Lori Harder: Founder & CEO of glōci
Episode 548
Today on The Kara Goldin Show, Lori Harder, Founder and CEO of glōci, shares her entrepreneurial journey and the lessons she has learned along the way including building her latest startup. We hear all about how her upbringing as well as previous business challenges have shaped her mindset around money and entrepreneurship. She discussed the challenges and triumphs she faced, including a pivotal moment when she raised $2 million supported by an impressive network of 54 female investors. Throughout our conversation, she provided invaluable insights into how she is successfully reshaping the beauty industry by merging health, wellness, and beauty in unique ways.Lori’s advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is particularly compelling, emphasizing the importance of resilience, the willingness to adapt, and the power of a strong support network. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in entrepreneurship, beauty, wellness, and transformative leadership. Have pen and paper ready! You don’t want to miss a minute of it! Now on #TheKaraGoldinShow.
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Transcript
Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be I want to be, you just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked down knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control control control. Hi, everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. So excited to have my next guest here. Her name is Lori Harder, you may be familiar with her. Lori Harder is the founder and CEO of glōci which is an innovative drinkable skincare routine drink. They come in these incredible packets, they are so tasty. And Laurie is a serial entrepreneur, we’re going to get her to share a lot about her lessons and her experiences, including her previous venture, which was called light pink, you may be familiar with that. And since then, she has pivoted and got the support of 54 female investors and decided to launch this incredible drink globally. So I’m very, very excited to have her here. She’s also a celebrated author of an incredible book that I just love called A Tribe Called Bliss. And she’s also got an incredible podcast too, which I happened to be on when I was launching my book a few years ago. So, so so honored to have her here. So thank you, Laurie, for coming on. Oh, um,
Lori Harder 1:53
this is like, this is a dream come true. And I had you on my podcast, and I absolutely loved it. If you read another book you’re coming on, you’ve got a spot, you’ve always got a spot whenever you want it.
Kara Goldin 2:04
Definitely I love it. So really, really excited for you to share a little bit about your backstory you didn’t just like land as an entrepreneur overnight. Tell me a little bit about sort of who was Laurie, back in the day. I knew. I know, you grew up in Wisconsin, right? And
Lori Harder 2:25
Michigan, but I spent time in Wisconsin, so spend a lot of time in the Midwest. Yep.
Kara Goldin 2:29
Got it. And so did you always did you wake up? Like when you were little thinking I’m gonna go and start all these beverage companies and be an entrepreneur and oh,
Lori Harder 2:42
my gosh, this is the best question. i Yeah, no, that is a big fat. No, I grew up in a really small town. In Upper Michigan, most people don’t even know that Upper Michigan exists, they always point to Detroit. And I’m like, Nope, it’s a whole separate part of the state up like by Canada. So we honestly, I feel like I identified more with Canadians than most people from the US. So really, really small town, closest thing to a city was like three hours away. And that was a really small city. And I also like to share that I was raised in a more restrictive religion that actually that didn’t allow us to associate with anyone outside of the religion. So it took a small town, and it made it even smaller. So that is all that I saw and grew up with was this congregation of I remember, it was 114 people. And so I wasn’t full of entrepreneurs, I really didn’t see a lot of entrepreneurs. You know, my dad actually was an entrepreneur, but he lost his or we went, we went bankrupt and we lost a business as well. So I lived through that and saw that and heard the story that you know, money’s hard to come by that like those things and dreams are for those people, not for us. You know, money is money is evil, kind of like all of those stories that you hear about this was my kind of my money story and just how I viewed the world. And don’t get me wrong. It was like we had a beautiful loving family. But we definitely were not an abundant mindset or felt good about entrepreneurship or money. And so, you know, my entrepreneurship story starts actually, when I had been married to my husband about two years, he was the breadwinner. He worked for a bank called HSBC and he was young and flying through the ranks. And at this time, I was homeschooled through high school and I never graduated. So I pretty much had like an eighth ninth grade math level and felt really shameful about it actually never told anybody that I didn’t graduate until like, probably four years ago. Because I just had so much shame around it like people aren’t going to take me serious like they’re never going to you know, Invest in me. They’re never going to believe in me the Never come to my stuff. And I realize how powerful it is to actually share that story. Because we all learn in a different way. We all have different skill sets, we all have different zones of genius and a certain education does not mean that you can not make things happen. And I feel like I am absolute living proof of that. So let’s go back to 2008. When the, you know, we had the recession, and everything crashed in 2008. And my husband is in the mortgage and finance industry. While I was working. I was always working like these odd jobs because I didn’t believe that I could get something else because I’m like, you know, so ashamed. I’m lying on my resume just to get a coffee shop job that I graduated high school, and I’m so afraid they’re gonna find out I’m lying when I go work at Ulta as a girl who like stalks the makeup and sometimes checks people out, I’m lying. When I go to the front desk, I worked at a hair salon for a while as the receptionist and I’m like, always afraid that they’re going to know, you know, like, back in the day, I’m like, Oh my God, they’re gonna find out, they’re gonna find out. So I’m like, the best employee these people have ever had, because I’m like, I’ll just outwork this, like fear and the shame. So 2008 happens, everything crashes, my husband loses his job. When he was I think I was 25. He was like 27. And we were living way beyond our means we had just bought this big fancy house, we end up losing the house, we lose our cars were $300,000 in debt, we borrow all of his parents retirement money to like, kind of get back on our feet and go buy this tiny like, studio, go move into the studio apartment. Now coming from what we came from, this is like a major, like blow to my husband’s ego. And just I’ve kind of not going to watch him, I watched him lose his identity. Like, he was a shell of himself. He was depressed. And I had this moment, he literally told me, he had come home and he’s like, Hey, like, I lost my job. We’ve been living beyond our means we’re going to lose our house, we have to sell our cars. And instead of being upset, I looked at him because I remember I’d been through this before with my parents, like, I remember this conversation with my family when I was about 14 years old. And I looked at him and I said, Okay, I’m like, I will never, ever let this happen again. And so I knew that like, Okay, this is my responsibility to like, I’m not mad at him. I’ve never asked about the money I’ve never asked about, like, you know, making sure I understand all the finances. So I think in that moment, it was like, I want to empower myself, I want to understand, and I want to never have this happen again. So what does that look like? I didn’t know what that looked like. Because clearly my education level didn’t change overnight. But I just opened up to a new possibility. And I was like, What are successful people doing? I found the Book of Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. And that, like we started doing that every single night. Now you feel really stupid when you’re doing some of these books, because it’s like you’re saying these mantras out loud. And it’s like, I have a Millionaire Mind and you’re writing down your old money story and you’re writing down a new money story trying to like change your beliefs about money and where you came from, and all the things and honestly, we were like our backs are up against the wall, we are at rock bottom, we have nothing to lose. So we went all in on. Like all of that. The personal development, the books, we did this every single night together. When we were on walks, we started something called the power nine where we’re like, manifesting and getting really grateful and, and just like really opening up to seeing possibility. And so what ended up happening is, I got a job at an LA Fitness where it was $6 per 30 minute session. So I just hustled so hard, but I had heard someone say either on a podcast or in a book to share your dreams with everyone you come in contact with. So I would tell my clients there are my Yeah, my my people that I would train I would tell them, like I have this dream of being on you know, Fitness magazine covers and having my own gym. And so one day about six months into it this woman about she was probably 27 Like really young, but opening her own chiropractic studio. And I trained her she was one of my favorite clients. She’s like Laurie, I’m opening a brand new studio. The lower level of this Chiropractic Center has like a unfinished basement like talking wires insulation, you can see all the two by fours but she’s like, look, you can use it. And you can train me for free and I’ll let you use it for like three months we’ll assess after that, like what the rent payment could be. Two weeks later, I was in the lower level of her Chiropractic Center with ads out on Craigslist for people to come and train. I was telling everybody about it and started getting my own clients that way. And so that was the first venture into owning my own business and entrepreneurship and I would have never done that. If I wouldn’t have hit rock bottom like rock bottom like don’t waste a good crisis because it’s absolutely where where like you have the opportunity to become someone else.
Kara Goldin 10:01
Yeah, it’s so true. And at some point, you have to sort of get over the trauma, right? And you have to figure out what can I do with all of this. I mean, obviously take, take notes of all the learnings along the way. And, you know, and also, frankly, the people too, I think, you know, do need to reset that as well. I mean, I’ve I’ve sort of coached, informally coached many other entrepreneurs along the way to on this whole topic. And I think it’s something that some people just think that they can learn a bunch of lessons and move on. But sometimes it’s actually your community, right, that you’re in to that you need to sort of do a hard reboot to that, in order to kind of create that change.
Lori Harder 10:51
I think that’s one of the most important and first things that you should look at. And it’s one of the hardest things that you’ll ever do. Because we are wired for survival. And survival means like being in a group of people, if we go back to historically what it meant to survive, it’s like you needed to be a part of a tribe, or you probably weren’t going to make it whether it was because you couldn’t hunt or whether it was because maybe you had a child and you couldn’t breastfeed or someone else needed to breastfeed your baby, like so many things like this, like we are wired to be communal. And so if you are in a community right now that, you know, maybe they don’t support you, but it’s all you’ve ever known, right your community can be your family, it can be the the friends, you grew up with the friends you went to college with. And if this is the community that you are super intertwined in, but they don’t support where you’re going, then that’s going to feel like a little bit of a death trying to leave and create a new one. It’s, it’s so challenging, because you face rejection from the people who they think know you the most or know the old version of you, but aren’t necessarily accepting, accepting of this new version of you. So some of the things that I’ve learned, I write a lot about this in my book, because I feel like I have a lot of experience having to leave that religion, the only people I’ve ever known in my entire life, and having to leave and go create an entirely new network of people, mind you, I did not like it’s not because of my shiny education that I got to network. It’s not because my parents were super tapped into other people that I got to network it is truly because I learned from failure and rejection of like, how do we create an environment that supports the person who we’re striving to be rather than just like where we’re at. And so you know, a lot of that is like, you got to just get in the rooms, whether that is through paying for it through a mastermind or going to a big event, or going to networking events and fumbling through your, you know, elevator pitch and fumbling through trying to figure out what a good way is to meet people. But truly, I think that when you decide to start a new venture, that’s also when you work on creating the new network. So not afterward, not once you’re there. But literally the first thing I do. And I’ll share a little bit about this. The first thing I do when I’m pivoting into a new arena, is I start developing that network and Kara, this is so funny, because I did this with you. I was like, Okay, I’m doing beverage. Who can I have on the podcast? Who’s in beverage? So guess who I had all over my podcast was women, women, entrepreneurs and women in beverage. I was like, the very beginning of my journey I had those people come in before I even knew what the heck I was doing. And so another example is, you know, I went from doing more like women’s events and online courses to when I wanted to write a book, I’m like, Oh, I gotta start networking with authors, like how do I get in with authors. And so I started listening to podcasts by authors. And sooner or later, I got on their email list. And they had offers to teach me how to write a book, how to market a book. And so I just started pivoting really hard into that world and making friends who are authors. And so this has always been an I’ve so many. I have so many stories that either my, you know, book proposal came together because of them. I got the book deal because they recommended me to the publisher, like because I paid for one of their events and ended up having them write the foreword, like it was all direct correlation to pivoting that network from the beginning. That’s
Kara Goldin 14:39
such great advice and insight for sure. So you went on to start light pink, do you want to share a little bit about that point in the timeline, as I always say, so what was going on? What year was this? Maybe share a little bit about the background on the on the product and the company?
Lori Harder 14:58
Yes. Okay. So it all starts when end of 2017, I had wrapped up a full long year book tour. And for me like writing a book was at the peak, I didn’t even think in my life I’d ever be where I was at or be an author and I had this realization. It was, it was a great experience was also really challenging. And I’m proud, I think I’m like, 37 At this point, and it’s, like I said, wrapping 2017 into 2018. And I’m like, do I want do I want to do this again, like, what do I want to do with my career, I was feeling like a big change. I wasn’t feeling as fulfilled and what I was doing, and I wasn’t feeling as challenged. This is the key. And so I was noticing that if I you know, because we had kind of like we had kind of we had been doing well in this meaning after a lot of years, we kind of had it dialed in, and I’m like, Oh, I’m just not feeling very challenged anymore, which equals not feeling as fulfilled. And so 2018, I started asking myself this question, I’m like, Okay, if this isn’t fulfilling me, what, what’s the next challenge? What does that look like? So my husband and I would go on walks. And I’d ask myself this question. If I had all the time, if I had all the money, if I had all the network in the world, what would I be doing, I just wanted to know what I was closing myself off to because of my current skill set, or because of my current network or because of money, because I knew that I knew that I could learn to raise money if I needed to, I knew I knew how to tap into a new network. And I knew that if it means a lot to me that I would learn how to create the time for it. And so my book was all about female friendships, and like creating these networks for where you’re going and having like breaking through superficial relationships. And the book did good. But it didn’t hit the mainstream market of women that I really wanted it to hit. So this is where the idea comes in is I had you know, I had 150 different ideas that I thought that I wanted to do. But I kept having this one come back to me that was light pink, which was a, a lighter Rosae. Like it was a lighter wind spreads. This is when the spritz is just came out. And there was no like wine spritz yet, and a non alcoholic Rosae as well, because I wanted it to feel inclusive and the CANS looked alike. So people wouldn’t ask like, Oh, why aren’t you drinking all these things? And on the back of the can was three questions that I had used at my event that I had hosted with 500 Women for nine years. So I would use these three questions. I had, like 15 of them, but was going to rotate. So that maybe if they turn the camera around, they would actually instead of like leaving these networking events, feeling like they didn’t get an answer and feeling like they drank too much. And feeling like it was a waste of time, that maybe these questions would be better questions that would get them a better answer. And so that’s what we move forward with. I was like, Oh my gosh, this can hit the mainstream and can teach women how to really connect like, this can be the opener for everything. And I ended up starting to raise money in 2020, great timing. I’m starting to raise money for light pink. And so what ends up happening is, you know, I, I raised the $2 million. It takes me about a year and a half throughout that timeframe. But we’re also formulating at this time, we’re trying different formulations, we’re ideating all of those things. And I just end up hitting wall after wall after wall like many people care if you were in the beverage beverage industry, like not even warehouses were willing to take, you know, startups at that time, I had to create a pitch for a warehouse to even try to take me and then they wanted $15,000 down and then I couldn’t get my hands on cans because there was the pandemic, which meant there was no like aluminum for any of the startups. So you were like doing all this weird underground, like trying to find people who can even get you like your cans, which is crazy. And I just it was like the first time in my life where for over a year straight. There was no good, like, I wasn’t getting good answers. And I wasn’t able to really move that needle forward. So probably 2022 At this point or beginning and I’m like this is this is not working like I think I’m going to need to pivot I think I need to start looking at something else. And that is when the idea for what I am doing now is coming in as we just got we just came to a total stall. Because what happened is the licensing for the alcohol industry. We were getting towards the end where we’re we were getting closer to licensing and they came back with that I need that I also need fingerprints of all of my female investors. And I was like, they’re not going to do that. Like there’s no way they’d already told me there was a couple of them who were like we’re done like we’re not jumping through any more hoops because they had already jumped through a lot of hoops that were just felt really unnecessary. And so I was like we can’t do this. This isn’t even it’s shipping has gone up minimum order quantities have gone up so high like this is not a viable business. I had a couple of girlfriends who are extremely amazing entrepreneurs I’d shared before we got on one of the women who was in the alcohol industry at the time. And she’s like Laurie, like, I invited her in, and it was very, very vulnerable. I was like, please look at my business, please look at my numbers like, tell me, do I have anything here anymore or not? And she’s like, No, you either need to raise 10 million more dollars, and just hire this crazy team of professionals. And you’ll probably keep on raising because 10 million is just going to be what really gets your foot in the door. And I was like, That is not, that is not the game that I want to play. And that is not where my skill set is best used. And that’s not why I got into it. This was about like, really being able to. I also wanted to pay women through like an ambassador program as well. And I quickly learned that wasn’t going to be feasible in the margins, either or feasible with alcohol. So I just we did a hard pivot into what I felt my community was really desiring because I asked them, I, I literally surveyed 1000s and 1000s of women in these different groups, one of my friends who has a massive group allowed me to go in there and also interview them. So we created a product exactly based off of their needs and our desires as well. That also is a smarter business plan, with less cost of shipping and way better margins. So when I went into the second business, I asked myself questions I wasn’t asking in the first one. It was like, alright, you know, what are the what are the products that actually have like good margins, that we could just be able to have a little more flexibility be able to market in a better way? Like what is the best way that my investors could mark it for me? And you know, what is something that fits really into their message as well, so that they can help me get this out into the world?
Kara Goldin 21:46
No, it’s it’s so great. So let’s talk about glow. See, so it’s the super foods that are contributing to it. Can you talk a little bit more about the actual product and what is inside?
Lori Harder 22:00
Yeah, so this is a daily beauty supplement that you’re just going to pour into your water every day, it’s super easy. I was also at a place where I didn’t want to take any more pills. You know, my background is like I came from the fitness industry years ago. And I did that for a long time. And it was like, I the only thing I ever found I really stuck with was things I could put into water because I wanted to drink more water. It just made it easier. It kind of killed two birds with one stone, it made me drink more water, it flavored by water. And I just it was easy to do. It could always go with me I wasn’t carrying a bunch of pill bottles in my purse. It was just a simple packet I can throw in there. So it is for this particular SKU is skin and gut. So it’s glōci skin and gut daily beauty supplement. And when we were serving people, one of the biggest things for women was they just wanted to feel lighter was the word they used all the time. So we started asking what does that mean? Like, lighter, and they were like less bloated? I feel like I’m not digesting properly. I feel like I’m not feeling good. When I travel. I’m so busy. I just don’t feel good in my body. And so a lot of that we were like, Okay, this is all like gut related issues that they’re feeling like they’re not digesting their food, they feel like they’re heavy that they’re bloated. And so we chose ingredients like really to target that. But what happens when you choose gut ingredients is your skin also becomes amazing. So we were one of the big things too is they just wanted to, like feel more hydrated. They had a lot of skin goals, they wanted to look better. So honestly, the main things were feel lighter and look better. Like just what are those things mean? So that’s where we really started to break it down. And we’re like, Let’s do skin and guts specifically. And when we really focus on gut, you also get the byproduct of skin and feeling better in general. So we have an amazing probiotic in here. We went with the one that was a little bit risky for us because it was a lot higher price but at 30 clinical studies on it. And we were really excited about all of the feedback with the clinical studies. So we went with a probiotic, we went hyaluronic acid, we have zinc, we have magnesium, we have prickly pear, we have vitamin C because a lot of these skin products you know we’re applying these things topically. But one of the things even about something as simple as Vitamin C is your body doesn’t produce its own collagen without the presence of vitamin C and we don’t make vitamin C ourselves so you have to supplement it. And so we looked at just all of the things that we thought what are the most impactful ingredients that we can put in here for these two things. And instead of doing like 50 ingredients because we know what happens when you do 50 ingredients is like you can’t put enough of the ingredients in there to make it have an impact in fact in the formulation world there’s there’s a little bit of an insider word for it that most we don’t share that opened my eyes up so much like sometimes when these products have sold many ingredients, they literally call it a fairy dusting. So that you can just put the ingredient on the label. And it doesn’t really do anything to the person. So I was like, I don’t want very dustings I want something that people, I want reviews on my page in 30 days that say, I feel better, I feel lighter. My skin is already glowing. So I’m like, how much of this stuff and what do we need to do? Because I wanted a sticky product. I wanted something that people wanted to come back to because they were feeling a difference.
Kara Goldin 25:32
And it is so tasty by the way. So you did an an excellent job. So really, really, really well done. So is your its direct to consumer now? Is your plan to actually go into locations with the product as well.
Lori Harder 25:47
Yeah, I would like to eventually get into you know, like Sephora is in different beauty. Just different beauty brands like beauty locations that are I just think it’s such an important conversation from the inside out because we’re doing so much topically and and while that’s great, it’s really you know, our skin is like rejuvenating itself from what we’re eating. And it’s not just what we’re eating. It’s also how we are like, our habits in life. Are we sleeping? Are we are we trying to lower our stress levels? Are we in communities, so even on even on the bottle, I have kind of what blowsy means it’s a way of being showing up unapologetic about one’s glow up chasing big aspirations and creating like minded communities. Because I want people to know like, how how you look and feel is not just about that. Like, it’s not just about what you’re putting in or putting on top of your face. But like, what if we looked at a whole like a completely holistic way of being about our beauty and wellness. So I’m really excited about that I’m excited about the future of products as well. Because our whole idea is just giving your daily routines a glow up, like your beauty and wellness routines that glow up just making them a little bit better and making them work work more for you. Because the other big idea of this was I was taking hydration products already. And I remember one day when I was really thinking about like, Okay, what could this be, I’d flipped my hydration packet over. And I was like, Oh my God, I am drinking really expensive salt and sugar. Like, I’m like, I’m just a girl standing in front of our hydration pack packet asking it to do more for me like, like, do more.
Kara Goldin 27:33
for it. I know, it’s so nuts when you really look at the ingredients. And it’s and so many of them. I mean, some of them just don’t really taste that great, either. So I think you’ve you’ve done an excellent job, or we were crazy about the flavor, ya know, you’ve done such a good job with it. So how do you educate your direct to consumer? You’ve obviously have a big following, you know a lot about direct to consumer, but how do you educate consumers to understand that you have this product? And what are the benefits? Right? So I think launching a new product is always scary, right? And I think you know, whether you’re launching a product, frankly, or launching a book, I always tell people, getting your social following up and getting people to really, you know, understand who you are, trust you all of those things, I think are our key. But how have you found educating people about this product? And can you share any insight into that?
Lori Harder 28:36
Well, I love that you’re asking this because we are I mean we’re in this right now like we this is this is our daily question of okay, how do we how do we? How do we bring people along on the journey? How do we make sure that people are starting to talk about us? How are people understanding us right now like, we’re, we’re in the feedback phase of what are people saying about it. So that’s so interesting, because you what you think people are gonna say might be different from what they’re experiencing. So, you know, for me, I’m exhausting all of the modalities that I know about right now, but we’re also branching off into new departments as well. So I’ll kind of share a little bit about that. So for me, the ways that I know how to share with people are making sure that I have like almost a daily Instagram post or stories or lives and I’m just talking about it trying to get feedback from different people, but being omnipresent in every channel that I have access to so I talk about it on every single episode of my podcast I’m starting to get friends we’re creating you know different have created an ambassador program so that they get paid off of it as well if they love the product. So I’m educating them on how to share it as a sponsor on their podcast. I’m going I’m guessing on podcasts all the time like this where honestly like I’m even with talking to you. I’m learning how to talk about it right now and kind of hearing like, what am I buying thing like sticks out for people? What am I finding felt like, oh, that’s what I’ve been trying to say I didn’t know. That’s what I was trying to say before. So the more honestly, when you have, the more that you can talk about it every single day, the more it’s number one just going to be in your bones. And number two is going to educate you know, your people. So we’re trying different things with emails right now, seeing what hits because there are so many different marketing angles that we can take with the ingredients in the probiotics. So we’re trying to see, okay, what emails were people clicking on? What are they interested in? So I’m very much in the data right now. But the more that I’m out there, and the more that we do, the faster the data comes in. So that’s what we’re trying to do.
Kara Goldin 30:44
Yeah, no, that’s, that’s terrific. So knowing what you know about building companies, you’re a serial entrepreneur. What do you think? What do you know, now that you didn’t know? before? I mean, it there, there’s, you’ve had, you had a great company, I would say that timing was not on your side, when you actually launched the previous I think timing wasn’t on a lot of people side, when COVID hit for a lot of different brands, and especially when you were just getting started. Also wasn’t alcohol, beverage, which is three tier system, all of those things, you know, allowed you to become smarter and wiser. And you know, somebody else can go and do those businesses, not me, but what what have you learned about starting businesses like wisdom that you would share with maybe a founder who’s thinking about going out and doing it themselves?
Lori Harder 31:42
Oh, God, I mean, they’re endless, but I’ll share a few that I really learned from the pivot and everything like that. So I would say, you know, when you’re thinking of a product, the first thing is like, just check on the red tape. Like so many people, you know, either want to do I meet a lot of women who love wine, I’m like, Oh, it’s just check on how much legalities there are. Because just thinking about starting an alcohol company or you know, CBD or anything like that, where there’s like legalities to jump jump through red tape a lot of your money, and legal fees, and upfront, like, I can’t even tell you the amount of money we spent on legal fees just to make sure we were doing things okay. And that if I would have known that I actually think I would have not done this from the start just knowing about, hey, raise an extra, you know, 250 to 500 KB just to consult your your attorneys every step of the way. So you don’t make you know, you don’t get in trouble. And I think right there, I would have been like, oh my god, half my money is going to just go to legal fees, like no way. So look at the red tape. The next one is look at your shipping costs, look at your margins, look at your, like, look at everything if you’re thinking of a product at all, like what will it cost for supply chain and like landing in your customer’s home? Because when I started with alcohol, I did not think of oh, this is really heavy, like for shipping and I want to do direct to consumer. And I won’t have those margins there to do anything with so those are two big things that it’s like look at what industries you can get, you know, decent margins in because you’re gonna have a lot easier time. It’s all hard right? But you’re gonna have an easier time. If you have some flexibility with your pricing and you’re able to charge either a little bit more you have some really good margins on it.
Kara Goldin 33:41
Yeah, definitely. Well that is incredible advice. I could talk to you for hours about this you have so much wisdom but again you you have a podcast as well. And like I said your your book A Tribe Called Bliss is so incredible plus glow. See everyone needs to buy this product. And definitely, definitely give it a try. Because it’s really, really great. And it’s it’s definitely something that I think people are going to learn about very, very quickly. But Laurie, harder founder and CEO of glōci thank you so much. Thank
Lori Harder 34:16
you for having me on I so appreciate this anytime I get to talk to you is a great day.
Kara Goldin 34:20
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would, please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit and of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. I would love to hear from you too, so feel free to DM me. And if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book undaunted where I share more about my journey including founding and building here. And we are here every monday wednesday and friday thanks for listening and good bye for now