Pink Lily's Tori Gerbig: What I'd Do Differently at $1M

Show Notes — Tori Gerbig, Pink Lily

Tori Gerbig started Pink Lily in 2011 selling random items on eBay with her husband Chris — both working corporate jobs, a newborn at home, and about $65K in student loan debt, plus a mortgage, plus car payments – they were trying to dig out from under. She launched the actual boutique out of their living room with just $300 in investment. Today Pink Lily is a $140M+ brand, and they didn't leave the living room until 2015.

In this episode, Faith and Jenn dig into how a side hustle that started on eBay turned into a real company — the slow, unglamorous build before any of it looked like a "brand," what changed when they finally outgrew the house, and what it actually took to get there while raising a family.

We talk about:

• Why they started selling on eBay in the first place (hint: it wasn't a big vision, it was $65K in student loans)
• What "starting with $300" really looked like day to day
• The moment the living room wasn't enough anymore
• Building a company with your spouse — and what that actually requires
• Growing from a side hustle to Inc. 5000 without losing the plot

This one's a good gut-check for anyone who thinks they need a big idea (or a big budget) before they're allowed to start.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode
 Pink Lily — https://pinklily.com
Follow us on instagram @WeAreFIDI

Sign up for access to our Library on our website for access to the blueprint of how each mom founder built her business. We did HOURS of research so you can steal it and copy.
Get Tori's BluePrint on how she built Pink Lily.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We're live. We've started. Fine, I'll do it. We have started. Okay. Now I need to figure out how to get comfortable in this weird couch sitting in the crook of it. Okay, maybe I'm gonna go like this. So hello. Finally. Fine. Finally. Finally. Um okay. So do we do chit-chat or yeah, we could chit-chat. Okay, maybe we do a bit of chit-chat. So what did you do this weekend?

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Oh, I don't even remember. Oh, I had to work. Oh, it was a very busy weekend. I had like four events on Saturday that I attended, one of which I hosted. And then the Sunday we went to church. Nice. And then we went swimming at my mom's, and then we went to a gender review. So it was a very busy weekend. That's a lot. Sounds tiring. It was exhausting. I'm still catching up, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

What about you? Oh, you went camping. I went camping and I decided it will be the last camping trip of my life. You have a whole airstream. I know that's what Colin was like. You bait and switch me. You used to be this outdoorsy camping. I was like, you know what? Let's really think about it. I was always down to go with you, but that was in my 20s. I'm now in my 30s with two small children. I'm not doing I'm not gonna pretend anymore. I'm not gonna put up with things that really don't work for me, which is camping. What was so hard about it? Sleeping with spiders. I'm just not about that line.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Did you sleep in the tent or in your airstream? In the airstream.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

But the airstream sits in our yard, like sits outside before. You guys can spray it. Spray it? Oh, I don't know. That would be just on the outside. Well, we we have so much going on on a regular basis that we don't take the proper amount of time to prepare for camping. So it was like thrown together. We don't have enough time free time in the moment to actually finish it. So it's halfway done. So every time we've camped on it, we take all this stuff and then we just throw it in the trailer, and it's like it's so disorganized, and I feel so claustrophobic in it because we have so much stuff and it's like oh it could be so nice, but we just don't have the time to put into this 78th project we have going on. True. So we have we came to some realizations that this might not be the time of life for us to be updating an Airstream because we've had it since 2019 and we let it sit for a couple years and then we put some time into it, and then we it sits for a few years, and we are both realistically talking about how much time we could put into it now, and we're like, no, it's not gonna happen. And I decided that I'm not camping in it until it's done or un until Ozzy's like five years old. You're just a couple more years. Yeah, just a few more years. So um, anyways, long story short, I'm not a camper, I outgrew that. Cool. Well, what are we doing? What are you? Who are we talking about today? So we are talking about somebody that the story I've been excited to tell you because I think you will be very interested in it specifically. Um so I want to sit back. This woman we we're gonna go over how it's fine. Faith has just been throwing coffee around the office all day. She stepped on it, and if that wasn't enough, she just dumped it on top of her laptop. Luckily, I have the luckily we still have the spill rags out.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

And I had it over my laptop.

unknown 4:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Okay, so we're gonna talk about how obsessive customer involvement builds a brand no one else can copy. Um, so this mom was, or this woman was a broke insurance saleswoman with a new baby and no paid maternity leave. And she turned a $300 eBay side hustle into a multi-million dollar fashion empire by treating her customers like co-designers.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

So genius.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Yes. I mean, I am on the eBay tip right now.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Yeah, I know. Uh, you've been texting me every week, probably. I sold this, I sold that. We're at it's very exciting. Yeah, it's good. So when I saw how this mom started, I was like, I'm pulling this for Faith.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Yes, I'm very excited. I have my pen in paper.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Yeah, so you're gonna like this one. Um uh should we do the intro? Sure. Okay, so I'm Jen. And I'm Faith, and this is the final do a podcast, and we chit-chat about moms who mom founders who are building businesses, building a dream life without really anywhere notably to start. So these stories apply to everyone. We want them to be accessible to anybody listening that you can start where she started.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Yeah, usually from nowhere, usually sometimes with help, sometimes without.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Yep. So we're gonna get into today's story. Pen ready. And we'll go ahead and tell you another little hook here. So she set a goal for $50,000 year one. Ooh. Four months later, after launch, she hit $100,000 in one single month. It was four years after? Four months, four months. Wow, yes, a hundred thousand and four months. Yes. So I do want to preference that these some of these stories really catch our attention because of like this. The timeline, crazy. Yeah, doesn't happen for everyone, but it's good to know that it could happen. It could happen, it could happen. So let's start where let's start at the beginning. Okay. So she's fresh out of college. Oh, I'll tell you her name. Tori Gerbig. Tori Gerbig. Tori Gerbig of Pink Lily Boutique.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

It's online.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Pink Lily Boutique.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

So she's fresh out of college, straight into the recession. Um it's around the recession time, straight out of college, like 2009.

unknown 6:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Um, she starts selling insurance. She goes into insurance because that's just all she could get. So she's making very little money, and that's the preference of the story is that she's making $25,000 to $30,000 a year. Um, she says she has $65,000 to $70,000 worth of student loans, student debt, which I very much feel that graduated with student debt as well. And what year is this? This is 20, or sorry, 2009. Okay. So right after recession. Right afterwards, which she said it was a very, it was a tough time to be out looking for a job. Yeah, apocalyptic. Yeah. So she's married, she has a mortgage, she has a ton of student debt. There's no fulfillment in what she's doing. Obviously, selling insurance is not fun. Scammed and she she said they weren't making they weren't they weren't making it. She wasn't making enough money. Her husband was in finance but not making a lot of money. So she started flipping stuff on eBay, just trying to get any extra income, trying to chip away at the debt. Um, she said it was super random in the beginning, whatever they could get their hands on, golf clubs, Halloween masks, whatever she was picking up, she was reselling. I was just kind of thinking about you. I was like, oh, it sounds like faith right now. Painting, lava lamps. I mean, I like the stuff that I've seen you're selling. Her stuff sounds extra random.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

I mean, it's getting more random as the days go by. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Well, you do what you have to do. So her point was that it was nothing strategic. She was just grasping at straws, trying to make a little income. They just needed money. Um, the pressure point came when she became pregnant, and it's 2013, and she's reviewing her her documents for maternity leave, and she realizes it's no paid leave. So she can take time off, but she's not getting paid for it, and she was kind of she was scrambling because they were already barely making it with her income, yeah, and then obviously taking the time off. Um, she said she decided, okay, I have to I have to crank up this eBay selling. So she said she started selling on eBay and Etsy together. Um, and she's doing this while she's on maternity leave and the few months that the baby's born, and she starts a Facebook group, and she noticed that her customers were asking her about clothes more than anything, asking for clothing items. So her Facebook group grows a lot in this first year that she's just selling random stuff.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Oh, so she's m she's selling eBay, but she's doing it via Facebook group?

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Yes. So then she starts doing it via Facebook group once she launches her Facebook group and she's like immediately she gets hundreds of people signing up. By the end of her maternity leave, she has a th 10,000 people on her Facebook group. Wow. And she said there she was hustling so so much that year. She was selling things out of the back of her car. She's looking what people are asking for, and she's then going and finding it. She's packaging everything on her kitchen table when she's mailing stuff out. Like she's really hustling. She said she basically did not sleep that first year. She had a kid, and I'm like, oof.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

I mean, I feel that.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

So I also didn't sleep the first year, but not because I was hustling.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Right. I mean, I had a hard kid too. Right. Shout out to the stubborn, strong-willed children that wreck your life a little bit. They're great. Love them. Love them.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

Live, live, love.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Yes. So this is something that I think is important to sit with a little bit is that Tori didn't have a business plan. She was just trying to make it work with a newborn. And she was doing whatever the customers wanted. She had there were she was, yeah, no business plan. So she wasn't specifically trying to do anything. She just trying to make money. Trying to make money and she just listening to what her customers wanted, which I think is good. I that's a lesson to me because I'm very I want to know exactly what we're doing and we have a business plan if it weren't for you. Right. I'm glad we have it. Yeah, we have a business plan. So what happens at the end of this year? Uh after the end of the first year, her Facebook group has grown to 10,000 people on it. I don't really know. I'm not huge into Facebook groups.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Yeah, but I've heard that she it seems like she's monetized this Facebook group and that you can like sell monetized Facebook groups to people. Oh. And for a lot of money.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Oh, I did not know that. No. Oh, so she's not doing that. Right. She just has it, she's just people are just in there asking it for stuff. They're um she's starting to go out and find whatever they're asking for. Um at the end of the year.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

Facebook is just one year old at this time.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Yes, so she did say that she wanted to point out she was coming into this at a very lucky time when Facebook was starting to blow up. She's like, Instagram really wasn't a thing yet. I think it was. And so they were early on that bandwagon, which she said helped so much. So we we do note that she had some luck on her side. Well, however, now we have AI. Yeah. So we have other benefits that she didn't have at the time. So I don't like it when people are like, oh, well, if I just would have done it then. Like, well, we didn't do that then. So let's m let's like focus on what we have now and the things that we have that they didn't. So let's keep going. So um at the end of the year, her husband says, This is way too much manual work. We need a better way to get your products out to customers. Let's start a website. So they built the website themselves. She said it was clunky, it was ugly, it was slow.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Can only imagine.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

And they launched it on this uh January 1st, 2014.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

So this has been some years. They roll out with it. Five years. Yeah, so they were struggling for a few years. She was just kind of dabbling in in the eBay selling for a while, and then when they had their kid, that was 2013, that she's pregnant. I see. Yeah. So she's only doing that for a year and she needs to ramp it up. Yeah. Blo the Facebook group blows up because of the timing and she's selling stuff. So they roll out their website. She immediately promotes it on her Facebook group, which already has 10,000 people engaged in it.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

These Facebook groups.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

And she says their goal for the year, she's like $50,000. If we can make $50,000 like we'll pay off some student loans, we'll have a little extra money. It'll be great. They hit $50,000 in two months. So awesome. So by April, only four months later, they have hit um $500,000 in revenue. Wow. So she quits her insurance selling job. Good. Because she's like, I've got we've got so many orders coming in, no time for it whatsoever. She's like, I'm making way more money on this online, this my my website now that she's selling clothing because that's what her customers were asking for on the Facebook group. They wanted clothing. So even though that's not where it started, that's where the customers took her to clothing. And she's like, I didn't, I don't know, fashion, but sure, let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

You tell me what you want.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

I'll exactly and she that's exactly her attitude. So part of some of the struggles um are that the family did not support her at all. Her her family that lived nearby and was local. They were very skeptical of what she was doing. She obviously didn't have experience in that. They were like, no, no, no, don't don't quit your job. You need that, you need the security. And she says, you know what? I'm I'm quitting. You know, this business is taking off. I believe in it. So um she also describes herself as a perfectionist. She said she's high anxiety and she felt like nobody could do things right enough. Yeah. And so she wanted to take it on. So that was part of what led to her quitting as well. She's like, no, I have to do this. Yeah, I need to be in it. So um the business is growing, and by six months in that first year, they hit a million dollars in revenue. Wow. So her husband now quits his job to help her.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

That's crazy. So what I really like a million dollars in 2014.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

14. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

So what I really like about their story is she kind of she got things going, but then husband saw how well it was doing, and he's like, let me help you ramp it up. So she focused on the clothing, the designing aspect, and he did the back-end business, the financials, he, the website, he kept the business running what so she could focus on like the forward-facing design aspect. Yeah, communicating. Are the clothes um thrifted clothes, or did she So now she's ordering, so now she's sourcing them from um the LA Fashion District.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Some some more consistency and SKUs and one thing that I love about what, yes, one thing that I love about what she did, she says that as this business is growing, she's taking the clients behind the scenes, she's showing the behind-the-scenes process of what she's doing, how she's designing, when she's choosing colors and fabrics and designs, she's posting it online and asking them what they want.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

And so they are basically designing the clothes that they want to buy.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

And she she said initially how she started, she just picked clothing items that she wanted she would like to wear that she liked.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

But then she started real seeing how people were wanting things. She's like, it wasn't necessarily my style, I didn't really like it, but she's like, I don't care. If that's what you want, that's what we're gonna have.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

And I thought that was interesting in fashion because I could see myself being like, I'm gonna have a clothing line of all the things that I want to wear, which maybe it it hits or doesn't. Right. But she was just fully focused on what the customers wanted, took herself out of it, yeah, and then built this company that blew up because it was the customers running it basically. Yeah. And she said she got a little put a lot of pushback because she showed so much of the process that other other designers, other people didn't like that because they didn't want everybody to know that. They didn't want everybody to know. But she was just so open about it. And her her market, so her the gap in the market that she found was you could buy expensive expensive luxury items at the time, but if you wanted like the middle ground, there wasn't a whole lot of options, and she's from Kentucky. Kentucky? Yeah, with some southern, yeah, it's Kentucky.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

And there's something about southerners, once they jump on a trend, they're on it. They're they were on it, and they're in it, they're bandwagoning.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

So she mentioned actually early on that which she's fulfilling orders, she's like, once they launch their website, she's getting orders from California, and she thought it was just wild that she's you know, this little town mom in Kentucky, and she's shipping orders to California. So she thought that was so cool, and I think that's yeah, amazing. So she talked a lot about how you know working together with her husband, it was very stressful in the marriage. Yeah, but they they did have kind of separate roles, they worked on separate things, but did point out that it was stressful. The first few year few years where they were just exploding was absolutely nuts. Yeah. And she had two small children. Um and are they still together? Yeah, okay. They're still together.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

I was starting to get worried the first couple of people we did were like all kicking on. I know, I know.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

I thought the same thing. I actually that was part of my criteria. I looked in, I was like, We've had some really inspiring women. However, I want I wanna give me a story where the the couple's still together because that's that's really important for me because I'm building I'm building business with my husband as well, and I want to see that you can make it. Like I wanna see that you can do it together too. That's why I love this story because they did end up working together a lot, and she points out that it's hard, and obviously it's hard. Like um, and then they had two small children in the middle of this. She ended up hiring her mom to help babysit and come over um while she would package items. She mentioned the kids were running around in the early eight stages when she's packaging everything from her dining room table.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

And I know you were like, Where were the kids?

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Yeah, oh absolutely. Please tell me where the children were. So they were there. And and she even talked about, I think we were talking about off just a few minutes ago before we were recording, how moms, every mom kind of does it differently. They have their own style, their own needs. Needs, yeah. And children are a part of obviously if you're a mom, children are a part of your life, but they're a part in different ways depending on yeah, who you are. And for her, she had them home in the beginning, and they were pulling on clothing racks and almost falling over and learning to walk around all this clothes. So she she reached out to her family for help. Yeah. At some point, her mom ended up even working in the company, and she talked a little bit on um, so I'm listening to all these podcasts. She doesn't have a book, she has podcasts that she's gone on. So on one of the podcasts, she's talking about how her mom would get so caught up in the drama with other employees, and she's like, I ended up having to fire my mom at one point from the company, and she same day walked over to HR and rehired herself. So excuse me. Yeah, so just so we all know, working with family, there will be drama, there's no way around it. However, you need them. Yes. I wish my family was coming out.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

I'm learning that helping with my own mother. She's been helping me a lot lately, so nice, but also hard.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Yeah. Working with family is always hard. So her husband left after six months his job. The family was again super unsupportive at that time when he leaves his job because they're like, you need to have a job, still unsupportive, and they're making they made a million dollars in revenue. Obviously, that's not take home, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:30

But they 30% of that is a lot, the bunny.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Yes, exactly. And especially when she mentions that their total income when they started this was $30,000.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

Was no, that was just hers.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

That was just hers. So, but total they were making sixty to seven thousand. So they it wasn't a a huge salary to replace, and the family was still like, no, you need to be at this yeah, like just to show how like people's beliefs.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

Yeah, yeah. So don't listen to the haters or the people who are extremely. Extremely scared or afraid afraid of um what is it, liability.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Yes, and everybody has different risk tolerance, and you can see there's a generation, or maybe it's not a generation, it's just I don't know. People get scared, they can't handle risk, and even though you and I'd be like, leave Oh, I just can't imagine looking at somebody else's life and being like, you shouldn't do that.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

It's like as if you don't know what you're doing with your own life. That's true.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

So by the end of that year where they launched their website, December, they have made four million dollars in revenue.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

In one year. In one year.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

And the goal was fifty thousand. Eighty times that's crazy. The original goal. And they scaled from the living room to a multi-million dollar operation, eventually hitting 141 million a year. Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

So they were selling on eBay, they stopped selling on eBay because they start well, they started this Facebook group, and then they started to realize that in the Facebook group people had these needs. Where I'm lost a little bit is how they how she got to from to making her own things.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

So because people were asking for these clothing items, she was sourcing clothing, but then she noticed that yes, okay. So she started then sourcing um an LA because people were asking for these clothing items. She's like, well, I'm just going to supply them instead of looking for them. Yeah. Because that was way more efficient. And she said she started small with um, I don't know what the minimum orders are, how she got into actually boat producing her own clothing. Because I guess you can take your own tags and they'll sew it on, and that was her own stuff.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Yep. Very cool. Yes. So I'm glad I caught that.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

At time of yes, at time of interviews, which these were all in the early 2000, uh 2023, 2024, um time period, the company is now making over 140,000. 140 million, sorry, a year.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

So and again, what's the brand called? Pink Lily?

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Pink Lily.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

And she has her whole story on her on her website, the pinklily.com. We can link it there if you want to check out her store. It's very cute. And yeah, what do you think of the clothes? I mean, it's not my style. Okay. Um it I think in 2014 I would have really liked it.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Yeah. Okay, so they're still catering to the same style. I was wondering if like they had adapted or evolved or if it's still.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

I mean, it's we live I've lived in LA. It's like the most fashion forward, like it kind of I mean, I wouldn't even say LA fashion's my style. Oh okay. It's too out there. But like her stuff is definitely to me looks like Midwest, Southern. So I don't I don't really know. I just like it's it's cute, it's pink, it's very loud and um colorful.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

And it has its own distinct style. Yes. Okay. Yeah. It definitely looks like that to me. Um, so one of the things that she talks about in one of the interviews is she talks about founder moms versus working mom distinction. Um, and I thought that was interesting because I hadn't heard other moms specifically founder moms talk about it. She says working moms clock in and still or clock out and they still come home and they do then the shift at home, you know? Yeah. And sometimes they're still working at home. And sometimes they're still working at home. And but then she mentioned that founder moms never clock out at all because you're at work, you come home, you gotta do the house stuff, the kid stuff, you put them to bed, and then a lot of times you're back on your laptop and you're working on your stuff. Like there's no website at 1.30. There's no clock out. And she was she made a point to say, like, I think all moms are rock stars. We're doing many jobs at once. But she wished that more founder moms would talk about I guess the tension and I don't know, like how they're how they're making it, because there really is never a clock out. And I probably forced clock outs. Yeah, well, my husband forced me to clock out this last week in camping, and I was like, no, let me clock in.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

Yeah, you would text me like I want to go back to work and I didn't know it's like oh I know, I have a I have a problem.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

And maybe we're just a different breed where we don't like to clock out.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Yeah, I like to clock out, but I still can pop back in. I try to keep like a mellow like I have bad things happen in my business all the time. I try not to let it get to me or bother me and just get it done and then move on to the next thing and try to enjoy what the good stuff because not everything in business is enjoyable.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

That's yeah, no, that's true. It there's a lot of stuff that I do need to step away from.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

Yeah, you just gotta get it done and move on.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

Yeah. Another thing she talked about was comparison culture and mom guilt, which I thought was interesting because s somebody that has that much success making $140 million a year from their company, um, she said she was still getting hate from other mothers and founders, founder moms.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Jealousy.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

Yeah, jealousy, yeah. I'm I'm assuming jealousy. And on um, I'll link all the the podcast that I was specifically referencing, but um she's being interviewed by several m men and one of the the men was saying, I I see from talking with women founders and women in general that they seem to get trapped a lot more in comparison culture than the men do. Yeah. And she's she talked about Tori talks about that, and like, wow, if a mom at that level of success is still dealing with like comparison in Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Well look at like Kim Kardashian and like the most influential people in the world and they're still constantly told that they are trash.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

Yeah, I guess maybe the more successful you are, maybe the more hate you get too, because people are just they want they're jealous of the life that you built.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

Yeah, and I sometimes I think it's hard not like I sometimes I have to step back and realize that some of the things that I'm saying myself is a projection of what is going on in my own life versus me actually even considering their own situation.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

Yeah. Um, and then another point is the family as employees trap. Leaning on your own mom for child care or help and what happens when those lines um blur. They blur, yeah. And we kind of talked about that a little bit, but we need our families, but also know that that it doesn't come without drama.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Well, yeah, like the other day my mom had like a moment where she kind of was like, This is really hard. Like she didn't say it out outwardly, like, but she was I knew what she was going through because it's a lot, but she kind of had like an issue with my son, and like it was really hard for her, and I was just like, Mom, like you should say, like, hey, I'm tired, hey, this is hard. Like, you don't have to like do everything, like you can permission to speak, yeah, permission to tell me that you're tired and that you need help, like, you're not there to just like you're not my slave.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

Family dynamics are so interesting because they're obviously the closest people, they're people you'll always have, and you have to love them no matter what. But in my mind, sometimes I think because they're family, I can say whatever I need to say to you, and you'll have to still love me and we'll figure it out. But then I I work with my brother in business and he's much more sensitive than I am. Yeah, so you know, we all have different personalities, even though we're in the family and we feel like we can say things, I feel like I can say things, but then it's like, well, sometimes people are more sensitive and you you maybe can't say that. I I'm still learning that. Yeah, like take it down a notch, Jen. Yeah, revisit later. Yeah. Okay, so let's go into some business tips that I really liked if you're thinking about starting a clothing boutique or just an online business in general. So Tori built the audience before she built the store or the Facebook group. She focused on what the customers actually wanted and pulled those products into her storefront. Yeah. So fabric, color, style, instead of guessing what they want. And I was thinking about that and how I can apply that to our what we're doing. And even just on the podcast, um, sometimes we think somebody might like this. Somebody might like this, but I was thinking you and I we need to do polls or questions to our listeners like like once a week at least.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Yeah, true. I recently started looking at the answer the public website too. And yes, which we've talked about before, I think, maybe. Have we? No. The answer the public. It's like you put your website in or what your focus is, and it'll take your website and it'll find what people are searching for in your niche.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Oh no, I haven't you haven't shown me that. I need to see that.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

Okay, well check that out.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

That sounds good after. Okay. Um, and then the price gap. So she's not at the bottom with her clothing line. She wasn't competing with Forever 21 on cheapness, she was filling the affordable but decent quality hole. So obviously, you gotta find the gap.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

Yeah, which is kind of a hard gap to fill.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

It is and I as we're interviewing moms and our interviewing are doing these case studies, I have noticed a lot of them started 10 years ago and we're finding their story, and we're 10 years later. So I do think that's worth noting. So if you have an idea and you're thinking about it, start right now because we'll be telling your story in 10 years.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

And it might fail and soon. You're gonna learn so much from that failure that you're gonna start something new and it's gonna work.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

And then we didn't get into it specifically, she talks a lot about her hiring process. Um, so we have a library on our website. We are fittyfidi.com, and we're gonna put a lot more details of our episodes in our library. So if you're thinking about launching an online business like Tori did, or fashion specifically, or you're doing eBay selling, we're gonna have a lot more of the business tips in the library. So that is something that will be there. If you're interested, you can go over to our website and you can sign up for the emails, and that will give you access right to the to the library. And we're gonna go over more math or not math, never math, please, more pricings on how she priced stuff, sourcing more of the exact steps of how she sourced, how she hired. She had some great tips on how she hired and found the right people for her business. After year one, she had seven employees, and today she has 200 employees.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

Wow, that is a big jump. Big jump. Jen does her homework, so I'm sure you'll get some good tips out of it.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

Yes, so we have a lot more details that we will have on our website if you want to get into this and have more of a playbook for what you want to do. And so, just a couple takeaways. If you're a mom scared to bet everything on a hunch, start with a small goal, something that if missing it doesn't wreck you, but just start small and like Tori did with the eBay, she just started doing it. Started doing it, yeah, didn't think too much about it, and then let the numbers tell tell you when to go bigger. Yep. Not your confidence.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Yeah, data. Yep. Everything is data.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

And then if you're a mom who feels like she has to do it all, know that Tori's perfectionism nearly broke her. Hand off when you can and keep only what you can do. She talked a lot about how she delegated, and in the beginning she had to do everything herself because she was such a perfectionist. But you can't scale, you can't grow if you are doing everything in your company or in your business. So as soon as you can delegate, do that. And again, that will be more in our library of those steps and timelines. So when she did that, and then yeah, if you're drowning in comparison, she calls us out by name as something that founder moms specifically she found were getting into. I mean, I think that's moms. I think that's women in general, really. I don't think that's confined to founder moms. But redirect that instinct into research on your customer and not judgment on yourself.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

Yeah. And I think there's sometimes I just try not to worry about everything that's going on and just get do what you can with what you have. Yeah. And don't worry about everything else.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

So that's Tori Gerbig of Pink Lily.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

Pink Lily, can't wait to check it out. Yeah. All right. And share this podcast with a mom who you think might need it. We would appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

Yes, and give us a review on Apple Podcasts since we're doing our call to actions. Please. Um yeah, if you like this, if you have some constructive criticism, please message us. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

Love the constructive criticism.

SPEAKER_00 35:25

Love it. Yes. Tell us what you want to hear, but give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify wherever you're finding this.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

Leave the criticism in the comments. I mean, sure.

SPEAKER_00 35:33

We'll see it. Okay. Bye. Bye.