The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - BONUS - Our Panel At SWSW - How To Find Your Niche & Create A Successful Business

Episode Date: June 10, 2023

To connect with CLEARSTEM Skincare click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE Subscribe to our YouTube channel HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential Visit clearstemskincare.com and use code SKINNY at checkout for 15% off your first purchase.   Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Welcome back, everybody, to a bonus episode of the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is an episode that is centered around a conversation we had with our friends over at ClearStem. Danielle and Kaylee have both been on this show multiple times. And we had this conversation with them during South by Southwest at Soho House here in Austin, Texas. And we thought that it would be nice for people that couldn't attend that event to be able to hear it here today. So it's obviously not one of our regularly programmed episodes, but nonetheless thought it might be valuable for

people that weren't able to attend to listen to it here. We've done a ton with ClearStem as of late. They have two phenomenal episodes that have been on this show, and they were just also the premier sponsor at our Dear Media IRL Summit. So love talking to these girls. Had a great time here for South by Southwest. Before we get into it, we'd definitely like to thank once again, Clear Stem, Gut Personal, Toto, and Dream Pops for being part of this event. So check it out. Here we go. Bonus episode, Skinny Confidential, Him and Her times Clear Stem. This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her. Okay, guys. Welcome to the ClearStem Skincare, the Skinny Confidential live podcast event. We're so excited to have everybody here. I would love to introduce our beautiful guests today, you guys. These two power duos have truly been changing

the game. Honestly, you guys both have just built these incredible brands, these incredible cult followings with what you guys have done. You guys have really just nailed down what it means to have a successful brand that offers so much value to your community, but also in what you're bringing to the table in terms of business. And we wanted to really cultivate this event today and bring everyone together to really talk about that and to really discuss how did these two incredible brands build such a cult following,

build such incredible products? What is the secret sauce? And the best part about this panel too, is that we're actually going to open it up to you guys to ask any question you would like. A live Q&A, ask them whatever you would like and really get the honest truth and answers from everything behind the scenes, which is so cool. I mean, how many opportunities do you get to sit down with founders and just major personal brands like all of you guys and just really get to see behind the scenes? I'm so excited for this.

First and foremost, let's go ahead and just have you guys go around and introduce yourselves. Lauren, we can start with you. I'm Lauren Bostic. I'm the founder of The Skinny Confidential, and I am a co-host with my husband of the podcast. I guess in this context, I'm Michael Bostic. I'm Lauren's husband, co-host. My name is Kaylee Christina. I'm the co-founder of ClearStem Skincare and chief growth officer. So I oversee all brand growth aspect of building ClearStem. Yeah, you do.

I'm Danielle Gronach, CEO, co-founder of ClearStem and owner of San Diego Acne Clinic. Beautiful, you guys. Okay, so the whole purpose behind this event is the difference between just building up an audience and actually building a cult-like following. Lauren, I want to kick this off with you and Michael. You guys have really built up a true personal brand, really starting, you know, you started with a blog. Michael, you've been a serial entrepreneur. What is the difference between just building an audience and building a cult-like following? I mean, I think there's a huge difference. I think someone that's built a cult-like following gets people here. I don't

mean just here, but the ground, feet. I think someone who has a following, it's just kind of like a scroll situation. They might have a lot of followers, but there's not a lot of purpose, depth, and meaning, and we can get into exactly what that means. We think about this a lot. I think building an audience is easy to do on a single platform, but building a community and a platform and a customer base or consumer base, that's something that's much more difficult. And the way I think about it is building an audience is that you could do that on a platform. Building a community and a platform and our customer base or consumer base, that's something that's much more difficult. And the way I think about it is building an audience is that you can do that on a platform, building a community, that community follows you wherever you go, whether it's an e-com site, whether it's a podcast, it's a blog, it's a live event. And that's a different thing.

Very few creators and entrepreneurs and businesses are able to do that. But to me, that's how I kind of think about defining it. Yeah. It's almost kind of like that loyalty, right? Like there's so much trust and so much validity built from that, where it's like anything that you guys go to do, whether it's an event, whether it's a podcast, you're kind of bringing them with you because you've already established that trust with them,

which I think is really unique, especially in today's day with social media. Kaylee and Danielle, I want to ask you guys, how do you create that real feeling of community? You guys have done so much with education and working with actually one-on-one consumers where it's like you're walking them through their skin journey. You're walking them through understanding what toxic skincare looks like. How do you create that real feeling kind of outside of the brand and really being able to connect with your consumer? I think there's a huge difference between look at me, look at me and come with me. So the look at me energy is just more talking at people.

And we've always done a come along with me. Danielle and I both have struggled with really, really bad cystic acne in the past. We're very acne prone naturally. So everything we educate on is everything we've been through and struggled with and then turned it into building a brand. So we don't just say, here's the information. We say, we've been there, we've done it. This is what we figured out to get to this point. And we connect with people individually. We listen to people's stories.

We hear them. We make them feel seen in the struggles that they're going through. And then offer our research and advice and everything we've found getting to the root cause of acne to then help us the same way we helped ourselves. Agree. And I think it's really important to be one with your customer at all times. And it's so much more than just a product or, Hey, do this, you know, two steps here. And like, there's so much more to it because especially with what we do, it's such a psychological impact, like your skin, how you

see yourself, how that shows up in your life, your relationships, like understanding the impact and like what we've both gone through. Like we're not solving acne. We're not selling skincare. We're like helping people through navigating something that is like pretty devastating and can really affect their day-to-day lives. Beautiful. Absolutely. I think that you guys both share this synergy of just value, right? I feel like you guys all show up in this, in this tone of really showing up for your community, not just again, with that kind of look at me energy, but really more so of how, what am I sharing that's worth value? What am I educating on? I want to ask you guys, what was maybe, or what was either A, your biggest mistake you felt like when you were learning how to build a community on the brand side and even on the personal brand side? And maybe what are some mistakes that you guys see right now or some

corrections that you guys are seeing with brands where they, maybe they're not really capitalizing on being able to connect with their, with their community. We're going to pass this around. I think, um, a lot of creators and brands make a mistake thinking they need to be everywhere because they see all sorts of other creators and brands being everywhere. For example, I'm really not in a lot of places. I don't have a big social following and I don't spend a lot of time on a lot of different platforms, but I do a lot of podcasting, obviously. And from that medium, we've been able to build a very sizable, not only business, but audience and create other businesses and other ventures from it. So I think it's a mistake when brands think they need to do everything and be everywhere

because they're not able to actually do any of those things that effectively well, and they spread themselves thin. So I think for brands, for creators, for people trying to build an audience or a customer base, really focus in on what you do well in a couple places and in places where you're going to be passionate and kind of shut off the noise when you hear other people saying you need to be everywhere because it's just not realistic. I mean, if you imagine me doing TikTok dance videos, it just, it wouldn't resonate, but I sure can't talk. So podcast. I think it's really important to make your consumer the hero of the story. And there's so much content out there where it is like what you mentioned earlier, Kaylee, like look at me. Instead of providing value, and I think even going

further than value, every single piece of content that I touch, I try not to waste someone's time. And I talk about this a lot because if you look at an Uber or a Postmates, they're all saving time. Everyone wants to save time. And the same sentiment should be applied to your content. If you're posting stuff that is just wasting people's time, it's just a distraction. And so I think constantly making the consumer the hero and constantly making sure that every little piece of anything that you touch when you put out has some kind of takeaway. And it can be like something like just makes them laugh. Something really simple is fine. It just can't really waste their time. I like that you mentioned even making them laugh because something

that we started, this was actually Danielle's idea a few weeks ago. Like some of our content can be really heavy. Like we're talking about acne a lot. We're talking a lot about the psychological effects people are having to make changes in their diet or supplement routine. And we just wanted, we wanted people to be able to come to the clear stem page. We focus mainly on Instagram. We are across other accounts, but like what we said, we know what we're good at. So we love podcasting and we focus a ton on Instagram and that's where our audience is. But Danielle came up with an idea a few weeks ago. It was called Friday funnies and they've been the biggest hit. And it's really people just sharing funny skincare memes. And then our favorite one, they win a whole thing of clear stem, but it's just been a way to lighten our page, to have fun, to drive

value in a different way and more of a fun light way and bring it away from sometimes the heaviness that dealing with skin issues can bring. I love that so much. And I feel like, again, that's bringing this human component to what you guys are doing. I think with social media, there's so many questions, right? We live in such a social world. We live so behind the screen. And what you guys have been able to do to reach the masses while also still humanizing your brand and showing up with Friday Funnies, things like that, I feel like it brings this person back to the brand. And I feel like we're seeing that. Gone are the days where we've trusted these really big businesses that mom and dad

trusted, the, you know, the kind of like old giants. And now what we're craving is kind of seeing the human behind that. When you guys look at marketing, when you guys look at brand building, when you look at what platforms should you be on or where to start when you're wanting to build that community, what does that look like for you? Is it finding, you know, the consumer first? Is it leaning into trends? Like, what does that look like? Coming back to being one with the customer, it's like, where would we go? Like if we were at the stage in the journey where the people are that we're trying to reach, like, where would

they be looking? So it's starting there. It can be a lot of different channels. Lucky for us, you know, Instagram is great. Podcasting is also great. I think it's just really like, how do you get the succinct, actionable information that people need in order to understand your brand and to be like, oh, that's what they do. And to your point, not waste their time and then get that to them in the venue and on the stream that they are most likely to see. It can look a lot of different ways. I would just lean into what you're good at. I think a lot of people, like Michael said earlier, try to be everywhere. Do you like to talk? Do you like to be on camera? Do you like to write? I would really,

really have an honest conversation with yourself that's extremely self-aware. I would ask your friends, your family members, whatever that looks like. And then I would lean into that medium. And if you do want to end up launching a brand, I would really content market on that medium. So say you want to launch water bottles. Maybe you try 16 different waters on your page every week. Lean into what you're going to launch. So for me, when I knew that I wanted to launch an ice roller, it was like the story was so much about swelling from a surgery that I went through and being puffy. And then I also engaged the customer and I talked to them through DM and I talked to the audience and that was a big problem. I saw that. So I was definitely content marketing before I launched the product. I think that's really important when you're building a brand.

And that ice roller, I just have to say, has saved my face a couple times. I mean, along with the bounce back from ClearStem, it's just a whole duo. I mean, it's a great alignment we have going on here. You guys, we're going to open this up to you. So what we're going to do here is we're going to take some live Q&A. And I would love for everyone to just really politely maybe raise your hand if you do have a question for our lovely founders here. And then we're going to go ahead and walk the mic over to you guys to ask the question. So if anyone has a question, please raise your hand. Beautiful. Hi, thanks for a great panel. My name is Ansley and I'm

with Dallas Heights 101. Our team is always talking about how consumer interests and criticism and feedback changes on a continuous basis. As founders, what would you say is the biggest consumer need or trend right now? I think about this from a different reference point, but I think most people just want to feel acknowledged, right? I mean, especially in a world where you have so many people sharing so much information and spewing so many different things. I think if you can make a consumer or a listener or an audience member feel acknowledged and feel that you have their interests at heart, they're going to be loyal to whatever platform or brand you have. When Lauren and I put out content, we always say like, you know, we get to interview a

lot of interesting people, but it's done selfishly and selflessly at the same time. Meaning, yes, we get to have these people and have this information, but the idea is that we're serving our community or our listenership, something that they can take for their own life. And so I think if people feel the intention is there to help and serve them, they will always support your brand. It's when it becomes self-serving and businesses or brands or influencers or creators make it about themselves, it's really hard to retain a loyal listenership, a loyal following, a loyal customer base. If that makes sense. I don't know if that fully answered your question. To go off of that too, I've been seeing

a lot of better, not best for people. So I think best of the best can get really overwhelming for people, especially when they're just starting maybe a wellness journey or improving parts of their lives. Like Lauren, I've seen you grow at the skinny confidential, like tips and tricks. Like where can I just enhance little, little aspects of my life as I grow with different consumer-based brands with us? Like there's, we can get into like really, really nitty gritty with acne, but that's so overwhelming for people. If we go deep into like mold toxicity and heavy metal toxicity, it gets so overwhelming and just inundated, like information overload for people. And so keeping it like, what's, what's the baseline for people? Where can people start? And if they get inspired to go, you know, past that, go for it. But consumer brands that are

just helping people better their lives, feel heard and just enhance different aspects rather than trying to go too extreme. Any other questions? So this is more podcast related, but specifically as a podcast, how do you feel you specifically are able to engage with your audiences, maybe give them content that is really relevant to them, or even in another light, what do you feel has been the largest learning curve or transition or moment for you? With content, with the podcast, I'm constantly listening. I'm always listening. I'm in my DMs. I'm screenshotting to my team. I'm in the comments screenshotting. I'm paying attention to what's relevant without it being overly trendy. I'm also looking for people that bring something other than a following. And what I mean by that is, what is the niche here? Maybe something that's so random that you would never think of, but you really want to hear on

a podcast. That's where I'm looking. I like to look in the white space and see what there is. But then I also... I'm not mad at like a huge guest that maybe hasn't been shown in a certain light that I want to show the guest in. So I'm always looking to see where I can take something that's different than what everyone else does. I noticed that sometimes when I log on TikTok and I do this myself too, it's like everyone's constantly doing what's trendy. And I think we're going to have a moment. I think it's about to happen where people start to actually go against the trend. And I'm really excited for that. And I think if you're out there and you want to start a

podcast, that's how I would advise you to start it. It's like, how is your idea different than what everyone else is doing? And also, does it feel like the person who's listening to your podcast is at dinner with you? Does it feel casual? The podcast where it feels super preachy, or there's a lot of judgment, or maybe it's even like really, really produced, I feel like are going out. But that's just my opinion. Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of things I could say here. I think in podcasts in particular, and I obviously outside of Lauren and I show see a lot of different talent come through the Dear Media doors. I always tell people that it really

doesn't matter who your guest is. I mean, and I see maybe some people don't want me to say this, but I see all the analytics for everybody's show and all the numbers and the guests kind of move up and down. But really what the audience is coming back for is the hosts. And if you don't develop a relationship with your hosts and make, or with your audience and make them feel like you're there for them and that you're putting them there first, no big name guest is going to save you. Lauren and I have interviewed, you know, all sorts of different people. And what we found the common theme is it's the people that come on the show that provide a tangible takeaway for the audience that we've cultivated. That's what resonates well with the audience. And I think about this

a lot. Lauren and I talk about longevity all the time. What actually is going to build a sustainable long-term channel or brand? And first, it's got to be something that you're excited about doing every day. There's no way we could do the podcast for seven years if we weren't excited. And second, again, the consumer, the audience, they have to feel like you're putting them first. If they ever feel like it's just about you and about the audience or about the brand... I mean, I don't know how many brands are in here, but I've shut down tons of brands being like, you don't like it. You don't like me. You don't like that. Fine. There's other people that have come by. So I think people need to really think

about this when they're building any kind of creative endeavors. Like what does this look like in the long run? How are you serving an audience in the long run? How is it not self-serving? How are you making it more than just about yourself? What's the conversation? What's the takeaway? Um, because John, Sue and Sally, the big name with the publicist, isn't going to do it for you. I would love to know what you guys would tell yourselves 10 years ago, like before or longer than that, before you had the success that you have today, especially in today's world with so much noise going on around us, how to like stay authentic to yourselves and also enjoy the moment and like the process? I probably would tell myself to say no to distraction.

There's so much distraction going on everywhere you look. And I think, and we've had this conversation recently on our podcast a lot, you have to say no to create space for the yes. So when I first started 13 years ago, I said yes to everything. And I mean, I said yes to everything. And I mean, I said yes to everything. And I do think that that really helped me to get sort of to where I want to be as a benchmark. But then it started to become a problem to say yes to everything. It's like users are spread thin. And I think right now with all these different platforms,

it's very easy to say yes to all of them. It's very easy to say yes to a bunch of interviews or whatever it is. I think you really have to protect your space and protect your peace and say no and say yes to the things that really are going to make movement. Also, I think right now, if you just are starting, you feel like you have to post every single day. I did that too. But then it becomes a moment where you're like, okay, I cannot post every single day sort of for the rest of my life. So I really think a lot about making a game plan for myself of moving forward. What does that look like? Maybe you take a day off. Maybe you take a week off, whatever it is. I really, as I go on for longevity reasons,

want to make sure that I'm having space to rejuvenate so I can be effective when I am actually online. I'd say probably two things. And I'm looking around the room and it seems like everybody's 30s of 25. And I'll be nice. And I always say to people I'm working with that you learn patience by being impatient. I mean, so many of you I'm looking at, you have so much time, right? Like, and you're probably putting a lot of pressure on yourselves to get it done all right now. That's a mistake that I made really early in my career. And it's, you know, you forget to contextualize how much time you actually have, you know, you, you could double your life right now and still be young and still have plenty of time.

There's that. And then I think the other thing as an entrepreneur is people really fail to contextualize that the business, the finance, none of that really matters without health, happiness, your family. I know it sounds cliche, but some of my teams over here, our teams over here, and they always ask why I'm so calm when shit's going on. I mean, if you think about the last four years, it hasn't been the easiest for operators, but I don't think there's ever really been a time that I've been rattled. And it's because I have the context that tomorrow, you know, it could be all gone, right? My kids are safe. My wife's here. Like I have my health. And so many people put that on the back burner and waste their time to chase some kind of business or idea. And the problem

with that is you actually don't get further as an entrepreneur with that mentality because you're always stressed. You can't think clearly. You can't make good decisions. When the pandemic happened and everybody was freaking out, I was basically just like this because I started thinking like, this is family. That's what's important. You need to start to see your health and all that diminish. And so I guess my advice there is like, be patient. Know you have time and take care of your health. Because if you do those things, the other stuff kind of falls in place. But if you don't take care of yourself, someone who's going to come in, that's calm, cool and collected is going to eat your lunch. So that's my advice. Stay calm, stay cool, take care of your health first and prioritize what's actually important in life, which is your family, your friends, your health, all of that.

I think as everyone's growing, we're all trying to figure out what we're passionate about and what gets us really excited every single day. And I think that can be really overwhelming for the type of person that knows they're passionate and know they want to either build something, create something, or just work their way up and working for a certain brand or a certain company. And so I think it's really important to remember that figuring out your passion, what you're really good at does take time. And you have think it's really important to remember that figuring out your passion, what you're really good at does take time. And you have to sometimes try out a bunch of different things and just constantly scrolling through social media and looking at everyone's bio and just assuming they have everything figured out just because they created one

niche of something. I think it's good to put blinders on and just continually test for yourself and what makes you happy. And then continually leaning into that, honing your craft on it and figuring out what brings you the most passion and then build that into your life. Love that. What would you say to yourself 10 years ago? Constantly be expanding and constantly be sharpening your own sword. And that can look a lot of different ways. And I think it's really good to know what you're good at and more importantly, know what you're not good at and be totally like excited to learn that too. I think

that's really helpful, especially if you want to start something big, like nobody's good at everything. Like Kaylee and I are very good at different, where some stuff we overlap on and then some stuff I suck at and you're amazing at and it's like important to know that and then you can celebrate the things that you're good at and focus on those and then you know exactly what kind of partner you might need or what kind of people you want to hire and that is just as important as anything else and then also just who you surround yourself with it is so true that you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with and especially sum of the five people you spend the most time with.

And especially like the top three people you spend the most time with. Those people make sure you undoubtedly know that they have your back and that they are expanding you. Whether it's inspiring you to be a better version of yourself or giving you like valuable feedback. Like, you know, every relationship is a mirror and it's like, what can you learn about

yourself from the people that you're with and how are you impacting them? The quality of your relationships really does dictate your longevity and how well you do everything else. So investing in that. And then with that comes like emotional health, like everyone who's had a childhood and has a pulse needs a therapist, like for real, like therapist, spiritual coach, some combination of the two. Like we have a corporate therapist who like also comes to our retreats, but you know, is also an executive coach, like seek mentors in every capacity that you possibly can. And, um, just keep growing every day and everything is a teachable moment. Everything is learnable, especially the bad stuff. So just kind of go with the flow and

just be grateful for the experience and the good stuff will come. Also, maybe for the guys out there, nobody cares about your bottle service tab. Wow. I, you guys, you are just so powerful and I bring so much to the table and I just want to thank each and every one of you guys for just sitting up here and just sharing your truth and sharing your wisdom today. I also want to look at all of you guys and just thank you guys so much for coming. This has been so awesome. And we, I can feel like I can speak collectively for all four of you, but community is everything. Being, being and showing up for you guys in this present moment and really being able to kind of cultivate that relationship, being able to bring that value, being able to have an actual like contact with you guys,

I think is just so special. And even just looking at this room and looking at all the incredible people that have showed up today and just having these conversations and overhearing these conversations is so powerful, impactful. So I want to thank everyone today for showing up. We will be having a beautiful cocktail hour after this. Um, but thank you guys and what a wonderful panel and what a wonderful week. Yes. Oh, okay. I thought you were leaning. I was like, yes. Do you want to say something, Lauren? But thank you guys so much. And, um, yeah, cheers. Let's have some cocktails and some drinks.