Attorney to Entrepreneur

Speaker 1 0:23

Hello everyone . Welcome again to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by MarketingOpscom , powered by the MoPros Joined today . We got all three of us again . This is two in a row . Naomi , mike , say hello , hello .

Speaker 2 0:35

Hello , I'm getting a chance to see Naomi's like a thermometer and or thermostat , rather in the background , and it just flashed like 19 degrees and I was like that's free Celsius .

Speaker 1 0:47

Oh right Right still freezing for me that's still that's . It's like , uh , what would it be around 40 celsius for me outside , so thankfully I'm inside with air conditioning in texas right now , because second summer has arrived second summer , what about arrived ?

Speaker 2 1:04

Second summer ? What about second breakfast ?

Speaker 1 1:07

Yeah , that's where my head went . Yes , exactly , all right , well , you heard . Uh , we have a guest here today , unlike last time when we were the three of us . But today we are joined by Vivian McCormick and we're going to . She's going to talk to us about her journey from being an attorney to a founder and to and uh , some of the lessons she's learned along the way with way with rebranding and going through legal stuff and trying to cross borders . So she is the co-founder and CEO of Willit Hopefully I pronounced that correctly , I should have asked before A linens and bedding and home essentials brand based in Vancouver . And , as I mentioned , vivian started her career as an attorney before shifting to entrepreneurship . She has been a co-founder , consultant , advisor and supporter of entrepreneurs since leaving her day-to-day practice of law . So , vivian , thanks for joining us today .

Speaker 4 1:56

Thank you for having me .

Speaker 1 1:58

Did I get that right ? Did I pronounce it right ? Is it Willett ?

Speaker 4 2:01

You got , willett you got it all right .

Speaker 1 2:04

Should I try to pronounce it with a Canadian accent Willett eh .

Speaker 3 2:07

Willett . Should I try to pronounce it with a Canadian accent Will it A ? Will it A ? Will it A , Will it A .

Speaker 4 2:11

Which is both then , french and also the A portion of our there we go . So it covers it all . Maybe that's what we need .

Speaker 1 2:18

That's right . That's right , Okay , All right . Well , so and I was looking at it like I , I'm trying to avoid showing my showing my wife your site , because I think I have a feeling we'll end up with new bedding .

Speaker 4 2:29

That's the point .

Speaker 1 2:30

Yeah , and maybe the new bedding would be good for the hot climate .

Speaker 4 2:35

Yeah , I think you know you need that . It's temperature regulating .

Speaker 1 2:40

There you go . All right . There we go . All right , we're going to tie this up because for our listeners there's probably some question marks going up over their heads about how is a founder of a linen company in Canada who is an attorney have to do with marketing and marketing operations ? But we're going to get . There was interesting because going from being an attorney I'm married to a recovering attorney myself is what led you . What was the motivation for you to go from that to starting a business and kind of what's the story there ?

Speaker 4 3:18

I think I've always made little jumps away from law towards business all along my career . So I actually started , you know , in Canada you do your undergrad , same as in the US , I believe my undergrad is in commerce . It focused a lot on labor relations , so unions , collective bargaining , that kind of thing , and that got me interested in law school . So I went there and then law school and subsequently joining a firm had me move in a different direction again . So I started practicing in the area of real estate and banking and loans and insolvencies and then about five years into that practice I really found myself wishing that I could see the inner workings of some of the business that's going on with clients at the ground level , as opposed to when you're in private practice . Normally you get handed the deal and they need the paper done yesterday and you have no control or even input at that point into the inner workings of that business .

Speaker 4 4:31

So my next step was actually into in-house counsel in our country's development bank , so Business Development Bank of Canada . They fund only entrepreneurs . It's not a deposit-taking bank , it's simply loans to entrepreneurs to support small and medium enterprise in Canada . And I think a combination of that and some other external factors that were happening in my life at the time when I was there , 2012 through 2016, . I think entrepreneurship was getting sexier .

Speaker 3 5:14

You know , everybody wanted to listen to podcasts about and I did too right , I listened to startup startup podcasts so good Right , it was so good years ago how I built this , yes , how I built this All of them yeah , built this , yes , how I built this .

Speaker 4 5:27

all of them , yeah . And so I started to get that bug a little bit more . Though , outside of some late nights in my law office wondering what I could invent to kind of get away from law , I really never saw myself as actually an entrepreneur . I saw myself more as possibly a consultant to entrepreneurs . Um , I have that background in knowing how to help entrepreneurs get financing and I thought that's the direction I would go . But in the time when I , outside of my in-house counsel role , finally transitioned away from that , thought I would do some consulting .

Speaker 4 6:03

I have two co-founders in Willit and one of them brought this idea to the other two of us , and it was not the first idea she'd brought to us . Most of the other ones were like one that's not going to make any money , or two that's completely going to get someone sued . So no , we're too risk averse for that as lawyers go . So I've always moved in that direction and I think this opportunity was both about the product we wanted to bring into the world and to primarily bring to Canada , because at the time you really couldn't get it in a very cost efficient way unless you were shopping at big box stores , and so that's how it all led here . But for me I was scratching that . You know I want to understand business more , piece of the my , my career puzzle that I'd always had happening , even when I was practicing law . So yeah , a bit of a winding road , but I would say still I was always headed towards a particular area which was maybe trying to understand in a bit more of a direct way how businesses operated .

Speaker 1 7:11

It's interesting I hadn't really thought about that , even though I'm married to an attorney who practiced for 20 years . The idea of being able to I think it's probably why she liked having long-term clients . You got to know the business , whereas you described not being able to really understand the business and getting pulled in and trying to get a deal across the line . That would have been hard without knowing the nuances and knowing about like , because there's probably risks that you didn't know about , right .

Speaker 4 7:39

So yeah , it's funny that you just said that , because my practice definitely was very transactional and I think what I've learned over time and over operating this business is that I enjoy the relationship piece of it a lot more , and it's probably we had clients . You know I worked for financial institutions so we did have the same bankers we work with all the time , but the deals were always different . They were always very transactional . Different , they were always very transactional . And I think that's probably another transition away from that way of doing work and spending all of my time to something that was a bit more . You know , retail is still obviously very transaction based , but I do get more of that community feel to the work that we do now as opposed to before yeah , it's different kind of transaction though .

Speaker 1 8:31

So you brought up we both have brought up the word risk a couple of times , I think you've told me you even said it here . Right , you're a little bit risk averse yeah kind of the training as an attorney .

Speaker 1 8:39

I'd be curious to hear like , how did you get past that ? And but you know , I think what's interesting I'm looking at the four of us on the screens which our , our listeners can't see , but I'm like , okay , mike and Vivian probably both could have similar , will probably have similar things . And then Naomi and I have historically both been kind of at bigger companies . So it's funny that my guess is you're going to say you're risk averse , but then I bet Naomi and I like we're all probably risk averse , but there's probably something else that helps you get past it .

Speaker 4 9:10

There's a spectrum , for sure . I mean , yeah , when you , when you practice and represent clients , you're actually really trying to maintain that separation . You do want to become a trusted advisor but at the same time , at the end of the day , they are the ones making the decision . That's very clear . That's always something that we kind of had to keep that up . And then in-house counsel was a little bit more relaxed in the sense that you know , you are maybe less risk averse in that I don't , I wasn't going to get sued , but I also was acting in the best interest of my one client and as a crown corporation , so a business that's owned by the government in our country , you know there is a certain risk aversion that comes with that , as well as a very conservative business to work for . And then when we started this business , I think in hindsight , as I look back over the last six years , we started out in a very conservative way in so many ways as far as size , how fast we want to scale , how we wanted to fund the business , and maybe if I had had a little bit more of a risk taking nature , we might have done that trajectory . A little bit more of a risk-taking nature , we might have done that trajectory a little bit different .

Speaker 4 10:33

And then over time you do .

Speaker 4 10:33

You know the risk involved with making decisions where you have 70% of the information at best .

Speaker 4 10:42

I went from not having to make the decision and working with the information we have and generally we were at , you know , close to a hundred percent and then letting a client make the information , make the decision , to being an entrepreneur and having very little information and having to make a call sometimes , and we still do every day and I don't know that . You , I don't know if we get better at it . I think I might get more sort of no numb is not the word either . I was sort of now realizing that personally , professionally , you are never going to have all the answers and I think as things get more complicated both you know , when you start raising families and things like that , everything is unknown and I'm just starting to really get okay with following things and having a bit of a winding path and not needing it to be linear and all of these pieces , and I think that that serves decision making a bit better now . A little less sleep lost , I guess you would say .

Speaker 3 11:48

It's because you have great sheets I want to know your sleep score . What's your sleep score ? You know ?

Speaker 4 11:56

I don't have an aura ring , and here's the thing , without getting very too far off . But we have a product here in bedding . That is very simple , you know , and also in some cases some people consider quite a commodity . I am a bit scared of all of the data that I could get , because I know my own nature , which would be to be very captured by that data all the time and never really be satisfied . So I stay away from it a little bit and just rely on the fact that if I need a good night's sleep , okay , I've got a good mattress , a good bed and , you know , try to abide by the bedtime that my phone tells me although I'm pretty good at ignoring it these days and then go from there .

Speaker 4 12:39

I don't want to know . I don't want to know my score .

Speaker 2 12:42

Yeah , yeah , I have to say , though I echo the uh , the sort of numbness comment , right , like I know you didn't stick with that word , but I think that is often a difference between you know , there's a lot of folks that are naturally risk averse . As you become more comfortable and maybe even start to enjoy the aspects of that sort of ambiguity , right , or a little bit of the unknown , or this could go anywhere else . If you start to see that as a glass half full instead of a half empty , um , you might have signs that you're an entrepreneur . That is like living for some level of excitement that is just very different than than the dayto-day , like you kind of have to love it , um , because it's , yeah , it's , it's a roller coaster , to go on I think I would go so far as to say you kind of have to love it or at the very least , you kind of have to not let it give you a heart attack every week .

Speaker 4 13:51

And I think it's just a lot more level these days than it used to be . And that's not to say , you know , I still get , if I get , an idea , I kind of can't put it down until I've , you know , fleshed it out of my head , and those ups and downs are still very real . But when it comes to you see so many of those infographics on social media about the way that the linear line is actually this like crazy wave , I love it , I hate it . This is awful , this is great and it's very true , but I think I just don't react as much as I used to to that kind of wave yeah .

Speaker 3 14:34

And Vivian , you know you're someone that I've known now for a couple of years . The reasons I really wanted you to be on our podcast is because , I think , because this is a marketing ops podcast , so steering it a bit to that , I do feel there are many parallels between our entrepreneurship and marketing operations

Resource Management and Adaptability in Business

Speaker 3 15:04

, right ? So both involve strategic thinking , problem solving , focus on achieving specific goals . A specific problem that I think a lot of us , especially now , are dealing with is resource management , right , and you know , as an entrepreneur , you know I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs as well and you need to manage resources capital , human resources , time to build and grow your business . Allocate how to allocate them effectively . Capital , human resources , time to build and grow your business . Allocate how to allocate them effectively to . You know , maximize your returns .

Speaker 3 15:33

And on the marketing upside , you know , I think a lot of us are , you know , especially those of us who are dealing with managing people and resources and expectations we're managing smaller budgets , smaller like less tools , sometimes more tools too , right , and how do you cut that down ? Technology , teams executing marketing campaigns efficiently . You know , like an entrepreneur , a lot of I find my day to day is about thinking about how do we optimize the resources that we do have to achieve the best possible outcomes ? And I think that that's something that you're probably is in your wheelhouse , that is in your mind on a daily basis , too .

Speaker 4 17:20

Yeah , I think that overall , in the marketing space , in the entrepreneur space , everyone is just being asked to do more with less all the time , and I think I feel very fortunate to be surrounded by some very capable people , so they are typically successful in that . But that also breeds more of okay , great , now more and even less right and over the trajectory of our business . We started in 2018 . And it was , like I said , a very conservative start . Let's just make one order of inventory , put a little bit of money in , do a little tiny loan , see how it goes . Really never saw anything . We didn't know , and I have to say I probably should have thought through more what all the different options were , but we just thought , well , let's just get an order , and if it sells , great , and if it doesn't , well . We tried something and it was fun and we'll move on to the next project . You know , we tried something and it was fun and we'll move on to the next project , and we were shot off like a rocket in 2020 without really being ready for it .

Speaker 4 18:29

Let's be honest in that , when the pandemic started , our customer base had redirected budgets , had a lot of time for discovery of new product , and so we actually found ourselves in the opposite . We found ourselves with lots and lots of resources and I'd say at that point we did the opposite of what we're now trying to face , which was okay . How do we grow this thing ? Who do we bring on ? What are the best ? What's the best tech stack ? What about agencies , these bigger agencies ? And where do we want to go ? We want to go into the US . We want to build out from Canada , so should we be using US agencies , notwithstanding the much larger cost ?

Speaker 4 19:17

And then fast forward to 2024 , and the flip thing has happened . Really is that contraction of business , contraction of resources , time , people and really needing to learn how to deal with that , and one of them is to deal with seeing outcomes and projecting outcomes that are so different from what we had experienced during what I would call like the boom . Right , it was , we were barely advertising and we were just orders were flowing in . We were just orders were flowing in . And now the category , our category , has really changed and you know , we went from being in a category that really a luxury bedding very rarely was going on sale back then the Brooklinens of the world , the parachutes of the world , it was all semi-annual sales and that was it , and now that's changed a lot . So , yeah , we're always pivoting on what you know .

Speaker 4 20:22

We had this we , I think we felt very overinflated at , in some ways , too many agencies , too much , too much tech going on all of these issues , and now we've actually just completely gone the other direction and scaled it right back and , recognizing that that is going to lead to a very different outcome , you haven't just changed it a couple degrees , you've changed it many , many degrees , and being okay with that , because I think just as fast as it could have gone off which it did it right-sized itself We've adjusted , and now we know what that looks like . Size itself we've adjusted , and now we know what that looks like . 2.0 for me , you know , to the extent that things start to go get busy again will not involve that kind of scale the way that we tried it the first time , and so that's that's kind of a nice thing in that we've learned to manage resources and it's given us some very valuable lessons , which I'm sure your teams also experience . Right , you're often being asked , you're being asked to do more with less .

Speaker 4 21:24

You're being asked to get the most out of your people and the most out of your , your , your tech , and you make decisions that don't . You really don't always know the outcome right , and whether or not they'll be successful or not . And you we've learned , I think , really to drop things a lot faster than we used to . We would sometimes hold on for too long , sometimes by force . You know agencies that we signed on with . Everybody wanted you for six months at least , right . So by the time you made that call and the six months is up , you know there's a bit of an inertia . So we've learned a lot in having to go up and down .

Speaker 1 22:04

Yeah , it's , it's . It's interesting to me because I know we talked , we were going to talk about this to some degree as well . But this idea that you've brought up a couple of times of incomplete information , and I like the tie in now of managing resources , because I think that's a real thing , like we all , whether we're at a big company or startup , right , that should be a big part of what we're doing , especially for leadership roles , and I I see too many companies where I've been at , where the people sort of spend money without really even giving much thought to it and I've , like I've never understood that because I've I think I've always had the mindset like , would I spend this money if it was mine , right , even though I might have the budget and I always want to try to get the most out of it as I can . But so maybe talk to like I know we want to talk a little bit about the brand history and all that kind of stuff as well , history and all that kind of stuff as well . But while we're here , what , um , what are some of the you talked about this , like having to make decisions on incomplete information and , yeah , make , make trade-offs , and it's something I , like I said , I've talked about this a lot and I talk a lot about it , about it with coaching , clients and things like that .

Speaker 1 23:13

But , uh , especially people who are not used to doing that in a , from a manager standpoint , how hard was that for you to get to that point of recognizing ? I am not going to , because I think a lot of what I hear about from people who are entrepreneurs , who are seen as big risk-takers , is they actually try to manage that risk by trying to get as much information , get as much under control that they can . So there's less , that's like the likelihood of a bad a , a bad outcome , is reduced . So like um , but I haven't heard you talk about that per se like you . I've heard you talk more about like just getting more comfortable with it , which to me , is like the fear , like fear I've never . I don't like using the word fearless , because I don't think people are truly fearless , right , I think everybody's got fears . That there's courage , who do people who act despite the fear and that's just my own sort of nitpicky way of approaching it . But it feels like there's something similar here going on with with this like incomplete information is still making decisions .

Strategic Decision Making in Business

Speaker 4 24:12

I think that my my legal training actually is pushed me a lot to always want more information . I ask a lot of questions and you know , like you said , you don't get satisfactory answers to make your decisions . And so I it actually took a lot to train myself to not freak out . If we were not , if we were going to have to make decisions without information . And I think , layer on top , you know , when you're in a big organization , I think you can make decisions , and they may be outcomes that are not great . They take people off track , people are not meeting their , the business isn't meeting their KPIs .

Speaker 4 25:04

In a small business , there are some days where that kind of decision is like which one is going to end the game , right , like am I going to walk into this corner ? And then that's it like dead end . And so layer on top of that , like there's always this worry that you're going to make some decision that's literally going to end the business . And so I definitely not fearless , not at all , but just trying to weigh well one , just trying to avoid the business . Ending decisions is the first level If you , if you compare this to like a Maslow's hierarchy of needs . Dying is the first one right , survive yeah .

Speaker 4 25:43

Mike's nodding along like oh yeah that's right .

Speaker 4 25:46

And then , after you can , if you can get a type of decision you have to make that isn't one of those business ending decisions , then trying to do it very strategically , in a way that will not only get you you know , have you not die but also give you that many more moves , is how I've started to look at it . So that , choose your own adventure . How do I keep this game going as long as possible ? And that's a little bit what this is at the moment , I think . As we see dips , I and I will tell you the last time there was a major economic dip , I was an insolvency attorney , right . So I was watching businesses go through challenging times and I was watching their lenders go through challenging times determining what to do , but it never affected me really all that . I was plenty busy let's put it that way , right and so this time around , to watch everything that's happening and see what a direct effect it's having on our business .

Speaker 4 26:49

Sometimes , when you are in this mode , you're obviously always trying to figure out ways to grow , but sometimes you're just sort of also waiting . You're like let's not push so hard on pieces that are not going to move the dial today or a month from now , or three months from now , because those external factors are just too strong for us to be able to fight against . So how do we just reserve our energy , bide our time a little bit , do the things that are going to help the business today and kind of wait it out . Business today and kind of wait it out . And I think that that might sound counter to what you'll hear a lot of entrepreneurs say , which is like just grow , grow , grow at all costs , and I get that too . But there are times where you do need to sort of reevaluate and figure out what your next moves are that again extend the game , as opposed to shortening your lifespan .

Speaker 2 27:41

Yeah , I mean that definitely resonates a lot , you know , I think , from a marketing operations sort of one thing I might glean if I was a listener to this and just trying to like also hear this through a different lens , perhaps because I've now worn both hats I do it every day , I would say , as a marketing ops pro or rev ops pro , you probably built a spreadsheet before making a decision on what to do next . Right , I did . I projected the heck out of our business to say , like , how do I do a conference for hundreds of people and not end the company ? Right , because we went so far into debt that we can't even come back out of it . Right , right , because we went so far into debt that we can't even come back out of it . Right , and and I think if you're listening to this and you say safety of hey , it's not going to be perfect and you're the bet that you're making as a team maybe should head the direction , as Vivian was talking about , which is OK , well , what's going to help us keep this stuff moving , moving now , but in a maybe pragmatic and measured way that allows us to open more doors , you know , in the future ?

Speaker 2 29:30

So if you have to make a choice between releasing a whole new , you know product to your team to go to market versus improving data quality if one opens the door to future roadmap and go to market activities for your team over the other .

Speaker 2 29:47

Maybe that's the trade-off that you can make and you can look at the decisions in that way , versus trying to say how is this going to impact the revenue today or whatever . And I think trying to figure out ways to structure your decision making process in in that manner is , um , probably one of the most helpful things that I've been teaching . I've been teaching myself in my entrepreneur hat versus the marketing ops hat , that like I don't want to do anything until I have clear line of sight . I mean I'm not tooting my own horn . I have built projections that are within a margin of error of 5% , which is stupid . Why did I spend so much time doing that ? There was no reason to spend that much time trying to be that accurate , right ? I've had bosses tell me that time and time again , like there's a certain point where it's good enough and and you just have to go right .

Speaker 4 30:52

But I think that's I was going to layer . One more piece on there is that there are a couple things that you've touched on . I guess when we talk about it , I don't want to be flippant about making decisions , because , you're right , we do sit and labor for hours in front of a screen , spreadsheets , all kinds of things , all kinds of research we're doing before having to come to said decision . I think the other piece that is sometimes unsaid is that like , why do we , why did you , why do you spend that kind of time ? Well , sometimes it's that you need to be able to point back to something . If there is a failure , right , you have to say well , this is the legal training again , which was always that there wasn't really always a right answer , but you had to have your reasoning behind the answer and so long as you could demonstrate sound reasoning , you weren't going to be found to be negligent in your practice . That's how I was always taught right .

Speaker 4 31:47

And I think that has been what's driven me a lot of times . Even when you run your own business and nobody's really judging you other than perhaps you know external partners , but nobody's really judging you on that , I've always had a hard time letting go of really judging you on that . I've always had a hard time letting go of needing to have built a strong foundational reasoning behind every single decision , which can take a very long time . But it's partly because I had those worries about being judged if there was a failure . If the business fails and this used to be , this was kind of prior thinking .

Speaker 4 32:25

I don't think about it this way very much anymore ,

Navigating Business Rebranding and Risk

Speaker 4 32:28

but in the first couple of years , part of that conservatism was simply to just not have a business started by three women who had no experience in retail fail right . We were just so worried about the optics of it , especially when you leave a career that seems very stable . Why would you do that ? To go and do something like this and then have it fail , and then everyone's going to ask that question either to your face or not to your face . And so that was the early days . That was the early days , and now I'm not worried about the failure . And now I'm not worried about the failure .

Speaker 4 33:07

I think that we have to recognize that businesses run their course sometimes , and not all , and I've seen actually a lot of founders in the last little while decide to kind of make a pivot , shut things down , change things , and I think there's as much courage in that decision making as there is in the courage to start something . I think the courage to finish something or end it or decide that this is not the right time for this is probably braver than than starting and so trying to remember that all the time in decision-making now is like nobody's actually going to remember the failure either except you maybe , and entrepreneurs move on to next things , second , third , fourth tries , and nobody remembers the thing , even if you know you think your LinkedIn post is going to shatter some earth . It's not . You know . 24 hours later it's like what's the next thing on the feed , right ? So that's helped with being able to make decisions's , not being that worried about external thoughts on that .

Speaker 2 34:05

I appreciate that the e-commerce , uh B2C brands , uh founders , talking about posting on LinkedIn . It's great . It's like more of you where ?

Speaker 4 34:15

where all the B2C people on LinkedIn they're all over my feed , but yeah , the silos are so real it's like hard to find y'all .

Speaker 2 34:23

It's funny , it's true .

Speaker 3 34:25

A lot of it . You know , what you've said , Vivian , resonates with me because I think a lot of things around risk management too right , and measuring twice , three times , four times , cutting once and I think those of our listeners in marketing ops will feel that , because how many of us have woken up at three o'clock in the morning ? Oh my God , did I change all the test links to live links and is it going to go out at 8am ? It's real .

Speaker 3 34:50

It's real PST or EST . What did I do ? Right , it's like , and I've done that too . You know you wake yourself up because you have all this anxiety , but it's almost one of those things where sometimes things happen that you have no control over , but there's almost a sense of calmness . That can happen when you know you can show your work right . Sometimes you just screw up , but you know what I did , the work , and here's the work that I did and this is what I did to make sure that those things didn't happen and put in those fail safes , and sometimes things just still go sideways yeah I think part of life part of business .

Speaker 1 35:30

I think what I've heard here is a couple of things that resonate , and I think there's actually one of them is like , maybe it's a malcolm gladwell book , but like there's , there's something about like knowing what . Like there , I think there's this view of quitting , something that you talked about , these businesses that are shutting down or making that decision . I agree with you , it's very takes a lot to do that , um , but like knowing when to quit is actually , I think , a really good thing , and I think it ties to this like , how much analysis do I do before it becomes , uh , an in , you know , diminishing returns ?

Speaker 4 36:06

Yeah .

Speaker 1 36:06

Yeah , and I think knowing that right is a part of it . But I think we're all saying the same thing , like that still needs to be done right . It's not like you just willy-nilly just make decisions completely on intuition although I think intuition is undervalued in a lot of cases so I think there's a piece of that right . So I think that combination of knowing like I'm doing the , the analysis that I can with data or whatever right , or I'm looking at stuff and I'm using my intuition and that that combination , some combination there , is probably going to deliver , hopefully , the best outcome and then we learn from it .

Speaker 2 36:46

Yeah , I agree . I do want to talk about sort of I think did you all do a rebrand or something ?

Speaker 4 37:07

We did , yeah , yeah . So the brief history is we started this business with our very first name , really focused on the word sleep and what linen is made out of , and we also started only embedding . But we knew all along that we would expand . If this thing was going to go , we would expand it to other rooms of the home , et cetera , et cetera . And so we actually rebranded in 2021 and just to extend our original brand from sleep to home and then we thought , great , you know , we're done , Cool , this is great .

Speaker 4 37:38

All these and we had and again , like there were resources abound to put together beautiful marketing materials and videos . And I still look back on those assets . I'm like , oh , that was so fun . That was really some great time as far as creating marketing assets , assets . And then , once things stabilize , at the beginning of the pandemic and we had enough supply to try to break into the US , which we actually wanted to do in 2020 . But , for obvious reasons , we held off on that for a little while until things stabilize , we went into the US and it's a tough market and everybody told that we had advisors and we knew it's not like we didn't know , but it's tough . It's a noisy market as far as , especially in our category , there's businesses that precede us that have very deep pockets , so it was .

Speaker 4 38:35

It was hard right , but we were just trying to grow organically and go from community , which is what we've always done . That's how we started the business . And then um , you know , this is from my old legal days Everyone says you , you know , you made it . When you get sued and I'm like , oh , that's the worst thing I've ever heard in my life . But yeah , given how this- conversation started prior to hitting record today .

Speaker 2 39:02

I'm going to go with .

Speaker 4 39:03

No , I'm going to avoid that Nobody wants that , but what happened was , even though we felt like it was a hard , that breaking into the US market was very tough . Well , we landed on the radars of somebody who did not want us to use our name anymore , and so , long story short .

Speaker 3 39:21

To clarify , it's not the current name . No , no , no .

Speaker 4 39:24

Will . It is the rebranded name , which we did in 2022 . So in 2022 , we were notified that a business in the US had a registration against a word in our name that would preclude us from using it if they didn't agree and with legal backgrounds , you know . The other thing , when we first received these , were to go well . We have brand equity built up and I think we should try to fight for it . Let's see if there'll be reasonable Coles Notes version . They were not , and it became apparent to us , um , because litigation in the U ? S is expensive , that it would make more sense for us to rebrand again and walk away from our brand equity than it would to try to fight . And this is an uh , this is an outcome , um , a very unknown outcome that I did not want to take the risk to try to find out right and to spend the money to try to find out . And this is that evaluation .

Speaker 4 40:29

It was hard at the beginning and then it became clearer and clearer and I'm like , nope , this one is too risky , it's not worth it . And so , within the span of three months , we underwent a complete rebrand . We worked with a fantastic team and agency that we had worked with previously , who knew us , who knew the soul of the company really and could lead us through a rebrand . I have said before that rebranding your company after five years is like trying to rename your child , your five-year-old child . You have so many memories tied to the old name . It's really hard to do it and thankfully , again , we worked with a team who was really able to walk beside us to do it in a way that we would be satisfied with at the end and in parts in the middle it was really rough . We went through so many different options and there are three co-founders and so when we thought we'd have it , then somebody would sleep on it and wake up in the morning and go , nope , that's not the one . And then we'd be back to the drawing board and luckily , everybody exercised a lot of patience and we've worked together long enough that it didn't sink us .

Speaker 4 41:45

But , yes , so in 2023 , just over a year ago now is June of 2023 , we launched , we rebranded to Willit and I'm really proud , actually , when I talk about the rebrand the last time in 2021 , I'm actually really proud of a rebrand that we had to do time in 2021 , I'm actually really proud of a rebrand that we had to do , not necessarily by our own choice , but the outcomes and the way we chose to do it were very well done by our whole team , and we had people telling us who were great loyalists of our old brand that they followed along the whole story . The way we unveiled it was . We did tell folks what was happening to a certain degree and we told them here's when we're going to rebrand and here's what's happening . And our marketing team at the time was so great at telling that story I was curious if that was part of the narrative in this journey , like , do you ?

Speaker 2 42:44

you know , obviously you don't . Maybe you don't point fingers or anything like that , but you have to like elegantly explain like hey , we're not allowed to use this and we're not going to fight it , but we want you to follow along and we're going to .

Speaker 4 42:58

you know , do this Because otherwise why are you rebranding again two years later ?

Speaker 2 43:02

Right .

Speaker 4 43:04

So this is new name , number two , and why is this happening ? And so all of that actually went beautifully , and I can tell you that

Navigating Branding and SEO Challenges

Speaker 4 43:15

when we started the business , we were also really quite we didn't know enough , let's say , about consumer habits , when it came to buying something like bedding . You would assume that somebody buys a whole set of bedding for their bed and they probably don't come back for years , if at all . Right , we have been very pleasantly surprised and now have come to expect it over six years . Our repeat customer rate is actually incredibly high . It's up over 50% and people are back within 30 days , they are back within six months , they are back within a year , two years and then , like four years , they come and do the whole thing all over again .

Speaker 4 43:54

And that some of the LTVs of our , of our customers , are astounding to me , like I can admit that to you as the to you as a founder of a business , I should have said , yeah , obviously this is what people , this is what the LTVs are going to look like , but some days I'm really quite astounded and very grateful . So the people who are very loyal to the brand have stayed with us and they've been engaged . Primarily I think our email marketing has been very strong , and then second to that , social . But again , trying to divert resources to the right places when you're a very , very , very small team , which we are now , is always a challenge , but those marketing channels have always been quite strong for us . But where we struggle was to the loss of the , the loss of the brand from an SEO perspective was very , very painful and it still is painful , frankly , Um we're what like two years into this rebrand now .

Speaker 4 44:59

We're a year , about 14 months in .

Speaker 1 45:01

Okay , yeah , so what , what , what I'll ? I'll say it because I think she's been . I've been kind of smiling here because I know the kind of gymnastics that Vivian is going through to avoid saying a certain word , but I think that's a big part of it . Right , they could not reference that word or previous brand at all , right ? I mean , so you have to like , from an SEO standpoint , you're starting from scratch as if it's a brand new business .

Speaker 4 45:26

Yeah , but the funny thing is there is a really you have to . For us there's a needle to thread . That's very it's a small opening in that , and our prior name had the word flax in it . Flax is what makes linen and so people actually search for the SEO for non-branded is very much linen bedding flax sheets . Some people use the word . Not a lot of people know what it's made of , they just say linen and so you know .

Speaker 4 45:59

but there was some right , you know , but there was some right , and and the other thing that's a bit aggravating and this is a nerd , this is a nerd point is that flax and linen are effectively the same thing , right , Flax is the plant that makes the linen , and so when you look at SEO and you look at certain tactics that are used to strengthen the SEO of of our competitors , is this use of the term flax linen , which from my perspective , is like saying cotton twice . But you know it's for me .

Speaker 2 46:30

What that did for me was like I got triggered , because I know a good number of human beings that say 3am in the morning .

Speaker 4 46:39

I was like I know you told me 3am .

Speaker 1 46:41

Please don't . Oh no , you told me 3 am . I know . Please don't . No , please no .

Speaker 2 46:45

Yeah , it happens all the time , anyway , sorry .

Speaker 4 46:48

I saw a sign the other day for a local business here that just opened that serves chai , and they're like it's not chai tea , that's like saying tea twice , and so this is very much the same , but you might do it to actually SEO stuff words into your website . Right , right , right , um . So , yeah , I think one of the things for us all , in various different arenas , has been knowing what the thing to do in order to win the internet , and then also really not wanting to play the game in order to win the internet . And I can't tell you necessarily whether I feel like decisions we've made in that vein are right or wrong , because , yes , the business could be a lot bigger perhaps , given certain things we could be doing , but they don't resonate with us and our values , let's say , and for better or for worse , we've operated the business with a lot of those values in mind and , yeah , it's a winning formula in some ways , and in some ways it can be an uphill battle for us , for sure .

Speaker 1 48:12

Especially in this space . Yeah , seos to me I frankly don't understand why there are so many agencies out there taking money from companies for seo . Because to me it comes down like I know the algorithms change and yada , yada , yada . But to me it comes down to like write really good content for human beings , not for the search engines , and then do what you can to affect the search engines in other ways , but otherwise like , because if you write for the search engines it's going to be terrible for human beings to read .

Speaker 4 48:41

Yes .

Speaker 2 48:42

Yeah , yeah , and I think I think there's been a lot of improvement there . Um , this gentleman , uh , bronco , he , he's going to teach a course with us . Um , we're going to make it available to our members and it's going to tie SEO to sort of data analytics . And that's kind of the point I think about . About all this stuff Like um similar to our topic about is marketing , ops . Marketing , you know , seo in a broad stroke term is you can lose some of the value of of who can deliver um , search engine optimization in a very measured way . Right , so , at the end of the day , like , for us as marketing operations professionals , like , we're constantly trying to absorb and measure what's working and what's not , and the things that work are the things that are measured . I think we've all heard that . Right , like , if you're measuring it , you're going to figure out how to make it work , and that's really what it boils down to for SEO . Right , it's like looking at the landscape of what's possible , where there's maybe gaps for you to slide in because the long tail doesn't have a ton of competition , and then there's this incrementality to it . Right , it's like , okay , we're going to slowly pick up traction because we're grabbing onto these lower hanging opportunities and lo and behold , if we're measuring it over time and we're practicing what what we're measuring , then we'll actually see some growth Right . But like pretending , like you can just keyword stuff a page or just follow any type of model , it's like that's not going to work . You got to have systems in place to measure it Right , and so you know , vivian , like that's not going to work . You got to have systems in place to measure it Right , and so you know , vivian . I think that's what that's where I wanted to go with .

Speaker 2 50:29

The question next is you talked a lot about brand . We talked a lot about rebranding . You talked about a lot about the value of brand and the community behind your brand , which , frankly , I think is just wonderful for all of our listeners to hear in general , because that does take some of the pressure off of us as we think about being marketers in marketing operations or working with our quote unquote customers that are marketers and they're asking us to measure everything . But what are you doing today ? Like , does your team just sort of broadly , um , take a little bit of a relaxed approach and say , hey , we understand , brand is going to impact us and we're not trying to measure all that stuff and then for where you are measuring it , what are you trying to do today ? Um , that might be different , because you said the rebrand really teed you up to set up your sites on , maybe the next . You're 14 months in now and there goes my camera , so you can't see me anymore , but maybe you're measuring things a little bit differently than you were before .

Speaker 4 51:37

So and I'll answer the question that and I'm really curious when it comes to marketing ops for you and your listeners , you know there's on the entrepreneur side , I think there's there's a very push and pull all the time about measurement . You have to be extremely disciplined if you want to do a lot of data analytics and then A-B test ,

Measuring Brand Building and ROI

Speaker 4 52:04

pivot and do it all over again , cycle after cycle after cycle . And admittedly , I think , especially in the e-commerce space , a lot of people who start brands are really about the brand and the product and the data analytics and the discipline it takes to run . You know , on the e-commerce side , I think a lot of founders don't . That's not the place they go right . So I'm always curious . I'm curious on the marketing ops piece too . Do people who work in this space ? Is it a lot more long tail ? This is going to help from a brand perspective , so we have to have patience or is it a lot more short term ? You need to see results in order to , you know , justify the spend for these things . How do you fight ? Are we fighting the same friction ? I don't know . I'm curious because you know for us .

Speaker 4 52:55

You asked the question how are what are we doing now , how are we measuring ? Are we taking a bit more of a laid back approach ? I think what we're trying to do is exercise patience , in that building up a brand again is going to take time and we , frankly , don't have the boost of a pandemic . Thankfully , that would move this into a household name a lot faster again than it did back in 2020 . So and then , from a measurement perspective , yes , we have eyes on SEO , and I think we have actually pivoted away from some of the maybe more vanity metrics that perhaps D2C has been known to really focus on , to say whether or not marketing is working . We don't .

Speaker 4 53:39

We've both kind of scaled back on the paid advertising as well as thought about again , with restricted resources , what is it that's worth measuring for us , and so we've made some changes in that regard and to not be so driven by the things that we know aren't really great measures anymore , like ROAS and , you know , conversion rate and so on . They're still important to see what's going on , but it's actually like what's the storytelling as opposed to what's the number . So I don't think we've strayed much from the fact that we've always been more interested in brand building than we have perhaps to exercise the discipline to deal with the data and just build the business that way . And again , I can't tell you until this thing is done and dusted whether which one was better , but it's just not in our nature and that's just something we have to deal with and one day perhaps hire for in order to kind of match what is not our strength .

Speaker 4 54:41

But yeah , I'm curious , you know what , what ? You all sort of smiled when I asked what are you ? You know what's the driver when , if for people in marketing ops , is it ? Is it ROI of all sorts all the time , or is it understanding that some of it , even if it can be measured , like you said , it's over a long term . So you know , it's a little bit more on the brand building side .

Speaker 3 55:03

I think for those of us who are in the weeds and doing the work and in the tools and understanding where all of the information is coming from , and pulling those reports , looking at those analytics , we absolutely see that that needs to be brand awareness , there needs to be investment into that . That can sometimes be a challenge translating that kind of investment to leadership or folks who are signing the checks frankly and I don't know if this is a specific B2B space issue or do you also see it in the B2C space ? Um , but a lot of times it's like okay , here's the investment . What am I getting out of it ? Right , tell me in six months , tell me in three months , versus you know what about ? Just , I would love to have Apple's marketing budget where you can just put the Apple logo in a silhouette on a bus stop sign . Like the Apple logo in a silhouette on a bus stop sign , Like how are you measuring ?

Speaker 2 56:06

that we're not , we just need . We need a . There's a certain line item of marketing expense that we have to get every year on our books . And that bus has some of it .

Speaker 1 56:16

Right , yeah , well , I think I think I was smiling , because I think my answer comes in two parts . One is what I think many of our listeners will be , which is absolutely yes , we need to be measuring and showing ROI to the extent we can . I think a lot of people underestimate that . You used the word discipline . I love that . That is truly like . It requires a level of discipline to a lot of organizations , especially as they get bigger . Actually , we've got disjointed teams and there's lots of places where things to break down . They can't keep that up or consistently get it right . So I think ideally maybe ideally is not even the right word , but I think a lot of our listeners would say , yes , we want to measure that . I , on the other hand , kind of have gotten to the point where I want as much measurable as I can . I recognize that the data is going to be dirty and it's not going to be in quotes , right , right . I think a lot of people see data as it's either right or wrong and I just think it's a false narrative there that they can't really get to that and it never will be , especially in B2B , where you just have a lot of humans interacting with data on a daily basis , hourly basis . So I think there's value in measuring stuff right and I also think there's value in intuition , actually , because because of that I think investing in brand does matter .

Speaker 1 57:32

And , uh , one of the people we've had as a guest , kyle lacey , is the one who I think really had a couple of conversations with cmos .

Speaker 1 57:39

He in , I think , in particular , has done a good job what I can tell , where he measures , what he can , but he has a really good job of selling , telling the story to his , his c-suite and boards about what he's doing . And he I assume he's still doing this because he's moved but he allocated a percentage of his budget and not a small one like I think 15 to 20 percent for stuff he just was going to do . That was crazy and either not measurable or he just wasn't going to measure . And I think there's something to that and I've heard this from other CMOs that I respect like the idea of like there's some stuff that you just have to try and be willing to know that it's not going to be measurable , especially not measurable in the short run , you know . So I think I mean I can . I've heard multiple stories now from people who are like oh yeah , you know , we did this thing 10 years ago and I still have people asking me about it , like that's long-term brand equity , right yeah .

Speaker 2 58:36

So , yeah , I smirked when you asked you ask the question because , um , my answer was both . Yeah , my answer was both . We , we are tasked with building for scale , which means we think for the long term and we try to measure whatever is needed on the short-term horizon whenever asked . But we also push to say is your window of measurement appropriate ? Right ? Like , is this actually the right amount of time ? Do we all agree ? Like it ? I'm not .

Speaker 2 59:09

I'm not prescribing , as a marketing operations professional , what your test period should look like . Should it be two days , three months , three years ? Right ? That's not my job to figure out . My job is to set up the infrastructure for you to make the decision on , on what is right for you and your business and , I would argue , for brands like yours . Everything is measurable to a degree . You just have to decide on what your time horizon is and what you want to measure , right ? Hey , for the next six months , we're going to swap out all the photos that have women bending over folding the sheets to women standing up holding the sheets . And just see what that does . Is the dwell time on the page longer ? Is it shorter ? Right ? Is the heat map hotter or colder ? What do you want to measure ? That doesn't matter , just pick something Right , right , and and then we'll . We'll do that for six months and see what . What happens Right , what happens right , but the discipline to echo everybody , and specifically you , vivian , to go back to that and say , oh , was that successful .

Speaker 2 1:00:10

Someone has to remember that it was a six-month time horizon that we agreed on , and then you got to come back .

Speaker 4 1:00:16

And have the patience right .

Speaker 2 1:00:17

Yeah , the patience is key .

Speaker 1 1:00:19

Well , I think it's interesting . So somebody I think it was Chris Willis posted on LinkedIn today about and it was . I think it's interesting . So somebody's like really it in many places and it was . So I think that adds like the sort of point that like , should we measure or not ? It's because some way people are focused on promotion and short-term returns that there's this big desire to get data back quickly and it takes out this longer-term view of building value . Good question .

Speaker 2 1:01:12

Really good question and a really fun conversation , and I appreciate you joining us and sharing your story .

Speaker 4 1:01:21

I have some people I want to introduce you to as well your story and yeah , um , I have some people I want to introduce you to as well . Yeah , no , for what it's worth . I , when naomi and I talked about this , uh , my immediate thought was like what could you possibly want to hear about ? And hopefully people don't listen through and also think that on the back end . But you know , I do , I do appreciate , I always appreciate these kinds of conversations because I always take away at least one nugget from them and and this was really really eyeopening for me too- yeah , I mean .

Speaker 1 1:01:50

This reminds me of Mike summer camp a couple of years ago when we had the ask a CMO , right , you kind of it's the same thing to me , like I've , I think I think there'll be value from our people , from our listener , for our listeners , sort of understanding how you think as a entrepreneur or leader , and I think that's that's valuable in in its own right . Um , anyway , so , thank you , vivian , definitely appreciate it . Uh , if you , if you folks want to kind of follow you or learn more about , will it ? Um , how can they do that ?

Speaker 4 1:02:25

yeah , thanks for asking , so , um , we are still primarily digital , so shop will . Itcom would be where you would go to find us . It's the same , you are sorry . Same handle on instagram and talk about it offline . Happy to extend a discount code to your listeners and get everybody trying some temperature regulating sheets , michael .

Speaker 1 1:02:50

Yes .

Speaker 4 1:02:52

Get that onto your doorstep .

Speaker 1 1:02:53

Well , it's not about how much you spend , it's about how much you save .

Speaker 4 1:02:57

Right , so there you go , there you go . So , yeah , thank you to all of you as well .

Speaker 1 1:03:01

Awesome . Thanks to our listeners for continuing to support us , and if you have ideas for topics or guests , or you want to be a guest and bring a topic , feel free to reach out to Naomi , mike or me . Until next time , we'll see you then .

Speaker 3 1:03:16

See you everyone .