Jessica Rolph – Co-Founder & CEO of Lovevery and Co-Founder of Happy Family

Jessica Rolph 0:00
The best advice that I’ve heard that I would continue to stand behind is just obsession and obsession with your customer.

Kara Goldin 0:07
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 make sure you will get knocked down but just make sure you don’t get knocked out knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control control control. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Kara golden 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, its Kara golden from the Kara golden show. And I am so excited to have my next entrepreneur guest lovely, lovely, smart, exciting idea and female Of course, yay, entrepreneur here Jessica Rolfe, who is the co founder and CEO of this amazing amazing company called love every I hopefully I’m pronouncing it correctly Are you are, I love it. And let me tell you a little bit about Jessica first and then we’ll jump right in and get all kinds of dialogue going with her. But Jessica Roth is the serial entrepreneur and, and co founder and CEO of love every and it is a direct to consumer brand that you’ve probably seen it if you do not know what it is. And if you don’t have smaller kids as my kids have grown up, definitely you should have one of these around the house because there’s always kids that are coming through and, and there’s they’re these amazing, beautiful, beautiful kids that are just so fun and educational. And they’ve won all kinds of awards as well. And, and they’re really geared towards child development through play. So definitely, definitely check them out if you haven’t seen it. She’s also a board member and founding partner of happy family. You may also know that product, it’s an organic baby food company that she helped launch and build. And in a short space of time, they grew to more than 13 million in sales and Inc magazine listed them as one of the fastest growing companies in 2011. Jessica is just an amazing entrepreneur learned so many lessons. So I’m very excited to have you here today. So thanks for coming on. Thank you, Kara.

Jessica Rolph 2:53
It’s so fun to be with you

Kara Goldin 2:55
are really, really excited. So Jessica, let’s jump right in. Tell me a little bit about little Jessica, who washy Where did she grow up all of that kind of stuff?

Jessica Rolph 3:06
Yeah, so I’m a Minnesotan. I grew up in Minnesota. And you know, I think that as a child, I, you know, kind of love to take risks. But I didn’t have I wasn’t one of those kids with a lemonade stand. You know, I would I would my mom really encouraged me to take risks. By like, you know, as a third grader asked, I’d love to sing and making an appointment with my teacher to ask if I could sing a solo, you know, it was sort of like an arbitrary. But all this I remember my heart pounding. And so, grew up in Minnesota, went to school in upstate New York, and then met my co founder shazi. And we co founded happy family based out of New York. And when we first started,

Kara Goldin 3:46
that’s right. So you guys were college buddies.

Jessica Rolph 3:50
You know, we actually didn’t know each other. So we had both been really passionate about the natural products industry, she had this great idea to do something different in the baby food space. At the time, you know, it was really dominated by Gerber and the jars were everything. Only 3% of all baby food consumed was organic at the time. And she wanted to create something that was more focused on nutrition and a really modern brand. And I was working at Whole Foods at the time and had a different idea and food that never panned out. And so I said this woman that kind of loosely knew each of us that you two should know each other. And so she connected us, and we really hit it off. That’s wild.

Kara Goldin 4:27
And so Was that your first job out of school was Whole Foods. So

Jessica Rolph 4:31
yeah, I had actually I worked at the FTC the Federal Trade Commission as a as a paralegal. My first job out of school, I thought I wanted to become a lawyer and like really kind of wanted to help you know, sleeping in cardboard boxes to protest, you know, in college, just the inequities and really kind of like, really had a lot of passion and heart for need and couldn’t imagine going into the business world. And so I took a job My first job was in the legal field and really trying to help I volunteered at the legal clinic for the homeless and really felt like I was going to make my life there. And didn’t do that. Well on the L SAT, which was actually a gift, studied really hard, but did not do very well. It’s a really hard test. And also, you know, kind of had all the pamphlets of law school on my lap and just felt like, this is not the path for me. It’s just it wasn’t truly my calling. And so kind of on a whim, moved to San Francisco and took a job in political consulting. And so I was writing research papers, like 400 page research papers and and then really kind of discovered that I loved this intersection between business and society, businesses, social change, and so volunteered for this organization called the full circle fund and took a job at an advertising agency that was doing some digital work that I was really inspired by and created a vision that I wanted to become a social entrepreneur.

Kara Goldin 5:52
Interesting. And and then how did you get to Whole Foods then?

Jessica Rolph 5:57
Yeah, so I went to business school and my now husband and I hadn’t he had the idea to create a business for Lance Armstrong at the time, that was a kind of like Newman’s Own model, like how could we bring health and nutrition also paired with the nonprofit and feed the nonprofit with these important dollars that can come from like a for profit business. And so we were writing the business plan and working on it. But the yellow bracelet campaign happened at the time, all those remember those yellow, plastic bracelets, and Lance Armstrong Foundation was like, we don’t need to start a food company. We’ve got we’re minting money here, and you know, doing really well. And so I decided to take a job, I was getting my MBA and decided to take a job at Whole Foods. I’m working for an organization called spins, which I think back in the day, you probably bought data from spins and was there and got introduced to shazi. And was so longing to start a company and was so grateful for that that introduction to meeting my co founder of happy family.

Kara Goldin 6:54
So tell me the story behind happy family. Yeah, so

Jessica Rolph 6:57
shazi had the idea for the business. And as I said, the space was just like, you know, Gerber was dominating, there was only 3% of all baby food consumed as organic. And it was just like one of those kind of old industries like you, but you but there was all this new life and new intention from parents and a lot of parents were struggling with making baby food homemade. And so she had an idea to make fresh baby food and really try and you know, make something better that parents could feel better about. And so I joined her. And very soon after, we learned that we could not produce fresh baby food at scale that peas go bad, you know, less than seven days. And we just, you know, the technology that was acquired was so expensive at the time. And so we decided to launch a frozen baby food, that retailers loved it. And we got into target as a test. It was so exciting got into Whole Foods stores. But nobody knew that frozen baby food was in the frozen aisle, the baby foods in the frozen aisle and really like it was a total flop. So we pivoted and launched some dry cereal and launched some puffs and then started to finally kind of get some traction and build a brand that became a real alternative to a lot of the you know, sort of traditional brands that were selling jarred foods,

Kara Goldin 8:08
looking back at happy family. What was the hardest thing about growing that brand? Oh, my gosh, like, what

Jessica Rolph 8:16
wasn’t the hardest thing about that journey? I mean, honestly, there was so many, it was like, everything was hard. And I think what was really hard was not having product market fit from the beginning. And you know, I think we did, we did some testing, we did some focus groups. And we would hear from parents that they loved the fresh, we had this adorable like cube tray. And you know, people could pop out the peas and pop out the fresh carrots, and it looked so good. And retailers were excited about it. So then to realize that we were a failure, when we launched and that, you know, it was not moving. I remember, I got in. So we did the test at Target in the Midwest. And as I said, I’m from Minnesota. So I, my dad and I drove put all 24 stores on a map. And it was all over the state of Minnesota and southern Iowa on these test stores. And we literally drove around and just bought the baby food and just cleared the shelves. So we could stay and survive on shelf and we were handing them out for free to parents, like try this. Here’s a free coupon for you know, free baby foods they were my dad was kind of like scanning the aisles looking for anybody who’s pregnant or had a baby. So it was just I think so hard when money is running out. You know, you’ve kind of gotten these committed investors, you’ve done so much to get to where you are and then to find that your first product launch isn’t going to work. It’s really scary.

Kara Goldin 9:31
super scary. And so what did you do at that point? Um, yeah, so

Jessica Rolph 9:35
we ended up really needing to pivot super quickly and we needed to buy time. So we bought time by literally buying our own products. We created a community marketing program where we had moms you know, going out and giving out like lots of free coupons for I remember that

Kara Goldin 9:53
Riot Yeah, what do you idea? Yeah, I do. I remember it. I

Jessica Rolph 9:57
remember. I remember watching and i mean you really Like, grab the community and, and arm them, right where you guys did an excellent job of that. We have we hustled, we really hustled. And then I think pivoting to figuring out how we could launch something in the dry aisle that would then point people to the frozen aisle. So we had these little coupons that we put on top of our cereal that was probiotic, and different. And, you know, dhk wasn’t quite the total revolution that we were hoping for wasn’t from the jar to this, like fresh frozen cubes, but it was an evolved cereal, and then you know, kind of like, think outside the jar, look in the freezer, you know, try to point people to the frozen baby food, and so to, again, buy us some time. At the time, we got so lucky, because ersp best the big cereal manufacturer and Whole Foods went out of stock, they had some supply problem that lasted months. And so in this was the exact moment that we entered the market. So remember just getting, you know, like, like feet of shelf space just from nowhere for us because of the out of stock issue. And so we really got that break. And then it gave us the momentum to be able to, you know, kind of continue and raise more money and figure out how to get into more dry snacks. And then eventually, the pouch, which became a really popular way for parents to be able to have convenient food, but also really healthy food mix of fruits and vegetables. We put some salsa, which is like a chia into the pouch, which was really unique and different and coconut oils and different things. And so that really propelled our brand. And we were we were scaling from there. But there was some really scary times in the early days.

Kara Goldin 11:35
I can only imagine as a founder. I mean, it’s just everything sounds right on the outside. I mean, you guys are just growing, everything’s great. You’re, as I share with so many people, I think that there are so many founders that are going through their own private hell, right, that you’re driving around, and, you know, oh, I just want to hang out with my dad while I’m driving around, you know, you’re trying to pull this stuff and and, you know, maybe even raise a family at the same time. While you’re doing all of all of this. It’s just I can only imagine how nutty it is. And and in the end, you guys were acquired, right?

Jessica Rolph 12:14
Yes, we were acquired by a group did known. And it was really exciting. I mean, between, you know, launch in seven years, we got the company to 63 million in sales. And we required by group to know, which was really special for us, because we were so aligned with their vision for you know, for where they wanted to take the company and their values orientation. So it was like really was a really great day when that happened.

Kara Goldin 12:40
That’s awesome. Did you guys, did they just reach out to you? Or were you surprised when when that happened? Or had you actually hired a banker, or,

Jessica Rolph 12:50
you know, we had my co founder and I had both developed a relationship with Seth Goldman from the original founder of honesty who now has some cool new alternatives to beef jerky in his his new company as mushroom jerky. It’s really cool. Check it out. But we have both known him separately. And then he was very supportive and an early investor he invested 20 $500 in our first round of financing and happy family. And I will say like just having very low or no minimums can really make a difference. To just cop cobbling together that seed capital. I am like a huge proponent of a very low or no minimums. But then Seth introduced us to Gary Hirshberg, of Stonyfield, and Gary was with to known and so we developed, you know, kind of this ongoing relationship with Gary and denote actually had looked at maybe investing in us early, but, but then we had this sort of ongoing relationship and were able to when it was time to sell, we were able to really, you know, lean in and, and make that process work. But it was it was a competitive process. There were a lot of competitive baby food companies at the time, there was you know, a lot of companies that kind of were scaling at the same time it was, it was really intense. And so we felt really fortunate to be able to align with group down.

Kara Goldin 14:03
Yeah, definitely. Well, it’s a great product and I you should be so proud that you guys had had, you know, developed this and and successfully sold it and then you decided to go into the children’s product space totally go jump into out of food into this into this new industry. So what what were you thinking? I mean, what was what was kind of that? Where was your head on? on thinking about developing this?

Jessica Rolph 14:35
Yeah, you know, I really felt like it wasn’t finished. First of all, like I just had so much and I think maybe part of it is, you know, just kind of like the experience of building happy family and felt like and learned so much. And I just wanted to you know, I just wanted to continue with my career and I had this personal experience that was really moving for me. So I had three children on my own and I felt so good about what I was feeling them has been them all like organic healthy foods. And I found myself on the floor with one of my babies. And you might remember this care, I like those plastic light up toys with all the stuff, you know, you push one button and all of a sudden, like, a purple cow pops out lights are flashing music’s playing. And you know, I was really craving a moment of connection with my baby. And instead I felt like disconnected. And I also found myself wondering what was this toy, and all the toys in his playroom for me know, frankly, doing for his development, because I think we’re starting to hear and I think that the message was starting to get out at the time that the early years do matter. So there’s this public policy, public service message, it’s like 80% of the brain is developed by age three, and the early years matter. And half of who we become is based on those early years and those early experiences that we have. And you know, the other half is, you know, there’s genetics obviously plays a part, but your environment plays a big part. And so I felt really good about the nutrition piece. But I had there was like, there’s a big empty, sort of, like, unknown around cognitive development. And so I discovered this really nerdy doctoral thesis written on infant brain development. And I started doing these activities with my babies, and getting rid of all the toys that we had and started making my own and like, just finding so much joy, and connection in and really understanding what they wanted to learn. It made me feel like like a good mom, frankly, like a confident parent. And so I started dreaming about when we had sold happy family yesterday dreaming about Okay, like, what would it look like to have something that’s really more of like a system and a support system for parents that kind of builds on happy family? Like we were very much a support for early nutrition, but what if it felt more holistic around brain development, and so developed this concept for a stage based learning program that, you know, really didn’t didn’t exist before. So it’s really exciting.

Kara Goldin 16:53
I love it, it’s actually, you know, thinking about it, it really is a natural progression. I mean, it’s, it’s interesting with hint, for me, health really started with what I was putting in my body, but then I started to really think about the customer journey, and about how, you know, things like sunscreen and things like we’ve gone into other categories. Sometimes that’s where people enter, right? Maybe people we’re not, we’re not kind of thinking about the about baby food and better for you baby food, but then they’re thinking about the toys and about the better for you brain development. And then I think just building on kind of what you were doing and how people were, you know, feeling about the product? And and I think it totally makes sense on so on lots and lots of levels. So I love it, that tons of science behind your products, too, as I dug into some of that so and how did you go about going and getting kind of the science side of the research?

Jessica Rolph 18:03
That’s a great question. And I think even before then, it’s, there’s this like, moment, where before you kind of build the new thing. There’s this real vulnerability around, you know, am I like, a one hit wonder, like, Is this just gonna be it? You know, for my career? Like, can I really hit the jackpot twice? Yeah, to be successful twice. And what? You know, I think that there’s really a moment of self doubt before you start anything. As an entrepreneur, you know, it’s before it’s out in the world, it’s can feel very vulnerable. But I think for me, I just felt so compelled by what you talked about by this mission. And I think that for career transitions, it’s very much about like keeping one foot in, like, where you have knowledge and success, like with you, you know, you understand the marketplace of how to sell things, you know how to make products that are differentiated, you know how to sell things, but then also taking a foot and putting it into a new new territory and taking a risk. So for me, it was very much like I understood, early life, I knew that parent and what they wanted, because I was one of them. But then it’s also taking this leap into a whole nother for us, it’s really direct to consumer and really understanding how to build a subscription stage based business that is not at retail, um, that was all the new learnings for me, my co founder, so my new co founder at love every rod. So to answer your question, we definitely are, you know, we’re very much research back to there are so many there’s so much science on early life that is not reaching parents. So you know, you have these appointments with your pediatrician, but they’re focusing on the health of the baby. Frankly, like, you know, you have multiple children, you kind of forget, like, even you know, not only do you have your first and you have no idea what to do, but then even when you have your second or third year, like what was the stage again, it kind of feels like you sort of have like, amnesia from like, I can’t remember what it was like to you know, go through all these stages. And so, I think for us, you know, there’s so many there’s so much research, there are so many partners, we partner with ot professionals, PT, speech therapists. We have neuroscientists who just study how babies learn math. And there’s actually a lot of a neat learning that babies already have when they’re born about numeracy. It’s fascinating. And then how do you build on that? So there’s a, there’s a lot of research there, it’s very easy to kind of access it, it’s just not really reaching parents in a practical actionable way.

Kara Goldin 20:19
So interesting. So you’re 100%, direct to consumer, you’re not doing retail,

Jessica Rolph 20:25
we are about, you know, north of 80% of our business is direct to consumer, because that’s what we want is this ongoing relationship with parents. Our strategy for launching the company was to not launch the early learning program from the beginning, because we really wanted to kind of like, really understand how the brand was going to resonate. And how are, we had this insight that there was a product of the playgym, you probably had them for your kids. They haven’t they hadn’t changed much, since when your kids were little, it’s a cluttered category. But it’s such an opportunity for an early learning essential early learning opportunity. And if you can make it nuanced and stage based and really kind of changed that product, you can really offer this platform for learning for the first year. And so we launched that product in on Amazon and direct. And so we were able to build our brand awareness through the Amazon platform, because it’s highly registered for item, we had product market fit from the beginning, it was such a relief, it was I felt like I learned so much from a happy family experience did not want to relive that. So we’ve took a while and a lot of testing before we launched. And you know, kind of applied all the learnings from happy family to this new venture. And so we were really able to, you know, get the playgym out, it became number one in revenue within a year on Amazon in a very crowded category. And then that became really the kind of the platform for, for our early learning program, because people really trusted our brand and kind of loved the play. Jim,

Kara Goldin 21:49
I love it. So how do you think your business changed through the pandemic? And how, like, How were your customers? Were they different than they were 15 months ago? Or at least how you looked at them? I mean, did you feel like it was Did you see a dramatic shift and kind of their behavior in any way?

Jessica Rolph 22:12
Yeah, I mean, before the pandemic, we were seeing a lot of my co founder and I were seeing a lot of brand awareness growing. So we were really, really kind of cranking on the revenue generation side and on trying to figure out, you know, this, this machine, a building a direct to consumer company, you know, around content building, and all the ways that we wanted to have touch points with parents, you know, the pandemic was such a big deal for parents in particular, you know, they had children or foot, they were trying to work school, the schools were closed, daycares were closed. And so it was a really exceptional opportunity for us to have that openness of, you know, of wanting to try something. So it was a real accelerator for our company, it was also the fact that from A to kind of more technical backend side cpms are the you know, cost to acquire customers was really low. And so we were able to take advantage of that. And we had very strong retention metrics, meaning, you know, we were really keeping our customers the same pre pandemic, and post pandemic. So when you became a customer, you know, you wanted to stay a customer. For us, what we saw this shift, which was really exciting was we shifted really deeply into the mass market. So our fastest growing segment are families that are making less than 50,000 a year, we saw, you know, the really like the scale of the business, and you know, this diversity and geographically expand through the pandemic. And it was a really kind of accelerator for us in terms of getting to mass

Kara Goldin 23:38
with the brand. So interesting. So you can’t look at your product and your product sales as being on the coasts, as people always say that those are the people that are, you know, whatever, more educated more, we threw that out the door as well. I mean, it was very much scattered throughout the US for sure, and where people want better products. And I think that, clearly I can see that happening with yours as well. So you founded a couple of companies now, what do you think are the, like key things that you’ve learned? Or maybe that you, you did differently this time?

Jessica Rolph 24:16
Yeah, I mean, I will say that the key things that I’ve learned is just the power of partnership, and co founding a company. So my co founder, shazi in the first business, you know, we, you know, just there’s that sort of that all those early challenges, you know, having somebody who’s you know, you can think through problems together was just really powerful. What I learned, I was when Josie and I first started, I was 49% she was 51 it was her idea to build the company, you know, from a lot of perspectives is incredibly generous of her to invite me in at 49% with love every I wanted to actually be equal it with my co founders. So when rod and I became partners, we decided that we were going to do 5050 and so That’s been kind of an interest, you know, just I think, like a very subtle shift. But it actually represents a lot in terms of how kind of we behave as co founders. And you know, I think, practically speaking, both co founders need to kind of agree on what you’re going to build together and go forth together. And that’s very much you know, shazi. And I would always get there, and we’d always have healthy debate, it was like really, so fun to build that company with her. I think with rod and me, there’s just like a think, after being number two. And knowing how that feels, I really wanted him to be feeling like we really wanted an equal partner in the business. And so that was a big kind of, I think, learning for me, and I think, you know, we’ve been incredible partners, he’s running a lot of the revenue generation, and I’m running a lot of the product development. And we, you know, we really are a great a great pair that way now, but you’re the CEO of the company, I am the CEO. Yes. So that’s my idea. And I’m the CEO, he’s the president, with happy family. I was the CEO. Oh, shazi was the CEO. So you know, so there’s always a there’s there’s different roles. But I think that there’s kind of in the foundation of the business, I think, for me, it was is important to kind of build from an equity standpoint, equality,

Kara Goldin 26:16
definitely. So what what is some of the best advice that you heard about, you know, throughout your journey, and being an entrepreneur, maybe even advice that you don’t think is necessarily true to true today and building two companies in two different industries?

Jessica Rolph 26:37
The best advice, I mean, I think that the best advice that I’ve heard that I would continue to stand behind is just obsession, and obsession with your customer. And so now, I think that we are in this really special place with love everywhere we’ve been listening, and then building products, to now we are in a place of truly co creating with our customers. And so we have this book up every play kit comes with a book that we’ve developed, and it’s based on a monastery principles of real photography, real stories, children love them, there’s a child, there’s a, one of our play kids has a story of a little boy skinning his knee at the park. And, you know, it’s like, and he gets an alley, and it’s a, it’s a big alley, and there’s some, you know, we retouch some blood into that knee, and it’s like the child children’s favorite page, they just want to linger on that page of one and two year olds just really, really want to talk about getting hurt. And they want to know about how maxpower and it’s like very relatable to them. And so we developed these books, and we put it out there that we are really excited to hear from our customers do they have ideas for books or stories that have not yet been told. And so we heard from our customers that we had, you know, really kind of, we’re telling a lot of stories, but we were missing a really important story. And that was a story of indigenous nations and the Native American story. And so very much like books can be mirrors to children like max getting hurt in the park and you know, skin knees, and they can relate to that mirror that frame of seeing themselves in that moment. Books can also be a window into another culture, another world if you can find a way to relate. And so we partnered with a parent of a three year old in who’s a member of the coralayne tribe, and it’s a story of Adela coming home and she gets to put on her regalia with her grandmother and her mother and they smudge and they go on a you know, canoe ride, and she gets to play the drum and have some sort of really kind of be in her homeland. But every child can relate to getting dressed up. And so, uh, delegates to wear lipstick. And we have, you know, just this like sheet, you know, this photo of a delegating lipstick applied, and she’s in her regalia. And all three year olds love to get dressed up. And so they can really relate to that story. So that story of indigenous cultures was really driven by our customers, they were asking us for the story to be told that we were missing this story. Another example is a customer came to us her daughter’s a limb difference. And she said, I want to tell my daughter a story. She was we don’t know why. But she was born with one leg much shorter than the other. She has a prosthetic leg and I want to tell her story. And so we co authored a book with her flew down did photography of her and her daughter and her daughter meeting a girl at the park named Pearl, who in the story, and it was a fictitious story, but it was kind of mirroring what little Laura had experienced, was very curious and kind of inappropriate, you know, how kids can ask inappropriate questions about other people’s bodies. And so she was asking these inappropriate questions and wanting to touch a Laura’s prosthetic leg. And so it was a it was really kind of like helping this parent kind of tell her daughter’s story. And it was so special. And it’s like this co creation with customers that I think is really fueling our growth from here. It’s really like a deep partnership. And I think that obsession with our customers and that obsession with testing and really understanding them led to us being able to kind of do this Next level of CO creation.

Kara Goldin 30:02
So interesting. So do you feel like the obviously retail? As you know, we saw toys Rs a few years ago go bankrupt and other retailers that are out there do you think that consumers are really looking for? They’re kind of doing a lot more research when they’re doing they’re making these decisions? And and I mean, how do you think what is the future of Yeah, this of this industry, and I mean, I’m talking pretty broadly around toys too, but I feel like people are more and more looking for stuff that is that is going to, you know, help expand conversations help our kids be more and more creative. I mean, things that I think people are, you know, feeling today, as adults are, you know, things that could help them even with mental health with, with ways to connect to have EQ. And I mean, a lot of what you’re talking about, I think that it, it really lays out the early development necessary in order to live a happier life.

Jessica Rolph 31:19
Yeah, and I think that there’s just no more important kind of intention as a parent than to give your child the best and that and that spans income that spans demographics, that spans geography, that spans everything is just the human kind of desire to give your child the very best. And I think that that means you need to have a direct emotional connection to these companies in these services in these products that are helping guide you in those important early years. And you need to know that the company founders care about, you know, climate change, and like care about the world that your child is going to grow up in, you know, 30 years from now, right, and that the toys that they’re playing with aren’t actually, you know, contributing, they might be wood, but they’re, they’re actually sustainably forested, that you feel like you understand that they’re empathetic, and that they have this kind of right voice and that there are some, there’s, there’s a real desire, I think, for a human connection, I think that’s what we’re finding with this new economy. Parents are looking for a nerdy edge they’re looking for, they want the details, they want to know, they really care, and they want to know more and feel connected to these products that they’re bringing into their lives. So I think that the time of sort of disconnected, I’m just going to, you know, buy a toy and see if it’s fun, or you know, there’s there’s a time and a space for, for that, you know, parties and totally things. But, but when you’re talking about holding a parent and a child through those early years, and like building parent connection with their child, and actually helping them feel confident, there, it’s just a very intimate. And so I think that for us, it’s like our direct relationship with our customers. Our subscription model, which is like a popular business model now is essential to our mission, it’s, it’s key to being able to fulfill our desire to really partner with parents and help them through those early years.

Kara Goldin 33:06
I love it. So talk to people a little bit about your subscription model. Yeah, so

Jessica Rolph 33:10
I mean, I think it’s, it’s really the sort of the, we feel very lucky that like subscription businesses became popular, because if you think about it, we, you know, I really sort of had this idea to create an early learning program. And at the time, you know, subscription businesses were starting to trend. And it was so great, because people were familiar with this sort of ongoing, you know, payments and ongoing relationship with a company, stage based, you know, for us was so essential, like, we are there for you for every stage of your child’s development. So subscription is sort of key, because children develop, you know, a very kind of predictable windows, there’s a lot that’s in common about early childhood. And so we want to just there’s, you know, if we can go deep in each stage, we can be there with the next play kit with the next set of information. So I think it was really lucky that, you know, people were also buying razors by subscription and buying things on Amazon by subscription and

Kara Goldin 34:05
getting hit by subscription.

Jessica Rolph 34:06
Exactly getting his deliveries by subscription and feeling confident that it was like going to show up when you were running out. So I think that that you know, sort of behavior is it was a really was really helpful for us because, you know, a subscription was so core to who we want it to be for the parent.

Kara Goldin 34:22
And plus kids at any age want to get one new thing, right, or a grouping of new things and to show up and actually get mail. I mean, I remember, you know, actually getting mail as a as a kid that that was, you know, that was gold, right? I mean, to actually get something new and you want to rip up open the box. And, you know, I think that that is it’s just brilliant, right? That it’s not something that you actually have to go go in your car and go to a store. I mean, instead, you get somebody on subscription program, you know that it’s going to be healthy and better for them and They’re going to learn something in the activity. And also I think, I felt like you’re also showing an opportunity for play with a parent, right? Or you know, somebody else who a babysitter or whatever, where you can be creative and, and let your imagination run. So it’s a, it’s such a good item, I highly recommend it for everybody. So it’s, it’s a super, super cool. So where can people find more information about love every and then also just about you and your company?

Jessica Rolph 35:34
Yes. So if you have a child between the ages of zero and four, we have a weekly stage based email that you can sign up for, that’s really kind of, again, that nerdy edge and that content, so it’s at love every.com, l o v, EV, er, y.com. And then we offer a stage based learning kits there as well. So we’ve got sort of the About Us section. And then, you know, like, why we started the company, but then also, you know, a lot of kind of content that’s free for parents to help them understand what’s happening with their child’s development.

Kara Goldin 36:05
I love it. So, so, so great. Well, thank you so much for disrupting this industry and disrupting the baby food industry, too. I absolutely love talking to you about this, because I think that, you know, the sky’s the limit on what everyone can do if you really set your mind to it and doing something with purpose that actually makes the world better and and some way, which is what you’ve done twice now is just really, really awesome. And I think more than anything, as I was sharing with you earlier, I hope my podcast the guests that I’m bringing on really shares what is possible and and you know, that you don’t have to be in in the same industry or go do it again, in the same industry, you can go as switch industries, it really is about the idea and your ability to actually execute on that idea and build a team that you’ve proven out. So thank you so much. And thank you everyone for listening to this episode two of the Kara golden show. We’re here every Monday and Wednesday. And definitely check out check out my social on Kara golden on all social channels, and hopefully you’ve had a chance to purchase my book, undaunted, overcoming doubts and doubters on Amazon and lots of other fine bookstores. And, of course, pick up your favorite case of hint water on our website or in lots of stores all over the place. And thank you everybody, and goodbye for now. before we sign off, I want to talk to you about fear. People like to talk about fearless leaders. But achieving big goals isn’t about fearlessness. successful leaders recognize their fears and decide to deal with them head on in order to move forward. This is where my new book undaunted comes in. This book is designed for anyone who wants to succeed in the face of fear, overcome doubts and live a little undaunted. Order your copy today at undaunted, the book calm and learn how to look your doubts and doubters in the eye and achieve your dreams. For a limited time. You’ll also receive a free case of hint water. Do you have a question for me or want to nominate an innovator to spotlight send me a tweet at Kara golden and let me know. And if you liked what you heard, please leave me a review on Apple podcasts. You can also follow along with me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn at Kara golden thanks for listening