The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - #101: Tracy DiNunzio, CEO & Founder of Tradesy - How To Start A Business With Minimal Resources, Pitching Investors & Raising Capital, Building Mental Muscles for Failure & Rejection

Episode Date: February 13, 2018

On this episode we have Tracy DiNunzio on the show. Tracy is the founder and CEO of Tradesy. On this episode we discuss how to start a business with minimal resources, bootstrapping (that famous start up term), pitching investors and eventually raising capital if you need it, what it takes to be an entrepreneur, building up mental muscles to deal with failure and rejection, and taking feedback (good and bad) the right way.  To learn more about Tradesy click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE This episode is brought to you by Zola.com.    Zola is the wedding company that will do anything for love. They are reinventing the wedding planning and registry experience to make the happiest moment in our couples' lives even happier. From engagement to wedding and decorating your first home, Zola is there, combining compassionate customer service with modern tools and technology. All in the service of love.   To sign up with Zola and receive a $50 credit towards your registry, go to www.zola.com/skinny 

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. This episode is brought to you by Zola. So as you guys know, Zola is the way to go when it comes to the wedding registry and the wedding planning process. Trust me, this is totally a thing because over 300,000 couples have used Zola. So basically, Zola registry is everything you love about your favorite department store. Plus, it includes things like honeymoon funds, fitness classes, wine subscriptions, yes please, and so many different creative ideas. We even did a donation to charity. They have over 500 top brands, tons of experiences, like I said donations to charities, and even cash

funds. For our wedding I didn't want to hassle our guests so Zola took all the hassle out of it. It kind of makes the whole situation seamless for everyone. It's a win-win. To sign up with Zola and receive a $50 credit towards your registry, go to Zola.com slash skinny. Again, that's Zola.com slash skinny. Stock this site. You will love it, especially if you're a bride. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. Welcome back, guys, to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This week, we have Tracy DiNunzio on the show, and Tracy is the founder and CEO of TradeZ. I'm sure you guys have all heard of it. If you haven't, TradeZ is the world's leading peer-to-peer marketplace for women's fashion. On this episode, we discuss how to start a business with minimal resources, bootstrapping, that famous startup term,

pitching investors, and eventually raising capital if you need it, what it takes to be an entrepreneur, building up mental muscles to deal with failure and rejection, and taking feedback, the good, the bad, the ugly, in the right way. For those of you who are new to the show, I am Michael Bostic. I'm an entrepreneur, investor, and business operator. I specialize in brand development and business growth. Over the last 10 years, I have developed, helped to develop and manage brands and businesses in a variety of spaces. Most recently, the co-founder of Dear Media, a new kind of podcast company with an emphasis on female hosts and voices. Dear Media will place women, their stories, and narratives at the forefront of conversation. I like it.

And I'm Lauren Everts. I'm Michael's better half? I don't know. Well, I only have one right answer to that, yes. Okay. I created The Skinny Confidential as a blog eight years ago now. I was attending San Diego State. I was bartending, teaching Pilates and pure art and just bored, unfulfilled, and wanted to create a space for women on the internet and bring together a community. It's really cool now to watch all of that come to life. The Skinny Confidential is a YouTube channel, a podcast, like I said, a community and a book, which is available on Amazon. So what's been going on? A little slow Sunday for you, huh? A little slow Sunday. Catching up on Monday. You know, a lot of, a lot of you guys know we record these episodes. You know, we batch them up because we get busy. So we batch up a bunch of episodes

and then we'll go back the day before they're released and record the introduction so that we can, you know, give a little fire introduction. Well, we want to keep it fresh and we want to stay relevant. Yeah. You know, I mean, we did this interview a couple weeks back, which is not too far back, but you don't want to come in and be like, remember Christmas last year? So we always come in and do a little update. And sometimes, you know, Mondays are tough. Yeah, we had a nice weekend this weekend.

We hung out with each other. We did a conference yesterday or more more like a brunch i got to meet a bunch of you guys and tomorrow we are going to the movies like me and you guys 75 of us are going to drink rosé eat popcorn and see the movie 50 shades of gray i couldn't tell if you were just like crazy there for a second like talking about like there's 75 of you personally like you'd like but for me when i'm sitting here listening to you, you just sound like a psychopath. You're like all 75 of us, which wouldn't surprise me because you do have about 75 personalities. I feel like it's 80 after this weekend. You know what? That's how I spent my

Sunday. So obviously we're building out the studio up in Dear Media up in LA. It's going to be an amazing studio, top notch, top of the line. Gorgeous. A lot of bright light for Instagram too. But right now I've been splitting my time, San Diego, LA. I'm probably gonna have to be an amazing studio top notch top of the line gorgeous a lot of bright light for instagram too but right now i've been splitting my time san diego la i'm probably gonna have to be up in la a lot more which i know you're fired up about um last time in san diego i was just gonna you know gonna have to deal with it but my sunday was spent driving up at 10 30 at night last night to la so that i could be there for meetings all day today with the bare naked cucumber in the car with bare naked cucumber who for those of you who don't know who he is taylor he's been working go back to some old episodes himself at our wedding and went to a strip club and then proceeded to do like a whole lap dance situation so yeah he was up there because

he's looking at some of the the tech stuff um but anyways so then we i had meetings up there and then uh came back today got back at six and then did some bunch of stuff down here and now doing this podcast intro at 11 30 an autobiography by michael bostick it's a lot guys it's a lot out there in the life of a podcaster so tomorrow we get to see a movie i'm forcing michael to go um you know what though? No, don't try to get out of it. No,

listen, one of my, one of my big pet peeves is I hate to jump into sequels if I haven't seen the first ones, but I think for this series, I'm going to make an exception and I'm going to miss the first, the first shades of gray. What is it? It's shades of gray,

one 50 shades gray. And then what's this one? I don't know. It's, it's like 50 shades of something. We're going to Sinopolis. So the chairs will will be comfortable few people might have to sit on the floor i might be one of them you might be one of them i fucking michael sure as hell won't be one of them you may chivalry is dead michael you might have to sit on the floor i'm not joking i will leave the bring a barefoot dreams blanket there's. There is nothing I would not do more than sit on

the floor during 50 Shades of Grey. It's not happening. You know, sorry. You'll get popcorn. I don't care. I don't care what you give me. It ain't happening. So yeah. Okay. Well, it's going to be fun tomorrow, you guys. I can't wait to hang out. I feel like this is the perfect meetup. We get to watch a movie, drink a little rosé. We're bringing goodie bags with valentines in them for you guys. And it's going to be fun. Slip some woo in there. We slipped some woo in there. All right. So it's really cool to watch the Skinny Confidential secret Facebook group expand. You guys are hanging out in different cities without me, which is awesome and amazing. You guys are hanging out in different cities without

me, which is awesome and amazing. You guys have met a lot of friends. I think someone held a Skinny Confidential New York meetup the other day. If you want to host a meetup in your own city, all you have to do is go in the group, join the group, and then search the subgroup that has to do with your own state. I think it's really awesome that a bunch of you are meeting each other in that group. It just makes me so happy. I can't even tell you. To become a member, you're just going to search the Skinny Confidential in the search bar, and then you just click join. And I go through and I approve to make sure there's no guys sneaking in. We do have one guy, but that's a whole different story. His name's Gary, but basically Gary's our mascot. So it's a bunch of women and then Gary. A lot of you guys are

brides in the secret Facebook group. I've seen a lot of people that are getting married or they're engaged. So I think that Zola is perfect for you. As you know, Zola is the way to go when it comes to the wedding registry and wedding planning process. We've talked about this a lot because we used it for our wedding and it was a total lifesaver and really streamlined everything. I feel like it's also a big thing because like I said, over 300,000 couples have used Zola, which is nuts. Basically, Zola is everything you love about your favorite department store. Plus, it's also a medley of things like the honeymoon fund, fitness classes, wine subscriptions, and so many different creative

ideas. What did you do with our honeymoon fund? Do you think I'll ever be able to share in that honeymoon fund or did you just, we still have it. We haven't gone on a honeymoon. I'm waiting for you. It's not, it's not put into shoes or something that I don't know. Like what's happening on Valentine's day. Hopefully I'm going to unwrap a honeymoon. Um, no, we have a honeymoon fund waiting for us. We did a honeymoon fund and we also did a charity where we donated money to colon cancer research and to the Chihuahua fund, which was very on brand for us. They have over 500 top brands, tons of experiences, and even cash funds for For our wedding, I didn't want to hassle my guests, so Zola took the hassle out of it. It kind of makes the whole thing seamless

for everyone. Super easy for couples and their guests. You guys should also know the customer service team really goes above and beyond to help you pick out the ideal gift for the couple. Also, there's this thing they offer called group gifting, which allows a bunch of guests to contribute to a huge gift. So fun. Well, it makes it easier on the guests too, I feel like, you know, you don't want to have like, it's already a hassle. Listen, I know it's your wedding and I listen, I felt the same way. My sister's wedding's coming up. Our wedding was there and it's an important day, but you, you know, it is an imposition on people and you want to make it easy on them and make sure they enjoy it. I know brides are going to come out and rip my face off

for this, but it's true. Like, you know, like think about when you have to go to weddings and so, so you want to make it easy, but yeah, Zola makes it easy. You're going to get some good gifts, you know, you skip all the, you know, toaster ovens and all that stuff. Yeah. As the bride and groom, you can even personalize your registry with photos and notes about why you want certain gifts i love this i love a story i love personalization you guys know that about me of course zola does price matching and free shipping every day which is kind of insane i also think it was fun how our registry automatically integrated into their zola wedding website so the guests could seamlessly shop and get all the details they needed in one place. It was efficient, which you know I love. We also did like a newsletter

blast where we sent kind of the whole thing to everyone and it went out and they could just go on the site and easily shop. So that's an idea too. Yeah. And for those of my friends that didn't get me something, I see you on that list. Yeah. He's like Santa Claus making a list. I make a list twice. Yeah, a lot of naughties on that list. Taylor, to get even more excited, Zola has a customizable checklist and guest list manager. Best part though is Michael and I even manage the whole situation on our phones because they have a quick, easy to use app. That's a lie. You didn't manage it. I managed it. Just me. Super quick. To sign up with Zola and receive a $50 credit towards your registry, go to zola.com slash skinny. That's zola.com slash skinny for all your registry needs. That's zola, Z-O-L-A.com slash skinny. Go stock it. You will love it, especially if you're a bride.

All right, all right, all right. Let's get into the him and her tip of the week. Okay, so we haven't had like a businessy podcast in a while, and it's starting to be requested, so I think this is a great, Tracy, it's going to be a great episode. And because of that, I wanted to give a businessy, or it could be applied to anything, but let's say it's like a businessy tip of the week. So in our podcast Facebook group, we're getting ready to possibly

do some solo episodes and really niche down and figure out like if we were each to do a solo episode, what topics you would want us to cover, you as the listener. And a lot of the topics that are coming through for me is business and niche subjects and businesses. But one of those questions that's being requested a lot is multitasking and how to do multiple businesses. And I just, I want to make sure that I'm giving out the right message here when we're doing this podcast or when I'm giving advice. I actually think it's a huge mistake when you're starting out to try to do multiple things and run multiple businesses. I think at this point in my career, I'm able to

juggle a couple more things because I've built out a really solid team under me and with me. And so I'm able to delegate my time and be involved in different projects. But that was definitely not the case in the beginning. So if you're just starting out, and I think a lot of very successful entrepreneurs and business owners and operators will tell you the same thing when you're just starting out, whether that's a blog or it's a podcast or it's a business, whatever it is, I actually am not a fan of doing multiple things. I'm a fan of doing one thing and really, really honing in and getting good at that thing. There's an amazing book called The One Thing by Gary Keller that basically supports this theory that I'm talking about, which is basically focusing in on one thing day after day until that one thing snowballs and

becomes a huge thing. And then I think you're able to branch out. So kind of to niche down here a little bit and get more specific. When you're first starting out, you're excited and're excited and you, maybe you're starting a blog and then you start to get a little bit of traction. Like, okay, this blog is going really well. So maybe I'll create a makeup line and then that's going really well. So maybe I'll create like a health line and then I'll create like an ebook product. Like this is very common when I, when we go and speak. And when I, when I speak to a lot of you saying like, Hey, I have this, this, this, and this going on. And while I want to be supportive and say, hey, good for you, a lot of the time I find myself wishing that I'd said, hey, get rid of a lot of the majority of those things and focus on the one thing that you can truly maximize and profit from. For example, we take Lauren. She really, really focused in on her blog in the beginning, blog content to a specific audience. And since then, it's been able to umbrella into different things. Me like when my

first my first career was jetbed. And we really for the first like, four years of my life, or my business life, just focused in on building out jetbed. And from there, I was able to go into marketing, and then I was able to go into different investments and obviously some other businesses since then. But I think if I would have tried to do all these things out the gate, everything would have failed. So I think when you're starting out, it's super, super important to really, really hone in

on that one thing to start with and build that up so that you have a foundation to build other things if eventually you wanna do those things. So I just wanna make sure that I'm putting that message out there and I'm not confusing people into thinking they have to do multiple things all at once. I think multitasking can be very, very dangerous and destructive. So my tip of the week is when you're starting out, focusing on the one

thing. And then even when you start to branch into other things, make sure the first thing is running smoothly and operating, I don't want to say on its own, but running like a well-oiled machine before you take on another task. You don't want to be juggling 50 things like an octopus. It's just not going to work. Great tip, honey. Okay. So my tip, since we're talking business, has to do with my favorite thing ever, which is branding. You guys know I love branding. If I wasn't a blogger, I think I would be a branding specialist, maybe an interior designer, but probably a brand specialist. There's this book that I read that I featured on the Skinny Confidential, but I want to talk about it on this episode because I think it's a book that everyone should go out and get. You can find it on Amazon. We'll leave it in the show notes.

It's called The Brand Gap. And I just think it really lays out business strategy and design of designing a brand. And just to give you a couple spark notes, I kind of wanted to just lay it out for you before you buy it. And when you do buy it, you'll get more information out of these spark notes. So the first note is a brand is not what you say it is. It's what the consumer says it is. Don't you agree, Michael? It's the emotional reaction individuals feel when they see your brand and listen to your audience. So with the Skinny Confidential, I have always wanted you guys to use the Skinny Confidential as a resource. And when you leave, I want you to leave what you don't like, take what you like, apply it to your own life.

And I want you to feel inspired to be the best version of yourself in an unapologetic way. I think that that was really important for me. It wasn't just for you guys to leave with my outfit deets or what I was eating or how my hair looked. I wanted you to leave with something valuable that you could apply to your own life. So next spark note, a branding has nothing to do with data, numbers, and Excel sheets, nothing at all. It's about the people who experienced the

brand, not the numbers. So stop looking at the data, look to the people. I've always done that the whole time I've had the skinny confidential. I just think constantly being buried in your analytics is really counterproductive. And looking at your following count every second. I think it's all about the community. I always say that you should focus on the audience that you have, even if it's five people, you should focus on serving them. And from there, they'll go out and tell more people as opposed to taking those five people, ignoring them, and trying to get more people. The next spark note is a typical design has four goals to identify, inform, entertain, or persuade. However, when it comes to branding, there is a fifth to differentiate. This comes down

to strategy, guys. So why do you like Nike over other shoe companies? Because honestly, Nike's done an incredible job of differentiating its brand. And if you look at a blog or a blog that you really love, why do you like them over other blogs? I think that it's really important to stand out in the market and do something different. You know, I was talking to someone the other day and I think to be successful, you know, you do need to look at other people's formulas and maybe some people will copy those formulas, but to be remarkably successful, you need to do something different that's down the road. That's, you know, being ahead of the trend.

Another one, which I feel like this one applies to the skinny confidential is brands can become small tribes if they're done right. Your vibe attracts your tribe. Community is key. Community to me is everything. It's always been everything. It's why I do what I do. I've told you guys this when the secret Facebook group launched, it made me emotional because it's what I've been working on so hard the whole entire time I've been blogging. And I can see in that Facebook group that the vibe has attracted the tribe. You guys are so cool and amazing and you guys are all vibing off each other's energy. So if you're building a brand, make sure that you are building that tribe and that community.

It takes a village to build a brand. So you got to take the ego out of it. Not one person can develop a powerful, lasting brand without a strong team of people around the brand's message. This is you guys. Collaboration is so important. I talk about brand's message. This is you guys. Collaboration is so important. I talk about that a lot. Of course, engagement. I'm always looking at what you guys are doing and talking and engaging. It's my favorite part of the job, my favorite part of

the gig, meeting you guys. It's awesome. Okay, so I'm going to give you two more and then I think you should all go read the book if you're business owners or bloggers. The next one is to pick a strong icon and a name. So criteria for a good name is appropriateness, easy spelling, punctuation, likability, and protectability. So keep that in mind when you're picking your name. Lastly, I'll leave you with this because I think it's important you guys read the book, but a brand should always lead with authenticity. Authenticity is a word that's completely over book, but a brand should always lead with authenticity. Authenticity is a word that's completely overused, but it is true. Your brand should lead with that.

Your audience feels that. Your community feels that. And that is important. So check out the book. It's called The Brand Gap. It's super cheap. I want to say it's like $9 on Amazon. We'll leave it in the show notes. But I also have to give a shout out to another book, which I'm in, which is called Crushing

It by Gary Vaynerchuk. I am so excited because he featured me as one of the entrepreneurs in the book. Gary is a huge, huge inspiration for me. We've been on his show before. He's been on our show. And he just wrote this book about a bunch of people who were scared, just like you, who had obligations, just like you, who were told they were being foolish or reckless or irresponsible just like you. And they did it anyway and they reaped the rewards. And he basically showcases a bunch of different entrepreneurs in his book and gives you so many incredible tips on how to build a brand in 2018 on social media. So make sure you check out those two books. I'll leave them both in the show notes.

And with that, let's meet Tracy. Tracy DiNunzio is the founder and CEO of TradeZ, the world's leading peer-to-peer marketplace for women's fashion. As an artist turned entrepreneur, Tracy bootstrapped the business in its early days by running out her bedroom on Airbnb and sleeping on the couch. Wow. Today, TradeZ has a team of 100 team members and 5 million customers that have attracted funding from top tier investors like Richard Branson and Tim Ferriss. So I just want to throw this out there. I actually have had my closet on Tradesy since 2013, guys, which is nuts. You can shop my closet. It's a bunch of my clothes. It's tradesy.com slash closet slash Lauren Everett's. If you also Google the Skinny Confidential Tradesy, a post will pop up. I find Tradesy super easy to use. It's so user-friendly and they also have some really rare and unique pieces that you can shop. Honestly, I found some really, really good

finds on there. So go check it out, tradesy.com slash closet slash Lauren Everett's, or you can just shop tradesy.com. With that, let's welcome Tracy to the show. This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her. Tracy, how did you get started? We want to hear the whole nitty gritty. Okay. Well, I was a painter and artist and after the 2008 crisis, nobody was buying my paintings. And I had an idea. It was actually an art concept to create this universal online closet for women where we could all share our clothes like, like having millions of sisters. And so I got really inspired to just create that and started building it at my kitchen table on my laptop, quickly found out that I needed to hire or contract or beg some people to help me build it. But that was the original concept for Tradesy. It

was an art project about connecting women and our closets so that we could feel like we had a support network of sisters. And then I quickly recognized that it had some good business potential and started looking at it that way as well through that lens. I read somewhere that while you were building it, you were actually Airbnb-ing out your bedroom while you were staying in the house. Well, okay. So I was teaching myself how to design and code and market and all of that. And I got really obsessed and I would fall asleep on my couch with my laptop on my chest like every night. And then one night I saw this ad on Facebook for this new thing at the time called Airbnb. And I thought, gosh, I'm not even using my bedroom anymore. I just fall asleep on the couch working

every night. And I had a well-located apartment and I thought people would want to stay there. So I went for it and ultimately ended up renting out my bedroom for a really long time. Then my roommate moved out, rented out her bedroom and earned enough money to be able to stay focused on the business and even invest a little bit into growing it. No, I think it's, it's's extremely inspiring to hear about because I think a lot of people that listen to this show, they think, okay, I need all of this money to start moving on my idea. And I think you're a perfect example of someone's like, okay, you just got started with what you had at the time.

And as you evolved, you brought in the other pieces and you brought in some money to fund the business. But it wasn't impossible to start the business with what you had at the time. Totally. I think it's so easy to, and I was almost so ignorant that it was bliss. I didn't realize how much money it really would take to build something like this. So I jumped in with both feet. And then as I encountered phases where it required more capital I figured it out but you don't need anything to get started except the will and I'll say enough money to pay for your basic living expenses and for me Airbnb helped to create that opportunity I took side jobs I really hustled for a couple years just to make rent and oftentimes didn't make rent and had those like cute eviction notices on my door.

But it was all part of the journey. And I think you can start wherever you are. What would your advice be for someone that's listening that has a big idea like you had? Where would you start? That's the hardest, right? You really break it down into pieces and then smaller pieces and smaller pieces in terms of what are your first steps. And I would say something I didn't do, but that I think is really useful. And when I work with budding entrepreneurs now, I encourage them

to do this is create a deck and a financial forecast as if you were going to go pitch investors about the next five years of your business. And you can Google all of this. What does a great deck look like for, you know, early stage investor pitching? What does a good financial forecast look like? And it's not that you'll even necessarily take those out into the world and use them to raise capital. It's that the exercise itself is so clarifying to help you understand where you're going, if your business works, at what point you can expect it to work. And that will help you set realistic incremental goals along the way. There's a really good article by Guy Kawasaki that basically shows you how to write a pitch deck. I think it helps you frame it out. It's

basically, what is it, 10 slides? Exactly. And then that kind of forces you to say, okay, what are, what's my real answers here? What's my, what's my problems? What are the solutions? You touched on something you said in the beginning, you didn't really know what it took, right? You didn't know how much capital it took and how many resources to take. I think that that can be a blessing in some ways. Like if you, if you knew everything, you know, now, do you think you would have got started at the time? Oh, I would have been terrified. I, and I may not have started. I may have thought, well, that just sounds impossible. It's just not achievable. Um, I was again, just ignorance is bliss. I thought, um, gosh, if I just had $50,000, I could really build this thing.

And I can tell you that almost nine years after starting on this, we've raised $80 million in venture capital financing. So my $50,000 estimate was like slightly off. Yeah, a little bit. And I really had no idea what it meant to build a business at scale. But you can learn that as you go, because no matter how much you know on day one, you've still got to put the first brick in the building and then the second, and you are equipped to do that. So let's talk a little bit about bootstrapping. I think a lot of people now, they know, they go and get venture

money right off the gate and maybe they don't have a lot of experience. And so when you do that, you kind of, you start hiring and scaling your team immediately. And then maybe that founder doesn't know what it takes to be in the sales department or the customer service or get, you know, basically get your hands dirty. And next thing you know, you've spent a ton of money. You don't really know where it all went. You don't really understand how it got spent. What do you think the benefits of bootstrapping a business like this are? Yeah, that's exactly right. What you said. I mean, the, the three or so years that I spent in pure bootstrap mode taught me so much. And, you know, it's hard to tell someone who's starting out

stuff like this, because if some, if I thought money was an option, investment money was an option, when I was bootstrapping, I would have gone and gotten it. I just, you know, I didn't have a network. I didn't have an education in this stuff. I didn't know any investors. So it wasn't accessible to me to go out and raise capital. And that the fact that I was forced to learn how to build and do every single job on the team myself, and I did them all pretty poorly. But when it came time to hire people to do things like marketing or design, I had enough fluency to understand what I should expect from them and where I wanted them to be better than I was. So yeah, that education is irreplaceable. Is there a book or a resource that you would recommend to someone that's looking to raise capital? Oh gosh, there are so many now. There weren't as many back then. The classics are,

I think it's called Venture Hacks with the Brad Feld sort of guide to raising. And now there's also a lot of great info on AngelList as well. But it's really changed even since I was in the early stage trenches. Like now you can Google what it's like to raise in early financing and angel around a friends and family around a seed round from VCs and find abundant information. So I always, I'm old enough to remember when if you wanted to know something, you had to like go to a library. It sounds ancient. I can't even believe it. But for me, part of why learning how to do all this stuff was so exciting was that we suddenly gained access to all the information in the world when we got the Internet, when we got the mobile Internet. And so there's never been a greater opportunity to teach yourself anything than there is right now.

And I think it's easy to lose track of that and all the noise of the connectedness of the Internet. But Google it. Like, it's all there. We're having a conversation about this in the car because there's a couple people we know that you know they say well this doesn't come naturally to me my theme of my entire life has been figure it out find a way to figure it out and it doesn't matter if it comes naturally to you or not you just got to figure it out there's not been one thing in my whole entrepreneurial life that i've known when I started. Right.

And that's the fun of it, right? Like I, I, I lived in Mexico for a few years and I, I always look back on the first year as so much fun because I was both living a life and learning the language at the same time. So my brain was really on fire all the time because I wasn't just doing what I was doing. I was doing what I was doing in a new language while learning the language. And that's sort of what entrepreneurship is like. So there's a lot of humility and strength required because you are in the unknown and also being asked to be a leader. So that's a really scary place to be. You know, you're saying I'm capable of running this business and also I don't know a lot of stuff. Um, but for me at least I've, I've also, I've always been so curious and there's never been more access to learning than there is today. I had no, I had never used Excel. I have never worked at a company in my life. I was an artist. I got, I had ninth grade

math. That was it. Um, never took a business class in my life, knew nothing about tech and, you know, we're doing all right. You figured it out. Yeah. So you, you, you obviously you've met a lot of successful people now you're a successful person. You have a lot of mentors. What do you think one quality is in these people that you see consistently in order to be entrepreneurial? I think it's that curiosity for sure. And also a high tolerance for chaos and uncertainty. I would say like, I tend to be anxious and want to make everything right before I go to sleep at night. You know, if I, before I started the business, it was like, unless everything was resolved, I didn't feel like I could go to sleep.

And, um, since starting the business, I've had to really develop a capacity to kind of live in chaos and uncertainty without letting it trigger my anxiety. So I go to sleep now. It's hard. It's hard. I want you to talk more about living in chaos. I want you to really elaborate on that because I've had to teach myself to do that, too. And it's very hard. As a perfectionist, we were talking about this earlier. How do you kind of manage that? It's very hard because if you're the kind of person who's starting a business, you're probably the kind of person, like how I was, who wants to, you know, who thinks they can control and fix everything. And then you, in order to really run a business well, you actually have to

let the kind of chaos of the puzzle unfold and guide it instead of trying to fit all the pieces together. So if you're trying to fit all the pieces together, you're going to exhaust yourself and create an environment in which teams can't work. In order to allow a team to work and develop, you kind of have to stand back and be okay with a lot of things constantly being unresolved. Sounds like you're parenting. It's similar, though, because you have to step out and let the child make the mistake and have them learn from it. Yes. And I don't have kids and I often think that my parenting instincts go into the team a lot because it really is like having kids. And if you're doing it right, your kids need you less and less.

Right. You're not raising kids well if you teach them to be constantly dependent on you for answers. And so with a team, it is similar. But also within yourself to be able to withstand all of that uncertainty, it just takes tons of practice and like talking to yourself and saying like, if it were all tied up and neat and resolved, that would mean I wasn't pushing the boundaries enough. Like if you're innovating and you're stretching, then there's going to be some degree of chaos and uncertainty. And if everything is really easy to manage, you're probably staying too safe and not pushing to your highest capacity. You got to get uncomfortable.

And that gets extremely boring too. What? That gets extremely boring when you're just playing it safe. I would rather try something innovative and push the boundaries and crash and burn than just kind of coast along. I would too, but then those moments of crash and burn can be really devastating. So you also build up muscles to withstand rejection and failure because those are inevitable along the way. So let's talk a little bit about failure. Do you have a particular failure, failure in mind that at the time seemed crippling, but ended up being a blessing and driving to success? Oh boy, I have a ton. Um, I can tell you that after I launched the early version of, of TradeZ, which was a wedding

marketplace, um, I thought at six months in, when we had a couple of customers, I thought, see, this is all going to work. I should start another site. Um, and I started another marketplace for, for baby and kids clothing. And gosh, that just, I took all of my pro like early profits money that could have paid the rent. And I put it into this new business because I thought I was going to be able to run two businesses and grow them both at the same time. And that just, it was so ill-conceived and misguided and it crashed and burned so spectacularly. So that was an early humbling moment. I had a moment in 2013 where I was raising money for the

company, raising our series B financing. Um, and I had three deals on the table that I thought we were going to get all of them. And right before Christmas, they all fell through. I spent Christmas through New Year's in a fetal position, crying and thinking I had ruined the whole thing and let everybody down. And then we came back after the holiday. I said, I'm going to move to Silicon Valley for a few weeks and I'm not coming back without a term sheet. And we were really able to turn it around, became one of the hottest deals in Silicon Valley, got great investors on board, got a better valuation than expected. But yeah, there've been the moments of failure and rejection and disappointment come fast and hard. And as long as you develop resiliency to

get back up out of the fetal position, um, you, you, you get enough at bats to score. It sounds like the theme of your story is resourceful. You got resourceful. Yes. Being resourceful, resilient, all of that, I think is key to surviving the entrepreneurial journey. What is TradeZ's why? And how important is that why to you? I've been talking a lot about this on the Skinny Confidential, your why. Yeah. It's so important to have a why. And when you lose sight of your why, it really shows in your business. So very simply stated, the why for TradeZ is to create sustainable commerce. So and I'll give you the quick backstory on that. I mentioned that I lived in Mexico.

I also lived in some other places. And when I came back to the States, I was really stricken by how much disposable consumer stuff we were consuming and throwing away. Like I living abroad in the places I lived, if I was done using something, I found someone to give. It really struck me how much we were just consuming and trashing things. And fast fashion was at its peak. And it was really like myself and all of my friends, we were buying all of these cheap, poor quality goods that I then learned were very, were made in ways that were really bad for people and the planet. And we were consuming them like junk food. You know, I'd have a hundred t-shirts in my closet, but nothing to wear. And I thought, gosh, this is really it's unsustainable in so many ways. It's unsustainable for us as women. We're being sold garbage. You know, we and when we wear it, we don't feel good. We think we're going to and then we don't. It's disappointing customer experience of owning these types of disposable goods. And then we're participating in a consumer culture that isn't supporting people or supporting the environment.

I mean, fashion became one of the top five most polluting industries in the world over the last 20 years. And I thought, this is so silly. My friends and I, when we go to each other's closets, we always feel like we found treasure. There's so much stuff already in the world. If we could just use these supercomputers in our pockets to connect all the people and all the stuff to each other, we wouldn't have to go to the mall and empty our wallets and come home with piles of disposable crap. And maybe we'd be more thoughtful about what we buy,

knowing that it's going to go to someone else and have a second lifetime and maybe even a third. And so the why for TradeZ is to connect women who make or influence 85% of all consumer purchasing decisions. So we determine what consumer behavior looks like. And our why is that we connect those women to create an entirely separate peer-to-peer economy, first around fashion, and then ultimately around all consumer goods, so that we create a world where demand for disposable goods goes down and the life cycle of products is extended

and everybody has access to really high-quality consumer goods. That's a why. That's a why. I like it. That's the why. That was really high quality consumer goods that's a why that's a why i like it why i was a little long but that's the why with the political climate a lot of people you know they really get down on oil and gas and i think that's that's fine but people don't realize how traumatic you know the clothing industry is on the planet like they there are so many problems in this industry that causes so many issues for this planet people just don't think about it they think oil and gas and the typical the talking point things but it's so true it's crazy i mean you've got oil and gas you've got um industrial agriculture

and fashion's right up there they some some say it's the third most polluting industry some say it's the fifth i say either way like we could do better with it so what is a perfect customer experience for someone that comes on trade see like walk me through it yeah um so as the perfect customer experience is that you maybe you're looking for something you really want like a chanel bag like my paul green white loafers that I can't find anywhere in seven and a half I don't ask for much I feel like we just take those to a cobbler and they're gonna be like new anyway okay michael get on it are you on it yeah let me find the local cobbler um yeah so you would you would come to us probably find us when you're looking for something that you want maybe like a luxury

um bag etc um and then be pleasantly surprised to see that it's up to 90% off the retail price, because everything on our platform is pre-owned. Some of our, some of the products for sale on Tradesy, and we have millions and millions of fashion items for sale, some of them are pre-owned, but never used, if that makes sense. And every woman knows this, like you bought that amazing dress and never wore it, or you got a bag or a pair of shoes and carried them once or twice. So we have a lot of, um, pre-owned, but like new. And I have to give you guys a shout out right now. Cause you guys gifted me the most beautiful white Chanel purse and it looks brand new and I still have it and I

still use it and it looks brand new. I mean, you would never know it's used. That's the thing about these really high quality luxury goods is that they are more durable. They last, they don't look used or feel used. And that's sort of the whole point of owning something high quality is that after being used for a time, they retain their integrity, their value. They appear like new. So, yeah, I mean, I have a vintage Chanel bag that is just starting to show a little bit of signs of wear on the leather. And even that, I think, is beautiful because it's out of life, you know? It is. Yeah.

How has your business evolved? Like, if you could step back and look at it from the beginning to now. I think initially we were focused on creating a certain type of customer experience. And as we've grown, we've learned how much we can leverage technology and data to create a marketplace system that is truly, truly scalable. So starting off, I just wanted to bring this experience to women and see what kind of impact we could make. And now we have ambitions to create groundbreaking technology that enables the peer-to-peer marketplace to really scale and thrive.

So I think in that way, internally, the work we do and how we think about the business has changed. When you were developing this business, you inevitably have to, as you grow, you have to come up against the Ebays of the world. What is your take on that? And how were you guys able to navigate that competition? Yeah, competition's a big thing in our category. So eBay's always been there. Maybe not always, like not since the beginning of time, but they've been there for a long time. And what we learned when we started was that less than 3% of women

who shopped online had ever sold online. So we knew that for whatever reason, eBay's platform wasn't turning all the women who shopped into sellers yeah and and when we talked to women we found out that that was mostly because they found three things difficult um listing shipping and returns on the selling side so we decided to solve for that but um but on but we didn't just have competition from ebay because we saw we saw tradesy as a way to fill in in something that eBay might not be providing to the market at that time. Which I think is super smart. A lot of people think they have to come up with this brand new idea that's never, the world's never seen.

And you could just basically take something that they have seen and greatly improve upon it. Totally. And, and think about it through the eyes of a different customer. Like I think traditionally we know that a lot of the products and services we use were conceived of by men and built by men and therefore end up feeling like they were built for men as well. So that was the opportunity that I saw. I felt like, gosh, eBay just doesn't speak to me as a woman. This experience doesn't feel geared towards me. And I thought there was an opportunity to create an alternative really specifically for the way that women wanted to sell and shop. But competition is so interesting because it turned out to not be eBay that was our competition.

It turned out that this idea of fashion resale online was having a moment right around the time that I thought of it. I wasn't the only one. If you have a good idea, a lot of times you are not the only one having that idea. Yeah. Like it's when an idea's time has come, something really interesting happens and you see pockets of people in different cities, totally unrelated coming up with the same ideas. And early on, I would see competitors emerging and I would say, did they like hack my computer? How could we have thought of the same thing at the same time? And that's actually not uncommon, I've learned. But we ended up having 23 venture backed competitors in this category. So the category became really...

And how many of those 23, though, are still around today? There are four of us left here in the U.S., major players. There are a handful of smaller ones, but I would say that the field has narrowed down to four kind of major players in the market from that 23. And so there remains competition, but fewer, bigger competitors. Have you ever heard of a guy named Bill Gross? Yeah, totally. Yeah, he did a speech and he basically said a lot of people, they misunderstand the most important trait in a successful business and it's timing. A lot of people think it's funding or the idea, it's timing.

And I think, you know, it's hard to get that right. A lot of it comes down to luck, but a lot of it also comes down to like listening to what the consumers are saying and seeing what other people are doing and waiting for that time. And if your timing's off, even if it's the best idea in the world and you're the best team, you can be in a lot of trouble. It's completely true. I mean, you can look at our category and other categories and see that other people thought of these concepts, tried them out, but the market wasn't ready or the technology platforms weren't mature enough or the ways in which, you know, peer to peer shipping could be enabled were not fast enough to really meet the needs of the market.

And so there's been, I mean, a great example of this is YouTube. There were a ton of streaming video services on the Internet. A close friend and early supporter of TradeZ had one of these businesses, so I know. And it was like he put streaming video on the Internet almost before anybody. But it also didn't matter because the market wasn't ready. Talk to me about your morning and nightly routines i'm obsessed to hear about you know successful happy people and what they do in the mornings and at the night do you like a routine situation i don't so i'm still like a bohemian weirdo and i don't like

routines and i used to listen to um ceos talk about that and they be like, I wake up at 5am and I do a one hour workout and then I check my email and I'm like, I might, if I don't have a meeting, like roll out at 930 and lay in bed doing emails for an hour, you know? I actually don't like to have a routine. The only thing that's consistent is morning coffee. And then at night- Sparkling water, you said too. Sparkling water, only fizzy beverages and caffeinated beverages.

That's like the only rule. And I like to stay up late and work when the world is quiet. And so... No, Lauren and I have been going back and forth on the conversation. I like to get up early when the world's quiet.

She likes to get up late, but I don't think there's a right or wrong. I think it's like whatever works for you as an individual. And what I've learned over time is you can't stifle creativity. And if that's when she gets creative, if it's late at night, you told me I have to get out of the bedroom though. Well, there's a difference. I said like, it's hard to sleep with the keys like clicking next year. And I don't know what she's got like giant fingers or

something. It's just slamming these things. Last night I was up until like 3am, which is probably a bit excessive. Um, but I totally understand what you're saying.m., which is probably a bit excessive. But I totally understand what you're saying. It's just silent at night. And there's something about I'm the type of person that like I have to wrap my head around things and I just procrastinate the whole entire day until I absolutely have to fucking get it done. And there's no other option. And all of a sudden, it's like go time. Super shame. Super shame. I think that happens with all creative people i think and you can't who am i to stop it so you were in tim ferris's book yeah tribe of mentors uh or tools of titans i was in tools of titans tools okay and he's an investor what is the best advice he's given you that you just always think about oh gosh i know you're. Let me pull out my scroll. Yeah. He's given me so much good

advice. It's hard to even, uh, narrow it down. Um, I would say, um, he helped me think through a bunch of, um, branding and messaging early on that I, um, I don't think I was seen clearly enough. Tim just has an incredible knack for zooming out and distilling down messages into their most powerful form. So when he first invested, we spent a bunch of time kicking around, you know, how do we talk about TradeZ? I think some of the insights he shared were not just the insights he shared, but the questions he asked me about our brand really stimulated my creativity and allowed me to stimulate the creativity of my team. His questions, man. Yeah. He's a master at questions. He really is. What are two resources?

It can be anything that you continuously look to. It could be anything. It could be like, or not even, maybe not even. Speech, people, anything. Blog, book, podcast, anything. Or even a quote. Just something that you look to constantly in your life to get inspired or to get motivated. I'm really into a lot of artists and like historical figures.

I look to Frida Kahlo all the time. Um, she was such a unique woman with her, with a really unique story and lived really honestly and bravely, um, in her truth. So I get really inspired by her. Um, and then also I have just such a phenomenal set of investors and advisors that I keep in touch with and learn from all the time um and they've really um they've really shown me how little I know so when you get to hang out with people who are in their 60s and have done what you're doing 50 times over and have been really successful at it it's incredibly educational and also really humbling um and so i i like my my older more experienced advisors a lot and i draw a lot of humility and

learnings from my relationship it's like when a man with money meets a man with experience we use a woman in this term the man with the man with the money ends up getting the experience and the man with the experience ends up getting the money uh woman yeah it could be i i also heard one early on that really served me well when you want money ask for advice and when you want advice ask for money that really works it's a great thing especially with early investors like you don't go in and say hey i, I need money. You go in and say, Hey, I'm working on this thing. And I've got a few problems that I'm trying to solve. What are your ideas? Because until an investor feels engaged and part of it, and like they can contribute to solutions and to the vision, it's hard for them to get excited about putting their

money in. Yeah. A lot of people don't understand that it's a lot of the time it's not about the money or the check. It's about, do they feel passionate? Do they feel excited? Do they want to be a part? Like, you know, for, for a guy or a venture group or whatever that has that type of the funds to invest, how interesting could writing a check be, right? They have to be passionate about something. And I think a lot of people make a mistake where they go in and they say, uh, you know, you're gonna write me this check and I'm going to give you this money back. And it's like they're already doing that on their own, which is why they have the money in the first place. Yes.

You have to demonstrate that there's going to be a return on their investment. That's sort of the table stakes. But in my experience, the best investors are the ones who believe they have some unique perspective or value to share with you that's going to help you accelerate your business. So when you think about who you're going to meet with or talk to, it's like, how do you leverage their unique experience or expertise to help build your business? Because that's when an investor gets excited. They're like, I think I can make a return on this. And also some of the hard won knowledge that I've developed is going to be a competitive advantage in this business. That's interesting that you say that because you were talking to me before we started podcasting about achievement and how sometimes people think when they achieve certain things, they feel fulfilled.

And I was saying, oh, yeah, that reminds me of Tony Robbins. And Tony Robbins says that the best part of life is contribution. So as an investor, it would make sense that they want to contribute as opposed to just write a check. Completely, completely. I think there's, we were talking about this earlier. There's like a, when you're ambitious and you're starting, it seems like once I hit certain benchmarks of success, I'm going to be like, Oh, I made it, I feel amazing. And at least in my experience, and I've heard other people say this, when you actually get there, it's oddly less fulfilling than you would have expected. And then it turns out that the only thing to do, at least for me, that ends up being fulfilling,

is to take the knowledge and the experience that you've been lucky enough to access and use it to make a contribution to other people. I love it. And we read in your bio that it says that your team is so important to you. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah, totally. I didn't, when I started the business, I didn't consider the part of leading a business in which you become an employer. And what a great responsibility that is to the people who work for you, you know, treat them with dignity and respect, compensate them fairly, etc. starts to become, at least for me, it became really central, really important. And we really strive, even though we're crazy startup, and we're always running really fast, and there's always so much work to be done. We do our best to make sure that we're being really fair to our team. And then, I mean mean there's nothing more rewarding than watching them grow and excel and achieve

so um i think we've worked really hard to create an environment where they could do that and then seeing it happen is just the ultimate well we love sam and ashton sam and ashton who were who were among the very first here we've been in in business as trade zoo for almost six years now um and Sam and Ashton both came in like the first year or so and they got me watermelon jerky when I came in here do you remember that I'll never forget that they had the watermelon jerky lined up what's watermelon jerky oh my god you gotta try it it's so good it's, so basically it's one ingredient and it's dried watermelon and there's nothing else in it. And it's in jerky strips and

you get it and it tastes like fruit snacks, but all it is is just dehydrated watermelon. That sounds amazing. Although not as amazing as what I thought it was, which was beef jerky watermelon flavor. That sounds good. That sounds, I could get on board with that. That's either, yeah. It sounds good. Watermelon glazed beef jerky. What is some bad advice you've heard along the way? We've talked about good advice.

What's something that you're just like, no. Oh, there's so much of it. There's just so much of it. Where do we start? And how do you navigate it? Knowing what you know now. Obviously, it's got to kind of it. Where do we start? And how do you navigate it? Um, knowing what you know now, obviously it's good to kind of put yourself back a little bit, you know, take yourself back to a different time. Oh gosh. I mean, I, I will say in the, I feel like maybe

I've mentally blocked it, but in the early stages, especially you'll get a lot of bad advice. Um, and the, how do you discern it? It's, it's really hard. I, I, I think it's important to be constantly soliciting feedback and advice from everyone you meet. Like if you're an entrepreneur and you're not pitching to strangers on the street, like you got to do more of that. All the feedback is valuable, but you will get what I think of as feedback whiplash, where two seemingly competent, you know, smart people will tell you to do the exact opposite thing. And I don't have a miracle answer for how to deal with that. I think that staying in touch with your own intuition is very important and hard to do

when you're getting a lot of advice. But doing that matters. And then remembering that there are no absolute truths. You know, nobody who's giving you advice has a crystal ball. If they did, they'd be a lot richer and probably not hanging out with you. But it's also important not to just ask your mom or your dad or your best friend. Totally. Get out and solicit all the feedback you can find.

And then maybe sometimes there are patterns in the feedback where you go gosh four people said this now maybe i should really listen to it um sometimes something will just resonate with you and you'll kind of know it's true and other times advice will feel a little wrong to you and i would say the only the best you can do is to listen to that and to do something, whether it's meditation or exercise, whatever you do that keeps you in touch with you and keep tuning into your intuition and trusting it. It doesn't mean it's always right.

It just means you don't have any other way to navigate it. And I think that doesn't always need to be when you're – I think it can also be while you're evolving the business or the platform. For example, we'll use this podcast. For example, when we started, it was definitely a little rough around the edges. Lauren and I were not the best. We're still working. Your middle name was Interrupt.

Yeah, still improving. But a lot of what we did to get feedback was didn't ask people around us. We asked the listenership and said, what do you guys like? What do you dislike? And at some points, it was painful. And like, oh, that sucks. It feels like a punch in the stomach, but taking that feedback and saying, okay, like 10 people are saying the same thing. Let's address it. Yes. I want to end this on a positive note. What does success mean to you?

I heard a quote once, um, that has always stuck with me, but I'm not going to attribute it well. So someone, some mystery person said, the measure of your success is not how much money you make or how much power you get when that window of opportunity opens for you. The measure of your success will be when that window of opportunity opens, how many hands can you grab to pull through with you? And I think for me, that's the measure of success. If I can look around the world and see that I had a small part in helping other people get closer to what they want.

Um, that's really all there is. You'll feel fulfilled. Yeah. Yeah. Where can everyone find TradeZ? Pimp yourself out. TradeZ.com on the interwebs.

But I highly recommend that you download our apps for iOS or Android. We're just TradeZ, T-R-A-D-E-S-Y, in the App Store. Unless you hate saving like 90% designer clothing in which case and fashion then don't download our app and i would also recommend that everybody um think about becoming a seller you probably have some stuff in your closet that another woman would value or want and selling is like a miracle it's like you're getting money for things that were just sitting there and you can use it to shop again um or to start your new business or to start your new business. We have women who are selling on trade Z in order to fund their businesses, which I think is just

the last time we met when we came here, there's, there's women that do this full time. Oh yeah. And really like they're able to quit their day jobs and like fully do this full time. Totally. I think we've talked about that in the past on this podcast. That's amazing. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. We had a mom and daughter whose house was in foreclosure and they, they used, um, their great fashion sense to go out and source like under, underpriced clothing and, um, outlets,

et cetera. And then resold at a profit on tradesy and they were able to keep their house. Wow. That's amazing. Wow. Super cool. That is a cool story. I know. I need to Instagram,

uh, Instagram at trade Z. Okay. T R a D E S Y. Okay. You could also follow me. I'm real boring, but it's just my name at Tracy Denunzio.

And I want to tell the audience too. I am a seller on trade Z. I've been a seller on TradeZ for three years and I have my own online store. Um, it's under Lauren Everett's, right? Okay. I'm just want to make sure. And, um, it's a lot of clothes that I've worn once that are really cute. Um, yeah. So check me out on TradeZ too. So if you go to the site or the app and you type in Lauren Everett, your closet will come up. I love it. How can we get Michael to have a tradesy situation?

His closet looks like. Do men go in there? Probably not as much. You need something. We don't officially have a men's category yet. But we find that a lot of our women are listing their men's stuff anyway. So we're going to launch a separate men's category soon just so that everything's in the right place.

But you can list already. Please can you do something with the men thing? His closet is like... Lauren's going to start offloading my stuff. No, your closet is so absurd. I mean, it's just... I got to... Yeah, I got to...

I've never seen someone with so many boots. I like boots. I start taking things slowly and bringing it like... And like to like give to my brother. He doesn't know it. You think I don't know it? No, I do notice. And Michael's like, where's my boots and i'm like babe i noticed everything

because i'm like that was my favorite pair and it's gone his voice gets like 20 octaves higher though and he's like where's my boots all right let's not make this about me thank you for coming on jesse that was so fun thank you so much for having me guys i'm going to do a giveaway for Gary V's book before I go all you have to do is tell me about your blog or business on my latest Instagram and I will pick two of you to win crushing it by Gary V like I said I'm featured in it the skinny confidentials featured twice which is super exciting just leave your business or your blog on my latest Instagram. I can't wait to see what you're all about. Also, do you want to get a short email from me? Tipsy Thursday is a quick email, kind of like a TSC aperitif with lots of value that includes five tips from me, my favorite song

of the week, show book, wellness tip, random tricks, and obviously lots of easy beauty hacks. To check it out, just go to theskinnyconfidential.com and click Lauren Everts and then subscribe. Drop your email in the box and you guys will get the next one. It's always something different and fun and fresh. Lastly, if you rate and review the podcast, make sure you screenshot it. Email it to asklauren at theskinnyconfidential.com and we will send you my five top secret beauty hacks straight to your inbox. Thank you guys for listening. We love you. We'll see you next Tuesday. This episode was brought to you by Zola.com. Zola is the wedding company that will do anything for

love. They are reinventing the wedding planning process and registering experience to make the happiest moments in couples lives even happier From engagement to weddings and decorating your first home, Zola is there, combining compassionate customer service with modern tools and technology. They have an app so you can do it all off your phone. All in the service of love. To sign up with Zola and receive a $50 credit towards your registry, go to zola.com slash skinny.

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