shopify, totally guerrilla marketing, packing up our van, going to all these shows, and interacting with human beings.

Wow. Let's fast forward to today. It's a fucking machine. Yeah. Just money comes in overnight. No. Money goes out. Oh, it goes out?

It goes out. So we went from human interactions where somebody would walk up and see a shirt that says, you know, hating me won't make you pretty. And they pick up the shirt and they go, that's badass. Oh, my God. That's so me. Getting that engagement and that feedback, right? Yeah. Now you have to be on Facebook and Instagram and X and Twitter and Tik Tok and, and it's, everything is digital and everything is a machine and an algorithm.

And it's incredibly challenging. I think we are in the most challenging point of our business in 17 years right now. Yeah. I mean, it used to be, you know, I, we invested one time in a mall store and for hip hop clothing and it used to be, you know, people go to malls and buy clothes, you know, and you go down to, you do the thing where I forget, what is it called? The magic show. Yeah. Magic show in Vegas.

Go to Vegas and blow out your American express car buying $30,000 worth of clothes. Yeah, magic. The trade show in Vegas. You go to Vegas and blow out your American Express card buying $30,000 worth of clothes. I'm old. This is in the 90s, people. And it's probably more than that. But you'd buy your inventory for six months from now, whenever they deliver it. But the malls were the thing.

Everyone would go to malls. Now malls are dying and dead. You're right. Everything's online now. Amazon, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. We did magic. And you would sit down and you would write $30,000, $50,000, $60,000 worth of business a day at that show.

And you would be shipping to multiple locations. Accounts like we had Hustler Hollywood. And we were shipping to every Hustler store from California to Florida. And it doesn't it doesn't work like that anymore. It's it is it's so hard for me to wrap my mind around putting money into this machine, not knowing what my return is going to be, not knowing how many people I'm going to reach. I don't have any control over that. And the barrier of entry is going up. It costs more to acquire a new customer. It costs more for your stuff to be seen by people. And it's just this self-perpetuating machine. So I personally feel the most challenged right now. And we've done over $40 million in sales.

Wow. And right now I feel is the most challenging because I have the least amount of control. Yeah. Have you ever thought about opening like a store with your brand, a branded store? We did. You did? We did. We did. We had a flagship store, a retail location, and a lot of the things that you just mentioned are exactly what happened. Aside from employees just being impossible because so many people are just irresponsible quads, that's one component.

And then, thank God we got out of it pre-COVID. That could be another shirt brand, Impossible Twats. That explains actually some of my models. I don't know what that means. I'm just being funny, people. That's another name of the new podcast too, by the way. Impossible Twats Podcast. Hey, you said you wanted some sound bites.

There you go. We got sound bites, ladies and gentlemen. Callback jokes. So yes, we go. We got sound bites, ladies and gentlemen. Callback jokes. So, yes, we did. We tried the retail thing. Luckily for us, we got out of it pre-COVID. I think COVID would have been really, really difficult to get through. Oh, yeah.

And, you know, everything you just said about the decline in in-person shopping and the incline of convenience and instant gratification. I mean, as an e-commerce brand owner, I literally have customers asking me why they didn't get their package the same day they ordered it. Yeah, people are really idiots that way sometimes. But my point is, every single thing has changed at the most rapid pace that I've seen in the 17 years of doing this.

So I've been doing this pre-Facebook to now. It's just this monstrous machine that's required in order for you to be a brand. And it's just bizarro world. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone. It's wild. You know, I mean, you can have a business model and everything's kind of cranking for years, a decade or something. And all of a sudden, you know, different patterns of doing business change.

I mean, I remember we had our mortgage company and we had this huge telemarketing arm and big $50,000 dialer, like 75 telemarketers a night sitting on it. And then all of a sudden they said, Hey, we're going to come up with this thing called caller ID. People were like, Hey, that's going to hurt you, Chris. I'm like, nah, we'll be fine. We got this massive dialer that can pound numbers. We'll be fine. Nah, that thing hurt. That thing hurt big time yeah we just ramped up the dialer but it still hurt like it really made a difference you know because people could start screening calls sure like i don't know who park place mortgages yeah and then came the do not

call list yeah the dnc that that one really uh-huh because we we followed the rules and like everyone else so it was our bad. Yeah. I mean, our business was very similar. We had Facebook monetizing your reach and your frequency and all of these things. And then iOS 14 happened. So that was the fight between Apple and Facebook for being able to follow you around across platforms. And iOS 14 happened and almost killed our business.

Wow. Almost killed our business. So it's just, you know, there's so many unknown things. And the only thing I do is keep going. That's all you can do. You just keep fighting, man. You just got to fight the good fight and figure, you know. I mean, that's kind of what being an entrepreneur is anyway.

I mean, every day is new challenges. Every day is new something. Sometimes it's the same challenges over and over again. There's a guy I like to watch on TikTok cause he's really, he's a really savvy businessman. He's an old Italian guy who kind of reminds me of who's had an old Italian singer left my heart in San Francisco, Tony Bennett, but he he's, he's sold private, private planes all of his life. Pretty much.

He got in when like 40 years ago when he was young and he's, he, he basically, you know, deals with people who have enough money to buy private planes. And so he buys and sells them and he's a broker. But he kind of details his life. And he talks about it. And here he's like a 60-year-old guy. He's been in the business for 40 years or something. And he goes, you know, the funny thing is, is every day,

after all these decades of being in business, there's always some some new challenge there's always some new hurdle to a deal there's always some new thing you know he goes some of it's the technology some of it's this he goes there's always something new that i have a problem i have to fix yeah and i i remember thinking about that when he said it and and i was just like wow man yeah i mean that's just it's the eternal journey of the entrepreneur this is it we did not choose the easy path but it sure is damn ass rewarding when it's good it is it's amazing and at the core of all of it is the women that i serve and that's why i, you know, going all the way back to when we set up at those shows and we would meet with these women and face to face, they would say,

oh, hell yeah, I'm a beautiful disaster. And here's why. And they would tell me their story. And then we started taking those stories and sharing them with other women. And it gave other women a platform to not feel so shitty about themselves and then all of a sudden the brand was more than just a cute shirt it was i literally am a beautiful disaster this is my identity and all of a sudden the brand started to transcend what it was into who it serves and now we've got hundreds of thousands of women in private groups that are there for each other every day guiding the way because i've been through something similar or i know somebody who's been through something similar or don't do what i did or

here's some tips or and now we have this tribe that we have amassed of these women who, for some of them, the only confidence that they have comes out of their closet. And it's when they were a beautiful disaster. And we've been able to turn this, these trials and these traumas into a trademark and empowerment to an empowerment. And there you go. It's,

it's, it's all about. It's all about them. That's why it's easier for me to keep going. If it was just all about me, fuck, I would have gave up a long time ago. That's the beauty of being an entrepreneur, too. I think we were talking about this a couple days ago with someone. The ability to give back and the ability to serve your community. And your community serves us communities you know serves us as entrepreneurs by helping finance us and support us you know and we we just have this really great

way of being able to give back to a community and lift people up you know most of us i think that are entrepreneurs you know someone helped kind of help give us a lift up too and and and and they gave us you know we got a few breaks along the way you know that that cool customer or someone who helped fund something and and someone to taught you something and and you know you you feel like you want to give back to the community and you i think i think a lot of entrepreneurs from that experience they recognize the cyclical it's not cyclical reciprocal that's the word i was looking for the other day i used reciprocal or i used cyclical it's not cyclical reciprocal that's the word i was looking for the other day i used reciprocal or i used cyclical then i'm like dude that's something else different it is that way

sometimes but you know i think we realize that a rising tide lifts all boats basically and you know that's important that we get back and it sounds like you know you've you've been really smart you've built a community around your brand. And that's really something smart. A lot of restaurants didn't do that before COVID. In fact, most of them didn't have a website before COVID. And they really got caught with their pants down. And they had to scramble.

And, you know, they had no way to order online. You know, they didn't have an online presence. So you couldn't call them and do pickup. And, you know, having that community, you know they didn't have an online presence so you couldn't call them and do pickup and and you know having having that community you know now restaurants are much smarter i mean the smartest ones try and get your email sure and offer you discounts and stuff so that's really great what's the future of your brand what do you see coming down the future i mean is there is there any things you're working on that you can share that maybe you see the future of where the business is going? Yes, I'm actually currently working on some strategic partnerships so that we can really take the brand to the next level.

You know, we'd like to get into some different categories. We have the women in the beautiful disaster tribe want everything from a bed set that says beautiful disaster, a fricking steering wheel cover that says beautiful disaster, looking into licensing agreements, some strategic partnerships to be able to expand the product line. And really just, I'm trying so hard to find the right set of people that know more than me about this crazy machine so that we can continue to have a sustainable brand. And we can continue to reach the women who so desperately need what this brand and this tribe can deliver. So right now I'm just, I'm, I'm open to opportunities for how to do this in a bigger,

better, more efficient way at scale. There you go. Partnerships and alliances and all that sort of good stuff is, you know, really important in today's world. Rising tide lifts all boats. Have you guys done all the SEO

hiring and targeting and all that kind of fun stuff you do with websites? Oh, God, yes. We've got teams for every freaking acronym that you can think of. You know what you could do? You could get referrals from a psychiatrist. That might be, you know,

paid. That might be some sort of breach of confidentiality. I have a feeling most of your customers don't go to psychiatry, but that's a good story. I'm not even going to touch that one. I'm still dating half of them at this point. There you go. We'll just send you some little referral cards. Yeah, I might just, yeah, I'll just make some money i'll get my some of my first date money copy money back but i love beautiful women but

you know sometimes the reason they're beautiful is is they're they're working on some they're working on some childhood issues if you if you think if you think that you're just gonna find somebody a woman that doesn't have any drama or trauma or past or trials or triumphs you're either a never going to find that or be really fucking bored yeah that's the reason i'm still single after all these years but i've known i've had some amazing women in my life and i know some beautiful women but i remember i do remember when i owned my modeling agency bikini team for six years that the women would come to me and they would see the male models being drama queens and they would say to me chris are we as big a drama queens as the male models i'm like no the male models are far worse you guys don't even come close to what little bitches those guys are

there was always that so it's not exclusive to females it's no it's male models too they're it's a human condition we are all we're all broken we're all trying to fit the pieces back together we're trying to do a little bit better today than we did yesterday fit the pieces back together i keep trying to break mine some more i'm like this seems to be working i don't know break it some more yeah the wild turkey final thoughts as we go out how can people on board with you get involved with your brand etc etc you know the best way is to visit the website at bdrocks.com i encourage you to go to our tribe stories section this is the collection of thousands of stories from women all across the United States.

So if you're feeling like you have it bad in life, go read a couple of the stories and you will probably be humbled pretty darn quickly. We also have a couple of private groups on Facebook and our main page on Facebook. You can follow us on Instagram. Both of those are at beautiful disaster clothing. And you can find us in about 50 ish Harley Davidson, Harley Davidson stores across the United States as well. Yeah. This,

this, I mean, I should get in some of these groups. This sounds like my core demographic. No, no, no, we don't,

we don't, we don't let poachers in. I've dated a lot of malls all my life. God bless them. They're just such wonderful people. And they're beautiful. And they're usually beautiful disasters. But yeah, it's, you know, dad left when they didn't give enough attention. They're young and now they work really hard at being beautiful and getting attention from men you know it's the same everybody's at a different

place in their journey it's different the place their journey but yeah i'll just i i know what shirts to buy now for dates well we also have a men's line called handsome devil so you really some of that for yourself that's kind of pushing on my looks, but, but the devil part is accurate. So there's, yeah, I, I do. I tell people I'm a merge.

I'm a, I'm a merge between Brad Pitt and George Clooney. So they still look at me as scant, but that's not my problem. So there you go. Give us the.com one more time as we go out. Sure. It is BD rocks.com.

There you go. Thank you very much, Christina, for coming to the show. We is bdrocks.com. There you go. Thank you very much, Christina, for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the time. And it's such a great entrepreneurial story.

Keep fighting in there. You just have to, I guess the fight never ends. No. So, you just got to build your muscles and be able to get up more times and you get knocked down.

That's it. There you go. That's the key right there. That should be on to get up more times than you get knocked down. That's it. There you go. That's the key right there. That should be on a shirt. Thanks for my audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, FortressCrispFoss, LinkedIn.com, FortressCrispFoss, Crisfoss1, the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the internet. Thanks for tuning in.

Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.