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She Built It® Podcast
Welcome to the She Built It® podcast. Join me as I talk to women who have successfully built it - a life and business that they love. We dive into the topic of “how” they built it and talk about everything from having the courage to make career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively, build teams, implement growth strategies, and infuse tech innovation. Magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so let’s dive in.
She Built It® Podcast
She Watched Patients Struggle With Flossing for Years. Then She Built the Fix.
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On She Built It®, Brynn MacLennan, product designer, mother of five, and co-founder of Slate, shares how co-managing a dental practice revealed something that couldn’t be unseen: even wealthy, educated patients weren’t flossing. Not because they didn’t care about their health, but because flossing was broken.
Brynn shares how she turned that insight into a patented 3-in-1 electric flosser now sold in 870 Target stores, what it took to hit $1M in year one, and the marketing strategies that actually moved the needle, including why dental professional influencers outperform lifestyle influencers for Slate every time. She also talks about the leadership evolution of letting go, the books that changed how she builds her team, and why she thinks founders need to talk more openly about failure. This conversation is for any founder who started with a problem no one else thought was big enough, and turned out to be right.
Connect with us:
The Day I Realized Oral Health Wasn’t Just About Teeth | Brynn MacLennan | TEDxSpokane
She Built It® CEO, Melanie Barr Instagram
Episode resources:
OuterSignal — Know Every Customer
Multipliers, Revised and Updated: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman
Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork by Dan Sullivan
Learning to let go of things is hard. When you start a company and there's only one of you, you realize what your strengths and weaknesses are. So I offloaded my weaknesses at first. I'm not good at customer service because I'm just like a problem solver. I learned I need to be flowery and kind. If I wanted to have exponential growth, I needed to hire the right people that had more experience than I did and help me grow more rapidly. You need to be able to have everyone on your team feel like their voice matters.
SPEAKER_00I'm Melanie Farr. Welcome back to the CheopleTip Podcast, your go-to place to empower you to live the life and business that you crave. I'm here to talk about everything from having the courage to make life and career leads to the details of how to lead effectively, create successful teams, implement strategies for growth, and infuse tech innovation. I'm here to celebrate your wins and navigate through your challenges. I live in the city now, but I grew up in a town of a thousand people. I've navigated major life leads, a senior-level corporate career, worked in professional sports, and now as a successful entrepreneur who loves business, technology, family, and making meaningful connections with you and the She Built It community. I also love a good workout and dose of self-care. Magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy. So turn up the audio, open your favorite notes app, grab your favorite drink, and here we go. Welcome to She Built It. I'm your host, Melanie Barr. Building a business is one of the hardest and most rewarding things that you can do. It takes vision, resilience, and the willingness to solve a problem most people walk right past. Today's guest did exactly that. She sat inside a demo practice, watched the same gap play out every single day, and decided to build the product that closes it. Not because it was easy, but because she could see what was missing and she knew how to fix it. Bren McClennan is the co-founder and CEO of Slate Flosser, an oral wellness brand and the creator of the patented three-in-one electric flosser heading to national retail. Bren started her first business at 13, studied product design at Brigham Young University, and brought her experience to Johnson ⁇ Johnson before co-managing a dental practice and founding Slate Flosser. What she built from that experience is a product company at the intersection of consumer health, innovation, and smart growth strategy. Bren speaks widely on the connection between oral health and systemic wellness. She's navigating national retail expansion, building a brand in a category ready for disruption, and doing it as a mother of five based in Spokane, Washington. She's one of the most powerful product founders we have had on She Built It, and I cannot wait to get into how she thinks about growth, innovation, and building something that lasts. Bryn, thank you for being here. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. What is the moment, belief, or frustration that sits at the heart of Slate Flosser, the thing that made you certain that your product had to exist?
SPEAKER_01We owned a dental office and we noticed that people were not flossing, even though we had wealthy, educated patients. And we're like, wait, if these people can't floss, flossing is broken. I'm a product designer by trade, and I was like, if we can make this easy and effective, so your dentist notices will make a huge difference. And we worked with dentists and hygienists. This was invented by a dentist. We sent it out. I know I like it, but would other people like it? And we sent it to 500 hygienists. 74% of them said it was better than any tool on the market at stimulating the gums. And I was like, okay, we can do this.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. Because I know how important oral health is. And it's great that you took this product because floss has always been kind of awkward.
SPEAKER_01It is so awkward. I knew I needed to floss. I flossed for a lot of my life. But when you have kids and you're trying to wrangle them, sometimes this isn't on my top 10. But once I found out all of the health benefits, I was like, wait, this takes 30 seconds. I can do this.
SPEAKER_00And it's interesting that you say when you have kids or a busy lifestyle, that's when things tend to slip.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It's hard to know. What do I need to prioritize? I can exercise or I can look good or do my hair. Or like what are the things that matter to me?
SPEAKER_00Tell us more about who you are, what Slate Flosser does, and the work you're leading right now as you headed to national retail in 2026. I am the co-founder of Slate.
SPEAKER_01We are based out of Spokane, Washington. And our mission is to make flossing so easy that you do it. And we've seen fantastic results. It was so fun. We grew exponentially. The very first year we were in business, we did a million dollars. So I was like, okay, we know people want this. And then we have done some studies and we found out that 46% of people still go in store to buy oral health. And so we're like, okay, we need to be where people are. So we made that a goal in 2025 to be in retail. And we were able to launch into Target. And we were so excited. And originally we were like, we just want to be in a few stores, but we actually are in 870 stores. So with that comes the anxiety of how do I make sure everyone in the nation knows about our product?
SPEAKER_00Yes, I love that you say to make sure people do it because everyone thinks about brushing their teeth. Flossing is always the extra.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so this is what blew my mind. I found out all these things when I was working at the dental office. It's connected to dementia, heart disease, your gut health, erectile dysfunction, pregnancy genivitis. Flossing is more important at disrupting that bacteria than you're brushing your teeth. Dr. Sander was saying if you brush your teeth, you only do 60% of your mouth. And if you were to shower, would you skip your armpits or other cracks and crevices? Those are the dirty parts. And I was like, oh my gosh, your gums are the armpits of your mouth. Yeah, it's kind of gross to think about. So yeah, so interesting.
SPEAKER_00What part about building Slate Flosser could you talk about all day? What's the part about growing the business that lights you up? It's twofold.
SPEAKER_01I love being an entrepreneur. I started being an entrepreneur as a young child. So I love the business side of Slate. I love growing it. I find it so interesting to talk about D2C and Amazon and how to grow your business and what's working, what isn't working. What worked last year doesn't work this year. It's constantly changing. But the other side is education. I'm extremely passionate about oral health. I couldn't unlearn what I learned. And it just made me be like, if people knew what the bacteria in their mouth is causing in their body, they would do it. I was like, I exercise, I go to the gym. All the people at my gym care about their bodies, but they're forgetting about their mouth. So how do we get people to realize that oral health is self-care, is longevity, is wellness.
SPEAKER_00And that's so fun. It has to be so fun for you to build the business and do that that you love and also know you're helping so many people.
SPEAKER_01My neighbor is a heart surgeon, and he was like, I am so grateful that you're doing this. You are going to impact so many of my patients. And I it was crazy. He was telling me there's some bacteria in your body. And if you have T cells in your heart when you have heart surgery, there's like a 70% chance you'll die after. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is insane. I don't want to have T cells. You're inspiring so many to floss right now. Hopefully, that's the goal.
SPEAKER_00How are you using AI in your business today? And where do you see the biggest opportunity AI can support a product company like Slate Flosser as you scale?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so this is really interesting because I'm a creative at heart as a product designer. So we don't actually use it at Slate for a lot of creative. It's very good at systems helping you create like SOPs or helping you create guidance. So we use Claude, we use chat. Also, there's like ways to use it in ad buying, ways to use it in monitoring things and operations. But personally, I use it a lot to help with my email inbox and with creating framework for ads. But in the end, we always create things with humans still. Yeah, because we are still human. If you see a flosser, we want there to be a hand or a smile so that you can connect with it. So it can be a positive experience. Because I think most people think of flossing as I'm gonna jam my gums, it's gonna hurt, I'm gonna bleed. We're like, what if we made it like something you wanted to do that it would feel good and you'd feel happier and prettier and your smile would look good?
SPEAKER_00You are preparing for national retail launch and building visibility across dental practices and digital platforms. How are you thinking about positioning so the right customers find slate flosser at the right moment?
SPEAKER_01So, and actually, an AI tool that we use is called Outer Signals. It teaches us about our consumer. It's really nice. We have six typical purchasers. A lot of them are focused on wellness, and a lot of them are in dental professionals. And so, knowing that, we use these personas to help us hone in on how to maximize our ad spend, how to maximize what we're communicating to people. So, people who are using our product right now are early adopters. They're the people who maybe were like the first to get a Peloton or the first to do Hydrox or something like that. And we just have to figure out how do we reach them. And we have seen really good success with dental professional influencers, but people don't really respond to lifestyle influencers at all for us. So we're trying to learn and grow. But something that's been super exciting is we've seen really great success with national television, national magazines. We invested in a PR firm with our launch. We won men's health, women's health, Elle, the Today Show. We were able to win awards for all of those things. And that just helps you get more eyes on your company.
SPEAKER_00That's great. And as life gets busier, we want tools to help us do things easier and quicker. With the electric toothbrush, it's like, why wouldn't you want that? And when you look at a flosser, you think, why wouldn't I want something like that to make it easier?
SPEAKER_01It's fantastic because a toothbrush is usually at least 10 times more effective than a manual toothbrush. And so when you think of the technique of flossing is way more technique sensitive than an electric toothbrush. Like with a toothbrush or just going around, you're getting those main surfaces. But that's actually what makes our product so special. Ours isn't just floss, it's a three in one. It has like bristles and ribs on the back. And so I think really communicating to our consumer what makes it more effective. It's not that it's just FOSS, it's that it's a three in one and it's disrupting the bacteria along your gum lines more. And it's great that you made the charger the way you did too. That makes it easy. Yeah, we love that. And we actually just came out with a battery-powered one that the battery lasts almost six months. So you can go on your trips and never think about charging it.
SPEAKER_00So smart. What is your biggest growth challenge right now as you move towards national retail? And how are you thinking about solving it?
SPEAKER_01I think everyone is just like brand awareness and brand loyalty too. So for us, when you get bigger, you get knockoffs or competitors. Luckily, our flossads are patented and specials. We're able to not have that problem. But that is the hardest question of all. Like we are always trying to figure out what we can do to get national recognition, to get people. We see certain states that are more health focused tend to adopt our product a lot more easily. But then that means, okay, well, California, Washington, Florida, New York, those are high populated, high health focused. But the target isn't just in those stores. They have also places in smaller cities. So we're just really focusing on our consumer and how to communicate to them. We haven't nailed it. We're always working on how to make it better.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think with as quickly as things are moving, everyone's in that place.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And the cool thing though is like most people they know they need to floss. So they are like, oh, if this is going to make it easier, like I'll try it.
SPEAKER_00But they have to know it exists first. What has changed the most in your leadership across the various stages of your business growth?
SPEAKER_01Learning to let go of things is hard. Like when you start a company and there's only one of you, you realize what your strengths and weaknesses are. So I offloaded my weaknesses at first. I'm not good at customer service because I'm just like a problem solver. So if someone was to say, hey Bryn, this isn't working, I'd be like, okay, here's a new label. But I learned I need to be flowery and kind. But I actually read a book called Multipliers because and Who Not How. And I loved both of those books. Who Not How made me realize if I wanted to have exponential growth, I needed to hire the right people that had more experience than I did and could help me grow more rapidly. And then the multiplier book is about as a leader that you need to be able to have everyone on your team feel like their voice matters. And I think it's something as women, we actually typically do a little bit better job of letting people feel like their ideas are important. But I've been trying to figure out how do I make my team know, even if they're not involved in this and they have an idea about it, I still want them to give a viewpoint because that would be a viewpoint that the consumer would probably have as well.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And as a founder, I think the best ideas are the collective ideas. And I want to surround myself with people and team members that come to me and say, hey, have you thought of this? Or why aren't we doing this? Or this just started happening within our business and what we do, we should think about doing that. And I know as a founder, we're not all good at everything. And so that is the hardest part as you're starting and growing.
SPEAKER_01I think what's hard nowadays is to get top talent. Sometimes they don't want to move to where you are. But we have this awesome headquarters in Spokane. And right now we have almost our whole team is in Spokane. You're able to get some awesome people to be here, but that really helps to have the interaction of humans. So I think right now a big challenge is how do you get your non-in-person people, because you want to have great talent, still be as involved and brainstorm together?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that is hard. It is hard when you're spread across the country or even the world. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's been hard, but then you learn, okay, this is how we're gonna do it, or we're gonna have an off-site.
SPEAKER_00What's one honest lesson about leading people or building a product that you wish more founders talked about openly?
SPEAKER_01I wish more founders talked openly about failing because we all are failing at something and it's the people who failed, learned, and then kept going. Luckily, I'm part of a female founders' group, and I'm pretty good at sharing my failures and not being worried about being exposed. But when other people do, I usually learn a lot from it. I wish founders shared. Oh, I tried this and it didn't work at all. But it's also interesting to see like how quickly we have to adopt change. Even with like meta ads, there's a whole new formula to do it now. Before you used to be able to try different hooks on the same picture, now you can't do that. And influencers are completely changing. So I just think being more honest about our failures would help people more.
SPEAKER_00You're right. Because a customer too wants to go on a journey with you. And a customer might end up investing more in your product when they know the complete story behind it, instead of just saying, Oh, we have this successful business, to know everything it took to get to where you are today.
SPEAKER_01And I totally I think people are way more invested, but it's hard because when you sometimes share those things, people can take it advantage of you. I used to share my numbers all the time, and then I realized, oh, there's a reason people don't share their numbers. But it's hard. My natural instinct is to share. Now I only share with trusted individuals. Yes. And your reach shows a success. Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER_00How do you make sure to protect and cultivate your joy within work in your life?
SPEAKER_01Who you surround yourself with at work actually can really dictate this too. I have an amazing team where I come to work, I'm excited to hang out with them. So I realize I'm fortunate that way. In my personal life in the last few years, when you first start a company, everything feels like it's important, everything feels like it's on fire. As I've grown, I've realized, oh, I need to take the night off to spend with my children. I can't work tonight. So I'm taking my first vacation on tomorrow, actually. Good for you. But I'm like planning on not working. And I'm and I our company is I've been working on it for six years. So I've taken vacations, but I've always been like working on in the background. I think the hard part is at the beginning you're being scrappy and gritty, and you really have to sacrifice a lot. But I'm like, did I need to do that back then? Maybe that's why I'm successful. I don't know. But now I put in boundaries of I don't work on Saturdays really at all. Now, if there's a super pressing thing, or we're having a big sale, I'll work on Saturdays. But I never work on Sundays. And I make a point of like, if my kids need to be somewhere and I need to be with them, they know that I am. And I honor that for all of the our team is 90% women, so they know that I know that their family comes before work.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's so good because we can do it all. And I try to put my phone away too. And my mom growing up was a kindergarten teacher, and I watched her, she would take one day on the weekend and not do anything. And then the next day she'd prep all of our plans for the week. But I learned that from her, and we really do need that downtime. And then we come back so much more refreshed, even though sometimes we don't feel like we can take it.
SPEAKER_01I live for exercising every morning, like it helps me start my day off so well. But when I had little kids, that wouldn't have been an option. So I think it's really hard. I'm a 40-year-old with five kids. My youngest is seven. My life is way different now than it was seven years ago. And so I think founder women need to give themselves more grace when they have little kids. So if you're a founder when you have kids, you can't compare yourself to someone who doesn't have kids or someone who's older. It's just things are going to be different. But I also could work way into the night when I had kids. And now if I stay up past 10, I'm dying.
SPEAKER_00Such is such good advice because it is hard in those early years. And it does change as they get older. It goes from being more physical to the mental load. Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much for joining us today and for all that you are doing to create products to protect our health. Please share with us how and where we can find Slate Flosser.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so SlateFlosser.com, also Amazon.com, Target, and Target.com are floss heads that you can subscribe at Amazon and our website. Also, if you ever want to follow me, I try to give people tips on being a female founder on my Instagram, which is Brynn McClennan.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for joining us today. I'd love to hear from you. Reach out to me at hello at shbuilt it.com on our she built it website or at she built it on social. Thank you to my editor, Rich Drafalino, who always makes us sound good. Until next time, let nothing stop you from experiencing effectively business that you crave.