#032 "Cathryn Lavery - Launching DTC Brands and Picking the Right Co-Founder"

The Brandon Zhang Show

On today’s episode, Cathryn Lavery joins us to talk about how she prepared for her jump to entrepreneurship, picking the right co-founder, and the keys to a successful Kickstarter campaign. Cathryn Lavery is the Founder & CEO of BestSelf Co — an organization dedicated to helping people become their best selves, fulfill their potential, and lead happier lives. Cathryn has sold launched and sold over $25 million in DTC products and was placed #318 on the Inc 5000 list in 2019.
Links:
Cathryn's Company Best Self
Cathryn's Personal Website
How to Name Products
Article on Finding a Co-Founder
Article on Kickstarter Campaigns
Article on Building Relationships as an Introvert
Contact Me:
My Twitter
My Website

5 Key Takeaways:

1. The Foundation was a program that helps people build their own businesses to create their own freedom. And it was focused on helping you find a problem industry and finding a solution, it gives you accountability partners, different lessons and modules, and guides you through that process. It was one of the first times I was surrounded by other entrepreneurs and it was actually where I met my co-founder.
2. The most important part about a Kickstarter campaign is being able to understand who you are selling to and why the product will help him. This was easy for me to articulate in my first product as the audience was me and just writing about my personal experience helped me find that audience.
3. People often think that introverted means anti-social. That’s not true, it just means that I might need time to regroup alone. I think introverts and extroverts just have different ways of managing their energy. This is why I think introverts often think that they can’t network as effectively because of this idea that being social is tied with being extroverted.
4. I think looking back at my search for a co-founder, obviously complementary skills were really important but I also should have had more conversations to understand their values, their goals for the future of the company, etc. A business partnership is basically a marriage and you want to have the same level of trust and belief in a business partner as you would a partner in real life.
5. I just read this book “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” and the first domino was a lack of trust. And this is because you have a group of people that are all afraid of being vulnerable and it creates this artificial harmony where no one is able to be themselves. The best way to deepen relationships is by being vulnerable.