The First Time You See Someone Wearing Something You Made | Kristen Anderson | 183

What if the reason most bras don’t feel right… is because brands aren’t actually listening? 

In this episode of Manders Mindset, host Amanda Russo sits down with Kristen Anderson, co-founder of Iteration, to unpack what happens when product design is guided by real women, not guesswork.

From Kristen’s “Skirt Girl” origins and a wild childhood fashion story to her path through lingerie startups and Target swimwear, this conversation explores the mindset behind creating with intention, building community-driven products, and learning to move forward even when things feel uncertain. Expect laughs, founder truth, and a few unexpected questions, including the one law Kristen would make if she could.

⏰ Timeline Summary:

 [06:10] Childhood dynamic, being the youngest, and a healthy co-parenting example after divorce
 [11:35] The sewing-machine turning point and how “Skirt Girl” began
 [18:40] The Barbie fashion incident that turned into a hospital visit (and a lifelong fashion obsession)
 [39:20] Freelancing in the early internet era: uncertainty & learning curves
 [45:30] Brutal commutes, startup culture, and developing a growth mindset
 [58:05] The idea that lingered: early COVID, abandoning the book, and the start of Iteration

To Connect with Amanda:

Schedule a 1:1 Virtual Breathwork Session HERE

📸 Instagram: @thebreathinggoddess

Follow & Support the Podcast:

📱Instagram: @MandersMindset
👥 Join the Manders Mindset Facebook Community HERE!

To Connect with Kristen/ Iteration:

https://iterationera.com/

Transcript

Meet Kristen Anderson And Iteration

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Manders and Mindset Podcast. Here you'll find both monologue and interviews of entrepreneurs, coaches, healers, and a variety of other people, where your host Amanda Rousseau will discuss her own mindset and perspective, and her guest mindset and perspective on the world around us. Amanda's and her guests will help explain to you how shifting your mindset will shift your life.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Welcome to Amanda's Mindset, where we explore the power of shifting your mindset to trip your life. I'm your host, Amanda Reserve, and I am here today with Kristen Anderson. And she is the co-founder of Iteration, the first intimates brand co-created with over 1,200 women.

Who Kristen Is At Her Core

SPEAKER_01 0:49

With 15 years of design experience at Victoria's Secret, Lane Bryant, and Adorme, she saw firsthand how ignoring real customer feedback led to poor fits and high return rates. Thank you so much for joining me. Oh, I'm so excited to be here, Amanda. So who would you say Kristen is at the core?

SPEAKER_03 1:14

Hold on, such a good question. Loves art and design. I grew up really believing in creation as like an early skill, and I learned from drawing things to crafting with my hand. I I love being somebody who disrupts things a little bit and changes the setting. I don't love taking anything at first glance. I don't believe it. I have to find it a little bit. Rules were made to be broken. True. A little bit. But with tact and doing it right. I love being who I am every day as much as I can. I really struggle with. I feel like back in the day, the phrase I would have used would be faking the punk. I don't want to be somebody I'm not. I want to be who I am. I want to be somebody who shares with her team. I love making people laugh and have a good time. To me, it's very much about having a good time while you're doing things. If you're not having a good time, the why are you doing it?

Family, Co‑Parenting, And Early Independence

SPEAKER_01 2:41

If you're not having a good time, why are you doing it? I like that mindset. Can you tell us a little bit about your upbringing? Childhood dynamic, family dynamic, however deep you want to take that.

SPEAKER_03 2:57

Sure. Um, I'm the youngest um at three family households. So whatever that does in my like setting. My zodiac side is what I was thinking. And the youngest girl, my sister is a middle child, my brother is older. We're all five years apart, so it's like we never really went to school together. We were always kind of like separated. I was very much like my own individual, always, just like little day-to-day things, not as much like my school because I was so separated from them. But my parents divorced when I was probably six, so I got two birthday parties and I really enjoyed that at a little point. They made it really easy though. They were really good about being co-parent, like before that turn even really existed. My mom and dad, like even now, they've been divorced longer than they were married. But even now, my mom would invite my dad to Thanksgiving dinner if she was hosting it at her house. They're still a really good friend. It was never like drama for your mama, you know. So I think that really helped. I would say that being the youngest, I got a lot of extra attention, especially towards the end of my adolescence. So it was really great to have parents that cared and wanted to be there for those parts. You and I think that there's lots of things that have made me who I am. Like sibling relationships, probably more than anything. But you know, it's hard to even wonder any other way, because like every uh opportunity for a choice basically opens a new branch. So I mean, I wouldn't have it any other way. I think everything that happened led me to this place. So it was worth it.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

I like that. Every choice opens you to a new branch. That's great that you were able to have such a great I don't even know what word I want to use, but with the co-parenting, you know, and you mentioning your favorite thing with having two birthday parties. Like that that's a great thing. Like some parents would be arguing over who gets to throw it. I think that's a great way to handle it. And even years later, you're still looking back on that, like you got two birthday parties when you were what so post-school, did you go to college?

Sewing Machine Spark And Skirt Era

SPEAKER_03 5:35

Yep. So I went to school at Framingham State in Mass. I didn't know I was gonna go to college at first. So a weird moment in my senior year of high school, because that summer I had gotten a job as a nanny, and with my very first paycheck, I bought a sewing machine and fabric, and I went home that night and I made a dress, and I was like, This is so cool. Cause I the only sewing machine I had used at that point was like my mom's like really shitty pink Kenware that like smelled like rubber when I used it, and it was just like everything broke, you know, like nothing, it didn't sew right ever. But I bought the sewing machine, I made a dress, and I was like, oh my god, this is so fun, I love it. And then I just like never looked back, and so I started going store and buying all the fabric I could buy that I loved. Like I had really silly, silly fabric. I had I remember one skirt that I had that was like had flamingos all over, and I just like I loved making like these weird wacky skirts. I had like a really cute mini poodle skirt that I made. I just I had a lot of fun making clothes, and so mostly skirts though, mostly skirts, my senior year of high school. And I like at some point in in life, I had wanted to be a doctor. I took four years of Latin in high school because I wanted to be a doctorate, and then my senior year, I told my guidance counselor, I'm like, I didn't think I just want to take a break because like I discovered this new passion that I wanted to build a portfolio so that I could go to FIT. And so I had this in my mind at this point, and I was like, I'm just gonna take a year off. I'm gonna make a portfolio because FIT needed a portfolio. And so my guidance counselor's like, no, I don't think you should do that. And then he convinced me to apply to the only school nearby that would take me without a portfolio for fashion, not the only school, but like one of a few schools, and he convinced me to look at it and apply. I went and visited the school before I applied. And I was like, Oh, I actually really like it. So I applied, and then I got in. It was the only school I applied for. I was like, okay. And then I actually loved it. I loved Framingham State, it was such a fun school, and I learned a lot there. I also became really involved in student government, became my call government president. Uh my freshman year, then I became an RA for the rest of it. I just found a good place there. So I never ended up transferring to FIT. I just went framing him all the way, and then I ended up in the lingerie field, and I never looked back. I thought I was gonna design dresses when I first started, but I love undergarments, and they're like party dresses for under your clothes every day.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

But that's it. I'm so curious. What made you buy a sewing machine your senior year?

College Choices And Finding A Path

SPEAKER_03 8:40

Well, I had always been really, really interested in clothing. And like, I mean, I would draw clothes when I was like younger, that would be what I drink, which I don't know why, because I loved it. But then at one point, when I was nine years old, actually, I was I was at my friend's house. She was actually a foster child, so like this was kind of a new environment for me. It wasn't like somewhere I was like totally used to being, but at her house, we were like sewing Barbie clothes, and I take a needle and I stick it in the rung and then I'll go to look for something, and I'm kneeling when I kneel on this needle, and I feel like I'm in my knee, and I'm like, what the hell? And I'm nine years old, so I didn't really say what the hell, obviously. But I leaned back against the bed, and I was like, Oh my god. And I looked and they're streaming it on my knee, and I'm like, oh my goodness. That was my first take with fashion. I feel like that was the whole universe, like freaking me with fashion bug. And I'm like, why did this happen to me when I was nine years old? I had to go to the hospital. I got seen in the ER by like Mr. Doogie Hauser, he was literally the youngest doctor I've ever seen in my life. He snipped the string so you couldn't get it out, and then I had to have surgery the next day to get this needle out of my friggin' knee. So I'm done, it's stupid, and I'm just like, how did this happen? And now looking that hindsight is funny, funny. And uh, you know, now I get it because that was the universe trying to tell me to go here. I think maybe, or maybe not, maybe it was the opposite. Maybe it was like you should be a doctor, be like Doogie Hauser, who you should outdo him. I don't know. I messed up something.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

So you've been into the clothes for a long time and drawing them and everything.

SPEAKER_03 10:47

I mean, I tried to use my mom's pen more, that like pink one that like burns rubber. I tried to use that when I was younger too. Like, even after the like Harvey incident, I did not give up. I wanted to make bags. Like, I tried to get into a bag making business with my sister at one point, and she's really unruly, so it didn't work. But I was probably the center of the limit. I could not be managed, and now I learned I can't be managed because I own my own business and I can't be managed. I tried using this janky Kenmore machine, and it just smelled like burnt rubber, and the bobbin just kept getting messed up, and I didn't know what I was doing, but I knew this wasn't right, so I just really wanted a sewing machine. I wanted a make sewing machine, I wanted to look at a pile of fabric and turn that shit into a skirt. Like, I just I really, really wanted to do that. And after I bought the sewing machine, I would do it like obsessively, like every day. I would find some new fabric, make a new skirt, especially once the school year started from after summer. I would go home every night, I would make a new skirt, I would do that from like the beginning of September through November, not repeating skirt for the first two or three months of four year. I never wore pants, I was known as skirt girl in my high school because I was always wearing me skirt. I was also the whole in the whole Mac teacher's hallroom. She also would like see me in the hallway in my new skirt, and she'd pull me in, show her class when I had made that too. Because I look like this whole Mac project basically every day. I'm just like coming in with new things and never wearing pants. And I only learned later, after three or four years after high school, that I got called skirt girl or skirt girl. Like nobody ever called this to me, my face, but I worked at a shoe store too. And so one day I was working at the shoe store, like in summer break between college, and somebody's like, Hey, you're skirt girl. And I was like, What do you mean?

SPEAKER_01 12:52

And they're like, You're the girl that always wear all the skirts. That's why I should have. So, what was it about making skirts that you liked as opposed to like making t-shirts or making pants? I mean, skirts were really easy, to be honest.

Early Career Struggle And First Lingerie Job

SPEAKER_03 13:07

Like, they were just a really easy thing. I felt like I had vision every time I had new fabric, I know exactly what this is gonna be. Like I'm like a girly girl, so I think skirt I latched on a skirt, and I was like, I'm just gonna make a new skirt every day and see what I can do. I had one that I really loved that was black tweed with pink stripes running through it, and it had like a little flounce at the bottom, and then it had a little sheer like Georgette ruffle flounce behind that, and then a little bow around the edge at the like where the seam got, and it was it was so cute. It was like something L Woods would have worn back in the Lakeland London's, and I like I loved it so much, you know. It was so cute.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

I hope I can give it. So then you go to college to Flamingham, and you said you loved it.

SPEAKER_03 13:58

Oh, I loved it. I mean, it was so cool. The the campus was very like quintessential, like New England college, just very picturesque, small, like everybody felt like kind of friendly in your major, you know, people like there wasn't that many people that were there, so like you just got to know people really well, and it was nice. And you know, I I really loved being in RA. I just I really like fell into college in a way that like I hadn't in high school, like I didn't relate to high school the way I related to college. I just really loved it. I thought at some point I would have moved to another school about trying to go to FIT, but I just really loved it. Felt like my education was really good too, so I didn't feel like I needed to go there, you know.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Did you start sewing other things besides skirts when you were in college?

SPEAKER_03 14:52

Most definitely, but I did make a lot of things out of weird stuff too. I did a whole semester where I made clothes out of like non-clothing materials. So I made like a garbage bag dress that had like a newspaper underbust and like foil piping, and it it closed with a little lock and pad, like chain and pad lock. I did like a raffle ticket boustier and had like a foil skirt with also raffle, like raffle around it, also foil piping. It was kind of a collection, so it sort of like had cohesive on. But yeah, I mean it was that was really fun. I just loved creating things however I could. So whether it was normal materials or something out there, I loved it.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

Now, post-college, what did life look like for you when you left Famingham?

SPEAKER_03 15:51

Yeah, no, it was weird. I had a really hard time with life. I I graduated in 2009 and the Harry suck. I had a job at Old Navy and I was doing visual merchandising. I would get there at three in the morning. I mean, I was a fashion designer and this was merchandising, so I'm trying to do it, and it was just really, really hard. And then I only lasted a very small period of that job, and then I went and started working at a consignment store. I worked my way up really quickly there and then became the assistant manager and then the store manager. It was really fast, but that was really fun. I really loved working in consignment, and then you know, after that, I had a friend after about a year out of school who had gotten a job at a laundry company in the North Shore of Boston, and they were looking for another person, and so she got me in for an interview. It was like amazing because you know, I had the interview and I was basically offered the job like on the spot. I didn't really want to take it to be honest, because it was all like what's okay, consaler. I was making better money at the consignment store, and I called my mom. And she's you have to take it. And I'm like, but it's like less money than I'd be making in the store.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

It's a dream, and this is how you get it.

SPEAKER_03 17:20

It's just like uploading the door, and like, you know, laugh. And then I basically took it close. She's like, she helped me go to college. I'm like, I can't have a girl, so I left, and that was in the North Shore of Boston. I had to move into this like crazy house for a very temporary period. Weird time in my life.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

No and now you took the job, but so was the only reason you didn't m want the job because of the salary? Was it like something you were interested in?

Freelance Lessons And Adore Me Breakthrough

SPEAKER_03 17:59

I mean, I was definitely interested in the role. I just once I heard the salary, I was very deflated by it. I'll be honest, I've written about it on my blog. It was only$23,000 a year. It's wasn't like 1985. Or 2010. So it was not a great paying job, and it would also require me to move away from my home. I had no idea. I was barely making ends meet living with my mom, making like ten or fifteen thousand dollars more than that, and now I gotta take this job and make less money and figure out a way to make an apartment work too. It just felt scary. That was really the main thing. There was obviously a very big part of me that really wanted it because it was everything I worked for and it was very interesting, and just the idea of getting off the job on the spot, basically, like now was like, Wow, like, oh my god, like it feels like you know, you did a good job and you got there, and then like, but there was no negotiating, right? Like, I tried, I was like, is there anything out for you? You know, if there was nothing. So just knowing that as I got in my car after having also worked for like half a day, too, because that was part of the interview. So I came in for the interview, I did the interview, worked as this girl's like assistant for a day, and like or half a day, like sketching and showing my work, and that's why I got offered the job on the spot. But you know, just the idea of it was kind of deflating because I'm like, I don't know how to make that work, right? But I knew I kind of had to do it if I wanted to get into the industry, so I I knew my mom was right because they are always right.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Oh my gosh. Now, how did you let feel about the idea of working in lingerie? Because you hadn't done that before, had you?

SPEAKER_03 19:47

No, I hadn't done it. I had a little bit of slimwear in my portfolio at that point, but no lingerie. I thought it was really exciting though. I just remember being like I got into the office and I walked into the spot that my future boss would be working in. I loved it because there was so much like frilly girly shit all over. It was a hotbed suit. It was like everything, everywhere, all of the time, all the place. Like everywhere, but it was fun and it was like colorful and pretty, you know, lacy. I immediately felt like this is my place. Like I knew within six months of being there that this was something that I really enjoyed, and I understood how it translated into something that was similar to what I had really wanted all along. Because I really, really like what got me inspired originally was I love Betsy Johnson and I love like these party dress girly flair that she had. And so that's what I tried to channel in my own skirts when I was making skirts. But lingerie is just like that all the time, and it's just under your clothes, and it's something you wear every day, so it's like compounding effects, right? You wear a raw and underwear probably every day. A lot of people do wear raw or underwear every day. So just the idea of having this party on your body every day instead of a party dress like they wear one, like on New Year's Eve, one day of the year, whatever. Like, you know, and like a lot of people just wear their party dresses once too, or like they rent a dress, or whatever, but like your under that's gotta feel good, it's gonna fit, it's gotta be like something close to your heart. It's like all the good things. I don't know. I just I can't think of anything that is not that like party dresses is, you know? Like it it became everything to me almost instantly.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

I love that. Now, how long did you work at this company for?

SPEAKER_03 21:51

I was there for like two maybe two and a half years or so, and then I they had kind of like a crazy dynamic. Make shift because Frederick's went out of business and a bunch of their people to let go a bunch of us. And then I went into freelance. And freelancing was a lot different than it is now. So it was like scary, wild, wild west. But I did it for a while and I tried to make it work and I didn't really love it. And then I got an amazing opportunity at Adorme in New York. And that was like life-changing. So I said, Yeah, I'll take this opportunity and move from the Boston area to go to New York. And honestly, it was just like the best thing that ever happened. And so it's just it was like meant to be, you know.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

No, you mentioned after you left this place, you did freelance for a little bit. How was that?

Moving, Commute Grind, And Startup Life

SPEAKER_03 22:54

You know, it was just so different because I feel like I was so junior and I didn't really know what I was doing at the time. And I feel like with freelance, the best time to do freelance is when you really, really know your shit, because that's like when you can really command a room and explain with authority versus guessing. I mean, honestly, I think it's hard to imagine the internet without Chat GPT. It's hard to imagine the internet without Google or without the robustness that Google is now, right? And so, like, back then it kind of sucked. Like, I made all of my invoices on Excel. I really didn't know what I was doing, and I really didn't know how to position myself in a way that was like meaningful and well executed at the time. And so, like looking back, I feel like, oh, I was like daunty. I mean, I still got business and I made it work, and it wasn't the worst thing, it just knowing how I operate now, my business light years ahead of that. So it just feels like a kind of cringy period of my life.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

When was this approximately, Fee?

SPEAKER_03 24:10

So that was like sometime between middle of 2012 to like middle of 2013. So it's like the internet is so different, it's hard to like it's kind of crazy because like you are probably also right around my age, and so you probably have grown up with the internet where you might kind of remember a time where it wasn't there. I do, and when it was very new, and that's weird, not everybody has that, but like before the internet and after the internet are very different periods, and even when you think about if you slice that in half and you just look at that period of my life, right? Like that is so long from where it is now, and so like I think about how everything you get, like it's just hard to imagine what that was like. I can't even remember it well enough, right? Like, I just remember it. It was hard. It was hard to find business, it was hard to figure out. You know, I think I used upwork. I don't think it helped very much. Like, I don't think I got great clients, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:18

How long did you do this freelancing before you got the job at Adore Me?

SPEAKER_03 25:23

I mean, it was probably just about a year, a year and a half, maybe. I think I did it a little bit after I got the role at Adorme, but not very long after.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Were you looking for a woke when you got this job at Adorme?

SPEAKER_03 25:36

I'd hadn't started to, yeah. Like it I leaned into the freelancing for a little while, but then I just was kind of tired of that. I felt very not sure what was gonna happen. I had been interviewing a few places, I think I had interviewed and had a job interview at Puma, and had gotten flown to an interview in Dillard's in Little Rock, Arkansas, which was an interesting experience. I had looked at a lot of different roles actually, been interviewing, and I just I got really lucky because my previous boss from the job that I had been let go from was in the Adore Me office the day after they got my application. And so they asked my ex-boss if she had known me, and she was like, Oh yeah, and then she started talking me up. They reached out like that same day and asked me for an interview. I came in a few days later another day, then I was offered the job on the spot, but I wasn't even home, and they called me and helped me awesome.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

You mentioned a doromey was in New York. Yep, but you were currently living in Boston.

Growth Mindset And Learning On The Job

SPEAKER_03 26:56

Yeah, I was in the Boston area, and so I had to go to the interview. It was like they had called me, I think, on a Thursday or Friday, and I had to go home to Connecticut to get ready for the interview. I drove to the New Haven Transition. It was like a six-hour round trip to go to the interview, and then honestly, I remember so many of the feelings too. I had a really bad experience in New York previously. The last time I had been for a job interview was awful. I had only been there twice for an interview. This was the second time, right? And the first time was awful because it was right out of college. I had a recruiter that saw my portfolio and she thought I would be just in this job at a cult company. I go to the interview. They take like 30 seconds to look through my first 10 pages of my portfolio and my resume, and then they're like, I don't know why you're here. And then I'm like, again, another six-hour round. Anyway, so that was my previous experience of going into New York. So the whole time I'm riding into the city for the Adore Me interview, I'm just like thinking in my brain if I could take my butt and like get off this train right now and then get right back on the next train to Connecticut. Like I don't even have to know if I could just go back home and tell everybody I did the interview. I mean, I tell myself that, but then somehow my brain and my legs have two different messages and they walk me all the way to the interview, take the interview. I have a great time. It's a very good conversation, just like this. We hit it off. Me and my would-be future boss. It was just good and easy. It just felt like we were in sync. So now, did you move to New York after getting the sick? So I'm I was living at the time with my eventual husband in Massachusetts. He actually moved from Connecticut with me to Massachusetts. He's the reason why I could afford to live there, really, because he also provided income to our apartment when I was making a low-so money. And so he lived in our apartment there, and I moved back home to my mom's while he tried to figure out a job situation in New York. So I lived in my mom's house for like three months. It was like three hours every morning, three hours every evening. I lived kind of like a zombie, and she did like my laundry and made me lunches, and I felt like I was a kid again, and it was kind of great, but also kind of awful. Honestly, the worst thing that I remember from this phase of my life was the smell of the refrigerator. It was horrendous at one point, and it was only because I brought my lunch every day that I remember this. It would infect my lunch bags. But I was like, Oh my god, why does it smell like the fridge? This was my mom prepared. It smells like the dormant.

SPEAKER_01 29:57

But so you were commuting, you had like a six-hour total commute.

SPEAKER_03 30:01

Yes. And you did that for three months. But we also had a really long work day, too. So our working hours were usually nine to seven. My boss was really wonderful, and she would let me try and skip out at like six, six fifteen-ish to try and get a train that wouldn't get me home after midnight. But I would like get on a 6:30 train or whatever, because it's still a 20-minute walk from there to the Grand Central, and then I'd get take a two-hour train, after an hour ride, and then you know, I'd be in bed by like 11:30-ish, maybe midnight, and then I'd wait just four am I doing anything.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

It was like, oh my god, what am I doing? So you do that for three months, and then did you move to New York?

SPEAKER_03 30:52

Yeah, eventually got an apartment with two other roommates, two girls, for like uh nine-month window or so. Also, another fun experience in life having roommates again. I hadn't had roommates to college.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

So you have two female roommates for about nine months. And do you leave Adorme after those nine months?

SPEAKER_03 31:14

Oh no, I was there for a long time. I was there for like three, a little bit more than three years. So I'm just living my life and being part of a startup kind of unleashes something in you that you don't know you have until you do it. So, like, I don't know. I just there was a mentality there of work hard, play hard, and so I did that. And like I wasn't with my boyfriend at the time, like he was in Massachusetts, and so living with my girl roommates and having the adore me lifestyle. I just I worked really late every night and hung out with them. My adore me people were my BFFs. Um honestly, a few of them still are, so it's like that lifestyle is kind of you become close with the people that you work with because you're always at work or you're always doing something worth-related.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

What would you say is the biggest uh thing you learned from that startup?

SPEAKER_03 32:14

I think having a growth mindset for sure, believing that you can learn anything you need to learn. I did not know what I was getting into when I took on the job. Had no clue exactly what I knew I was working as an associate designer and I knew what the job role consists of, but I didn't know really what I was getting into. And so, like just being open to new experiences, being able to accept what was in front of me and say this is a challenge, but I'm gonna be able to do it, I'll figure it out. That takes you so far in everything you will ever do in life, and so if you just embrace the idea that everything is figure outable, that's actually a cool kind of a wall on the window. But everything's figure outable, everything is something you can learn if you are willing to take the steps to do it, and especially now, I mean, there is like literally nothing you can't teach yourself with what the internet is nowadays.

SPEAKER_01 33:18

I agree with that. I love that, I love that perspective. So you worked out of doing me for a little over three years, and then post that.

Pivot To Swim, First Startup, And Agency

Birth Of Iteration And Community Co‑Creation

SPEAKER_03 33:29

Well, I loved working there. I really wanted to work my own thing, so I took a role that I thought would be Marvel Work Life Balance. So I went, had a job at Swim USA, which I'm as the lead designer for a Target brand. At the time it was called Verona, but then it became Kona Soul, which is kind of now I think she didn't shore, but it's been a little bit of an evolution. So I took on that role. I also was working on my own startup at the time, and I took it a little like where I thought I could take it. And at some point I just realized it was called fearless, but at some point I just realized like I didn't feel like I could do it by myself. I felt like I didn't really love the idea anymore, and I felt like I was putting too much pressure on myself to understand and learn how to do every part of the business myself because I didn't have a partner. So at a point about I would say two years into working on that, I said, you know, I need to put this away for a while, I need to take a break. So I just stopped working on that, and I kind of rolled that into one of my businesses that I currently still have, which is my design agency. I think I started that probably in early 2016, and then I had shifted it to the design agency by the end of 2018. That was kind of what I realized. With building my own business, the first time the fearless business, I tried to do everything, and pivoting, I said to myself, like, why don't I just really focus on what I'm really good at, which is the product and making product from beginning to end, the whole process. I'm really good at that whole thing because of my time at Swim Us Day, because I've seen the whole process from beginning to end all the way through from all sides. So I took what I knew and I built that into a consulting design agency that you know I help other brands develop and create their own products, especially focused on the laundry and swimwear categories. That was kind of another interesting area because it made me realize that I was actually really good at doing that part of things, and doing it for so many other people, it gives you confidence in a way that you just don't get from doing it on your own because you don't have any feedback when you do it on your own until you get to the point where you're selling your product. You don't really have a feedback. So doing it for other people and seeing them and trying to take what they did well, trying to take what they didn't do well, and iterate on it, all of those things led me to my next venture, which was iteration, which is kind of where I currently am. We make really soft, comfortable intimates made out of tents of hotel that are co-created by a community of 1200 women. I'm saying that all weird, but yeah, so all of the different variations of what I've done have taken me through many different journeys and that led to iteration, which is really exciting because it launched last year. We're just about to celebrate our one-year birthday, and you know, I was actually talking about therapist, and we were talking about how there were so many things that I had wanted to do that I've now done with this business because you know I watched a product, it came to life, I've made sales, or made wholesale orders. There's so many hurdles and milestones that I've actually accomplished. You often don't even think about them when you're a really hyper-focused person, you're just moving on to the next thing, right? How often do you pause and say, Wow, I did the thing I set out to do.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

That's amazing. Congratulations. That's so true, though, that so many of us don't stop to recognize when we've achieved something. Totally. Such a bad habit of play. Oh my gosh. And now I'm so curious. Did you always have the intention of creating your own brand like this?

SPEAKER_03 38:02

I don't know that I've always had the intention. I think I I just really like creating. And I think when an idea strikes, if you if it lingers long enough, you ought to listen to it. And honestly, that's kind of where it first came from. It was actually early COVID, and I was starting to write a book, but I saw the book. But I was starting to write a book about like creating product for me in the end, and it was kind of in that that I had this moment where I was thinking about what I wanted to create, and I realized I had this really interesting idea for a business where people contributed actively in the process. And so I just abandoned the book and went in a new direction. It's just a really interesting way to approach things when you listen to what your insides tell you, you know. Sometimes you have an idea for something and it comes and goes, right? And those are the ideas you want to grab, right? But when you have an idea that lingers and it sits out of your gut and you're just thinking about it, and you can't stop thinking about it, and all you want to do is try to figure out some way to make it happen, like that's an idea you should listen to. It's something that deserves a little bit more pause, at least. And so, like, I try to be more respectful to those ideas now because some things just come and go and they're like fats. Like I said, they're just in and out. I don't give a shit about those, but like the ones that sit and they like stay in your belly, and you're like, oh what think what am I thinking about that still? You know, that's what you listen to.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

Tighten up. I like that reference when it sits in you and you keep thinking about it. Those are the ideas too. Follow through with now. Can you explain a little bit about this community co-creation and how it works?

Turning Feedback Into Product Decisions

SPEAKER_03 40:15

Yeah, for sure. So we started an online community before we had ever launched any product. We knew that we wanted to create with intensive, and so we built a small community of women that weren't very happy with their bras at the moment, and we asked them what they wanted. We started with this like 3D printed 3D contoured frame, and we actually still like have it as this idea that we want to return to when the money is right, if the time is right, but right now it is just a very expensive idea for us as a business that's like fully bootstrapped, you know, we only have two owners, it's just us. So we started down that path, and during that, we also realized that even though we really want to revolutionize the bra, we can start somewhere else because not everything has to start in one giant movement. Sometimes you start small and incremental, and that's the idea of iteration as it is, anyways. We decided we're gonna launch with the lightest support level that we can offer right now, and then we'll build into our fully expanded product right as time goes on. And so, with that, we engaged this community and asked them to give us feedback on the entire process. And we told them, like, what styles do you want? What kind of features do you want in your bras? What are nice to have? What are the deal breakers? What sucks in a bra, and what should we absolutely get rid of so that we don't mess with them and what's really, really good and what you really want. And so we tried to basically over a year and a half, we honed that feedback and captured what we needed. You know, we got feedback on the colors they wanted. They told us what names they wanted for the colors, like they gave us really, really cute names and they gave us like really classic names, you know. One of my favorites is freaking marvelous. They gave us feedback, they did wear tests for us. They wore our underwear, our bras for days and days and weeks, and told us what they liked about it, how it felt, how it fit, and they showed us they gave us a lot of feedback so that we could take all of those little tidbits and use it to make the product better and make sure that the next round was even better than the last, which is yeah, the whole point. It's like we are always becoming better iterations of ourselves, and why shouldn't our underwear keep up and always getting better? You know, I love the idea of having a bra that you kind of know you can go back to and if it's changed in any way, because they did something to make it a little better, not to make it a little cheaper, to make it better.

SPEAKER_01 43:13

I love that. What made you decide you wanted to get customer feedback?

SPEAKER_03 43:20

Well, when I was at Adore Me, actually, we had really rigorous feedback whoops that we would go through where we would, you know, kind of review customer feedback, and we get like a report every week of these are like the items that had the highest negative feedback or the highest return rates. We would look at that information and then we would decide based on that, what are we going to revisit, refit, re recheck everything? Like we would then order samples from a warehouse, we tested on fit models, we'd refit them. We'd go through months of refitting, we would update the product and then Nothing happened, and that was like the first part of it where I saw all of this work that we put into making product better, but never informing the audience about it. It just felt like we were missing the mark because sometimes we were actually listening and people and then doing something, but then just totally not letting them know, which is like hey, you returned this bra because you didn't like the quality of the strap, but we fixed that. So maybe you should try it again. If that's the reason you returned it, why not let people know? Just being cognizant of all of these new iterations going on in our product line and the total anti-customer understanding of it. There's just two totally separate worlds, and honestly, I feel like all lingerie is so much like that. Like, there's two totally different worlds. There's actually like a world in which this is how they fit a garment on a fit model, and then this is how they tell you how to fit it on their website, and they're like not the same. And it's just like the whole world is just trying to figure out how to make things that are the same work.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

I'm curious. Were you surprised at anything when you started asking the customers about their feedback?

Why Customer Loops Matter In Lingerie

SPEAKER_03 45:21

I mean, I think I was most surprised by how interested they were in giving their feedback and how they how much they wanted to chime in. Some more than others, but you know, there was a lot of interest. The more fun and silly we made it, the more they were interested in it too. There was a really good poll we did around Halloween time, and it was like, what strap width would you want your bras to be? Like, what's your ideal strap width? And like we used Kit Kats as like a form of measuring, you know, Photoshop them on, and like it was just a silly way, but we got a lot of feedback, and it was a really popular post, and it helped us understand a really major feature of our bras, and like actually that is has in hindsight, we've learned now that like the strap was the biggest complaint we had seen in all of our research. The fact that we also got the most feedback on that is also interesting, too, right? And it did translate into like a wider strap on our product because of that feedback, so it all kind of worked.

SPEAKER_01 46:29

I'm curious, did you change anything based on ever getting customer feedback?

SPEAKER_03 46:37

Oh, for sure, for sure. There was a period in time where we had like a little mesh layer at the neckline. It was something that I had created before another bra came out, but then a bra came out of a competitor, and they have this like the same thing. Some people just didn't really like it, like for various reasons. We ended up taking it off. It was like an extra component. There was a lot of reasons that it made sense. So just remove it. But I think it was a good call at the end of the day if enough people are hesitant about one feature of something to call it out to us. We also are a smaller bootstrapping company, so it's not like we can have 10 iterations of things in an ideal world. Like, I could see that there's probably a place where we could have the version of it where it had the mesh, but we had to start somewhere, and starting at that place didn't feel right when so many people had chimed in and kind of said, like, this wouldn't make it a basic bra for me. This would make it harder for me to put in my wardrobe or whatever they said, you know.

SPEAKER_01 47:47

I want to transition it, Tad, but I'm curious. It did you always have the idea of naming this iteration?

SPEAKER_03 48:00

It was a very, very early name for sure. I can't remember any other name to be on. So yeah, I think it was the only name.

SPEAKER_02 48:11

Basic.

SPEAKER_03 48:12

It's one of my favorite ideas slash word concepts. When I was writing that book, I talked a lot about iterating and the idea of iteration and just doing things with subtle improvements to make that better. So I think you just there was never any other names.

SPEAKER_01 48:32

I gotcha. I was just curious because even when you were tracking earlier and you mentioned iterating ourselves, it's a part of every aspect. If you have this personal development mindset, always iterating something.

Naming Iteration And Personal Growth

SPEAKER_03 48:47

Yeah, for sure. I think it's one of the things that made me feel really good about getting older, actually. I used to get really sad about my birthdays, whatever. And now I'm like, you know, that just means that I'm like better. I'm more seasoned, I have more experience, I probably make more money, I have more history with people that I love. I'm just better in the next iteration. Pretty much unless you don't figure out a way to take good and get rid of the bad and use it to make yourself a little bit better, you will always just naturally kind of go towards becoming better.

SPEAKER_01 49:28

You've come so far with all of this creating. Now, anybody listening to us, if they're interested in starting something, whether it's a business, their own brand, what's one thing that you wish someone had told you before you began so much of this creating?

SPEAKER_03 49:51

Well, I have a really well documented blog post that I put out, and I think that one thing that all entrepreneurs, anybody who wants to accomplish something, really anything you want to accomplish, you should write a letter to yourself, and you should tell yourself why you're doing it and the reasons you're getting into this, whatever the XYZ of it is. You want to tell yourself, and you want to be able to pull this letter out on the hard days and look at what's happening when things are really bad. You want something that will lift you up and remind you to keep going because it will get bad and it will be really hard, and it might even get worse than that, but you can come back to this letter. And so if you're having a bad day, you gotta wait till it's a good day. And if it's a good day, you probably are gonna want to quit. So if you only want to quit because it's a bad day, don't quit. Keep going, wait till it's a good day. And if it's a good day and you really want to quit, then I guess you can quit. But I've never had it happen where I waited until a good day and I really wanted to quit.

Advice To Founders: Write Yourself A Letter

SPEAKER_01 51:16

Write a letter to yourself about why you're doing what you're doing. Yeah, the things that motivate you, what's gonna keep you going.

SPEAKER_03 51:24

Ultimately, it's for you to be inspirational to yourself because it's hard to not listen to yourself. Right. You saw you said it. So you can't really like buy it, right? So just tell yourself why you're doing it, tell yourself what's in it for you. Tell yourself the things that it will mean if you accomplish it and why that's important to you in your life, your family, or whatever it is. Give yourself all the reasons it matters to you in a meaningful way, and just give yourself a little pep talk, basically. It's just like a little pep talk. It's gonna get hard, it's gonna suck sometimes. You're probably not gonna know what to do. And when you don't know what to do, maybe here's what you should do. And maybe think about it. Lay in a map, plan a strategy for it. You got X, Y, and Z. Your uncle Tom is the person that you're gonna reach out to when you have financial woes. At the end of the day, it's really just about like giving yourself a little bit of guidance so that you have self-control, even on a bad day, even when you don't want to listen to anybody else, you can listen to yourself.

SPEAKER_01 52:40

I like that. I really like that. Now, I'm curious what you would consider the biggest aha moment you've had in your life.

SPEAKER_03 52:51

Oh you face the biggest, the biggest aha. I think so. I took a picture of this and sent it to my friend today, actually. It's a card and it's a curly girl card. I love curly girl. I don't know if you've ever growed them, but they make really cute cards, but, anyways, it just says it's important to remember that the beginning can be anywhere along the way, and I think that is an amazing aha moment for like any person that's trying to start something because you don't have to wait for a good moment, you don't have to wait for a good day, you don't have to wait for tomorrow. You could start right now, it can be anywhere along the way, anywhere. And we also wait, we wait so much, don't you think? Like so many people that we we wait for a perfect moment, right? And you don't have to wait, don't have to wait for that. You can just change or do whatever the fuck you want whenever you want.

SPEAKER_01 53:51

I love that. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. Yeah, it was a great call.

SPEAKER_03 53:57

I enjoyed it.

Aha Moment: Begin Anywhere

SPEAKER_01 53:59

Have you heard of a man named Jay Shetty? Yeah. So he's got a podcast, he's a motivational speaker, he's written a book, he has a podcast called On Purpose, and he ends his podcast with two segments, and I've incorporated them into mine. I give him a little bit of credit because these are not my questions, they are not my questions at all. The first segment is the many sides to us, and there's five questions, and they need to be answered in one word each. Go prologue. No, they're not hard. They're not hard. Look at that, and there's no wrong answer. So okay I trust you. What is one word someone who was meeting you for the first time would use to describe you as? Bubbly. What is one word someone that knows you extremely well would use to describe you as? Chaotic. What is one word you'd use to describe yourself?

SPEAKER_04 55:12

Animated.

SPEAKER_01 55:15

What is one word that if someone didn't like you or agree with your mindset would use to describe you as crazy.

SPEAKER_03 55:26

Or no, unhinged.

SPEAKER_01 55:29

What is one word you're trying to embody right now? Joyful. I like that. Second segment is the final five, and these can be answered in up to a sentence. What is the best advice you've heard or received?

SPEAKER_04 55:49

Keep going.

SPEAKER_03 55:51

Why is that the best? Because when it feels like you're an hour, he might as well keep going. So many people give up so just short of the milestone.

SPEAKER_01 56:07

What is the worst advice you've heard or received? Stop being a cowboy.

SPEAKER_04 56:15

Why is that the worst advice?

SPEAKER_03 56:23

Kind of like the wild, wild. It's not like necessarily corporate or like polished, but it's it's like what is something that you used to value that you no longer value? Being a perfectionist or being perfect.

SPEAKER_01 56:46

What helped you stop valuing that, if anything?

SPEAKER_03 56:50

I mean, it's not that I don't value it, it's just that I have realized that it hinders action in a lot of ways. And so I'm much more willing to be actionable and imperfect than perfect on paper and never do anything. That sucks.

SPEAKER_01 57:13

I agree. If you could describe what you would want your legacy to be, as if someone was reading it, what would you want it to say?

Rapid Fire: Many Sides And Final Five

SPEAKER_03 57:22

What is my language too many essential? You know what? I hope my legacy is that I help inspire people to be a little bit more courageous and be open to be who they are. I hope I encourage people to wear whatever they want to wear and feel confident doing it. I hope I inspire a legacy of understanding that there's a lot of value and growth and believing in yourself and that you can learn and do anything. And don't anybody else ever tell you you can't? Because they're wrong.

SPEAKER_01 58:22

If you could create one law in the world that everyone had to follow, what would it be? And I want to know why.

SPEAKER_03 58:32

I want everyone to just walk around in their underwear, and that's because I want to know what everybody's underwear looks like. What they're wearing. And who they're wearing. If they're wearing my underwear. Not really. But they just love to know what they're wearing. I can't ever know. When you would design underwear, you don't get to know who wears your underwear. That's like just like if I had a law that I could like make people walk around with their underwear, then I would know who's wearing my underwear, and it would be really easy to like be like and the designer of the request.

SPEAKER_01 59:11

It's silly no. Do people like not tell you that they wear it? This is just a random question that I'm curious now.

SPEAKER_03 59:20

I mean, people I like love tell me they would wear it.

SPEAKER_01 59:23

Like the close show. I get it. But like you won't know just like Joe Schmo walking down the street.

SPEAKER_03 59:29

Well, yeah, I would never. I mean, I do bra fittings sometimes for my friend's bra shop. So like I might know if I helped fit them into their bra. But if I didn't, then yeah, I never know. I never know. Yeah, as a swimmer or active wear designer, though, sometimes you get to see people on the beach wearing your stuff, and that is really like therapeutic to the soul to like witness like just habit stance, witness someone wearing your bathing suit, and you're just like, I'm like, it's kind of earth-shattering in some sense, but also like I mean, I sold lots of swimsuits with target. So lots of women have my bathing suits. I don't know why there was like swimsuit. One time, one time, or at least a handful of times, my mom slash my aunts have gone up to people on the beach and said, You're marrying my daughter swimsuit. When I do it, it's okay. When they do it, it's extra. It's getting it weird when I do it too.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:38

I I can understand though why that would be a law because you're curious and you're not necessarily gonna know really the way.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:45

I mean, that's just me making a silly law, though, because I have no right to be a lawmaker.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:49

What if most most of the guests that I'd be asking what law they would make have no right to be a lawmaker? But I asked them all I asked them all it, so it's okay. That's true. Sure. Thank you so much. Any final words you want to share with the listeners?

Closing Thoughts And Calls To Action

SPEAKER_03 1:01:10

Just check us out and go buy some bras and underwear from iteration.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:17

Sounds good. Thank you so much, Kristen. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Amanda. It was great chatting with you. You as well. And thank you guys for tuning in to Mandu's mindset.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:34

In case no one told you today, I'm proud of you. I'm voting for you. And you got that. As always, if you enjoyed the show, I would really appreciate it if you would leave me a five-star rating, leave a review, and share with anyone you think would benefit from that. And don't forget, you are only one nine step shift away from shifting your late. Thanks, guys, until next time.