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Hello, it's Dune here, your host and hype girl. I am so excited to bring you this special mini series on the pod that is centered around failure. The next three weeks that we're going to be diving in and reflecting on some of our favorite episodes that are all about embracing failure and turning it into your greatest asset, which
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Because we've all been there or we all will be there. Failing is literally just part of the journey, whether we like it or not. I remember for me when I was building Kinks, my D2C jewellery brand, you know, it didn't go as planned. We closed it down and that could have been viewed as a failure for sure.
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But for me, it turned out to be this critical learning and this critical experience that really shaped where I am now. And it actually got me to figure out what I actually wanted to do. It led me to Female Startup Club. So this miniseries is really about highlighting similar journeys from other founders who have faced their own challenges and emerged stronger than ever.
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Tune in over the next few weeks to hear these gritty stories and the valuable lessons that come from failure. Whether you're navigating a tough phase or you simply want to know that you're not alone, these episodes are going to remind you that every setback is a setup for a comeback and we all have it in us to fail forward.
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And if you have a story to share all about failure, we would love to hear it in the Facebook group. Come in, join us and be part of the conversation. Alrighty, let's dive in. Welcome back. Here are the six quick questions.
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Question number one being, what is your why? Yeah, I think my why is definitely to stop preventable suffering, honestly. I've seen firsthand what illness can do to a person, to their loved ones. It doesn't have to be that way. So much of modern disease right now, we call them lifestyle diseases, diseases of civilization, Western diseases. These are the names that are given to people
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cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, obesity, diabetes, like these things are controllable. There's genetics, sure, they play a part, but the science of epigenetics is finding that it's the lifestyle that we lead, the environment that we're in that can either activate those genes or keep them on the down low, essentially. So choosing health now is
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the bedrock for feeling good, performing better, living a longer, happier life. And with Providence Meals, that's that's my why I want to give people these tools to help them reach their fullest potential, to really know what it feels like to be well. I think as we age, we we just sort of forget how it feels to have a ton of energy when you're a kid, you know, or.
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to be the weight you want to be without thinking about it all of the time, or to just have like nice skin and just, you know, look, your, look your age or even younger. I just want to help people feel that way. And that's then their motivation to do that for others, for themselves and to, and to, and just really like that leads to a better world, right? If everybody's feeling healthy, then I think some of the, just the,
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tragedy and suffering and drama and even just like bad moods start to go away when you're, when you're living, you know, your quote, best life. Totally. Oh my gosh. That's so true. Isn't it? Question number two is what do you think has been the number one marketing moment that's made your business pop? Well, our nationwide launch this year really took our business to the next
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me doing my thing, you know, for a long time. And even with the celebrities and with Dr. Frank Lipman recommending us,
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I think it was really this year that has been the moment where we finally were able to say to all these people across the country who have been emailing us for years saying like, when are you going to, you know, when are you going to come to Kansas? When are you going to come to Texas? When are you going to be in Illinois? Like, it's so exciting for us to be able to say like, yeah, you can order it online now. You can go onto our website and try our Feel Good Figs, try a cleanse program. Like, that has been amazing.
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the biggest like marketing moment that for us, like marketing our nationwide availability has been huge. That's so cool. Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What are you reading? What do you listen to? What are you subscribing to? So I guess normally I would say, um,
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I'm part of a lot of cool networks of female founders and that's gone online. So I still, I still have my network, which is great, but I, I love surrounding myself with smart women who have maybe gotten a little bit further in their business than I'm at right now. I love learning from those women who have been through the trenches themselves. But I, I,
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Love podcasts. I listen to podcasts all the time. I'd say that's probably where I hang out the most to get smarter. The Doctor's Pharmacy by Mark Hyman, Dr. Mark Hyman. The Expanded Podcast with Lacey Phillips, where she works on a lot of just like kind of focusing on your self-worth. Food Trainers is a great one. Fellow nutritionists that I know, Lauren Slayton has a great Food Trainers podcast. And for business, I love the pitch and how I built this on NPR with Guy Raz.
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I just love hearing other founder stories relating their experiences to my own learning something new. And then as far as books, I've been reading so much during the pandemic, which has been another silver lining of the pandemic because I felt like I never had the time to read before. So I've been reading some fiction, but a lot of nonfiction. I've been reading. I just finished Eat a Peach by David Chang, which talks a lot about his upbringing in Northern Virginia as a Korean, as a set of immigrants. Yeah.
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And I am also Korean and a daughter of immigrants who grew up in Northern Virginia. So that's been really, really great to read, as well as Minor Feelings by Kathy Park Hong, another Asian-American who has her book is amazing. She puts into words a lot of the feelings and emotions that I had growing up Asian and a predominantly white society that I didn't know how to articulate or that I was even allowed to feel.
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my own upbringing and seeing how that has really shaped who I am today. So it's been, yeah, it's been great listening and reading and just having access to so many smart people in a way that I didn't even, I guess, I guess they were always there. But something about the pandemic time has sort of opened up this world to me of just really like learning and also looking inwards.
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Yeah, that's like self-care of doing the things that you want to do, but you haven't necessarily made time for, you know, prior to this year. I totally get that. I've been doing exactly the same. Question number four is how do you win the day? And that's around your AM and PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and productive and successful.
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Yeah, I know, I definitely know the days that I haven't won those mornings when I wake up and somehow find myself on email and Slack at like 7am and then not really getting off until 7pm. So being on the West Coast, I feel like I work a much longer day now in many ways. But when I win the day, it's a completely different start. I will wake up, I feel rested because I've gotten to bed.
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early enough the night before gotten a good solid seven and a half, eight hours to maybe 10 minutes of yoga, followed by another 10 minutes of meditation. I have a pandemic puppy. We actually we got him last Christmas. So before the pandemic started, but he's been my buddy throughout all of this, as well as, of course, my husband and kids. So taking him out for a walk early in the morning and getting that fresh air and that sunlight early in the day.
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And then, you know, it is a lot of work being a founder and an entrepreneur. It means being on the laptop quite a bit. But at the end of the day, if I can create a healthy meal for my family with lots of green vegetables, you know, sit and have that nice family dinner and talk about the things that I want.
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care about with my kids that they don't always share because now they're 12 and 15. So they're, they're starting to be much more into their friends and chatting with mom and dad. But I find that family dinner is sometimes we have some really great conversations around various topics at dinner. And that's, that's definitely winning the day when I feel like I can connect with my kids and husband that way. And then
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Trying to get off the phone at night is a terrible habit of just thinking I'll pick it up and look at one thing or another. And then next thing I've been scrolling on Instagram for half an hour. So putting my phone down and picking up one of those books that I have been devouring lately or listening to a podcast or maybe meditating again or journaling.
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Those are those are really good days. I feel like I pat myself on the back. Oh, and then I should mention to kind of if I don't have like a formal sit down meditation at night. I love my skincare routine lately. So my nighttime skincare routine has turned into like self care pampering session meditation all in one. So I've been doing facial gua sha, which is I don't know if you know what that is. It's like this.
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you basically like rub a stone across your skin. It's very soothing and it kind of breaks up the fascia, like a tight jaw. And then Koreans love the 10 care, like 10 step skincare routine. So I don't do quite 10 steps, but you know, I do enjoy putting the products on, patting them in and just sort of massaging my skin and relaxing. So that's when I can fit that in, that definitely feels like a win as well.
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Yeah, goodness. That sounds like heaven. I'm lucky if I do like a two-step routine, my skincare at nighttime. I need to get back to being better at that. I actually found something that I started doing in the pandemic. Before we got on this call, or before we started recording, I was telling you my addiction to my phone is just so serious these days. But something that my husband was like, you have to start doing this because he's been doing it for ages. But
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I downloaded the Kindle app to my phone. So every time I picked up my phone, instead of looking at social media or something, I was also able to just read for 10 minutes. Or like if I was commuting somewhere, like on a train, I'd just be able to like, you know, look at my phone like I wanted to, but actually enjoy my book. And I found that to be such a helpful, you know, moment of pause from social media, but to also enjoy something and you get that fix of still being on your phone. I thought it was, I thought it was very clever and well overdue that I hadn't done that yet.
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Perfect. That's exactly what I did. I actually put the Kindle app on my phone and I put it in the same spot on my phone where I normally had Instagram so that that muscle memory of my thumb just going straight to that location was actually hitting the Kindle app first. Oh my God, I did exactly the same. I took social media off my homepage altogether. At first I actually deleted my Facebook, but I put my Instagram to the back and then I realized I needed my Facebook as well. So...
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But yes, love that. It's a great tip. Yeah. The addiction is real, though. It's a struggle. It's so real. Oh, my gosh. It's sick, isn't it? Where were we? Question number five. If you only had a thousand dollars left in your business bank account, where would you spend it?
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Oh boy, a thousand? Well, I wonder what had happened to bring us to this point. What were the steps that were taken that got me there? Well, first, I definitely take some deep breaths. And then I guess, honestly, I would give it to my employees. I assume that that means that we're not in a good place. There's only a thousand left. I'd give it to my employees and then I would sit down. I would figure out like what went wrong.
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and how to fix it. Because I think that's probably a characteristic of many entrepreneurs is like, when you're in the rock bottom, you, you get up and you keep going. So I, you know, whether that would be starting over, or I'm not sure what, but
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But certainly, certainly I give it to the people who had gotten to me, helped me get to where I am today, which is all of those wonderful cooks and dishwashers and porters in the kitchen who are just, you know, slaving over a hot stove to make sure that everybody can eat well. And the delivery drivers can get into it. It's everybody on time. Like that's that's theirs. That those last dollars are definitely theirs.
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Amazing. And last question, question number six is how do you deal with failure? And that can be around a personal experience that you've had or just your general mindset and approach.
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Yeah, I think that that experience that I mentioned before of opening another business and then going through all this financial drama and legal bullshit, it was that was probably the biggest failure I'd had up to in my life. And that point, I had really invested all of my time and money and energy into something. And at the end of the day, I salvaged it. I was able to sell my share of the business to a chef who wanted to open his own restaurant. So it kind of it kind of worked out, maybe not so much financially at the end, but it
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I felt like I could say I had done my best and walked away from it. And I think, like I mentioned before, I took away so many lessons from that experience that to me now failure, I don't, it's hard, but I don't have as many negative connotations with the word failure anymore. Failure is learning. Failure is how you learn, you know, what not to do next time. So that's how I deal with it. I have a, I reframe it. I reframe it to being education towards future success.
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Totally. Goodness. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today, Carol. I've loved chatting with you and learning about what you're building and what you're creating for people around America. Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure being here talking to you.
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Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
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And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
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As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.